#written only as a correction/update to my original response
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(i wrote a response to this post a while ago, i don’t remember how long, but i didn’t like what i wrote anymore so i deleted it. but also i really like overthinking things and writing a lot of words about it so i’m rewriting my addition for funsies. i’m assuming op has notifs on this post turned off by now but if not... sorry lol)
The basic premise of “Undertale Prime” as a hypothetical game off of which Undertale is based is... fine. It’s sort of just a (needlessly convoluted?) way of saying that Undertale subverts the character archetypes typically seen in the RPG genre. The problem is mostly with what OP presumes to be the purpose of this subversion.
I find it hard just from this post to gauge exactly how the author feels about the game, but I am left with two possible conclusions:
1) The game/its characters are bad. Undertale is “nonsensical” at best and “morally repugnant” at worst. The writing takes a fanfiction-like approach and fails at maintaining moral and logical consistency.
I think use of words such as “morally repugnant” and “plotholes” is sort of... over-serious. Is every shounen anime or children’s cartoon that uses talk-no-jutsu “morally repugnant”?
Undertale is silly. It’s a silly game. It has more serious moments and themes, and it does provide an interesting deconstruction of the RPG genre. But it is also a very lighthearted and funny game for the most part. It could almost be called a genre parody. The juxtaposition of the characters’ zany personalities with their attempts to murder you is... kind of part of the joke? (Like it’s somewhat tongue-in-cheek.I don’t feel like the game needs to spell it out for you explicitly for that to be clear). Mostly I feel like this interpretation is demanding a real-world level of coherence and logic that is unreasonable to expect from a silly fantasy RPG that parodizes many aspects of its genre. It feels pedantic (said the pot to the kettle, har har)
2) The incongruence is done on purpose, as part of some meta-commentary about fandom. Undertale is aware of its internal inconsistencies and its characters are intentionally written this way in order to critique fandomization.
The tone the OP takes towards fan characterizations feels quite derisive. I can’t help but feel that this interpretation is influenced by a negative view of fandoms. There are interesting conversations to be had about media literacy and the way fandoms engage with media, but this take feels unnecessarily reductive. In any case, Undertale is very earnest in the way it presents itself, and I can’t picture it as some sort of snide criticism of fans and fandoms. The way characters are written may reference fans and fanon, but I don’t think the writing gives any reason to believe that it’s a negative thing.
Conclusions aside, I think the reasoning is fundamentally flawed. OP refers to the boss monsters as “villains”; they are bad people. Killing them is a morally acceptable way to “hold them responsible” for their actions. This is an oversimplification that Undertale actively resists. The characters of Undertale do bad things, but that does not make them bad people, or unworthy of saving. Even if it did, it still wouldn’t justify keeping the entire -- largely nonviolent -- monster race imprisoned underground. Sometimes in order to help the people who are good you have to help the people who suck; you don’t get to pick and choose who lives and dies. That’s like the whole fucking point!!! That they’re “monsters”, but not in the way that is typically meant when said in an RPG!!! That you can’t play god with people’s lives and expect the best possible outcome!!! UGH
(Also... you absolutely CAN kill the monsters that attack you. The game doesn’t punish you for a Neutral route. Some of the characters might end up hating you, or having different things happen to them depending on your actions... although if you don’t like them I don’t know why you’d care what they think or what happens to them anyway. Frisk escapes the underground, and all’s well that ends well for them. A Pacifist ending is “better” in the sense that you get more of the story, the complete credits, and the monsters are freed. But again this is only really “better” if you actually LIKE the monsters. There’s little material benefit to the player or to Frisk; it’s also more mechanically difficult than a Neutral run. And yeah, the game punishes you for a Genocide route. But that’s because you have to go out of your way to kill all of the monsters in the game, which is immoral, pretty inarguably).
TL;DR: This analysis misses the point of Undertale’s narrative by over-rationalizing, and possibly projecting the author’s own attitudes about fandom onto Toby Fox.
Also, the line about how “the most sympathetic/admirable women become lesbians” is... weird! Just a fucking weird thing to say.
A Remake Without an Original
Hold on tight, folks. We’re going full post-structuralist.
So. I’ve been thinking about the discussions that @nostalgebraist and @cyborgbutterflies have been having about Undertale fairly recently.
And I think I’ve hit upon a Doylist explanation for why Undertale is so morally bizarre:
All the characters in Undertale have no canonical existence, they have all been preemptively rewritten as the characters that fandom would have turned them into.
Undertale as it exists now, is like the fanon version of a game that never existed.
Let’s call this hypothetical game-that-never-was “Undertale Prime”.
In Undertale Prime, Papyrus is pretty much an exact duplicate of Skeletor: an evil mastermind whose plans never come to fruition. Constantly frustrated, taking out his anger on his minions in the most hilariously melodramatic ways.
In Undertale Prime, Undyne is a deadly serious super-soldier. Even a bit of a sadist. She is acquainted with Alphys, but there’s no romance between them.
In Undertale Prime, Mettaton has no Mettaton EX form. He remains a rectangular robot for the entire game, but his personality shows small signs of the sass and flamboyance of Mettaton EX.
In Undertale Prime, Alphys is a tetchy mad scientist, more like Cumberbatch’s Sherlock than anything else. Prickly on the surface, lonely underneath. There’s no mention of anime or internet arguments or anything like that.
In Undertale Prime, Asgore is stern and serious, and completely in charge, but tormented by the necessary evils he has committed to protect his kingdom. Like a more sympathetic version of a king from a Shakespearean tragedy.
And finally, in Undertale Prime, all bosses are killed without remorse or punishment.
We’ve seen these character archetypes before, and we can guess how a typical fandom would reinterpret these archetypes:
the Thwarted Mastermind becomes a Bumbling Narcissist.
the Deadly Soldier becomes a Hot-Blooded Blockhead.
the Mad Scientist becomes an Adorable Nerd.
The Geometric Robot becomes a Svelte Bishonen.(look at Bill Cipher fanart)
The Tormented King becomes Sad Dad.
(and the most sympathetic/admirable women become lesbians)
But most importantly, all these villains would become sympathetic.
They’d become comedy relief, or even woobies.
Undertale takes the most probable fanon reinterpretations of Undertale Prime, and makes them canon. Why are the villains actions treated so cavalierly? Because typical fandom wouldn’t care. Typical fandom forgives villains, typical fandom makes villains cute.
But the discrepancy is this: in Undertale, the characters’ actions all remain the same as they would be in the dark and serious story of Undertale Prime. They play the same role in the plot, they are still Villains. The only things that change are their personalities, and the manner in which they are presented to the audience.
The result is that Undertale Prime makes moral sense, but Undertale does not.
It’s as if the Avengers canonically considered Bucky Barnes a family friend and acted as if the events of The Winter Soldier had never happened, as fandom wishes it were– But Bucky was still a terrorist.
It’s as if the characters in Borderlands 2 saw Handsome Jack as charming comic relief, the way the audience does– but Handsome Jack was still a murderous psychopath.
It’s as if, in Kingdom Hearts 2, Organization XIII were portrayed as the bickering sitcom family that the KH fandom made them into– but they were still trying to kill Sora and friends.
Every playthrough of the Kingdom Hearts franchise involves killing every member of Organization XIII.
But I guarantee you every Kingdom Hearts fan has their favorite Organization member.
None of the characters in Undertale are “held responsible” for attacking Frisk, because a game audience typically does not hold boss characters responsible for attacking the player. Instead, the audience sees them, through a Doylist/Mechanics-oriented lens, as a welcome addition to the game: a challenging battle and an entertaining character.
Undertale takes the player’s expected affectionate attitude towards bosses, and makes it the “objectively morally right” choice, according to the game’s in-world metaphysics.
Undertale is not just a game that preaches pathological altruism, it is, in itself, a pathologically altruistic text– a text that privileges the interpretation it expects to be subjected to over its own internal structure and logic, and preemptively changes itself to make those expected interpretations into objective truth, even when those changes create plotholes and morally repugnant implications.
A game, suffering to make itself everything the world expects it to be, about a child who suffers to make itself everything the world expects it to be.
#written only as a correction/update to my original response#i could have just edited my original rb but i didn't think about it until after i deleted it#something something hope and kindness in the face of terrible adversity#undertale#long post
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COMMISSIONS ARE CLOSED!!
EDIT/UPDATE:
Commissions will be closed until August! Thank you so much to everyone who's commissioned me or shown interest in these! It means the world to me!! And I hope that you'll all stick around to see the results of these commissions!! (Which does include the sticker plan!)
To all current commissioners and waitlisted folks: don't worry, your pieces are still in progress and to those on the waitlist I will be in contact! Thank you all for your patronage and patience! You are all so amazing!!!
If you would like a commission but missed out on these, please be sure to check back in August!
Thank you all again so much!! I hope you have a wonderful week you guys!! <333
SO, as you may know, some of you may know, maybe none of you know, I am trying to start selling stickers!!! On my own. No RedBubble or Society6. Nope. All by my lonesome!
But in order to do that, I need to make the money to purchase the stickers and other necessary shipping supplies in the first place. So, I'm opening commissions!! Specifically,,,,,,
I am doing sketch commissions!
I don't have a set close date OR any slots, so it is completely first come, first serve for as long as I can keep it up!
I'm going to include more information, process, as well as terms and conditions under the cut, but if you have any questions not answered below please don't hesitate to get in touch with me here, on Instagram (@jo.the.mouse) or by email ([email protected])!
And before I continue on, if you cant commission me but want to support me all I ask is that you please reblog this post!! It does a WORLD of wonders to spread posts around! Thank you!!
What I'm Offering
Commissioned artworks in my “Sketch Style”. The money made from these commissions is going to directly fund the creation and sale of illustrated stickers!
Here is a fun little preview sketch of what will be the Canada sticker that I've been obnoxiously polling people about:
Prices
Uncolored Sketch:
$15
Includes: one character, no/minimal shading, and simple/abstract background
Flat Color Sketch:
$25
Includes: one character, no/minimal shading, and simple/abstract background
Full Color Sketch:
$35
Includes: one character, basic shading, and simple/abstract background
Add Additional Characters:
+ $5 per added character
What I will draw:
OCs (original characters)
Fanart
Real People
Furries (Anthro and Feral)
Fantasy/DnD
Suggestive (no real people without written and signed consent)
What I will NOT draw:
Overtly NSFW
Heavy Gore
Process
Contact me either through DMs (Tumblr: jothemouse, Instagram: jo.the.mouse) or through email ([email protected])
We'll talk a bit about your commission (like what you're looking for, any references I'll need, how much it'll cost,.ect.) I'll also be asking for your email and preferred payment method at this time.
Payment for the commission is due upon receiving a confirmation email. This email will include a google form contract (this is mainly for me to make sure I have everything correct), notice that I've sent you a payment request, and a time estimate!
I will begin the initial sketch once payment is received.
Refunds are available at any point before you receive the initial sketch.
Upon receiving the initial sketch you can suggest changes and revisions. This is your only opportunity to do so.
From there I will finalize your commission to agreed upon level.
I will let you know when your commission is finished and send you an email containing a PDF and PNG file!
Terms and Conditions
PAYMENT is due upon receiving email with confirmation and a time estimate. Depending on discussed payment method, you will receive either A; a PayPal invoice, or B; a Venmo payment request. Work will begin once payment is received.
REFUNDS are available at any time BEFORE you receive the “initial sketch” OR if commission cannot be delivered within agreed upon time or at all.
Time estimate is not a hard deadline and response times may affect how long a commission will take.
This commission is for PERSONAL USE ONLY. You may not use the commission for any commercial purposes, claim it as your own, or use it in conjunction with any AI methods.
I reserve the right to refuse any commission that I believe falls outside of my comfort level or skill level.
Additionally, I will only be drawing in the specific style demonstrated in the example works.
ALRIGHT! You made it through all that nonsense!
Thank you so much for reading! And if you're able, please consider commissioning me!
I hope to see you in my DMs!! (^-^)
#artists on tumblr#art#art commissions#commissions open#commission#illustration#digital art#fanart#original character#oc commission#fanart commissions#dnd#fantasy#furry#furry commissions#dnd commission#sketch commission#hetalia#hetalia fanart#my art#mice can draw#fandom commissions#commissions#open commissions#digital art commissions#commission info#commission sheet#comms open#comms info#independent artist
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What? Homestuck updated? I get that 11-11 is an arc number (even if it's by far the least important one), but I thought we were on hiatus to work on the big [S] page?
Anyway, Tavvy left a message. That's some fancy handwriting. It's also quite possibly the first written message in the history of Homestuck that's 100% grammatically correct normal English, with Tavvy dropping his comma quirk entirely. Also everyone involved here has cell phones and Tavvy is writing them a letter by hand. He's also leaving snacks for the other kids and telling them to eat the raisins.
It's very parental. Bit interesting that Tavvy, who has had the worst upbringing in a comic about abused children, is the best dad. Tavvy in general is a bit of an enigma, all we really know about him is that he has latent anger issues, presents as a total geed, and is apparently a Man Of Action in disguise.
Jade I have detected a flaw in your incredible shield plan.
VRISSY: FINE, stay 8ack there and sit on your ass. VRISSY: What Do I care if you spend the rest of your life 8eing 8oring and sad, just like your Shitty Parents! HARRY: h-hey... my mom and dad aren't shitty... VRISSY: Harry Wake Up alre8dy! They're NOTHING!!!!!!!! Can you at least Act annoyed a8out that????????
Speaking of unique parental situations, is Harry the only character in Homestuck that actually likes his parents?
Aw man, this art is cool. This could be a poster!
Jade I have detected a flaw in your incredible shield plan.
So, uh, Yiffy running away distracted Jade, causing her to drop her shield and get shot, huh? Yiffy is indirectly responsible for her mother's death. Also, what the fuck? I liked Candy Jade! But I guess if the Omega Kids are to be the new protagonists, their all-powerful parents have to be cleared out.
RIP John, by the way. The great HS1 cast pruning has begun.
End of Act 1. Dirk-Orange curtains for Beyond Canon. Well. Short update, but I guess it sets up-
(I actually did miss that there was a next page link for a bit)
gavageCunctation [GC] began negging adamantGriftress [AG] 801 MINUTES AGO.
Hey hey, it's gavageCunctation! Last seen on Vrissy's phone in the jail, where Vrissy was able to talk to her (despite no internet) but didn't want to. 801 minutes ago is the HSBC arc number reversed, but also GC is using a time travel capable chat client, implying they're in another universe.
GC: you'd "h8" this "vaguely ominous Doomer 8ullshit." GC: but this time... GC: i really feel like it's true. GC: i'm going to play TC's game with some of my friends today...
A universe with a "game". GC was Terezi's tag originally, but this character is using a purplish #8E5594 font color instead of teal. That hex doesn't match Eridan (6a006a) or Feferi (77003c), so it's not a troll blood color despite the grey (clawed) hands. Perhaps she's in the DirkRose session? The original TC was Gamzee (terminallyCapricious), but I think these characters will be nothing like their handles imply, even as GC and AG are friends.
GC: AA (that's oomf)---* has def been bugging you about this because she cannot fucking help herself... GC: if it's one thing she gonna do it's bug or fuss or meddle. GC: heh well, i guess that's three things.
We also have an AA, which was Aradia's tag originally, but "bug or fuss or meddle" is a line associated with Kanaya.
GC: except she's not an oracle. GC: she's some other shit... GC: to keep it real with you i don't really understand it... but that's kind of the whole deal with magic, right? GC: you don't have to understand it, just believe in it... GC: i kind of forgot where i was going with this. GC: oh yeah... GC: she said that she was certain that you would play with us. GC: obvs i called bullshit...
So, this is either the greatest red herring in history, or confirmation that the Omega Kids are in fact going to play SBURB. That was the running assumption but I think we have this on lock now. AA might have prospit cloud visions, or (more likely?) has her own witchy thing going on.
GC: my roster's so crowded it's making sardines claustrophobic.
Wait, no, GC knows what sardines are? Did Dirk and Rose make sardines, or is this a third planet and a completely unrelated-to-Dirk session?
GC: o-–* GC: good luck, vriska. GC: with everything... GC: o-* GC: so yeah. gavageCunctation's [GC'S] computer exploded.
Oh, the o---* think is a cartoon bomb with a lit fuse. What an ominous ending line. Short update, but a lot to speculate on.
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INTRO!!!
This will hopefully be the first and last time I break character on either of my NSO blogs, but I felt it was necessary to post a real intro considering the things that will be posted on this account.
(TL;DR @ the bottom)
DISCLAIMER!!!
These blogs were created with the purpose of being a creative outlet for my trauma and mental illness. This means that some of the content on this page might be unpleasant for some people. If that's the case, don't view my blog.
To start things off...
16+ only, please. I want to create a safe space for as many people as I can, but I don't want to be responsible for influencing any kids into doing any of the things I speak about.
For anonymity, I'm not going to tell you my actual name, so please just call me Kangel or Ame, depending on the blog you are viewing.
I will do my best to always tag any possible triggers on my heavier posts, so please correct me if I miss a tag or incorrectly tag something.
TRIGGER WARNINGS!!
As I just mentioned, there will be a lot of triggering things posted on both of these blogs. Because of that, I'd like to compile what will be the most common trigger warnings to look out for on this page (will be updated as I post to remain accurate)
Mentions of grooming
Mentions of past trauma
Neglect
Fear of abandonment
Long rambles during panic attacks
Addiction
Abuse/toxic relationships
Intrusive thoughts
Self-harm
Mentions of suicidality
A Bit About Me
I like Jirai and the message it sends as it's something I heavily relate to. I don't have any jirai clothing yet, but I'm saving to buy my first item asap! I also really like vocaloid, visual kei, breakcore, and honestly most kinds of music haha.
If you couldn't guess, I really like NSO. The kind of person Ame-chan is really spoke to me. I've always wanted to take on a new persona online, and what better way than a Kangel blog! I'll speak a little more on the roles of each blog later, tho <3
I really like RPGs like Persona and Final Fantasy as I grew up playing both. They're both really comforting games for me.
I suspect I have Autism and either BPD or bipolar. I'm in the process of trying to find a psychologist to get an assessment and confirm my suspicions, but it's hard to find anyone where I live.
The Kangel blog!
This blog is where I'll post my lighter content. It's my distraction from my actual life and is mainly here for me to pretend I'm someone else. This means that while I'm on the Kangel blog, I'll do things like write in American-English as it's another layer of disconnect from my real life.
There will be much less triggering content on this blog, but there will be an occasional vent post, but that will likely be written in the style of the in-game vent streams and tweets. That means it will likely be a bit dramatised to sound entertaining. Those posts will still have tagged TWs regardless.
The Ame-Chan blog!
This blog is like the priv Twitter account that Ame has in-game. Darker posts will go here, and almost everything will be a vent of some kind. If I feel it's necessary, I will also add a 'check the tags' disclaimer at the beginning of the post so you can decide whether you're in the right headspace to read that post. This is essentially my diary tho and sometimes I just might not add tags. I'll always do my best tho.
This blog is essentially a public diary, which means there will be a lot of in-depth description of my current state and any retelling of past trauma. "Traumadumping" about my childhood will be kept at a minimum though.
This also means that I will occasionally post about dreams I have. I rarely have good dreams, and they're almost always some kind of dream relating to trauma. These normally have a different list of TWs to look out for (including the original list).
I will list those below:
Kidnapping
SA (sometimes explicit, but I will likely never go into those details unless I found it particularly distressing. Those will always be under different tags, though)
Running away/homelessness
Survival game type plot
Physical abandonment
Murder
There will likely be more added as this account develops.
Both blogs, but primarily the Ame one, will occasionally mention a P-Chan. This refers to two different people, but I'll never disclose which is which. This is mostly for privacy.
P-Chan 1 refers to a real-life person I know and have a semi-toxic friendship with. If I succumb to the BPD allegations, I'd assume they're my 'favourite person'.
P-Chan 2 is fake. They don't exist. They're a character in my head who is my ideal person. They exist so that I have someone to project my unhealthy obsession onto instead of the real P-Chan. This often also means posting the intrusive thoughts I have around P-Chan.
OUTRO!!!
I tried to keep this short while having as much info about this page as needed. I hope this can be a safe space for anyone who relates to me and wants to get to know me. I'm always open to making new friends <33
TL;DR
Mentally ill girl creates blogs to ignore her problems and vent while staying as anonymous as she can. Triggering posts galore, but it will be tagged to the best of her ability.
#ooc#introduction post#intro post#trigger warning list#menhera#jirai kei#needy streamer overload#pien kei#ぴえん系#landmine girl#kangel104#amechan26
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This is so good and so true:
DO WE NEED MULTIPLE BIBLE TRANSLATIONS? WHAT TRANSLATIONS SHOULD WE USE? By Lynette Hughes:
I am writing this in response to several Facebook friends who have questioned my reasons for using various Bible translations rather than exclusively using the King James Bible. If you are convinced that the King James Version is the only legitimate English Bible and that all other translations are false then please don’t waste your time reading this article because nothing I can say will convince you otherwise. If you love and enjoy your KJV, then by all means, you should continue to use and enjoy it. For myself, I believe multiple versions of the Bible can actually be an aid in understanding the message of the Bible, although, I personally like to go back to my primary study Bible [NIV], to compare scriptures.
Since the King James version was translated in 1611 many Bible transcripts have been discovered that are older and more accurate. When Bible scholars research through these older manuscripts they have discovered that some words, phrases, and sentences were added to the Bible either intentionally or accidentally. The verses that you see missing are simply not found in the oldest and most reliable manuscripts and the translators have removed these verses and placed them in footnotes or in the margin because they do not believe they were part of the original manuscripts of the Bible. Bible translators do not compare a translation against another translation, but against the manuscripts that were used.
It is nothing but myth that the King James Version is perfect. A 1611 King James version is virtually unreadable by the average person today, and there have been over thousands of corrections in the KJV from 1611 through 1769 edition, which is the version we use. And, although I believe that the KJV remains an excellent translation, yet today this 400-year-old version remains difficult to comprehend in all too many passages. Everything from the spelling, to syntax, to grammar, to phraseology is very different from what we speak today.
To complicate things, the KJV uses many archaic and obsolete words which have changed in meaning over time and do not convey what the original translators intended to express.. If you were brought up on the King James Version or you have been reading it for years, you might not quite realize how totally foreign sounding the King James Version is to modern readers. Estimates are that the King James Version uses 827 words and phrases that have since changed their meaning or are not used at all. When the Bible is translated, it should be translated into how a people/language group speaks. We understand the written Word of God best when we can read it in our own language – in the vernacular of the day – not how it was spoken hundreds of years ago.
I do realize many people have gotten used to a particular Bible version and resist any attempts to update or revise it, but fierce loyalty to a particular version of the Bible is illogical and for some advocates idolatrous. No doctrine essential for salvation is affected by translations, modern or ancient—unless done by a particular cult to promote its liberal agenda or belief system. There is no perfect translation of the English Bible, as the Scriptures were originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, not English. Each translation has its own strengths and weaknesses, and I am not arguing for any specific version.
Hand a KJV to a young person, or even an older person, and ask them to read 1 Thess. 4:5 and then explain to you what "concupiscence" means. Here is another one: "Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may WITHOUT the word be won by the CONVERSATION of the wives;"1 Peter 3:1. That sounds like a total contradiction until one learns that CONVERSATION in that verse does not mean speech, but behavior. The meaning of the word in English is no longer the same. A prime example of words taking on a different meaning because of culture is the Christmas song "Don we now our gay apparel, Fa la la, la la, la la la, la." That would have a totally different connotation today.
I certainly concede that the KJV is virtually unsurpassed in poetic beauty and literary elegance. But literary beauty and elegance are not substitutes for clarity. We read the Bible in an effort to know what it’s saying. Reading several translations based on different manuscripts can unlock different shades of meaning that you may have previously missed. It can clarify passages of Scripture, and help you see a verse in a different way.
For those trying to choose a Bible, I would encourage each of you to pick a word-for-word, literal translation [such as, NASB, HCSB, KJV, NKJV, MEV, ESV, or the less literal Bible translations, such as the NIV and NLT (a combination of word for word and thought for thought'), as your primary study Bible, then use other paraphrased versions that may be easier to read to help you wrestle through difficult passages and compare them with your primary Bible translation. If there are distinct differences between versions, you may find it helpful from time to time to utilize the Greek and Hebrew lexicon to verify biblical definitions.
Some Bible versions translate less literally, and should not be used as a Christian’s primary Bible. Bibles, such as The Living Bible, GNT, TLB, NEB, the Amplified Bible and God’s Word are paraphrased to reflect what the author thinks the Bible says, not necessarily what the Bible actually says. A paraphrase of the Bible should be used more as a commentary, a way to get another perspective, but should not be viewed as accurate as it is an author’s idea of what the Bible says. A paraphrased Bible allows the greatest degree of liberty in translation and leaves too much room for personal interpretation [2 Peter 1:20].
Some Bibles, such as The New World Translation [used by Jehovah’s Witnesses], the Message, the Passion Bible, as well as feminist and homosexual versions, are doctrinally corrupt mistranslations that have the specific purpose of altering Scripture to agree with their beliefs; they have an agenda all their own.
The Message Bible promotes the mystical New Age message with a boldness that's never been seen in a mainstream Bible. “Lord” occurs 7,970 times in the King James Bible and the Message contains the Lord only 71 times. I could go on and on but let me clarify one thing.... The amputation of these words, of which there are many more, are no accident. It is not an issue in translation or Greek manuscripts. It's also not a matter of updating archaic words or making it easier to understand. It was a deliberate and intentional doctrinal decision to remove the "Lord" and the use of the "Lord Jesus".
Above all, when we are choosing a Bible and/or comparing scriptures, we must ask God for wisdom and discernment. The Spirit of God will enlighten us to hear and understand the truth of God’s written Word and apply it to our lives. It is every Christians privilege to ask and expect the teaching and guidance of the Holy Spirit. We are not left to be absolutely dependent on any interpretation of man. 1 Corinthians 2:5 KJV says “That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men. But in the power of God.”
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I NEED ADVICE FROM AO3 USERS PLEASE
So I have this fanfiction I am working on and it's about a two white guys (it's an important detail for later) getting together, let's call them A and B. I don't want to reveal who they are, but suffice to say they're a moderately popular ship that has existed for a long time (my fanfiction is about one of many adaptations of a beloved source material).
A and B are a fanon ship: in the specific adaptation I am interested in, the love interest of character A is a girl and a person of colour (this will be relevant later), let's call her C. C is of mixed race in the source material, and in various adaptations she has been cast both as a white person or a person of colour.
I want to say, though, that A, being an extremely popular character, has been shipped with many, many other people before, so it's not really a matter of AxB vs AxC ship wars, I could present a list of I think at least 10 very popular ships in which A in involved.
In my fic, that I am still writing and it's still at its "beginning", I have mentioned C only once. I didn't say anything bad about her, I simply namedropped her: I am planning for her to be a positive character. She will later have a more important role, but that's bedside the point.
I haven't uploaded this fic in a good while, but today in my email I find that I have received a comment in my inbox, saying that it's unbelievable the commitment of people to write fanfictions about AxB, even when the adaptation I am writing about went "faaar out of the way" to make B unfuckable and gave A a love interest, C. The comment also accused everyone who has ever written about this ship of having of a fetish for "white men in their porn" (my fic doesn't have any sex or sexual scene at the moment) and not allow "girls or people of color" (I have not specified the ethnicity of any original character in my fic, and at the moment the most developed of them is a woman).
The comment does not even address me directly, it's a rant that could have easily been Tumblr post, and apparently it's frozen? I don't understand, but I can't reply.
I'll be honest, I don't know what the fuck I am supposed to do in this situation. Do I understanding the sentiment behind the rant? Yes. Do I think she has a point in how ship between a white guy and another white guy are more popular than any other kind of ships in fandom? Sure.
But my fic is pretty much just one amongst the hundreds about this ship. What am I supposed to do about it? It's not like she specified anything specific I said in my fic was racist or sexist, it's just the inherent concept of that ship, I guess. It's not even addressed to me, in a way, it's like the person was talking in general.
Am I a bitch if I decide to delete the comment? I am conflicted. It's not like I disagree with the sentiment of the speech, but it's an upsetting comment to see. I am definitely not one of the main creators or promoters for this ship, this is the first and only public fanfiction I have ever written. I hardly speak of this fic on here.
I haven't updated it in months, many months, so it's not like it could have popped on the general ao3 fandom page for the adaptation it is about. Whoever wrote this comment had to look specifically for my fic and then left that. What do I do about it? Block and delete? Is it acceptable? I have read on ao3 for a long time, but I am new to writing for ao3 and I don't know the etiquette.
I have always been of the idea of "don't like don't read". If you find yourself reading my fic and I say something that's racist/sexist/ableist/discriminatory, please tell me! I will correct it. But looking specifically for something you hate to tell me that you hate it in general, like I was personally responsible and could do something about it, leaves me confused.
Oh and the comment was left under the first chapter. The fic currently has six, and C wasn't mentioned in the first chapter.
EDIT:
Thinking about it, it was pretty fucking weird, because I clicked on the account who sent the comment and they had only written one fanfiction. And it was about a ship with A. But it wasn't with C!!! It was with another white man! So. What the hell. Why are you preaching if even you don't follow through your own principles.
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This was originally a Facebook comment in the wake of the Las Vegas shooting that I’ve taken to reprinting here in reponse to the mass shootings I hear about, such as in Louisville last Monday and, since I sometimes take a week to get it done, in Dadeville yesterday. (And, please bear in mind, these are only the ones I hear about, meaning the ones with mass media coverage which hardly happens in every case.) When I reprinted it at the time of the Annapolis Capital Gazette shooting, for the first time I got a substantial amount of pushback, so now rebuttals to the counterarguments I have received then and since are in a lengthy appendix to the reprint text.
My usual procedure for responding to any substantive new comment to a reposting of this is to edit my response into the next posting, or sometimes of the current posting, rather than to reply directly. This is because, when I allow myself to get sucked into engaging with counterarguments directly, almost always I end up wearied again by new, merely paraphrased instances of the same old arguments already rebutted here.
I keep saying "it’s proven that the killing can be stopped" and you keep saying, "but we have rights" as if having rights was an end in itself. No, rights are intended to serve a purpose.
They’re for preventing people getting killed! You keep invoking directly or indirectly one sentence in a document that was written in an era when rifles, pistols, and cannons could hold only one projectile at a time and took minutes to reload [EDIT: supposed factual inaccuracy of this statement is addressed in the appendix]. That document also contains the built-in capacity for itself to be updated when its provisions are no longer effective. It is not Holy Writ. It even presented itself as updateable before it was completed: the sentence you’re so fond of is itself an amendment. Do you believe the sentence in question was written ultimately for the protection of guns or for the protection of lives? Because it’s used for protecting only one of the two, these days, and that’s not lives. Therefore it needs updating.
I will not accept any citation of theoretical future insurrection against a government turned hostile (which government, by the way, in that event would use planes or drones to drop bombs, against which your home weaponry is no protection - it’s doing so right now to civilian populations overseas, and it did so during the 20th century in Tulsa and Philadelphia - so good luck storming the capital) because firstly, actual civilian innocent lives being lost in the present are more important than any merely theoretical future; and secondly, that’s not what the Second Amendment was truly about anyhow. The militia it refers to were the nation’s first police forces whose original formation was for the purpose of hunting and killing black people. The only valid (using the term loosely) reason for denying that the Second Amendment now requires amendment itself is that you’re okay with police shootings of people of color. Those US government bombings on US soil I mentioned parenthetically above? Black neighborhoods, residences and businesses, rich and poor. That’s what you’re defending whether or not you know it.
You think your postion is "rights are important" but you aren’t seeing the context, the difference between what you think the rights are for, and how they are instead now actually being utilized. You aren’t seeing the logical fallacy in what you’re saying which is "this right whose purpose is the protection of innocent lives is more important than all the innocent lives that are being destroyed by people exercising this right". You aren’t seeing that your position ultimately reduces to "lives are less important than guns" but I do and it outrages me wherever I see it.
Even if you were correct that Americans’ minds somehow work differently than the minds of all the people in all the nations where gun law successfully prevents mass shootings (which, by the way, seems disproven by the majority popular support of the gun control legislation that Congress brought after Sandy Hook then voted down), it would only mean that disregard for human life has become the American way. It’s not in me to quietly allow that to stand. While that’s your position there can be no meeting of minds between us, no agreement to disagree. I may give up arguing with you in particular as a bad job, but never mistake that for concession.
The question before us is, "Lives or guns?", and you keep answering, "Guns."
[end of reprint]
Popular counterarguments I’ve received:
1. Inquiries as to what form I would give the gun control law I advocate and what type of guns I would see banned. I would model such laws on the laws that have drastically reduced or have eliminated mass shootings in all nations that have implemented them including, at one time, the United States. I would use those laws’ definition of what was banned. (I anticipate receiving complaints that this statement is not specific enough to sealion but, because such a law were better drafted by someone with legislative expertise and experience and a research staff than by an unpaid webcartoonist, I consider that a feature not a bug.) (I anticipate rebuttals that the previous parenthetical statement constitutes effective admission on my part that I’m too ignorant on the subject to have an opinion at all, but you don’t need to be a plumber to know when you need your toilet rooted out.)
2. Rebuttals seeming to assume that I’m calling for the banning of all guns. Nowhere in the reprint did I call for that. What I called for were two things: the reexamination of the Second Amendment just like any other legislation that’s two and a half centuries old and therefore in need of review, and the implementation in the United States of the solution proven by other nations (and by, at one time, the United States) for the problem of mass shootings which is some manner of national gun control. Now, it may be that the U.S. needs to ban all handguns like some nations, or only some guns like other nations, or ban guns from only certain demographics such as those with known domestic abuse history (which would rule out a percentage of police which might astound you) and as known violent crime offenders, and may need even to experiment at first to find out what’s best, I can’t say. And I didn’t say here (for the reason noted parenthetically in the above paragraph). It remains that the loss of life under the status quo is unacceptable to me and to the majority of the nation (the majority who supported the national gun control bill in Congress after Sandy Hook which bill failed due to special interest lobbying) and requires action be taken; that’s what I say when I say, “The question is, ‘Lives or guns?’”.
3. Rebuttals that gun control won’t stop criminals from killing people. That’s off the topic. The topic is not stopping all murders or violence, the topic is stopping mass shootings, for which national gun control is drastically or wholly effective in every nation that has implemented it, including at one time the United States. (My impression that some comments assume I’m calling for total gun ban may only be an artifact of this consistent failure of counterarguments to focus on the topic.) Refusal to implement the known solution to a given problem on the grounds that it’s not a solution for all problems is not rational.
(Also: The presumption that a given argument’s focus on one topic demonstrates indifference in the speaker/writer on any or all other topics is one of the classic logical fallacies. That means, declining to be deflected off topic by the subject of other violent crime in a discussion of mass shootings in comments on my own post about mass shootings does not demonstrate that I don’t care about the victims of other violent crime; that’s the tu quoque logical fallacy, known in these online days as “whataboutism”. Declining to be deflected to other topics than mass shootings demonstrates, and demonstrates only, that my post’s topic is mass shootings.)
4. Rebuttals to my discussions of the unexamined racism in the second amendment pointing out, correctly, that gun control since emancipation has often been purposefully biased against black people … as if that were a reason to oppose gun law reform instead of a reason to support it. …or as if I were arguing in favor of racially biased gun law, when unexamined racial bias is the only actual specific complaint the reprint brings against the second amendment.
5. Rebuttals (but not genuine rebuttals, deflection attempts, obviously) that the first amendment also has not been updated since it was enacted, which means I must want that one reexamined too. It can be difficult to judge tone in writing but I’m reasonably certain comments to this effect are in bad faith and are pursuing an anticipated gotcha moment, when I’m expected to bluster, “Well, that’s different,” and be caught in a contradiction somehow. But this is, in fact, different. However the reason it’s different is not that I oppose reexamination of free speech rights (as such an attempted gotcha would be predicated on) because I don’t oppose it. The reason it’s different is that reexamination of free speech rights happens, in exactly the manner I’m advocating for gun rights.
Over the last two-plus centuries there’s been plenty of Supreme Court case law on free speech (and obviously these are only cases that weren’t resolved in lower courts). Most SCOTUS free speech case law consists of the striking down of laws that were ruled to violate the first amendment but there have also been innovations in SCOTUS free speech case law. For example, a case from 1969 gave rise to the “imminent danger test” used, to this day, for determining whether a given sample of hate speech is protected speech or not. Constitutional protection was determined by SCOTUS not to apply to something whose obvious intended and sole purpose is to harm people immediately, quickly, violently, and in large numbers.
I’m going to say that twice because it’s important: In 1969 constitutional protection was determined by SCOTUS not to apply to something whose obvious intended and sole purpose is to harm people immediately, quickly, violently, and in large numbers.
Of course I support periodic reexamination of the first amendment. I support it as an existing model for what the second amendment stands badly in need of. (More of the Constitution too, possibly, but the topic on the floor is mass shootings.)
It’s the same with the obvious, bad faith, unabashedly transparent gotcha attempt I also get, “There wasn’t internet technology when the Constitution was written so you must want to get rid of the internet like you want to get rid of modern weapons.” As above, this objection fails because it inadvertently supports my point: internet regulations are being created and struck down all the time. It’s another example of how our laws are meant to be treated. And of how they generally have been treated. But gun law hasn’t.
Same with the counterargument that maintains allowing any restriction at all to our rights is a slippery slope. If it is a slippery slope, we live on that slope already because - as noted in my reprinted post - the Constitution was purposefully built by its writers smack in the middle of that slope. Again: feature, not bug. (“Slippery slope”, by the way, is also on all lists I see of common logical fallacies.)
One of the quotations of Jefferson engraved on the Jefferson Monument in Washington D.C. is: “I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.” - Jefferson to H. Tompkinson (AKA Samuel Kercheval), July 12, 1816.
6. A rebuttal to the factual accuracy of my statement in the reprinted post, “You keep invoking directly or indirectly one sentence in a document that was written in an era when rifles, pistols, and cannons could hold only one projectile at a time and took minutes to reload;” the rebuttal sourced by, e.g., the article linked below detailing the history of several more efficient firearm designs dated to or predating 1787. I stand corrected. It is within the realm of possibility that the writers of the Constitution were familiar with these designs. However the only claim made in the article of actual use of such a weapon, the Ferguson breech-loading flintlock which fired “up to seven rounds per minute, two to three times faster that the muzzle-loading weapons of the day“, on American soil before the writing of the Constitution was “by the British against the Americans in 1777”. The Wikipedia article on the Puckle gun, a mounted gun documented to fire nine rounds per minute, makes a point of asserting no more than two may ever have been manufactured (apparently on the basis that only two survive to the present). These guns existed in the late 18th century but they were few and would have been prohibitively expensive to the private citizen or to the military- or law- officer; if not, the Colt revolver wouldn’t have been such an innovation when it came along some fifty years later.
Thank you for the correction on historical detail. However the contemporary existence of these designs, somewhere on the planet or somewhere on the same contintent and not all of them historically documented to have been actually manufactured anywhere let alone mass-produced at reasonable cost, hardly demonstrates that the writers of the Constitution anticipated the proliferation we have today of the automatic rifles which fire a thousand bullets a minute or the mounted guns which fire six thousand bullets a minute.
Come to that, bullets were not invented until about sixty years after the drafting of the Constitution. However quickly the founding fathers imagined it was possible for guns to shoot projectiles, the projectiles they would’ve been imagining were small metal balls, not constructions designed to mutilate bodies beyond recognition. The Uvalde, Texas shooting victims’ families were required to submit to DNA swabbing for the coroners to determine which corpses were whose children, and all reports suggest the same will have been necessary in Nashville.
It’s pure speculation whether the founding fathers had any concept of the possibility of the degree of destructive power of today’s firearms, unless someone reading this can produce further historical documentation. And even with such confirmation it’s beside my actual point, which is:
The writers of the Constitution did foresee, and designed the Constitution to accomodate, that it would at times need to be updated with the will of the majority. In regard to the second amendment and to gun control law generally that hasn’t happened and needs to start happening because the lack is costing lives. In regard to the intent of the founding fathers: Jefferson said the Constitution ought to be rewritten from scratch every twenty years.
7. Rebuttals suggesting or stating that contriving somehow to place the proverbial “good guy with a gun” on the scene of a mass shooting shall prevent/should have prevented it. Usually it’s a variation on a statement of willingness and eagerness in the genuinely admirable goal of defending themselves, their loved ones and neighbors, and their rights with their automatic rifles; insisting that the question isn’t “Lives or guns?” but something like “Lives defended with guns or lives left undefended?”. This appears to be the only proposed alternative solution by automatic weapon advocates to national gun control law in the problem of mass shooting deaths.
(The only proposed alternate solution besides doing nothing, under the counterargument that we don’t need any further gun control because violent crime rates are dropping. I guess everyone’s meant to just wait in an orderly fashion for the random slaughter of innocents to eventually stop? Gun crime stats may be falling, but mass shooting deaths are rising; they averaged more than one per day in 2022, and the figures I see for 2023 are the same or worse. That’s why the whole of violent crime is a whole separate topic. Anyway, the CDC says gun related deaths have most recently been rising - at least in, surprise surprise, open carry states [citation below].)
How the presence of a good guy with a gun would have been/will be arranged ahead of time in any given specific case past or future hasn’t been made clear to me. I suppose each individual advocate is suggesting their personal presence with a gun on them makes a location safe from mass shootings for everyone. But one commenter did ask me whether I knew of any “successful” mass shootings where a good guy with a gun was present. For that I have answers. These are just the examples of which I already knew without doing any research [I researched anyway and there are citations below]:
After the shooting at the Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas, the mayor stated there were many armed civilians present, who did not draw or use their firearms. The official position on that, paraphrased: “Good! They’d only have made themselves appear to law enforcement that they were our target.”
There was a “good guy with a gun” at the Parkland, Florida school shooting. Not an armed civilian who happened to be nearby, a trained uniformed county sheriff department law enforcement official stationed there from a division charged with serving and protecting the schools specifically. He was recorded on camera when the shooting started going up to the building’s entrance and standing there outside for the duration. In the intervening time there have been conflicting rulings on whether it had been the uniformed official’s responsibility to act differently [citation below]. But still, this is disproof that the mere presence of a “good guy with a gun” and the presumption that they'll take action is any practical protection whatsoever.
Most recently, there were police on the scene in Uvalde before the shooter entered the school who reportedly exchanged fire with him but did not prevent him from entering nor follow him in. He did not have body armor [citation below], but their reason for failing to stop him was they thought he did. At least, they stated they thought he did and that that was their reason for failure. And later on it's come out that they hesitated because they had identified that he was carrying an AR-15 [citation below].
I anticipate being accused of cherrypicking data for making answer to a specific request for specific examples of specifically this kind of thing. But, while I was looking around collecting citations for those events, I also found a 2014 FBI study that tells us mass shooters are stopped more often by unarmed civilians than by armed civilians. That’s a national statistic documented and released by civil law enforcement authority, not a cherrypicking. And while the report, in its own words, “support[s] the importance of training and exercises - not only for law enforcement but also for citizens” (without, unless I missed it, making any judgment on whether more or fewer civilians ought to be undertaking such gun ownership and training), it distinguishes between that and prevention, stating also, “seeking to avoid these tragedies is clearly the best result.”
A good guy with a gun does not constitute needed and recommended prevention for mass shootings in the eyes of federal law enforcement authority.
Finally, the good guy with a gun argument is a bad-faith logical fallacy at its heart. The logic statement form “if you or someone else on the scene of your mass shooting had had a gun, then you wouldn’t have got shot” is the same logic statement form as “if you dressed differently, then you wouldn’t have got raped”. This is a logical fallacy because law-abiding people’s right not to have crimes committed against them isn’t legally, morally, or factually contingent on their own behavior. The logic of the “good guy with a gun” argument places responsibility for the consequences of the actions of the mass shooters elsewhere than on the shooters, and that’s why it’s a logical and moral fallacy and why in simple practical terms it fails to constitute prevention.
sources
mass shooting deaths rising http://time.com/4965022/deadliest-mass-shooting-us-history/
gun homicides rising per CDC https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/homicides-using-guns-31-percent-cdc-finds-n895366
Dallas https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/about-that-good-guy-with-a-gun/2016/07/11/3ed098fe-47a2-11e6-acbc-4d4870a079da_story.html?utm_term=.9271a0507018
Parkland https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/02/the-parkland-shooting-did-have-a-good-guy-with-a-gun.html
FBI report https://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-weisser/fbi-report-active-shooters_b_5900748.html https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active-shooter-study-2000-2013-1.pdf/view
The Parkland sheriff officer liability https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2018/12/21/us-judge-says-law-enforcement-officers-had-no-legal-duty-protect-parkland-students-during-mass-shooting/
no body armor in Uvalde https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2022/05/25/khou-11-in-houston-the-uvalde-gunman-was-not-wearing-body-armor/
Uvalde cops scared of AR-15 https://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/lawrence-police-were-afraid-of-the-uvalde-gunman-s-ar-15-166823493564
8. “You sound like a Nazi.” Another fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_gun_control_argument
9. “Correlation is not causation. There is no scientific evidence of causation.” The lack of evidence to support causation is a contrivance, the result not of conclusion from investigation but of the willing, purposeful obstruction of investigation into causation. From the NBC News article linked above on rising gun homicide rates: “[The CDC] regularly reports on gun deaths, but its role in researching the underlying causes has been limited by the so-called Dickey Amendment, which is tacked on to congressional funding legislation every year. It bars the CDC from using federal funding to ‘advocate or promote gun control'.” Powerful gun control opponents in Washington DC are afraid of the evidence being investigated, which betrays that gun control opponents are as certain as gun control supporters what proper investigation of the evidence would show.
But there certainly is correllation. From the same article: “[M]ore states had loosened rules on gun ownership and the carrying of guns at around the same time that firearms homicide rates went up.“ That’s a negative example. For a positive example, there’s every nation, e.g. Scotland/the United Kingdom, to have had one mass shooting decades ago and in response implemented gun control only to have few or no more mass shootings since that first one in the same period of time that the U.S. has had escalating deaths from mass shootings. In fact, there's the U.S., where certain types of automatic weaponry were banned for about ten years but the ban was allowed to lapse and the number of shootings per year has gorwn every year since.
Even if there’s no causation, when the correlation saves lives - as it demonstrably, statistically does - then the lives are still saved.
10. “'Lives or guns’? I choose guns.” Here I deliberately evoke the no-meeting-of-minds clause in the reprint post for declining to engage with you which is nevertheless not to be mistaken by you as any kind of concession. It's not a rebuttal of anything I've written and says more about you than about me or about my argument.
11. The first few times I had cause to reprint this essay since January 6, 2021 I felt that my remark in my quoted Facebook comment’s paragraph about self-defense against tyranny, “good luck storming the capital” (a flip allusion to The Princess Bride dialog), called for some sort of comment or qualifier, since a storming of the Capital is now an actual historical event whose consequences to date to its top-level organizers have been minimal. But ultimately, while the insurrectionists brought onto the scene a gallows (ultimately unused), and while there were five deaths including a police officer, gun presence doesn’t seem to have had any significance (little enough that Fox News has even lied that there were no firearms brought in by the insurrectionists).
12 (conclusion). My stance is: nationally banning at least some kinds of guns is an effective solution to the problem of mass shootings, its effectiveness proven and documented for the purpose in every case it’s been implemented including formerly the United States, and therefore it needs to be reimplemented in the United States. The second amendment needs to start being treated the same way every other law/right in the United States is treated in terms of review and update against constantly developing status quo and technology. No counterargument to the statements in my reprint yet brought to my attention either 1) provides a proven alternative for mass shooting prevention other than the proven solution I advocate 2) fails to amount to answering, “Lives or guns?”, with, “Guns.” (Except “You called me racist!” which is untrue; what I called you was ignorant about racism.)
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Transformers: Mosaic - Transformers Animated
Originally posted on June 6th, 2008
"See you in August" - Waseem Bashar "Excited yet?" - Matt C. Adams
TFW2005 (announcement) | TFW2005 (update) | BotTalk
wada sez: Surprise, we’re back doing another event already! Prompted by the success of The End of the Beginning..., the Mosaic team decided to follow up with another event, this time themed around the fan-favourite Transformers Animated, coinciding with the conclusion of the cartoon’s second season. This event was deliberately more constrained, however, limiting the strips’ focus to a set list of characters. Perhaps due to these restrictions, or simply the tastes of typical Mosaic contributors, response was less enthusiastic, leading the deadline to be pushed back. Eighteen characters were suggested, and twenty-one strips were made; as with the previous event, they were posted on Mondays in batches of five or so, and thankfully this time the ordering was handled consistently. Of the suggested characters, only Blitzwing failed to receive a spotlight. Meanwhile, regular strips continued twice-weekly, though the submission guidelines changed: no longer did the Mosaic staff maintain a central “script pool”; instead, they only accepted submissions from people who already had a full creative team. Bashar’s preview here includes an unfamiliar design or two; these are actually character models for the strips he worked on. Now, readers, you’ll have to bear with me over the next few weeks, as it’s been years since I watched any Animated—so if you spot any errors in my annotations, please correct me! I’ve mirrored Josh van Reyk’s announcement for this event below the break, along with unobscured looks at Matt C. Adams’ Ultra Magnus art. Adams was apparently slated to draw an Ultra Magnus strip called “The Hammer Falls”, written by Mike Priest, presumably for this specific event; I’ve dug up the original script for it, but evidently it never came to fruition.
TRANSFORMERS MOSAIC REBOOT…
Well, sort of.
As the project quickly approaches its first birthday in June, the project team have decided it’s the perfect time to re-asses the project and how it runs.
Since its conception last year, the project has grown well beyond our initial plans / hopes, and now there are over 400 people involved with well over 250 pieces in various stages of construction.
These staggering statistics make it nigh on impossible to keep in touch with every member and keep things on track for all the pieces in production, and many people feeling concerned that their piece has fallen off the radar.
The Megatron Origin-based anniversary project has proven to be very successful, with the creative teams being set in place before work begins on a piece and all follow-up being performed each member of the creative team. This has kept things well on track for each piece. Also, we’ve found that specifying a specific theme/setting has really forced everyone to lift their game so to speak and has produced some simply amazing pieces of work.
Further to the issue, with 6 pieces being released per week (to combat the large backlog), we’re not pleased with the small amount of “air time” that each piece receives, as some do tend to get overlooked.
So what does all that mean?
Well, as of June 2008, we will no longer be accepting any scripts from anyone for regular mosaics and there will no longer be a “script pool” for artists to pick from. All Mosaics currently in production will still continue to be a part of the project and will be released as usual, though our plans are to cut down to releasing one piece per week, on Thursdays.
For any writer / artist / colourist wishing to work on a regular Mosaic, they will be required to organize the full creative team before work can begin. Scripts will need to be submitted to the Transformers Mosaic team for approval. The best way to gather up a creative team would be to send a call out on the IDW forums in the “Transformers Mosaic: Discussion” thread, or any of the other sites where Mosaics are posted.
Once we have been approached by a committed creative team, we will supply them with a (currently in progress) Transformers Mosaic Style Guide. This will be a .ZIP file that will contain a standardized TFM logo, layout templates/guides and lettering fonts.
The Anniversary pieces, which were originally intended to be posted all at once, will now be released 10 at a time, every Monday for 4 weeks, stating 7th of June.
For the whole month of July, Transformers Mosaic will be on holiday, so no Mosaics of any sort will be posted during this time and emails / queries will likely not be handled promptly.
After July, regular Mosaics will continue to be posted one every Thursday and to fill the gap on Mondays left by the Anniversary project, we will be running a similar project, but this one is to be set during the new Transformers Animated cartoon. The one downside we found from the anniversary project was that the theme was too “open” and resulted in more pieces than we had planned for, so we’re limiting the number of characters / pieces to be included in the project.
The following characters are to be included in the project;
DECEPTICONS: 1. Megatron 2. Lugnut 3. Blitzwing [claimed] 4. Starscream [claimed] 5. BlackArachnia 6. Lockdown (yeah, technically he’s not a Con, but…)
AUTOBOTS: 1. Optimus Prime 2. Prowl 3. Bulkhead 4. Ratchet 5. Ultra Magnus 6. Sentinel Prime 7. Jazz 8. Bumblebee
DINOBOTS: 1. Grimlock
HUMANS: 1. Sari Sumdac 2. Isaac Sumdac
The same rules will apply for this project as the Anniversary one, though each person may only be involved in one (1) piece, and each piece may only focus on one (1) character from the above list, though multiple characters may appear in one piece. It will be first come, first choice with character assignments. You cannot claim a character until your creative team is assembled and committed.
When you have a creative team lined up, email us at [email protected]. We will base character dibs on receipt time of emails sent to this address ONLY. We will update the above list for availability as often as possible until all slots are taken. If you miss your first choice, re-submit a message for your next choice and so on.
The Transformers Mosaic team will reserve the right to edit / reject scripts at their discretion.
All scripts, listing FULL creative team must be submitted to [email protected] by 30th of June, 2007.
Concerned you might miss out on getting involved in this project? Well, we’re planning on making these projects and ongoing process, so there’s always next time. ;) Also keep in mind that you can still submit regular mosaics if your creative team would still like to work on a TFA piece.
We understand that these new processes may seem unfair to some people, but the project is just getting too sprawled out to manage, and we feel this is the best way to keep things moving smoothly.
We look forward to the next phase of Transformers Mosaic! Huge round of applause to everyone who made it the first year so amazing!
#Transformers#Transformers Mosaic#Maccadam#Transformers Animated#Waseem Bashar#Matt C. Adams#Punch/Counterpunch#Lockdown#Lugnut#Impactor#Ultra Magnus
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This was originally a Facebook comment in the wake of the Las Vegas shooting that I’ve taken to reprinting here in reponse to the mass shootings I hear about, such as the three in a week in California the other week. (And, please bear in mind, these are only the ones I hear about, meaning the ones with mass media coverage which hardly happens in every case.) When I reprinted it at the time of the Annapolis Capital Gazette shooting, for the first time I got a substantial amount of replies in disagreement, so now rebuttals to the counterarguments I have received then and since are in a lengthy appendix to the reprint text.
My usual procedure for responding to any substantive new comment to a reposting of this is to edit my response into the next posting, or sometimes of the current posting, rather than to reply directly. This is because, when I allow myself to get sucked into engaging with counterarguments directly, almost always I end up wearied again by new, merely paraphrased instances of the same old arguments already rebutted here. New as of the Highland Park shooting is the section on bullets.
I keep saying “it’s proven that the killing can be stopped” and you keep saying, “but we have rights” as if having rights was an end in itself. No, rights are intended to serve a purpose.
They’re for preventing people getting killed!
You keep invoking directly or indirectly one sentence in a document that was written in an era when rifles, pistols, and cannons could hold only one projectile at a time and took minutes to reload [EDIT: supposed factual inaccuracy of this statement is addressed in the appendix]. That document also contains the built-in capacity for itself to be updated when its provisions are no longer effective. It is not Holy Writ. It even presented itself as updateable before it was completed: the sentence you’re so fond of is itself an amendment. Do you believe the sentence in question was written ultimately for the protection of guns or for the protection of lives? Because it’s used for protecting only one of the two, these days, and that’s not lives. Therefore it needs updating.
I will not accept any citation of theoretical future insurrection against a government turned hostile (which government, by the way, in that event would use planes or drones to drop bombs, against which your home weaponry is no protection - it’s doing so right now to civilian populations overseas, and it did so during the 20th century in Tulsa and Philadelphia - so good luck storming the capital) because firstly, actual civilian innocent lives being lost in the present are more important than any merely theoretical future; and secondly, that’s not what the Second Amendment was truly about anyhow. The militia it refers to were the nation’s first police forces whose original formation was for the purpose of hunting and killing black people. The only valid (using the term loosely) reason for denying that the Second Amendment now requires amendment itself is that you’re okay with police shootings of people of color. Those US government bombings on US soil I mentioned parenthetically above? Black neighborhoods, residences and businesses, rich and poor. That’s what you’re defending whether or not you know it.
You think your postion is “rights are important” but you aren’t seeing the context, the difference between what you think the rights are for, and how they are instead now actually being utilized. You aren’t seeing the logical fallacy in what you’re saying which is “this right whose purpose is the protection of innocent lives is more important than all the innocent lives that are being destroyed by people exercising this right”. You aren’t seeing that your position ultimately reduces to “lives are less important than guns” but I do and it outrages me wherever I see it.
Even if you were correct that Americans’ minds somehow work differently than the minds of all the people in all the nations where gun law successfully prevents mass shootings (which, by the way, seems disproven by the majority popular support of the gun control legislation that Congress brought after Sandy Hook then voted down), it would only mean that disregard for human life has become the American way. It’s not in me to quietly allow that to stand. While that’s your position there can be no meeting of minds between us, no agreement to disagree. I may give up arguing with you in particular as a bad job, but never mistake that for concession.
The question before us is, “Lives or guns?”, and you keep answering, “Guns.”
[end of reprint]
Popular counterarguments I’ve received:
1. Inquiries as to what form I would give the gun control law I advocate and what type of guns I would see banned. I would model such laws on the laws that have drastically reduced or have eliminated mass shootings in all nations that have implemented them including, at one time, the United States. I would use those laws’ definition of what was banned. (I anticipate receiving complaints that this statement is not specific enough to sealion but, because such a law were better drafted by someone with legislative expertise and experience and a research staff than by an unpaid webcartoonist, I consider that a feature not a bug.) (I anticipate rebuttals that the previous parenthetical statement constitutes effective admission on my part that I’m too ignorant on the subject to have an opinion at all, but you don’t need to be a plumber to know when you need a plumber.)
2. Rebuttals seeming to assume that I’m calling for the banning of all guns. Nowhere in the reprint did I call for that. What I called for were two things: the reexamination of the Second Amendment just like any other legislation that’s two and a half centuries old and therefore in need of review, and the implementation in the United States of the solution proven by other nations (and by, at one time, the United States) for the problem of mass shootings which is some manner of national gun control. Now, it may be that the U.S. needs to ban all handguns like some nations, or only some guns like other nations, or ban guns from only certain demographics such as those with known domestic abuse history (which would rule out an uncomfortable percentage of police) and as known violent crime offenders, and may need even to experiment at first to find out what’s best, I can’t say. And I didn’t say here (for the reason noted parenthetically in the above paragraph). It remains that the loss of life under the status quo is unacceptable to me and to the majority of the nation (the majority who supported the national gun control bill in Congress after Sandy Hook which bill failed due to special interest lobbying) and requires action be taken; that’s what I say when I say, “The question is, ‘Lives or guns?’”.
3. Rebuttals that gun control won’t stop criminals from killing people. That’s off the topic. The topic is not stopping all murders or violence, the topic is stopping mass shootings, for which national gun control is drastically or wholly effective in every nation that has implemented it, including at one time the United States. (My impression that some comments assume I’m calling for total gun ban may only be an artifact of this consistent failure of counterarguments to focus on the topic.) Refusal to implement the known solution to a given problem on the grounds that it’s not a solution for all problems is not rational.
(Also: The presumption that a given argument’s focus on one topic demonstrates indifference in the speaker/writer on any or all other topics is one of the classic logical fallacies. That means, declining to be deflected off topic by the subject of other violent crime in a discussion of mass shootings in comments on my own post about mass shootings does not demonstrate that I don’t care about the victims of other violent crime; that’s the tu quoque logical fallacy, known in these online days as “whataboutism”. Declining to be deflected to other topics than mass shootings demonstrates, and demonstrates only, that my post’s topic is mass shootings.)
4. Rebuttals to my discussions of the unexamined racism in the second amendment pointing out, correctly, that gun control since emancipation has often been purposefully biased against black people … as if that were a reason to oppose gun law reform instead of a reason to support it. …or as if I were arguing in favor of racially biased gun law, when unexamined racial bias is the only actual specific complaint I bring against the second amendment.
5. Rebuttals (but not genuine rebuttals, deflection attempts, obviously) that the first amendment also has not been updated since it was enacted, which means I must want that one reexamined too. It can be difficult to judge tone in writing but I’m reasonably certain comments to this effect are in bad faith and are pursuing an anticipated gotcha moment, when I’m expected to bluster, “Well, that’s different,” and be caught in a contradiction somehow. But this is, in fact, different. However the reason it’s different is not that I oppose reexamination of free speech rights (as such an attempted gotcha would be predicated on) because I don’t oppose it. The reason it’s different is that reexamination of free speech rights happens, in exactly the manner I’m advocating for gun rights.
Over the last two-plus centuries there’s been plenty of Supreme Court case law on free speech (and obviously these are only cases that weren’t resolved in lower courts). Most SCOTUS free speech case law consists of the striking down of laws that were ruled to violate the first amendment but there have also been innovations in SCOTUS free speech case law. For example, a case from 1969 gave rise to the “imminent danger test” used, to this day, for determining whether a given sample of hate speech is protected speech or not. Constitutional protection was determined by SCOTUS not to apply to something whose obvious intended and sole purpose is to harm people immediately, quickly, violently, and in large numbers.
I’m going to say that twice because it’s important: In 1969 constitutional protection was determined by SCOTUS not to apply to something whose obvious intended and sole purpose is to harm people immediately, quickly, violently, and in large numbers.
Of course I support periodic reexamination of the first amendment. I support it as an existing model for what the second amendment stands badly in need of. (More of the Constitution too, possibly, but the topic on the floor is mass shootings.)
It’s the same with the obvious, bad faith, unabashedly transparent gotcha attempt I also get, “There wasn’t internet technology when the Constitution was written so you must want to get rid of the internet like you want to get rid of modern weapons.” As above, this objection fails because it inadvertently supports my point: internet regulations are being created and struck down all the time. It’s another example of how our laws are meant to be treated. And of how they generally have been treated. But gun law hasn’t.
Same with the counterargument that maintains allowing any restriction at all to our rights is a slippery slope. If it is a slippery slope, we live on that slope already because - as noted in my reprinted post - the Constitution was purposefully built by its writers smack in the middle of that slope. Again: feature, not bug. (“Slippery slope”, by the way, is also on all lists I see of common logical fallacies.)
One of the quotations of Jefferson engraved on the Jefferson Monument in Washington D.C. is: "I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and (and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors." - Jefferson to H. Tompkinson (AKA Samuel Kercheval), July 12, 1816.
6. A rebuttal to the factual accuracy of my statement in the reprinted post, “You keep invoking directly or indirectly one sentence in a document that was written in an era when rifles, pistols, and cannons could hold only one projectile at a time and took minutes to reload;” the rebuttal sourced by, e.g., the article linked below detailing the history of several more efficient firearm designs dated to or predating 1787. I stand corrected. It is within the realm of possibility that the writers of the Constitution were familiar with these designs. However the only claim made in the article of actual use of such a weapon, the Ferguson breech-loading flintlock which fired “up to seven rounds per minute, two to three times faster that the muzzle-loading weapons of the day“, on American soil before the writing of the Constitution was “by the British against the Americans in 1777”. The Wikipedia article on the Puckle gun, a mounted gun documented to fire nine rounds per minute, makes a point of asserting no more than two may ever have been manufactured (apparently on the basis that only two survive to the present). These guns existed in the late 18th century but they were few and would have been prohibitively expensive to the private citizen or to the military- or law- officer; if not, the Colt revolver wouldn’t have been such an innovation when it came along some fifty years later.
Thank you for the correction on historical detail. However the contemporary existence of these designs, somewhere on the planet or somewhere on the same contintent and not all of them historically documented to have been actually manufactured anywhere let alone mass-produced at reasonable cost, hardly demonstrates that the writers of the Constitution anticipated the proliferation we have today of the automatic rifles which fire a thousand bullets a minute or the mounted guns which fire six thousand bullets a minute.
Also, bullets were not invented until about sixty years after the drafting of the Constitution. However quickly the founding fathers imagined it was possible for guns to shoot projectiles, the projectiles they would’ve been imagining were small metal balls, not constructions designed to mutilate bodies beyond recognition. The Uvalde, Texas shooting victims’ families were required to submit to DNA swabbing for the coroners to determine which corpses were whose children.
It’s pure speculation whether the founding fathers had any concept of the possibility of the degree of destructive power of today’s firearms, unless someone reading this can produce further historical documentation. And even with such confirmation it’s beside my actual point, which is:
The writers of the Constitution did foresee, and designed the Constitution to accomodate, that it would at times need to be updated with the will of the majority. In regard to the second amendment and to gun control law generally that hasn’t happened and needs to start happening because the lack is costing lives. In regard to the intent of the founding fathers: Jefferson said the Constitution ought to be rewritten from scratch every twenty years.
http://arizonadailyindependent.com/2018/03/11/multi-shot-assault-weapons-of-the-1700s-and-the-2nd-amendment/
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-12-02-0248
7. Rebuttals suggesting or stating that contriving somehow to place the proverbial “good guy with a gun” on the scene of a mass shooting shall prevent/should have prevented it. Usually it’s a variation on a statement of willingness and eagerness in the genuinely admirable goal of defending themselves, their loved ones and neighbors, and their rights with their automatic rifles; insisting that the question isn’t “Lives or guns?” but something like “Lives defended with guns or lives left undefended?”. This appears to be the only proposed alternative solution to national gun control law in the problem of mass shooting deaths.
(The only proposed alternate solution besides doing nothing, under the counterargument that we don’t need any further gun control because violent crime rates are dropping. I guess everyone’s meant to just wait in an orderly fashion for the random slaughter of innocents to eventually stop? Gun crime stats may be falling, but mass shooting deaths are rising - they averaged more than one per day in 2022, and the figures I see for 2023 are the same or worse - and that’s why the whole of violent crime is a whole separate topic. Anyway, the CDC says gun related deaths have most recently been rising - at least in, surprise surprise, open carry states [citation below].)
How the presence of a good guy with a gun would have been/will be arranged ahead of time in any given specific case past or future hasn’t been made clear to me. But one commenter did ask me whether I knew of any “successful” mass shootings where a good guy with a gun was present. For that I have answers. These are just the examples of which I already knew without doing any research [I researched anyway and there are citations below]:
After the shooting at the Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas, the mayor stated there were many armed civilians present, who did not draw or use their firearms. The official position on that, paraphrased: “Good! They’d only have made themselves appear to law enforcement that they were our target.”
There was a “good guy with a gun” at the Parkland, Florida school shooting. Not an armed civilian who happened to be nearby, a trained uniformed county sheriff department law enforcement official stationed there from a division charged with serving and protecting the schools specifically. He was recorded on camera when the shooting started going up to the building’s entrance and standing there outside for the duration. In the intervening time there have been conflicting rulings on whether it had been the uniformed official’s responsible to act differently [citation below]. But still, this is disproof that the mere presence of a “good guy with a gun” is any protection whatsoever.
Most recently, there were police on the scene in Uvalde before the shooter entered the school who reportedly exchanged fire with him but did not prevent him from entering nor follow him in. He did not have body armor [citation below], but their reason for failing to stop him was they thought he did. At least, they stated they thought he did and that that was thehir reason for failure.
I anticipate being accused of cherrypicking data for making answer to a specific request for specific examples of specifically this kind of thing. But, while I was looking around collecting citations for those events, I also found a 2014 FBI study that tells us mass shooters are stopped more often by unarmed civilians than by armed civilians. That’s a national statistic documented and released by civil law enforcement authority, not a cherrypicking. And while the report, in its own words, “support[s] the importance of training and exercises - not only for law enforcement but also for citizens” (without, unless I missed it, making any judgment on whether more or fewer civilians ought to be undertaking such gun ownership and training), it distinguishes between that and prevention, stating also, “seeking to avoid these tragedies is clearly the best result.”
A good guy with a gun does not constitute needed and recommended prevention for mass shootings in the eyes of federal law enforcement authority.
Finally, the good guy with a gun argument is a logical fallacy at its base. The logic statement form “if you or someone else on the scene of your mass shooting had had a gun, then you wouldn’t have got shot” is the same logic statement form as “if you dressed differently, then you wouldn’t have got raped”. This is a logical fallacy because law-abiding people’s right not to have crimes committed against them isn’t legally, morally, or factually contingent on their own behavior. The logic of the “good guy with a gun” argument places responsibility for the consequences of the actions of the mass shooters elsewhere than on the shooters, and that’s why it’s a logical and moral fallacy and why in simple practical terms it fails to constitute prevention.
sources
mass shooting deaths rising http://time.com/4965022/deadliest-mass-shooting-us-history/
gun homicides rising per CDC https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/homicides-using-guns-31-percent-cdc-finds-n895366
Dallas https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/about-that-good-guy-with-a-gun/2016/07/11/3ed098fe-47a2-11e6-acbc-4d4870a079da_story.html?utm_term=.9271a0507018
Parkland https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/02/the-parkland-shooting-did-have-a-good-guy-with-a-gun.html
FBI report https://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-weisser/fbi-report-active-shooters_b_5900748.html https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active-shooter-study-2000-2013-1.pdf/view
The Parkland sheriff officer liability https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2018/12/21/us-judge-says-law-enforcement-officers-had-no-legal-duty-protect-parkland-students-during-mass-shooting/
no body armor in Uvalde https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2022/05/25/khou-11-in-houston-the-uvalde-gunman-was-not-wearing-body-armor/
8. “You sound like a Nazi.” Another fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_gun_control_argument
9. “Correlation is not causation. There is no scientific evidence of causation.” The lack of evidence to support causation is a contrivance, the result not of conclusion from investigation but of the willing, purposeful obstruction of investigation into causation. From the NBC News article linked above on rising gun homicide rates: “[The CDC] regularly reports on gun deaths, but its role in researching the underlying causes has been limited by the so-called Dickey Amendment, which is tacked on to congressional funding legislation every year. It bars the CDC from using federal funding to ‘advocate or promote gun control.’” Powerful gun control opponents in Washington DC are afraid of the evidence being investigated, which betrays that gun control opponents are as certain as gun control supporters what the evidence shall show if proper investigation were to happen.
But there certainly is correllation. From the same article: “[M]ore states had loosened rules on gun ownership and the carrying of guns at around the same time that firearms homicide rates went up.“ That’s a negative example. For a positive example, there’s every nation, e.g. Scotland/the United Kingdom, to have had one mass shooting decades ago and in response implemented gun control only to have few or no more mass shootings since that first one in the same period of time that the U.S. has had escalating deaths from mass shootings.
Even if there’s no causation, when the correlation saves lives - as it demonstrably, statistically does - then the lives are still saved.
10. “'Lives or guns’? I choose guns.” Here I deliberately evoke the no-meeting-of-minds clause in the reprint post for declining to engage with you which is nevertheless not to be mistaken by you as any kind of concession.
11. The first few times I had cause to reprint this essay since January 6, 2021 I felt that my remark in my quoted Facebook comment’s paragraph about self-defense against tyranny, “good luck storming the capital” (a flip allusion to The Princess Bride dialog), called for some sort of comment or qualifier, since a storming of the Capital is now an actual historical event whose consequences to its top-level organizers have been minimal. But ultimately, while the insurrectionists brought onto the scene a gallows (ultimately unused), and five deaths including a police officer, gun presence doesn’t seem to have had any significance (little enough that Fox News has claimed incorrectly that there were no firearms brught in by the insurrectionists). If the event is relevant to the present discussion, it’s as evidence that a successful revolution attempt needn’t involve guns.
12 (conclusion). My stance is: nationally banning at least some kinds of guns is an effective solution to the problem of mass shootings, its effectiveness proven and documented for the purpose in every case it’s been implemented including formerly the United States, and therefore it needs to be reimplemented in the United States. The second amendment needs to start being treated the same way every other law/right in the United States is treated in terms of review and update against constantly developing status quo and technology. No counterargument to the statements in my reprint yet brought to my attention either 1) provides a proven alternative for mass shooting prevention other than the proven solution I advocate 2) fails to amount to answering, “Lives or guns?”, with, “Guns.” (Except “You called me racist!” which is untrue; what I called you was ignorant about racism.)
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genuine question how are you so comfortable giving long answers to things? I said something like “I am tormented by thoughts” on a discord sever I’m in and someone asked to hear them so I word-vomited like four paragraphs worth of character analysis and now I want to profusely apologize to everyone ever.
if this is a weird question you don’t have to answer; you just seem very sure of yourself and I’m mildly jealous (/lh).
It's not weird at all! And hopefully I can give an answer--probably a long one--to help you not feel like profusely apologizing. Update: yep! a long one! so you get a cut to preserve dash space :)
I'm thinking about this in the context of asks, but it applies to other things as well. The origin for me giving long answers was, in part, because I'm naturally a verbose writer. I fumble and forget things orally, but when I write things down that's when I can really organize myself and communicate most authentically. And I have a lot of thoughts and questions about things, so me giving longer, thought out responses to things is my actual reaction. That's part of it
The other origin was that, for me, sending asks is a really stressful thing! So when I sent asks, I always noticed that I was more excited to do so when I received a more substantial response. It was more rewarding to me, the anxiety worth it when I saw the evidence that what i'd done had prompted thought and effort from someone else.
So that's another big part of why I do things the way I do! Someone put in effort to share a thought, trouble, or something else with me. I want to respect that effort and give them something in return for doing so. To be clear this is not like a "they did this and now I owe them :/" it's like a "i want to show I care about them and their effort, and I can do that with my response! be thorough with their ideas!" I don't want anyone to feel like I'm brushing them off or feel inconvenienced by them, so I give that substance to try and show that I take them seriously and evaluate their words
(note: this is not to say that short responses are bad and inconsiderate. if you do those/like those, that's fine! great! they're just not for me most of the time)
It also helps to remember that since this is all written down (as you're talking about a discord server) people can pick and choose to engage. I'm not taking anyone's time who doesn't freely give it. People can ignore and skim through my posts and read only what they want to. I use readmore's and tag things for convenience, and that way I'm not being obtrusive (or at least minimize it, but people can let me know if I'm being obnoxious and I can adjust my approach!) The worst thing that happens is I forget to tag a particularly long post and people spend an extra second scrolling past.
But you're correct, my verbose nature is something I'm very sure of! It's a trait people recognize me by and can come to associate with me, and it's a genuine part of who I am. I write a lot. I sometimes explain things too much because I'm not sure I'm getting my point across. It's less about the long posts and more about being comfortable with things about me that aren't sanitized and dulled down to be more enjoyable to others.
Sure, if I wrote shorter posts they'd take up less space and be easier to read through. And sometimes I do make shorter posts and responses! But if I stopped doing so because I was worried about bothering people, I'd be denying a big part of who I am. I talk in writing a lot! that's me! I don't want to ignore me and I have things to say, so I say them. If I get distracted from the point people can redirect me and I'll start talking in a new direction, but it's still me
I think that's my attitude and thoughts around long responses. I deserve to indulge and express myself, and doing so like this doesn't harm anyone. It at the very worst briefly inconveniences people, and there are ways to minimize that. So my self-expression of my natural tendencies is more important to me and more genuine, so that's what I prioritize.
As for being comfortable doing it, it's a matter of just doing it and practicing. I felt bad about it at first, but not bad enough to stop. I'd make comments about how I'd drag and drone, but as I answered more and more things with long responses, as it came to be something people know me for, I stopped worrying about it more because it became normal to me and everyone around me
I have long responses. People know that now. They know if they want someone to really think and explore something, I'll do it! They know I'll fact check and quote things and be enthusiastic about practically everything. It's me! And I like me, so I want to keep doing that. i want to keep taking up space!
it definitely isn't effortless at first. If you go back through my blog you'll see differences in how I word things as I adjusted to match other people I interacted with at the time, but as I let myself develop that presence and do things more authentic to me, I grew to where I am now. And I will continue to grow and change!
But yeah. I have a lot to say and I want to say it! So I do! People can choose to engage or not, but I'd rather be authentic to myself than try to accommodate others when really I'm not harming anyone.
that got longer than I was expected but my advice is to keep taking up space and talking how you want to without apologizing. even when you want to. sit with the discomfort and evaluate things and you'll get used to it, and then it won't be uncomfortable anymore and you'll be able to talk how much you want to freely!
I hope some of this answers your question or helps <33
#quil's queries#solreefs#sending asks for me is really nerve wracking#so I want to recognize people who go through that effort!#and the way I do that is with my long responses and showing Im' paying attention to what they have to say#that's really the origin#that and practically always having a lot to say#i'm repeating myself at this point but those are the key things my responses came from#I don't know how much of this can or will be useful to you. but you asked so! big response!
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Mistakenly Saving the Villain - Chapter 1
Original Title: 论救错反派的下场
Genres: Drama, Romance, Xianxia, Yaoi
TW for this chapter: Mentions of suicide
I wanted to provide some ~variety~ so I'm doing another novel. I'll give a warning that the first few chapters are kind of intense and I'll keep the TWs updated as they come and put a TL;DR at the end if there's anything too graphic.
This translation is based on multiple MTLs and my own limited knowledge of Chinese characters. If I have made any egregious mistakes, please let me know.
Chapter 1 - The Beauty in Red
Song Qingshi is dead.
After his death, he came to in a strange space, and in the space, there was a sphere randomly flashing red.
The sphere said that he is a book-transmigrating system from a high-dimensional world. There was a xiania novel called "The Exceptional Furnace", which was about to be plagued by readers' resentment due to the tragic fate of the protagonist, causing problems in that world. It needed to find someone who is familiar with the tropes of these novels and someone with the power to change and repair the body and mind of the protagonist, and fulfill the readers' wishes - change the fate of the protagonist, dote on him, and let him live the happiest and most fulfilling life □□ □□□□□
The information in the system came intermittently, and in the □□ there were incomprehensible, alien-like characters.
Song Qingshi suffered from Lou Gehrig's Disease during his lifetime and devoted himself to studying medicine to try and save himself. He was a medical student who studied and experimented frantically every day and never wasted time reading novels.
In terms of emotions, he is even more obtuse. Although he is very handsome and has an attractive and obedient personality, due to his physical problems, even the school bully treated him like a precious thing. With all the excessive loving care and sympathy, not only did he never have a crush, but he also suffered from a slight fear of talking to strangers.
This was the worst soul for this task.
Song Qingshi didn't know how he was picked up by the system. He had read Marxist philosophy novels in vain. But from his messy information and analysis from the system's explanation, as long as he accepts the task, the system will send him to the virtual book world, give him a healthy body, and he will come back to life.
After Song Qingshi realized this, he was ecstatic. A healthy body is was his biggest desire. Not to mention the fact that the system only asked that he take care of someone. Even if the system had asked him to swim through seas of fire, he would have accepted still.
Because of this, he ignored his conscience, structured his response, and lied for the first time in his life: "I have read tens of thousands of books that I have memorized. I have extensive medical and nursing knowledge, have taken a psychology course as an elective, and I could solve all the physical and mental sufferings of the protagonist. And love. . . I have lots of experience with love, I know how to communicate, absolutely, I. . . can definitely accomplish these tasks!"
If there was any blood that could exist in a soul, he would definitely be flushed.
The system didn't notice his lies. It registered the identity of the task performer, and sent a series of garbled commands, mixed with all kinds of chaotic and disorderly information into Song Qingshi's mind, sending waves of discomfort through his soul.
Suddenly, the system let out a sharp alarm and the data transmission was cut off. Song Qingshi's vision went black, and his soul drifted away towards a bright white light. . .
. . .
When Song Qingshi woke up, he found himself lying in the woods, surrounded by the faint fragrance of various herbs. He squinted his eyes and looked towards the dazzling blue sky. There was a gorgeous golden luan bird dragging its long tail feathers, letting out a loud caw as it flew past, with countless immortal birds following it.
Was this the world from the novel?
It seemed too real. . .
A soft breeze blew across the forest, shaking off the dew on the trees. The dew fell onto his pale fingertips, bringing a slightly cool feeling. Then, all the memories of the original body flooded into his mind like a tidal wave, trying to merge with his own soul - this body was also called Song Qingshi, the master of the Medicine King's Valley, and the most talented medical immortal and pharmaceutical expert in the immortal world. His medical skills could heal the dead and revive bones, and the spirit pills he cultivates were considered treasures by every cultivator.
However, the original body's temperament was extremely troubling. He rarely left Medicine King's Valley at all, never made friends, and had no interest in matters other than medicine and alchemy. When a patient sought him out, he only looks at their temperament and never asked their identity. When he was in a good mood, he treated mortal beggars. When he was in a bad mood, regardless of the identity of the visitor, he would turn them into flower fertilizer for his garden. He often used living people to test medicines. Cruel, but because of his Nascent Soul cultivation base and various skills with poisons, the immortal sects didn't dare provoke him easily, only secretly calling him troubling behind his back.
Cultivators in the immortal world had long life spans, and the knowledge and memory of this original body had for its hundreds of years of cultivation had not arrived yet. Various data fragments of the system rushed in frantically, with countless garbled codes, tearing the original body's memory into a mess, leaving Song Qingshi at a loss. It took a long time before he managed to figure out his current situation.
This was Golden Phoenix Mountain Manor, the most luxurious place in the immortal world, where there are rare and exotic animals and countless immortals and beautiful concubines.
The owner, Jin FeiRen, was also a great Nascent cultivator. He was a true romantic, an excessive spender, and had friends from both the immortal and demonic cultivation world. He was a well-known figure.
The original body had always been cold, obsessed with his work, and never touched either men and women. Today's arrival was accidental. The Manor Lord Jin wanted to give him Ten Thousand Year Snow Ginseng to exchange a batch of medicinal pills for him. The original body had recently been lacking Snow Ginseng to make his medicines, so he agreed to the deal.
Since Snow Ginseng grows in the secret realm of the snow mountains of the Jin family. If you wanted to get the ones with the best medicinal properties, you needed to pick them at night and preserve it with a special refining method. Therefore, the original body came here to pick it personally, and Song Qingshi somehow ended up here.
Then, Song Qingshi was sent here by the system. . .
Where was the protagonist? What does he look like?
Song Qingshi wanted to ask the system to ask for more information, but the system seemed to disappear. The materials it sent not only contained no plot points from the novel, but also very little character information. There were garbled characters everywhere, even though the protagonist hadn't been introduced yet. Song Qingshi got dizzy going through all this information before he found some descriptions in the copywriting introduction: the best physique, unmatched beauty shou X□□□□□ gong, procured by trickery, sadomasochistic, □□, □□, □□ There were only three texts that could be read clearly: Banquet of Bea□□□.
. . .
If this were someone who often read these types of novels, they would immediately recognize that this situation was problematic.
Song Qingshi, however, didn't recognize any of this as problematic. He believed that this was a test given by the system to assess his reasoning skills and ability to do things. Song Qingshi was very accustomed to being assessed like this. Usually, when he and his teacher started developing a new drug, he often didn't have any prior results in his hand. It required some experimentation and to experience many errors and difficulties in order to reach the final result. Most of the time, that result was not what they were hoping for.
Many pharmaceutical companies invest billions or even tens of billions in drug research. Scholars have spent decades trying, right until their hair turned grey, only to fail during their clinical trials.
Therefore, every drug researcher is a strong man who has experienced many battles, repeated defeats and never-ending setbacks.
These questions from Teacher System were not difficult!
Scholar-Tryant Song expressed no fear! He will definitely find the correct answer and live up to the teacher's expectations of him!
Song Qingshi thought about the information he was given, determined the goal of the protagonist, and then quickly understood the key points of the novel: the protagonist will appear at the Banquet of Beauties, it will be a male, homosexual, unmatched beauty, superb body; a pitiful character with a tragic fate. He needs to save the protagonist, give him the greatest care, heal his physical and mental health, and then help him find happiness and joy!
During Song Qingshi's time, respect for sexual orientation was written into the law, and same-sex couples could get married.
He once found a novel lost by a rotten girl classmate, titled "His Evil Majesty's Spoiled Husband". On the cover was a handsome and domineering man in a period costume holding a beautiful woman with long hair with a super flat chest. He didn't understand it, and returned the book. When he asked curiously, his classmates told him what Danmei was, and told him that the beauty on the cover was actually male. The beautiful male was the "shou", and the domineering one was the "gong". So Song Qingshi is confident that he would easily distinguish between the gong and the shou in the novel. He would never mistake the gong as the protagonist.
He had thought it through and the direction of problem-solving has been determined. All that was left was to wait for the Banquet of Beauties to start the exam.
Song Qingshi's spiritual sea gradually became clear. The soul and body were merged and became flexible. He sat up with his hands cautiously, took off his shoes, raised his feet, and tried to stretch the toes that had been stiff for many years. The white and round toes curled happily. Song Qingshi stood up shakily, briefly walking forward a few steps with hands and feet before finally remembered the walking posture of a normal person, and his movements gradually changed from jerky to steady. . .
Under his feet was soft green grass and moist soil.
Outside the forest was a calm river. Song Qingshi stepped into the water and took a handful of cold river water to wash his face, confirming that he was not in a dream.
Tears fell out of extreme joy, and the big tears fell onto his palms. His hands couldn't stop no matter how much he tried. The river calmed down from the slight disturbance, and the reflection of the boy's figure appeared.
Song Qingshi was surprised to find that the body given to him by the system was very similar to his high school appearance; he was not very tall and significantly thinner. He wore a Daoist cultivator outfit made of many layers of snow-coloured cloud brocade, wrapped tightly around his body. At first glance, all the layers of clothing gave the illusion of a frail man.
His thin hair was simply tied up with some loose hair dangling freely. His appearance may be related to immortal cultivation. He is a bit more refined than his original body, with a cold, pale complexion and clear eyes. Because he often blocks out the world and focuses on his study, he feels a bit dull and extremely gullible, leading many unlucky ghosts to think that the original was harmless and would become the fertilizer or poison tester.
. . .
After Song Qingshi vented his emotions and saw the red-rimmed eyes in the reflection, he was a little embarrassed. He hurriedly lowered his head and fetched water, trying to wash away the tears on his face, but behind him came the sound of fine bells and ridicule.
"It's useless to commit suicide. It will only cause you needless pain. If you are still not reconciled, you can try and sink slowly to see if you can succeed."
Surprised, Song Qingshi turned around and saw the most beautiful thing he'd seen in his life.
There were trees full of peach blossoms, and under the tree was a beautiful young boy in red. Who knows how long he was watching Song Qingshi stupidly crying. The young man's appearance was blooming, like a scroll of rich colours and ink, painted with all the romantic colours of the world. The warm jade-like skin, the most beautiful thing about him were the dark golden phoenix eyes under the crow-feather-like eyelashes. He resembled a noble and dignified phoenix in the sky, but there was an extremely gorgeous red tear-shared mole under the corner of his left eye, desecrating his nobleness. The dignity of his appearance was crushed, and the phoenix rejoined the mortal world, turning into a creature stained with flattery and seductiveness which made people feel unbearable tempted.
His long hair was untied and hung casually around his waist. The ends of his hair were slightly curled, his feet were bare, and he was only wearing a red dress made of shark silk. The shark silk was as smooth as water, clinging to his body, covering all the desirables underneath.
Song Qingshi did not think anything blasphemous, but because he was caught crying, his social anxiety became more intense. After a long pause of building courage, he stumbled and said: "I, I just..."
His hesitation became reluctant approval in the eyes of the beauty in red.
There are dangerous monsters and birds everywhere in the immortal world. Cultivators were equipped with spiritual auras and keen senses, and can easily detect the wind and grass around them. Even the minor cultivators in the time they were establishing their cultivation base would not miss the sound of mortal footsteps with bells, let alone the Nascent Soul cultivators. If they release their spiritual thoughts, the smallest creatures on the mountain would not escape their attention. Except for Song Qingshi, a newly-born soul who had just arrived in this world, and was still very unused to spiritual power and these world conditions. . .
The beauty in red had completely misunderstood, thinking that Song Qingshi was also a mortal. There was only one use for such a beautiful mortal in Golden Phoenix Manor. He clarified: "A new slave?"
Song Qingshi looked up in amazement. He wanted to ask questions, but his eyes fell on the beauty of the red dress. There seemed to be some strange bruises on his neck as if it had been bitten by a mosquito, but it seemed that it might be something else. He took a few more secretive glances, trying to determine what they were.
The beauty in red noticed his curious glances and his heart grew upset. With growing malicious intent, a very gentle smile appeared on his face, and he said in a sincerely blessed tone: "Don't stare, you will have them soon, too."
Song Qingshi was very sheltered before transmigrating. He had never encountered malice and did not understand the mystery behind these words. Although he thought this blessing was a bit strange, he still answered politely: "Thank you."
The beauty in red choked hearing this answer. He was stunned for a moment. He looked at Song Qingshi up and down like a fool, and found that the person in front of him was clean and his skin was free of any injuries. He had never experienced the ravages of hell in his eyes. He was pure.
This discovery made him feel pity for the heart that had been tempered by suffering. He retracted his sharp malice and said softly, "After tonight, you will know that death is a luxury." He turned slightly to his side, looking at the river's flow. He warned, "When I first came here, I tried to commit suicide many times, but it was useless. We are slaves who are branded with the Acacia Seal. Our spirits belong to our master. So long as the master doesn't allow it, we cannot die, even by our own hands. . .
The beauty in red was silent for a long time. He slowly stretched out his hand and stroked Song Qing's hair that was soft as the fur of a small animal.
Song Qingshi saw several red rope marks on his pale wrists. He realized that this was pain that the beauty wouldn't want to be questioned about, so he pushed down his curiosity.
The fingertips of the red-dressed beauty slipped from his hair to Song Qingshi's delicate face, watching his innocent expression. He held his hand there for a moment before putting it down, conflicted. He didn't want to say any more. Since he didn't know those nightmarish experiences, it was useless to say anything more. Being able to preserve this kind of innocence, it was one more moment of happiness for him. Finally, he sighed, "You look good, but unfortunately the more your looks improve as you grow, the longer it will be until you're freed. . ."
Song Qingshi was puzzled: "What do you mean by 'freed'?"
"You'll know soon." The beauty in red's expression suddenly relaxed. He glanced around carefully, then stretched out his index finger and tapped his lips lightly. With a voice so light that he could barely hear it, he said ambiguously, "Tonight I will be freed. . ."
The beauty in red turned around with a smile and, with a crisp ring of the bells, turned to leave. His steps were a bit unstable, and each step was strenuous, like a mermaid walking on the tip of a knife in pain.
A pair of exquisite gold shackles were exposed on the beauty's ankles under the red clothes. Each of the shackles was decorated with an exquisite bell. The middle was connected by a slender golden chain. When walking, the bell shook slightly and made a clear and sweet sound, just like a tethered bird.
The golden chain dragged across the grass, and a few drops of blood dropped onto the green leaves.
Song Qingshi mustered up the courage to overcome his social anxiety, and shouted to the beauty who was about to leave: "Are you. . .injured? I, I know medical skills. . . Do you need me to treat you?"
The beauty in red turned back, looked at him for a few seconds, and he couldn't help but smile. This time the smile finally reached his eyes, like a ray of golden sunlight breaking through the clouds, dazzlingly beautiful. He shook his head towards Song Qingshi, and gave himself a sincere blessing: "I hope you have better luck tonight."
He turned his head, and the sunlight in his eyes disappeared in a flash, as if it had never existed, only the dark clouds that would not retreat.
Having endured these nightmares for years, he has long learned not to remember the kindness of others, and not to care about being offered charity from others.
He walked alone in this prison without stopping, step after step, wearing those painful shackles.
#mistakenly saving the villain#chinese bl#english translation#论救错反派的下场#song qingshi#chinese novel#mistakenly saving the villain translation
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Frisii
This is a rewritten post on the Frisii tribe, my previous post is over a year old so I wanted to update it by adding more information.
The Frisii were a Germanic tribe who lived above the Rhine in areas that are now known as modern day Noord-Holland, Friesland, Groningen, the Wadden islands in the Netherlands and East-Frisia in Germany. They should not be confused with the Frisians, a tribe which settled in the same area at a later time period, The Frisians and Frisii are however not completely foreign to each other, some Frisii stayed behind and were absorbed by the Frisians, the oldest still existing Germanic culture. The Frisii were neighboured by the Cananefates to the south and Chauci to the east, the west and north were part of the north sea.
The meaning of their name is derived from the Proto-Germanic word 'frisaz' which means 'curly'. There is a common misunderstanding that the word Frisii, and the later Frisian, comes from the word freeze/vriezen or freedom but this is not correct although understandably a good possible meaning.
The origins of the Frisii is still a bit unclear but there are viable theories. Unlike other tribes, like the Chatti, Lombards, Batavi, Cananefates etc.. who all migrated southwards and settled in their territories around 100BC, the Frisii are a lot older. In fact we do not know how old exactly they are but there are several theories:
The most likely theory is that the early Frisii, also called Proto-Frisians, migrated southwards from northern Germany and Denmark around 1000BC. Somewhere around 700BC they migrated from modern day Drenthe towards modern day Friesland, Groningen and Noord-Holland. There is however a more controversial theory that suggests the birth of the Frisii started with their patron-mother the Goddess Freya.
According to this theory a line of matriarchal rulers, known as folk mothers, were descendants of Freya herself and responsible for the creation of the Frisii, this would mean that the origin of the tribe is not around 700BC but around 2200BC. Here is a line of Frisii folk mothers starting with the Goddess Freya: Freya - somewhere around 2000BC Fasta, Medea, Thiania, Hellenia, Minna, Rosamond, Hellicht, Frana, Adela and Gosa. Of course if there was a continuous matriarchal line for about 1500 years long, this would include many more names but those are lost in time. This theory is based on the information found in the Oera Linda book, a highly disputed manuscript worthy of its own post so I will write about it in the near future. An altar stone has been found near modern day Xanten however with the following description: "MATRIBUS FRISAVIS PATERNIS" which could refer to these ancient Frisii matriarchs making the Oera Linda book theory possible.
By 100BC the Frisii were quite a large and powerful tribe who had established themselves fully in their current territory. Their first encounter with the Roman empire was around 12BC when Drusus Germanicus, one of Rome's most succesful generals, invaded Germania with the intention to turn the land into a province of Rome.
Drusus Germanicus, not to be confused with the other Roman general called Germanicus, was incredibly succesful with his invasion. He subjugated every Germanic tribe in his path including the Frisii who were forced to be allies of Rome. The Romans also built a fort, their most northern one, at modern day Velsen to keep an eye on the Frisii. It is likely that all of Germania would have become a Roman province if Germanicus didn't die after a fall from his horse in 9BC.
The Frisii delivered auxiliary troops to Rome and they had to pay taxes which led to high tensions between the tribe and Rome. The taxes were incredibly unfair as the Romans demanded large skins of cows which did not even exist in Frisii territory, they only had a small breed of cows. This rising tension eventually led to the Frisii revolting against Rome in 28AD. The Frisii hung Roman tax collectors which infuriated Rome.
Olennius, a Roman centurion in charge of Frisii administration, escaped the lynching party and hid himself at Castellum Flevum, the most northern fort the Romans ever built. The Frisii however marched onwards to this fort but were unable to capture it, archeological research shows traces of heavy fighting at this fort. The Frisii retreated back towards their sacred grove dedicated to their Goddess of war, Baduhenna, luring the Romans with them.
The Romans chased the Frisii right into the sacred grove. This was however a dreadful decision since the Frisii knew their swampy estuary terrain very well and were extra motivated by being in the presence of their battle Goddess. Almost all of the Romans were slaughtered, 900 of them, some according to legends, were captured and sacrificed to Baduhenna right in her grove. Another 400 Roman soldiers killed each other out fear of treachery, the event has been quoted by Tacitus:
"Soon afterwards it was ascertained from deserters that nine hundred Romans had been cut to pieces in a wood called Baduhenna, after prolonging the fight to the next day, and that another body of four hundred, which had taken possession of the house of one Cruptorix, once a soldier in our pay, fearing betrayal, had perished by mutual slaughter." - Tacitus
The Frisii name thus became famous in Germania and Roman emperor Tiberius tried to keep the Roman defeat a secret, not wishing to entrust anyone with the war because of the shame. The Roman fort in modern day Noord-Holland was abandoned after the revolt and the Frisii became free people once again and remained so until the medieval ages.
The earliest known written record that we have about the Frisii comes from a Roman poet Albinovanus Pedo. In one of his poems, he describes a disaster that occured during Germanicus' campaigns to avenge the Teutoburgerwald battle. This disaster took place around the Eems river in Frisii territory around 16AD and involves a storm destroying parts of his fleet:
"For a long time they had left the day and the sunlight behind them, for a long time they looked exiles from the well known part of the world, who had dared to go through forbidden darkness to the boundaries of nature and the furthest coast of the earth.
From here they saw him, the sea, carrying huge monsters under slow waves with rising wild whales and the dogs of the sea on all sides grabbing ships. The fleet was already in the mud, left behind by a rapid storm. They believed that their unfortunate fate was to be torn apart by these wild sea monsters.
The world was robbed, nothing could be distinguished, his breath was taken from him, and thus he spoke from his heart: Where do we end up? The day itself is fleeing and nature closes the rest of the world with eternal darkness. Do we sometimes look for people untouched by wars? The gods call us back, forbid that mortal eyes see the end of everything. Why do we violate a strange and consecrated sea with oars? Why do we disturb the silent dwellings of the gods?" - Albinovadus Pedo
The next written mention is quite an interesting one. It involves a dispute about land on the Roman border area. Two Frisii leaders, Verritus and Malorix decided to travel to Rome in 58AD and defend their case about this piece of land. During their stay in Rome, they amused the Romans greatly by refusing to sit down amongst the common people in a theater exclaiming that: "No people can match the Germanics in loyalty and bravery!" They then proceeded sitting down next to the Roman senators present in the theater. The Roman emperor, Nero, found the whole event quite amusing himself and granted Verritus and Malorix roman citizenship. This account, described by Tacitus, is also the first account of foreign tourists visiting Rome who were mentioned by name.
In 69AD, during a particulary tough year for the Romans, the Batavi revolted against the Roman empire. The Frisii joined this revolt which was initially quite succesful. Unfortunately the revolt was put down by the Romans the following year, resulting in severe trust issues between the Romans and the Batavi and Cananefates.
By 98AD Tacitus published his work 'Germania' and also provices us with a small description on the Frisii. He separated the tribe in two parts, the Frisii Maiores and the Frisii Minores. The Minores lived in what is now Noord-Holland and the Maiores lived in what is now Frisia and Groningen. Here is a description on the Frisii landscape:
"The terrain is fierce, the climate is rough, life and landscape are bleak. You only come here if it's your homeland." - Tacitus
No significant recorded events exist after 98AD, the history on the Frisii between 100AD-300AD is pretty much unknown. We do know that parts of the Frisii joined the Cananefaat pirate/proto-viking Gannascus in his raids on several settlements, mainly in Gaul. These attacks infuriated Rome and led to improved defenses being built by them. Gannascus is eventually assassinated by the Romans under the pretence of a negotiation which caused great outrage amongst the Chauci, Frisii and Cananefates. The Roman emperor of that time, Claudius, feared a violent conflict with these tribes and withdrew Roman forces from the Rhine in order to ease tensions.
Around 300AD the Saxon confederation came into existence and bordered the Frisii directly to the east. The Western Roman empire started to decline rapidly during this time period as well leaving the borders vulnerable for invasions. With the Huns invading Europe, economic hardship, climate change, failed harvests and empty Roman borders, came the great migration. Many Frisii migrated either southwards to become absorbed by the Franks or to the west by invading Britannia together with the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. Only very few Frisii remained in their original homeland, we have archeological evidence that some did indeed stay.
Frisii lands were now almost completely deserted until the arrival of Saxons and Jutes who settled the area together with the few remaining Frisii. These new settlers started to call themselves Frisians, after the ancient Frisii. The Frisians still exist until this day and they have a rich history which deserves a post of its own, which will be coming very soon.
The last thing I want to mention is the auxiliary troops that the Frisii supplied Rome with. The Notitia Dignitatum, a Roman document that describes details of the administrative organisation of the empire, mentions a Frisii cohort stationed at Vindobala, a fort located at Hadrian's wall. This entry 'Tribunes cohortis primae Frixagorum Vindobala' however contains a possible spelling mistake, Frixagorum instead of Frisiavonum. This entry might however also refer to the Frisiavones tribe unrelated to the Frisii.
Here are images of: A map showing the location of the Frisii, A reconstruction of Castellum Flevum, A depiction of the Frisii fighting Romans by an unknown artist, A reconstruction of a Frisii fortification, A small piece of a Roman helmet, bottom left, found at Velsen where once the Castellum Flevum stood which was attacked by the Frisii, A depiction of the Goddess Freyja, the ancestral mother of the Frisii, from 1874,
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The first sign; Jack Kline x reader
*Author’s note*
Hey guys well it’s been awhile since I updated my Rock angel series and for good reason too because here is where things get DARK!! As you’ll see in the taglist below I’ve started putting trigger warnings cause in this part it involves stalking, dog attacks (some people fear dogs so I wanted to be respectful). Now the next chapter after this will REALLY be insane so I hope you all buckle up cause you’re in for one hell of a ride.
Also face cast for Steve I put the gif for Joe Keery, and for the Rock Angel’s manager just look up actor James Woods (aka Hades from Hercules).
Taglist:
@plethora-of-things
@waddles03
@psychosupernatural
@ixchel-9275
@simonedk
@jd-johndeacon-or-jackdaniels
@queendeakyy
@queen-paladin
@queensdivas
@wormzteef
@geek-and-proud
@starswin
@onebigfangirlworld
@dj-lowkey
@naturalswifty89
@isabella-bby
@bohemiansweede
@5sos-wdw
@labessieisallama
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Everyone thinks it won’t happen to me, that I’m immune to such evil. No one thinks they’ll ever experience such a thing but you’d sadly be lying, or in complete denial. At least everyone goes through this type of evil at one point in their lives. And for celebrities, it’s a living hell because the world will only watch with a bucket of popcorn and enjoy your pain and suffering.
The only ones you can depend on are your family. And don’t ever say they wouldn’t understand because they will. Had I not told my family about what was going on—you know what fuck it they were forced into this. But even so if they didn’t know what was going on, this part of my story would’ve ended very, very, very, very differently.
*2 months after the tribute concert*
I hadn’t slept in a week. I was exhausted with trying to put the final touches on my tribute album for Freddie. My manager James Woods was really putting the heat on me with trying to get this album up so that I could ring in the money for him. Wait first let me backup just a tick and explain some things first.
When I first transferred out of EMI and went to Hollywood Records, my manager at the time was a man known as Desmond Roberts. He was a generous, kind man who saw my potential as a female musician and like Miami, pushed me to do my best. He was a family man as well; at the time he had become a grandfather for the first time at the age of 52.
But earlier this year he had to retire because it was by law of the company that all representatives must retire by the age of 65. With that my new manager was his young and vibrant VP James Woods. James is—well let’s just say he’d make a better car salesman than a recording manager.
A man born and bred in the heart of Boston, he’s the kind of man who sees his own vision and wants other people to execute it for him. Hell he’s even been pressuring me to go more into Pop music as that is the rising fame of music now. Artists like Madonna, Gwen Stefani, rising star Christina Aguilera, and Mariah Carey. He wanted to push me to going in their direction.
But I reminded him of my original contract that I signed on between Miami and Desmond. That my image was to never, ever, ever under any circumstances be changed. Yes he even tried to make me change my stage name into the Spicy Angel (yeah that didn’t sit right with me).
To put it frank—my current manager is a stubborn, two-headed, forked-tongue, snake in the grass. Sleezy, and can make some vulgar comments either towards me or some of my roadies.
But the one step he took too far was when he hired his own nephew to be my PA (he claimed that he was trying to help out his sister). At first I was against it but with that pleading and begging persuasionistic tone of his, for some reason I ended up agreeing and his nephew Steve Harrison became my new PA.
Steve Harrison. He was the same age as Jack, had deep brown eyes, a fairly handsome face, but his crown jewel was his hair. He always bragged and fussed about his hair. Brown and fluffed up beyond anything, like cotton candy. Silky and moosed to no end. Wow and I thought I was bad when it came to doing my air before a show.
Now Steve definitely knew his way around the recording station. Made sure that every song I recorded sounded to perfection, always sought to my every need, ensured that for upcoming tours I was given updates on the schedule, and he even took my calls and wrote them down for me. He kept his work profession throughout all of 1991.
But when the summer of 92 came around, things began to change.
As I said before, I hadn’t slept a week. The Freddie Mercury tribute album was taking longer than the company expected. That’s because I wanted to make sure every song, especially the cover ones that Fred had given me legal rights to do, were perfect.
I was at the controls listening to my version of Somebody to love when the door opened behind me.
“I would’ve thought her royal highness would’ve gone home?”
“Perfectionists never stop. I learned that from the best group of men I know.” He took the empty seat next to me and presented me with a cup of coffee. I softly thanked him and went back to listening to my song.
When the last vibrato rang out on the word ‘love’, Steve sighed and said.
“It’s beautiful.”
“It’s shit!” I complained. “God why did he give me such responsibility to do these songs I-I-I—not I’m even worthy to do his songs. At least not without him.”
“This version is the best. Better than I’ve ever heard it been played. In fact……I think you’re better than Freddie Mercury.” I snapped my head towards him.
“Freddie Mercury was and will always be a genius. His voice is unlike any other performer’s and his style of writing will forever go down in music history as the best damn thing the world will ever know! So don’t you ever say that someone is better than him. Especially me!” I shot up from the chair, it rolled back and slammed against the wall and I turned towards the wall with my arms crossed over my chest, and breathed heavily trying to calm down.
“I—I’m sorry. I was just speaking my opinion. I—didn’t know how much you cared about him. He…..must’ve really meant something to you.” He spoke softly.
“More than you’ll ever know.” I muttered as I fingered the bracelet Fred gave me as a birthday gift. “And I’m sorry Steve I—I didn’t mean to shout. I’m……just exhausted and stressed. With your uncle—”
“Hey, I get it. Uncle James can be a real pain in the ass at times.” I turned towards him and saw him standing a few inches away from me. “Hell one time when I was 16, I had asked him if I could take his mustang for a test drive and he told me ‘kid you so much as even leave a fingerprint you’re as dead as a doornail and I don’t care if you’re my nephew’.” The two of us laughed at his uncle’s impersonation.
“And I thought I was the only one with a douche uncle.”
“Oh trust me, you think he’s demanding at work? You should see him round the holidays.” I softly laughed. That’s when I felt his finger slightly graze against the back of my palm.
My heart stopped and that’s when I noticed that he had gotten a little closer to me. Closer and closer his face came but I quickly got out of his way and said.
“Excuse me, I gotta sign off this track and ship it off by tomorrow morning.” I grabbed Steve’s chair and went straight back into my work. As I was fiddling around with the switches and buttons, I could feel that he was standing right there beside me. I tried to ignore him and focus on my work but his lingering presence grew too much.
Like a moth to the flame. Silent but fluttering around too close.
I turned to say something to him, that’s when his lips suddenly crashed with mine. My eyes widened and my body froze for a moment before my brain snapped back into reality.
I pushed him away and slapped him across the face. Standing up and my chest heaving in so many mixed emotions, but the one main emotion going out about me was anger.
“What the fuck Steve!? Why did you do that!? You know I’m happily married and have children!”
“I—I’m sorry I just…..I’ve always been a fan of yours and I just….I’m sorry. Please don’t tell my uncle. You know as well as I do what he’s like. He’ll beat me to a pulp if he finds out. Please Angel I beg of you, don’t tell him.” His eyes going fearful and tears shined at the corner of his eyes.
I wish I could say that I told him that I was going to rat him out, have him fired even but—I didn’t. He’s right I did know what it was like to have an abusive uncle. Now while my uncle never really touched my physical, he did have his temper and would throw things at me just barely missing me (that mostly happened when he was on the bottle).
“Only if you promise me you won’t do shit like that again. And never speak of this to anyone.”
“I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die.” He said as he crossed his heart with his finger. I narrowed my eyes at him and grabbed my purse.
“Take the day off tomorrow. Then come back on Monday to work. Professionally.” I emphasized the last word and he nodded and I walked out without another word.
I wish I could take it all back. That I had fired him right then and there, if I had then what would eventually come, wouldn’t have happened. Or at least not gotten to the scale that it did get to.
*3 weeks after the kiss*
I was on the Late Show with David Letterman doing a television interview about the upcoming album as well as my tour coming later in the year.
“So Rock Angel your upcoming album ‘Fly High Mercury’ is said to be unlike your previous albums is that right? It also was the one that also took you the longest to make correct?”
“Yes it is.”
“Care to explain?”
“Well as you can tell by the title this is a tribute album to Freddie Mercury.” The audience applauded. I nodded and swallowed a lump in my throat. “Some of the songs are what I’ve written but another half of them are Queen songs that Freddie himself gave me legal rights to make a cover to. In fact they were some of my favorites.”
“Now how long did it take you to make this album?” David asked me.
“Well the songs I did, took roughly a couple of months but when—Freddie passed away I took a few months off to grieve and then as you all may have seen I was a part of the tribute concert so in total almost ten months.”
“Wow ten months.” I nodded. “And you said Freddie gave you the rights to some of Queen’s songs to cover?”
“Yes.”
“How did it feel to have that kind of pressure on you?”
“I’ll be honest it was tough. How-how do you compete with someone like Freddie Mercury? His voice and musical talents were unlike anything anyone’s ever seen or will ever see most likely. And when he asked me to do some of Queen’s works, particularly the songs he himself had written, I felt like I was going up against goliath and I was David. But—Fred has his reasons for why he does what he does, and—he must’ve felt like I could help embrace his memory further by introducing a new audience to some of Queen’s work, especially their earliest songs.” The crowd applauded.
“Well said, well said. Freddie will truly be forever missed. When we come back we have Kurt Russel joining us and then after that the Rock Angel will perform one of her hit songs from her recent album Fly High Mercury which is now available in stores. The Rock Angel (Y/n) Kline everybody!” the crowd applauded and David and I shook hands with each other as his theme song played us out on the commercial break.
I went backstage to change out from my black sequin interview dress and into some regular but dressy performance clothes. A black leather jacket, a white blouse, tight jeans, and some high-heeled black boots.
“Oh angel.” I internally groaned. Speak of the devil. James Woods soon came into my dressing room without a single care in the world (he’s lucky I’ve learned to do quick changes otherwise we’d have a problem). “Now darling please remind me again why you’ve declined Donald Trump’s hotel gig? He’s offered plenty of money for your performance especially since it’s his son’s birthday that day.”
“When I went to talk to him he also made me an offer I simply had to refuse.” I shuddered. “He’s a pig and an upright asshole with no respect for anyone but himself and his precious hotel business. God help us if he ever becomes President.”
“Fine. Instead of adding to the profit we would’ve gotten from this, we’ll take it out of your next pay how bout that?” I glared at him.
“You really wanna go toe to toe with me regarding money? Go ahead. Just know I’ve got the best lawyers in all of London on my side and they’ve been good to me for 10 years. So you better pucker your lips and do some serious arse kissing to the judge because they’ve won every. Single. Case I’ve ever had to do. From false stories to paparazzi stalking.” I stared him down even though I only came up to his chest.
Even through those cold, greedy eyes of his, I saw that he was afraid.
“Ahh court cases are a waste of time and a waste of profit. Now go on out there and give them a show baby cakes.”
“Never call me baby cakes.” I trudged out of my dressing room with my red special in hand and headed back towards the stage to sing my song.
After the show ended, I was back in my hotel room in Manhattan. I had just gotten done with my shower and soon coming into the room was Jack with some late night takeout.
“Chinatown special for the Rock Angel.” I smiled and splayed myself across the bed as he came toward me with the food.
“Mmm room service and a cute delivery boy. I am one lucky girl.”
“Well then Mrs. Kline, do I get a special tip for my services?” Jack played along with a grin. I smirked and placed my hand on the back of his head and brought his lips towards mine. His hands soon came to my waist as we separated but I kissed him again. Jack hummed in surprise. “A double tip? Well then, guess I need to be the delivery boy more often.” I giggled and took my food out of the bag.
“But serious babe, thanks for getting the food.”
“Hey no problem, anything for my beautiful rock star. I know that with your schedule firing back up, you don’t have time for a normal meal like we did before.”
“Did you call your mom about the kids?”
“Yep. Kids are safe and healthy. Well Little Jack had a slight fever but he was better within a day thanks to mama’s secret chicken noodle soup. I know that thing saved my life as a kid.”
“Well then she better……” a knock was soon heard at the door. Jack and I looked at each other confused. He stood up from the bed and answered the door. I held my robe tighter around me and soon I heard the door slam shut and Jack soon came in with a bouquet of a dozen roses. “Did you order those?”
“Nope. But I’ve got a feeling who did.” He turned as he glared to the room opposite of our suite.
Well of course I told Jack about the kiss. I know what it’s like to have been cheated on so there was no way in fucking hell I was gonna keep this a secret from Jack. As you can see he has not taken it well, in fact he’s grown very angry and jealous when Steve gets mentioned.
“Let me see the card.” He tossed the bouquet down on the bed. I sent him a glare and went to pick the card out and I opened it up. And low and behold it was from Steve. Even though it didn’t have his name on it, I recognized his handwriting anywhere. He wrote.
Fabulous performance (as always). A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
Your secret admirer and #1 fan
“You should’ve fired him.”
“Oh so you’re saying this is my fault!?” I snapped.
“No that’s not what I’m saying!” Jack snapped back at me. “I just…..” he exhaled deeply trying to release his anger. “I don’t trust him anymore. Not after what he did. In fact ever since he’s kissed you he’s been sending you a lot of stuff. The flowers, your favorite German chocolates, he even gave a teddy bear to our daughter! I’m telling you something about him now is just……” I walked up to him and embraced him.
“I know love, I know. I don’t feel comfortable around him too. But—he is James’ nephew and unfortunately he wants his sister to get off his back with this favor.”
“That shouldn’t matter! If he makes you uncomfortable you should just fire him and not even worry about what that sales talker of a manager tells you.” He is right. It shouldn’t have to go on like this but unfortunately the business world isn’t on my side when it comes to choosing my PA’s, I was thankful enough to keep my touring roadies and not get some rookies or 40 year old perverts who get high or drunk.
“The likes of a woman in a men’s workforce. I wish I could Jack but I can’t. Legally anyways. Look I’m exhausted right now can we please just go to bed?”
“Alright. But we will come back to this. (Y/n) I’m only stressed about this because I don’t want to lose you. What if—”
“Hey!” I put my finger of his lips. “Don’t you dare think like that. I know celebrities are always the first to die when it comes to crazed fans. But I swear to you Jack Kline, I will not be one of those singers to die at the hands of a so called ‘fan’. I’m your lioness.”
“And no one can break you down.” We pressed our forehead together and just stayed like that for a good long moment. I then softly kissed him and went to change out of my robe into my nightdress. Jack stripped down to his boxers and we put our takeout in the mini-fridge by the bed and turned off the lights before cuddling close together.
*September 8th, 1992*
It was Kelly’s first day of 1st grade. Jack and I couldn’t believe that our little girl was on her way to 1st grade. Of course to me it was the first day of primary school but still it was a big day for her. So Jack and I were sure to be there to see her off but sadly both of us had a long day today so we couldn’t go pick her up.
I was busy prepping for my upcoming tour while Jack got backed up with the car dealership. But thankfully Jack’s cousin Jared (who was working a case at the time) volunteered to go pick Kelly up after school. Now this school was at the top with their security, only those who were approved by the Parent or Guardian could pick up the child (which was good with us).
So Jack and I made sure to list the family members down in order so we went from Kelly Kline, Misha Kline, Roger Taylor, Brian May, John Deacon, and Jared and Jensen Walker as the adults to pick Kelly Kline up from school should Jack and I not be available.
It was late in the afternoon, around 3:30ish and I was talking with my tour manager Phillipe about where each performance was gonna take place when the phone suddenly rang. One of the assistants answered it and she said.
“Hollywood Records how may I help you?” there was a pause and suddenly her voice went frantic. “Whoa, whoa, whoa wait a minute slow down. Slow down who are you wanting to talk to?” I turned to her confused. “Okay hold on I’ll get her,” she turned to me and said as she held the phone close to her breast, “Mrs. Kline someone wants to speak to you. Says his name is Jared Walker.” I immediately shot up and took the phone and said frantically.
“Jared what’s happened?”
‘I-I-I-I went to pick Kelly up like I said I would, but when I got there they had said you had already sent approval of someone else to come get her!’
My heart stopped. They say it’s every parent’s worse nightmare come true, but it’s never fully real until it happens to you.
I dropped the phone as Jared’s voice echoed through the speakers calling out my name.
“CALL THE POLICE! CALL JACK! CALL KELLY’S SCHOOL! CALL ANYONE!!” I screamed frantically.
The search for my daughter was—one of the worst things I ever had to go through. Just who in the hell would know where exactly her school was? Not only that but who got my approval to sign off for her release?
I was frantic to the bone. I kept pacing with anxiety as every fiber of my being was buzzing with all kinds of emotions. Jack and Jared tried their best to calm me down but I wasn’t going to be calm till I had my baby in my arms.
After an hour and a half grueling search, the home phone suddenly rang. I went up to the phone and answered it.
“Hello?!” there was silence at the end of it for awhile till finally his voice came up.
‘Lose your little cub?’ my eyes narrowed and now only rage filled my body.
“Where is she Steve?” I sneered.
‘Just meet me by the spot where the first action sequence of Terminator 2 was shot.’ Then the line went dead. I hung up the phone, grabbed my keys and dragged Jared by the arm towards my car and we raced down the highway.
When we arrived at Bull Creek, I told Jared to stay in the car while I handled Steve. I got out of the car and right there at the very track where the first action chase scene of the film took place at.
Just ahead of me was a blue Ferrari leaning against it was Steve Harrison. And through the windows I could see Kelly playing with her favorite doll that she took with her to school, without a care in the world.
“So glad you finally made it Angel. Didn’t think I’d expect to see you to take my advice so quick.”
“Open the door.” I sneered.
“Gee not even a thank you?” he joked.
“I don’t have time for bullocks right now Harrison! Now open your bloody car door and give me back my baby!” he went over and opened the door and once Kelly saw me, her smile on her face grew wider.
“Mummy!” she cheered as she got out and raced towards me. I immediately knelt down and picked her up in my arms.
“Oh my baby girl. Oh thank god you’re safe! Are you okay? Look at me. We were all so worried about you.” I said as I kept kissing all over her face. She groaned and tried to get me to stop.
“I’m fine mum! Mum stop it stop kissing me! Mr. Steve said you changed your mind about uncle Jared coming to pick me up.” I glared over to Steve and said.
“Honey go in mummy’s car and wait there with Uncle Jared.” I kissed her one last time and she did as I asked her to. I walked closer to Steve as he kept talking.
“Lovely reunion. See I knew you’d appreciate what I’d done. After all as your personal—” I sucker punched him hard across the face sending him down to the ground. Blood even dripped down his nose. “Wow. Wow!” he scoffed. “I-I-I-I know that girls could punch but that…..that was—”
“What the fuck is wrong with you!?” I snapped at him.
“You should be grateful. I did you a favor. I picked up your daughter from her first day of school.” He tried to reason with me.
“You had no legal right too! You kidnapped her!”
“Kidnapped?! Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa wait time out!” he stood up and wiped his bloody nose. “Wow head rush. Okay hang on a minute. You were incredibly business with the tour manager so I knew you wouldn’t be able to pick her up. And of course Jack……” he sneered out Jack’s name with anger and jealousy. “He works now right? I mean about damn time too, can’t be the house husband forever right?” My glare deepened, “Anyways, so no one else was there to pick up sweet, little Kelly so I volunteered myself to pick her up. Didn’t want her staying at the school all by herself, now did we?”
“She wasn’t going to be alone we arranged for Jared to pick her up!” at that Steve’s face turned to shock as he said.
“Oh. Well—this is awkward.” Oh he was an incredible actor I’ll give him that.
“What is wrong with you Steve? What were you trying to accomplish here?” that’s when his eyes darkened and grew cold. His voice even changed to a possessive tone as he walked closer to me.
“Jack doesn’t deserve you. A farm boy like that? No you need a real man at your side. Someone who gets the business, someone who is always by your side. I know who you are (Y/n) Kline.”
He tried to grab my chin but I clenched his hand in mine and dug my nails into his skin. My hand shaking with rage as I stared him down.
“Is that what you think? You think by doing all this you actually believe I would leave Jack for you? You’re even more delusional than Jack painted you. Now I see it for myself.” I threw his hand down and backed away from him. “A wise man once said to another slime like yourself, ‘you just see what you want to see’. Next time you even touch or go near any of my kids, I swear to you there won’t be a courthouse that your uncle can bride with what I’ll charge you for.” I turned and walked back to the car and took Kelly home.
Of course I wish I could say that was the last time I ever saw Steve’s face again. But due to lack of evidence in the fact that Steve had given a false document allowing him to take Kelly, he wasn’t charged with kidnapping.
Plus his uncle got involved and swindled with his business talk saying that I was under a lot of pressure with the upcoming tour and that police action at the time of Kelly’s disappearance wasn’t necessary. He also emphasized that Kelly wasn’t harmed in anyway so it’s not like his nephew was an evil person. So the police believed James’ story and no charges were filed and Steve was a free man to do as he pleased.
Jack and I reinforced the school and even gave them Steve’s picture saying that if he ever came into the school again asking for Kelly again, they were to call the police because Steve Harrison does not have access to take Kelly out of school.
Little did I know that things were only going to get worse after that day.
*October 3rd, 1992. Jack’s POV*
It first began with the constant phone calls to the house. The phone was constantly ringing and everytime I picked it up, there was no one there. Just heavy breathing and then they’d hang up. It happened for hours on end, even at some odd hours in the night.
Soon enough I had had enough and decided to unplug all the house phones and I got me my first cellphone. If anyone in the family wanted to reach me, I told them to call by my new cellphone and that’s where I was talking to my Angel at.
‘Have the phone calls kept coming?’
“Unfortunately yes they did. But I unplugged the house phone so hopefully whoever it is gets the point and drops these crank calls and finds someone else to torment.”
‘I don’t know Jack. Maybe I should just come back and forget this tour.’
“No, no. Look, you nearly missed out the Angel-Queen tour back when we first met, I won’t let you cancel this tour either. Besides the world needs their Angel right now.” I assured her.
‘Yeah but—’
“What would he say right now?” I interrupted her. I heard her softly scoff and I knew she was smiling on the other end.
‘He’d tell me ‘Angel darling stop being so dramatic. There’s only room in this partnership for one hysterical Queen. Plus you’ll get early wrinkles’.’ We both laughed. ‘God I miss him so much. I can’t believe it’ll almost be a year come November.’
“I know. Have you talked to the guys at all since the concert?”
‘Not really. Figure I’d give them some space. They know my team’s number if they want to talk to me.’ I nodded and hummed in understandment so that she knew I was still listening.
“So you made it to Phoenix in one piece?”
‘Yeah thankfully. I’ll give you a call right after the show. Give the kids a kiss and cuddle for me.’
“Oh you know I will.” I said with a smile.
‘I love you Jack Kline; you know that right?’
“Of course I do. And I love you to the moon and back. Have a good show baby.”
‘I will. I love you.’
“I love you infinity times infinity there. Now you can’t say you love me more.” I heard her giggle. “Knock ‘em dead Angel.”
‘I will, bye.’
“Bye.” We both hung up and I deeply sighed.
“Daddy?” I looked up and there was Kelly in her nightdress holding her stuffed lion that her godfather gifted her.
“Hey baby girl, why are you awake?” I asked concerned. She walked up to me and sat down in my lap and said.
“I couldn’t sleep. Can you tell me a bedtime story? You know how like uncle Freddie used to tell me?” I stroked down her hair and said.
“Well, I’m not as extravagant or detailed as he used to make it but—I’ll do my best. C’mon I’ll make you some warm milk and tuck you back into bed, sound good?” she nodded. I picked her up, set her on the kitchen counter and prepared her some warm milk.
After that I carried her back to her bed and tucked her back under her covers and she took a sip of her milk.
“Okay so, what shall it be tonight? Do you want a story about—fairies?” she shook her head. “Unicorns?” again she shook her head. “Oh how about the story of a beautiful princess who gets saved by a knight in shining armor?”
“No daddy. Do you know the story of the lioness Queen?”
“The lioness Queen?”
“Uncle Freddie once told me a story about the lioness Queen who was raised by evil wolves but soon came on top as Queen of her own pride. He was gonna finish the story of how she would find herself a king but then—” she trailed off and I could see the tears prickling in her eyes. Oh that Freddie, of course he would tell our story like we were two lions.
“I think I know that story. Now again I may not be as good of a storyteller as Uncle Freddie was but I’ll do my best.” I sat down by her bedside and she cuddled up into her pillow, her stuffed lion in her arms. “Now let’s see……the Lioness Queen had reached the height of her reign. Everyone loved her because of her kindness and loyalty, but she was very much lonely. Sure she had the support of her new family but she still longed for someone she could love more than the family love she had from her new pride. So one day when she was out hunting, she was suddenly ambushed by the no good jackal. Now this jackal had particularly taken an interest in our brave Lioness Queen but she knew to not take any of his bullying. However he had brought his entire pack and they ganged up on the poor lioness.”
“Daddy don’t make it too scary.”
“Right, right, right I’m sorry angel. But the lioness Queen didn’t have to fear anymore. Because leaping from over the tall savannah grass was a dashing, handsome and powerful lion. He beat the jackals away and told the head jackal to leave and never bother the lioness again. Soon the jackal tucked his tail in like a frightened dog and fled the savannah and was never seen again. The lioness Queen was in debt to the young lion that saved her so she asked him if they could go to the watering hole together to talk and get to know each other more.”
I continued on to tell her mine and (Y/n)’s story of the day we met and fell in love with each other. Then about midway through the story I looked down and saw Kelly was finally back asleep. I smiled and kissed her forehead.
“Sleep tight my little lioness cub.” I walked out of her room and shut her door and walked back downstairs.
I walked towards the kitchen and I saw Sammy lying asleep on his doggie bed and Bucky asleep on his. But as soon as I came in, the two of them looked up at me.
“Hey Buck, Sammy.” Buck grunted as he sat up and came up towards me and sat down. I ruffled the top of his head. “Okay so what do you say last quick trip outside then time for you guys to get in your pin?” Sammy’s tail wagged as he immediately went towards the backdoor. I opened it up and he immediately went outside. “Alright Buck come on outside go out and go potty.”
But Bucky seemed tense. He lowly growled before racing towards the front door.
“Bucky? Buck!” Bucky went over to the front door and suddenly began barking aggressively and very loudly. “Buck! Buck shh! Quiet!” but he refused to listen to me. He kept barking and barking and barking. His fangs were out as he raced from the door to the windows. Growls came out of him and I noticed that his fur was on end.
Okay maybe it’s another dog or a raccoon or something, he tends to do that and we’re trying to break him of that habit. I grabbed his leash and when he was finally still I got it hooked to his collar and forced him towards his pin.
“Get in your pin now!” he snapped at him. I got him in his pin and as soon as I shut the door he started whimpering frantically, pacing around his pin letting out bark after bark. “Shhhh! You’re gonna wake the kids Buck now quiet!” I looked towards the front door and sighed heavily. Might as well just see just what’s out there.
I grabbed a flashlight and quickly stepped outside. I shined the light in every corner of darkness but I didn’t see a thing. No stray dog, nor a racoon, a cat not even a squirrel.
“That Buck is crazy sometimes.” It was then I noticed that our trashcan had somehow gone out to the side of the road. “I thought I brought that in when I came in this afternoon? Damn pranksters.” I left the front gate that surrounded our house and walked out to the curb to grab our trashcan and bring it back towards the side of the garage.
That’s when a loud purr of an engine roared through the quiet streets and bright headlights flashed right towards me. I heard the screeching of tires coming right towards me and without even thinking I ducked right up towards my driveway and I heard the sound of our garbage can being hit and tossed across the road.
The car’s lights soon turned off and sped off down the street. I panted heavily, my adrenaline now starting to collapse as I began to realize what could’ve happened just now.
Someone was trying to run me over and kill me. I knew that couldn’t be a mechanical problem cause why would the headlights suddenly come on and then accelerate straight towards me before driving normally down the road?
Only one person came across my mind as to who would go so far as to get rid of me. Steve.
I called up Jared and using his lawyer expertise he asked me various questions but unfortunately since I couldn’t identify the model of the car clear enough and couldn’t read the license plate in time there was no way for me to truly say it was him unless I could physically prove it.
But after that night I didn’t see Steve again, and I hoped that was the end of it. Until Halloween came around.
*Halloween night, 1992. 8:30pm*
I had just brought the kids in from our night of trick or treating. You know I’m glad we decided to allow the kids some time to know the American holidays cause I had to explain this to the guys as well as (Y/n) just what Halloween really was (since they don’t really celebrate it there in jolly old England).
I dressed the boys up as little lions while Kelly went as a witch this year. We all came in carrying our bags of candy.
“Candy!” Georgie exclaimed.
“That’s right buddy. We got candy, lots and lots of candy.” I told him as I got them out of their little red wagon.
“Daddy, daddy can we eat all the candy tonight please?” Kelly begged.
“You know your mother will kill me if she finds out I let you eat sweets before bedtime.” She whined before giving me her mother’s puppy dog face.
“Please daddy. Not even one itty bitty, teeny tiny bite?” I playfully placed my hands over her face which made her exclaim and shoo away my hand.
“You can have just one. Piece. But that’s it okay?” she cheered and quickly went through her bag and got out a blueberry flavored lollipop.
“Hey daddy? How come we can’t do trick or treating back where uncle Brian, uncle Deacy and papa Roger live?”
“Well sweetie, sometimes other countries don’t do the things we do. And sadly Halloween is just another day for them.”
“They should. Maybe next year papa Roger and I can be Star wars characters together.” I chuckled.
“I think your uncle Brian would enjoy that more than papa Roger.”
“But I wanted papa Roger and I to be Han and Princess Leia. Uncle Brian can be Chewie.”
“And uhh—who-who did you have in mind to be Luke?” I said brushing my fingers through my hair.
“Mommy! Cause she’s brave and strong just like Luke is! Georgie and Jackson can be R2.”
“And just who will uncle Deacy and I be?”
“Well uncle Deacy can be Obi-Wan and you’re C3-PO.” Wow she gives me the nagging droid.
“Oh so you think I’m a mindless philosopher ehh!? Come here you!” I quickly grabbed her and began tickling her which made her shriek and squirm. “Have me be Luke Skywalker or the tickling continues your highness!” I mimicked Darth Vader’s voice.
“Ne-nevheherererer!” she said through her laughter. I proceeded with the tickling till I heard the sound of a car engine coming down the street.
My mind suddenly went back to that night when I nearly got ran over. I set Kelly down on the floor and peeked through the curtains and could see someone standing right beside a familiar shape of a car that I knew well.
“Daddy? Is……everything okay?” I looked down at Kelly before quickly looking back towards the window.
“Kelly I need you to listen to me very carefully sweetheart. I want you to take your brothers and go to mommy and daddy’s room and hide in the closet. And no matter what happens do not come out till I come and get you, okay?”
“But why daddy? What’s going on?”
“Just!” I snapped but clenched my hand tightly and said as I knelt down to her height. “Please Kelly, do as your father tells you. Remember not a word or even let me see you till I tell you it’s safe, promise?”
“I promise.” I hugged her tightly and gave her a kiss and told her to go get her brothers and get upstairs. I glared at the door and opened it up before closing it. I walked towards the front gate and that’s when I heard his voice say.
“Well, well, well, Jack Kline I’ll be damned. Still around eh?”
“Yeah, yeah it’s me don’t cream your pants.” I sassed bluntly at him.
“Saw that you and the kiddies were doing a little trick or treating. That’s nice of you but umm…..what are you supposed to be? A new kid on the block?” I scoffed.
“What do you want Harrison?”
“What can’t a PA come up to check on his superstar?”
“I don’t know what world you live in but (Y/n) fired you last week.”
“Yeah, you see that-that-that’s…..that’s another reason why I came here. See, I personally am the best and most qualified PA that the Rock Angel could ever have. But while we were in Pittsburg, I get a notice saying that I’ve been fired. Now she never told me why so I thought who is more jealous of me and brainwashing the Rock Angel, than her own husband? So—care to explain?”
“Guess you were dropped as a child one too many times.” I walked closer to the front gate and said in Steve’s face. “She got tired of your advancements towards her. My wife isn’t like all other rock stars cause she’s been on the end of the cheating stick. And she knows to not put me or our kids through something like that.”
“Really lives up to her angel name huh?” he smart mouthed me. “Let me tell you though buddy boy. We have fucked with each other, and boy is she a freak in the sheets.” Bullshit I know he’s lying. “We’ve even fucked with each other here at your own house when you were away on business. I mean—who can say no to this?” he gestured to himself.
“You are even worse than we thought. Now do yourself a favor and fuck off Steve before I call the cops.”
“One problem with that amigo.”
“And what’s that? Amigo.” Suddenly I was grabbed by my shirt and a punch went straight through my stomach. I collapsed to the ground and the gate opened up. Steve stood over me and he sneered down.
“The cops are working for me.” I was then kicked in the ribs and I watched in horror as Steve kicked the door in and walked right on in the house.
*3rd Person POV*
As Steve entered the Kline residence, a place he had actually been inside a lot with his uncle on the meetings with (Y/n) to discuss further progress with her albums, brandings, etc. He walked up the stairs and went straight for the master bedroom where Jack and (Y/n) slept.
He looked around as he slowly walked around the bedroom before seeing the closet at the corner of his eyes. He turned towards it and walked right up to it before slowly reaching for the door. With a quick flick, the door was opened but no one was there. He then saw some of (Y/n)’s stuff like her hats and scarves.
He took a red scarf and inhaled it before pocketing it into his back pocket. That’s when he suddenly heard a thump from the corner of the room. That’s when his attention went to the wardrobe. A smirk spread across his face and as he opened it there he saw Kelly, Georgie and Jackson all huddled together.
“Hey kids, whatcha doin in here?”
“Go away! Mommy and daddy don’t like you anymore and neither do we!” Steve laughed at Kelly’s empty demand.
“Kids today. Guess I’m gonna have to teach you some manners little missy.” Suddenly he was turned around and a hard punch sent him down to the ground.
“Daddy!” Kelly cheered.
“Daddy! Daddy!” the boys repeated.
*Jack’s POV*
Like hell I was gonna just sit there and allow Steve to take whatever the hell he wants or worse find the kids. Spitting out some blood I staggered towards the house and walked up the stairs. That’s when I heard Kelly’s voice cry out.
“Mommy and daddy don’t like you anymore and neither do we!”
“Kids today. Guess I’m gonna have to teach you some manners little missy.” Like hell you will! I raced as Steve was talking and immediately grabbed him by the shoulder of his jacket, turned him around and sucker punched him across the face. My kids cried out for me while Steve staggered to stand up.
He soon began laughing before letting out a hoot. His nose bleeding from the punch I just gave him as well as his mouth.
“Looks like I underestimated you farm boy! I took you for a pushover but now I see just what that bitch sees in you! Lion King Jack she likes to call you!”
“Get. Out.” I demanded. Steve chuckled icily and said.
“And what if I don’t?” he spat blood in my face. I then let out a whistle and said two commands.
“Sick. Em.” Soon running past my right leg Sammy attacked Steve at his ankles tripping him over. Sammy maybe all sweet and innocent but when he needs to be (especially since Steve’s been around) he knows when someone needs to get bit.
Steve fell right onto his back as Sammy continued to bite and tear at his pants.
“YOU DAMN DOG!! LET GO!”
“You gonna surrender now?”
“FUCK. YOU!” I let out another whistle and soon barking in aggressively was Bucky. And being a German shepherd he was not holding back. Sammy released Steve’s leg for a moment and allowed his brother to take over.
Bucky bit Steve’s shoulder and tackled him to the ground and I knew he was biting down harder cause Steve’s screams got louder and more painful.
“Boys come!” the boys came back and stood guard of the wardrobe growling and protectively standing guard over my kids. “You wanna test me again or shall I give them a second chance at a new chew toy?”
Even with multiple dog bites, Steve managed to somehow stand up and he glared with pure hatred at me.
“I’ll—I’ll see to it……that those mutts are put down for attacking me. My uncle will hear about this! And I’ll be sure that you’re put away for a long, long time. I know you guys have no cameras in or outside of this house, so no cameras, no proof.” His sick twisting smirk widened across his face.
He staggered out of the bedroom but I heard the sound of him collapsing down to the ground. The dogs immediately went towards him but I didn’t hear any snarling or growling, instead I heard happy whimpering.
“Stay here kids.” I told them as I quickly I came out and I was shocked to see standing before Steve with a baseball bat in her hand was my wife, (Y/n). She panted softly as she dropped the bat and then took out one of our large kitchen knives.
Bucky and Sammy stood guard of the stairs to ensure that Steve didn’t even try to escape and that’s when (Y/n) sneered down at Steve.
“From now on you are no never come near me or my family again. I don’t care what kind of connections you have; we’ve got enough evidence with you in this house without consent and a struggle going on in my very bedroom.”
“Screw you…….bitch.” Steve murmured. Then I witnessed with my own eyes as my wife took that large 7in knife and slam it right down to the floor, very close to Steve’s dick. Any further up and she would’ve removed his very identity as a man.
“SAY YOU UNDERSTAND! Say it. SAY IT!!!” She roared down at him.
“I understand.” He muttered quietly.
“You what?!”
“I understand.” He said a bit louder. Her eyes steaming with hatred and fierce mother instincts stared Steve down as she removed the knife and she looked up to me and simply told me. “Call the police.”
Within minutes the police arrived and Steve was finally arrested. The police took our testimonies and a trial date was set for the 1st of December.
Now as I’m sure my wife as explained I wish we could say that was the last time we’d ever see Steve Harrison in our lives but we underestimated just how fucked up the legal system was here in California.
Thanks to his smooth, fast talking Uncle in trying to bride the judges and the jury, Steve didn’t serve any jail time. Only that he would have a restraining order set against him. By law he wasn’t to get anywhere within 50ft of (Y/n) or our family.
Steve Harrison was once again a free man.
By the start of 1993, my wife was once again trying to contact the judge, police, and any other law enforcement about taking Steve’s advances seriously. But all the same they kept turning her down saying there’s nothing else they can do.
That the restraining order will protect her, and if Steve does violate that then and only then could they talk serious jail time for him.
“Well then I want you guys to do one thing for me, the next time you bastards come to this house will be when my body is dead on the ground with a message in blood saying I told you so!” she hung up the phone and sobbed into her hands.
I slowly walked towards her and hesitantly sat down beside her. God I hate seeing her like this, she’s been worrying herself sick over this while still going on with the tour which will resume after this week.
“I—I don’t know what else to do Jack. I……” I refused to allow her to speak again. I embraced her as tightly as I could and she wept hysterically into my arms. Bucky and Sammy whimpering at our feet with Sammy licking her feet and Bucky nuzzling his head into her lap.
#tw: stalking#tw: stalkers#tw: dog attacks#queen#queen fandom#queen fanfic#queen fanfiction#brian may#brian may x reader#john deacon#john deacon x reader#jack kline#jack kline x reader#roger taylor#roger taylor x reader#bohemian rhapsody#queen x reader#freddie mercury#freddie mercury x reader#queen imagine#queen imagines#bohemian rhapsody imagines#bohemian rhapsody fanfiction#bohemian rhapsody movie#bohemian rhapsody x reader#joe keery#alexander calvert
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PI Woods - A personal take on Homicidal Liu
Important Disclaimer
This entire post was solely written for fun! I do not in any way want to demean the original version of Homicidal Liu. The original creator seems v cool and if the only thing that may be considered ‘fixed’ is the way Liu’s DID works, as even the creator themselves has stated that if they had written Liu today, they would’ve approached things differently. The rest is all just me throwing out my own ideas.
Also, if any corrections are to be made about his DID or if I wrote anything wrong, please do let me know!
Additionally, I must warn that this contains mentions of s*icide, self harm, violence, murder and mentions of past trauma. Said content is all beneath the cut.
The past
Liu came from a troubled, abusive household and spent a good few years in an orphanage until he got adopted into the Woods family at the age of 7. Despite now growing up under a loving family, Liu has always sensed that something about him made him different from other kids, finding himself often stuck with memory loss. Meanwhile, his parents had to deal with sudden outbursts and tantrums, their son suddenly insisting that his name is Sully, and at other times they had to stop 'Liu' from doing anything harmful to himself.
The possibility of dissociative identity disorder wasn’t considered, and at the time, the Woods parents assumed this behaviour to be the result of trauma from Liu’s previous household.
In the beginning, Liu didn’t quite have a word to describe his experience. He knew there were others living alongside in his body in a way and it made things harder for him. It was only once he got older that he discovered what DID was, and things finally made sense to him. He’s absolutely certain he has it, but never felt this was something he could bring up around his family, not even his brother. It took him even longer to figure out how to achieve some proper normalcy with his alters.
Despite the difficulties, the Woods family has always loved Liu like he was their own.
The system
Liu is the host of this system, and there are three alters alongside him. Liu always used to be rather taciturn and introverted, but was very kind and polite. Between him and Jeff, their parents always noted that Liu was the most well-behaved out of the two, also being studious and responsible: something that came naturally as the older sibling.
Sully, on the other hand, has always been rather antsy and anxious, always on guard like something bad is bound to happen. He isn’t necessarily violent, but he is very reactive and therefore is prone to outbursts at times. Notably, Sully is a very avid lover of all things strawberry. Sometimes a switch occurs, leaving whoever fronts now wondering why there’s so much strawberry yoghurt in the fridge, only to then remember Sully probably went to buy groceries. He’s also prone to triggers as he holds certain traumatic memories. Generally, he still manages to be functional. He's the most likely to hold grudges (relevant for later) and his cautiousness usually makes sure nothing stupid happens.
Myra is easily the most responsible in the system, and is also the only female alter. Sometimes she forgets that she is residing in a male body, but has gotten used to it, though Liu has insisted on at least making himself appear somewhat more androgynous for the sake of her comfort when she's fronting, while also preventing discomfort for other alters. Myra is more in charge of solving things like conflicts and occasionally manages switches as well, but also makes sure regular tasks get done.
Calypso is… Quite the subject. He is the carrier of most of the system's traumatic memories, and is the least stable out of the four. They are most susceptible to self-destructive tendencies. Sometimes Myra, Liu or Sully will wake up feeling horrible and sore, only to realise it was because Calypso tried things the night before. Due to these tendencies, the system tries to make sure they don't front very often, both for their own and Calypso's safety, even if this isn't always pleasant for him.
The Incident
Things were quite shaken up after the night Jeff tried to kill the system, but it was Sully who underwent the direct experience that night, while Liu woke up, confused and in pain in the hospital after his memory stopped at him welcoming Jeff back home. Naturally, he was quite distraught and disoriented, as was Myra and Calypso.
Trying to achieve a new sense of normalcy was tough for the system, and it took a while to even recover from the initial shock. They were sent off to Liu's aunt, who was more than happy to take the system in, especially considering Liu was her favourite nephew.
After the attempt on the system's life, Liu became far more withdrawn, and got more and more absorbed by his studies. He still had no idea what lead up to Jeff snapping the way he did, but had managed to forgive him and simply wants a chance to talk to him again. Given the opportunity, he moved out, eventually working as a private investigator. When he was younger, he dreamt of being a detective, but all the incidents leading up to Jeff's decline left Liu with a permanent distrust towards the police, making private detective work the next best thing. Along with this, Liu has completely dedicated himself to finding out where Jeff went, and to hopefully talk to him.
Sully, on the other hand, may forgive but never forgets, and this time he couldn't forgive. Similarly to Liu, he has developed an obsession with pinning down Jeff's whereabouts, but he has far more sinister reasons for this, as he is quite vengeful towards Jeff. He isn't as stable as he used to be, either.
Liu and Sully's dedication to finding Jeff has been the source of a lot of conflict, as Myra - and Calypso to an extent - wants to be able to move on from what happened and return to living a normal life, heavily disagreeing with what the two are doing. At times, she has tried sabotaging their investigations, and the system still hasn't come to an agreement regarding this situation.
Homicide
Things only get messier from here.
Once Liu is set on a goal, there is nothing you can do to actually stop him. This means he's more than willing to turn to murder if it means furthering his goals. He has already murdered several people, most being related to the investigation into Jeff. However, he approaches this very methodically. His go-to method is staging suicides or accidents, and cooldown periods are quite long. He only kills if he deems killing to be necessary, and does in fact feel guilty about it. He tries rationalising what he's done by telling himself that Jeff would most likely be killed by authorities, and that this is a way of protecting him, but deep down he knows he's kind of lying to himself.
Sully is much messier, much to Liu's chagrin. On some occasions he intentionally kills, and in many other cases it's because something triggered the trauma experienced from what Jeff did, and he reacts violently. Many of the people Sully kills either resemble Jeff or remind Sully of him in one way or another. Contrary to Liu, Sully takes pleasure in brutally killing these people because to him, it's the closest to actually killing Jeff. Sometimes Liu instructs Sully mentally on how to dispose of the bodies, other times there's a switch and Liu does it himself.
Myra and Calypso are extremely against this, leading to even more conflict in the system. Self-destructive tendencies coming from Calypso end up worsening as a result, and they have attempted to consciously kill the entire system, feeling like it’s the only way to stop what they’re doing. In some cases, they have nearly succeeded, so all three other alters have to collectively block Calypso from fronting entirely for safety reasons. Despite this, he’s still very much present.
Extra (can be updated)
Myra, Sully and Calypso are eager to have an image of what they believe they look like, and as a result love recreating themselves whether it’s through art or through character creators like Picrew. This is how the system would make themselves on Picrew:
Liu
(He very intentionally portrays himself without the scars and stitches. They’re a huge insecurity of his.)
Sully
Myra
Calypso
--
If I have made any mistakes in the portrayal of DID, please let me know and correct me!! I wish to do my best, as I know it’s a heavily misportrayed condition.
#creepypasta#homicidal liu#creepypasta headcanon#creepypasta fandom#headcanon#character headcanons#liu woods#liu hodek#sully creepypasta#creepypasta sully#liu creepypasta#jeffrey woods#liu woods headcanons#homicidal liu headcanon#sully headcanon
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This was originally a Facebook comment in the wake of the Las Vegas shooting that I’ve taken to reprinting here in reponse to the mass shootings I hear about such as, since I sometimes take a week to get it done, in Winder GA. (And, please bear in mind, these are only the ones I hear about, meaning the ones with mass media coverage which hardly happens in every case.) When I reprinted it at the time of the Annapolis Capital Gazette shooting, for the first time I got a substantial amount of pushback, so now rebuttals to the counterarguments I have received then and since are in a lengthy appendix to the reprint text.
My usual procedure for responding to any substantive new comment to a reposting of this is to edit my response into the next posting, or sometimes of the current posting, rather than to reply directly. This is because, when I allow myself to get sucked into engaging with counterarguments directly, almost always I end up wearied again by new, merely paraphrased instances of the same old arguments already rebutted here.
I keep saying “it’s proven that the killing can be stopped” and you keep saying, “but we have rights” as if having rights was an end in itself. No, rights are intended to serve a purpose.
They’re for preventing people getting killed! You keep invoking directly or indirectly one sentence in a document that was written in an era when rifles, pistols, and cannons could hold only one projectile at a time and took minutes to reload [EDIT: supposed factual inaccuracy of this statement is addressed in the appendix]. That document also contains the built-in capacity for itself to be updated when its provisions are no longer effective. It is not Holy Writ. It even presented itself as updateable before it was completed: the sentence you’re so fond of is itself an amendment. Do you believe the sentence in question was written ultimately for the protection of guns or for the protection of lives? Because it’s used for protecting only one of the two, these days, and that’s not lives. Therefore it needs updating.
I will not accept any citation of theoretical future insurrection against a government turned hostile (which government, by the way, in that event would use planes or drones to drop bombs, against which your home weaponry is no protection - it’s doing so right now to civilian populations overseas, and it did so during the 20th century in Tulsa and Philadelphia - so good luck storming the capital) because firstly, actual civilian innocent lives being lost in the present are more important than any merely theoretical future; and secondly, that’s not what the Second Amendment was truly about anyhow. The militia it refers to were the nation’s first police forces whose original formation was for the purpose of hunting and killing black people. The only valid (using the term loosely) reason for denying that the Second Amendment now requires amendment itself is that you’re okay with police shootings of people of color. Those US government bombings on US soil I mentioned parenthetically above? Black neighborhoods, residences and businesses, rich and poor. That’s what you’re defending whether or not you know it.
You think your postion is “rights are important” but you aren’t seeing the context, the difference between what you think the rights are for, and how they are instead now actually being utilized. You aren’t seeing the logical fallacy in what you’re saying which is “this right whose purpose is the protection of innocent lives is more important than all the innocent lives that are being destroyed by people exercising this right”. You aren’t seeing that your position ultimately reduces to “lives are less important than guns” but I do and it outrages me wherever I see it.
Even if you were correct that Americans’ minds somehow work differently than the minds of all the people in all the nations where gun law successfully prevents mass shootings (which, by the way, seems disproven by the majority popular support of the gun control legislation that Congress brought after Sandy Hook then voted down), it would only mean that disregard for human life has become the American way. It’s not in me to quietly allow that to stand. While that’s your position there can be no meeting of minds between us, no agreement to disagree. I may give up arguing with you in particular as a bad job, but never mistake that for concession.
The question before us is, “Lives or guns?”, and you keep answering, “Guns.”
[end of reprint]
Popular counterarguments I’ve received:
1. Inquiries as to what form I would give the gun control law I advocate and what type of guns I would see banned. I would model such laws on the laws that have drastically reduced or have eliminated mass shootings in all nations that have implemented them including, at one time, the United States. I would use those laws’ definition of what was banned. (I anticipate receiving complaints that this statement is not specific enough to sealion but, because such a law were better drafted by someone with legislative expertise and experience and a research staff than by an unpaid webcartoonist, I consider that a feature not a bug.) (I anticipate rebuttals that the previous parenthetical statement constitutes effective admission on my part that I’m too ignorant on the subject to have an opinion at all, but you don’t need to be a plumber to know when you need your toilet rooted out.)
2. Rebuttals seeming to assume that I’m calling for the banning of all guns. Nowhere in the reprint did I call for that. What I called for were two things: the reexamination of the Second Amendment just like any other legislation that’s two and a half centuries old and therefore in need of review, and the implementation in the United States of the solution proven by other nations (and by, at one time, the United States) for the problem of mass shootings which is some manner of national gun control. Now, it may be that the U.S. needs to ban all handguns like some nations, or only some guns like other nations, or ban guns from only certain demographics such as those with known domestic abuse history (which would rule out a percentage of police which might astound you) and as known violent crime offenders, and may need even to experiment at first to find out what’s best, I can’t say. And I didn’t say here (for the reason noted parenthetically in the above paragraph). It remains that the loss of life under the status quo is unacceptable to me and to the majority of the nation (the majority who supported the national gun control bill in Congress after Sandy Hook which bill failed due to special interest lobbying) and requires action be taken; that’s what I say when I say, “The question is, ‘Lives or guns?’”.
3. Rebuttals that gun control won’t stop criminals from killing people. That’s off the topic. The topic is not stopping all murders or violence, the topic is stopping mass shootings, for which national gun control is drastically or wholly effective in every nation that has implemented it, including at one time the United States. (My impression that some comments assume I’m calling for total gun ban may only be an artifact of this consistent failure of counterarguments to focus on the topic.) Refusal to implement the known solution to a given problem on the grounds that it’s not a solution for all problems is not rational.
(Also: The presumption that a given argument’s focus on one topic demonstrates indifference in the speaker/writer on any or all other topics is one of the classic logical fallacies. That means, declining to be deflected off topic by the subject of other violent crime in a discussion of mass shootings in comments on my own post about mass shootings does not demonstrate that I don’t care about the victims of other violent crime; that’s the tu quoque logical fallacy, known in these online days as “whataboutism”. Declining to be deflected to other topics than mass shootings demonstrates, and demonstrates only, that my post’s topic is mass shootings.)
4. Rebuttals to my discussions of the unexamined racism in the second amendment pointing out, correctly, that gun control since emancipation has often been purposefully biased against black people … as if that were a reason to oppose gun law reform instead of a reason to support it. …or as if I were arguing in favor of racially biased gun law, when unexamined racial bias is the only actual specific complaint the reprint brings against the second amendment.
5. Rebuttals (but not genuine rebuttals, deflection attempts, obviously) that the first amendment also has not been updated since it was enacted, which means I must want that one reexamined too. It can be difficult to judge tone in writing but I’m reasonably certain comments to this effect are in bad faith and are pursuing an anticipated gotcha moment, when I’m expected to bluster, “Well, that’s different,” and be caught in a contradiction somehow. But this is, in fact, different. However the reason it’s different is not that I oppose reexamination of free speech rights (as such an attempted gotcha would be predicated on) because I don’t oppose it. The reason it’s different is that reexamination of free speech rights happens, in exactly the manner I’m advocating for gun rights.
Over the last two-plus centuries there’s been plenty of Supreme Court case law on free speech (and obviously these are only cases that weren’t resolved in lower courts). Most SCOTUS free speech case law consists of the striking down of laws that were ruled to violate the first amendment but there have also been innovations in SCOTUS free speech case law. For example, a case from 1969 gave rise to the “imminent danger test” used, to this day, for determining whether a given sample of hate speech is protected speech or not. Constitutional protection was determined by SCOTUS not to apply to something whose obvious intended and sole purpose is to harm people immediately, quickly, violently, and in large numbers.
I’m going to say that twice because it’s important: In 1969 constitutional protection was determined by SCOTUS not to apply to something whose obvious intended and sole purpose is to harm people immediately, quickly, violently, and in large numbers.
Of course I support periodic reexamination of the first amendment. I support it as an existing model for what the second amendment stands badly in need of. (More of the Constitution too, possibly, but the topic on the floor is mass shootings.)
It’s the same with the obvious, bad faith, unabashedly transparent gotcha attempt I also get, “There wasn’t internet technology when the Constitution was written so you must want to get rid of the internet like you want to get rid of modern weapons.” As above, this objection fails because it inadvertently supports my point: internet regulations are being created and struck down all the time. It’s another example of how our laws are meant to be treated. And of how they generally have been treated. But gun law hasn’t.
Same with the counterargument that maintains allowing any restriction at all to our rights is a slippery slope. If it is a slippery slope, we live on that slope already because - as noted in my reprinted post - the Constitution was purposefully built by its writers smack in the middle of that slope. Again: feature, not bug. (“Slippery slope”, by the way, is also on all lists I see of common logical fallacies.)
One of the quotations of Jefferson engraved on the Jefferson Monument in Washington D.C. is: “I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.” - Jefferson to H. Tompkinson (AKA Samuel Kercheval), July 12, 1816.
6. A rebuttal to the factual accuracy of my statement in the reprinted post, “You keep invoking directly or indirectly one sentence in a document that was written in an era when rifles, pistols, and cannons could hold only one projectile at a time and took minutes to reload;” the rebuttal sourced by, e.g., the article linked below detailing the history of several more efficient firearm designs dated to or predating 1787. I stand corrected. It is within the realm of possibility that the writers of the Constitution were familiar with these designs. However the only claim made in the article of actual use of such a weapon, the Ferguson breech-loading flintlock which fired “up to seven rounds per minute, two to three times faster that the muzzle-loading weapons of the day“, on American soil before the writing of the Constitution was “by the British against the Americans in 1777”. The Wikipedia article on the Puckle gun, a mounted gun documented to fire nine rounds per minute, makes a point of asserting no more than two may ever have been manufactured (apparently on the basis that only two survive to the present). These guns existed in the late 18th century but they were few and would have been prohibitively expensive to the private citizen or to the military- or law- officer; if not, the Colt revolver wouldn’t have been such an innovation when it came along some fifty years later.
Thank you for the correction on historical detail. However the contemporary existence of these designs, somewhere on the planet or somewhere on the same contintent and not all of them historically documented to have been actually manufactured anywhere let alone mass-produced at reasonable cost, hardly demonstrates that the writers of the Constitution anticipated the proliferation we have today of the automatic rifles which fire a thousand bullets a minute or the mounted guns which fire six thousand bullets a minute.
Come to that, modern bullets were not invented until about sixty years after the drafting of the Constitution. However quickly the founding fathers imagined it was possible for guns to shoot projectiles, the projectiles they would’ve been imagining were small metal balls, not constructions designed to mutilate bodies beyond recognition. The Uvalde, Texas shooting victims’ families were required to submit to DNA swabbing for the coroners to determine which corpses were whose children, and all reports suggest the same will have been necessary in Nashville.
It’s pure speculation whether the founding fathers had any concept of the possibility of the degree of destructive power of today’s firearms, unless someone reading this can produce further historical documentation. And even with such confirmation it’s beside my actual point, which is:
The writers of the Constitution did foresee, and designed the Constitution to accomodate, that it would at times need to be updated with the will of the majority. In regard to the second amendment and to gun control law generally that hasn’t happened and needs to start happening because the lack is costing lives. In regard to the intent of the founding fathers: Jefferson said the Constitution ought to be rewritten from scratch every twenty years.
Multi-Shot Assault Weapons Of The 1700s And The 2nd Amendment Proponents of stricter gun control have a problem with the Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a Arizona Daily Independent https://href.li/?http://arizonadailyindependent.com/2018/03/11/multi-shot-assault-weapons-of-the-1700s-and-the-2nd-amendment/
Founders Online: To James Madison from Thomas Jefferson, 6 September 1789 founders.archives.gov https://href.li/?https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-12-02-0248
7. Rebuttals suggesting or stating that contriving somehow to place the proverbial “good guy with a gun” on the scene of a mass shooting shall prevent/should have prevented it. Usually it’s a variation on a statement of willingness and eagerness in the genuinely admirable goal of defending themselves, their loved ones and neighbors, and their rights with their automatic rifles; insisting that the question isn’t “Lives or guns?” but something like “Lives defended with guns or lives left undefended?”. This appears to be the only proposed alternative solution by automatic weapon advocates to national gun control law in the problem of mass shooting deaths.
(The only proposed alternate solution besides doing nothing, under the counterargument that we don’t need any further gun control because violent crime rates are dropping. I guess everyone’s meant to just wait in an orderly fashion for the random slaughter of innocents to eventually stop? Gun crime stats may be falling, but mass shooting deaths are rising; they averaged more than one per day in 2022, and the figures I saw for 2023 are the same or worse. That’s why the whole of violent crime is a whole separate topic. Anyway, the CDC says gun related deaths have most recently been rising - at least in, surprise surprise, open carry states [citation below].)
How the presence of a good guy with a gun would have been/will be arranged ahead of time in any given specific case past or future hasn’t been made clear to me. I suppose each individual advocate is suggesting their personal presence with a gun on them makes a location safe from mass shootings for everyone. But one commenter did ask me whether I knew of any “successful” mass shootings where a good guy with a gun was present. For that I have answers. These are just the examples of which I already knew without doing any research [I researched anyway and there are citations below]:
After the shooting at the Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas, the mayor stated there were many armed civilians present, who did not draw or use their firearms. The official position on that, paraphrased: “Good! They’d only have made themselves appear to law enforcement that they were our target.”
There was a “good guy with a gun” at the Parkland, Florida school shooting. Not an armed civilian who happened to be nearby, a trained uniformed county sheriff department law enforcement official stationed there from a division charged with serving and protecting the schools specifically. He was recorded on camera when the shooting started going up to the building’s entrance and standing there outside for the duration. In the intervening time there have been conflicting rulings on whether it had been the uniformed official’s responsibility to act differently [citation below]. But still, this is disproof that the mere presence of a “good guy with a gun” and the presumption that they’ll take action is any practical protection whatsoever.
Most recently, there were police on the scene in Uvalde before the shooter entered the school who reportedly exchanged fire with him but did not prevent him from entering nor follow him in. He did not have body armor [citation below], but their reason for failing to stop him was they thought he did. At least, they stated they thought he did and that that was their reason for failure. And later on it’s come out that they hesitated because they had identified that he was carrying an AR-15 [citation below].
I anticipate being accused of cherrypicking data for making answer to a specific request for specific examples of specifically this kind of thing. But, while I was looking around collecting citations for those events, I also found a 2014 FBI study that tells us mass shooters are stopped more often by unarmed civilians than by armed civilians. That’s a national statistic documented and released by civil law enforcement authority, not a cherrypicking. And while the report, in its own words, “support[s] the importance of training and exercises - not only for law enforcement but also for citizens” (without, unless I missed it, making any judgment on whether more or fewer civilians ought to be undertaking such gun ownership and training), it distinguishes between that and prevention, stating also, “seeking to avoid these tragedies is clearly the best result.”
A good guy with a gun does not constitute needed and recommended prevention for mass shootings based on the research of federal law enforcement authority.
Finally, the good guy with a gun argument is a bad-faith logical fallacy at its heart. The logic statement form “if you or someone else on the scene of your mass shooting had had a gun, then you wouldn’t have got shot” is the same logic statement form as “if you dressed differently, then you wouldn’t have got raped”. This is a logical fallacy because law-abiding people’s right not to have crimes committed against them isn’t legally, morally, or factually contingent on their own behavior. The logic of the “good guy with a gun” argument places responsibility for the consequences of the actions of the mass shooters elsewhere than on the shooters, and that’s why it’s a logical and moral fallacy and why in simple practical terms it fails to constitute prevention.
sources
mass shooting deaths rising http://time.com/4965022/deadliest-mass-shooting-us-history/
gun homicides rising per CDC https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/homicides-using-guns-31-percent-cdc-finds-n895366
Dallas https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/about-that-good-guy-with-a-gun/2016/07/11/3ed098fe-47a2-11e6-acbc-4d4870a079da_story.html?utm_term=.9271a0507018
Parkland https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/02/the-parkland-shooting-did-have-a-good-guy-with-a-gun.html
FBI report https://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-weisser/fbi-report-active-shooters_b_5900748.html https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active-shooter-study-2000-2013-1.pdf/view
The Parkland sheriff officer liability https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2018/12/21/us-judge-says-law-enforcement-officers-had-no-legal-duty-protect-parkland-students-during-mass-shooting/
no body armor in Uvalde https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2022/05/25/khou-11-in-houston-the-uvalde-gunman-was-not-wearing-body-armor/
Uvalde cops scared of AR-15 https://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/lawrence-police-were-afraid-of-the-uvalde-gunman-s-ar-15-166823493564
8. “You sound like a Nazi.” Another fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_gun_control_argument
9. “Correlation is not causation. There is no scientific evidence of causation.” The lack of evidence to support causation is a contrivance, the result not of conclusion from investigation but of the willing, purposeful obstruction of investigation into causation. From the NBC News article linked above on rising gun homicide rates: “[The CDC] regularly reports on gun deaths, but its role in researching the underlying causes has been limited by the so-called Dickey Amendment, which is tacked on to congressional funding legislation every year. It bars the CDC from using federal funding to ‘advocate or promote gun control’.” Powerful gun control opponents in Washington DC are afraid of the evidence being investigated, which betrays that gun control opponents are as certain as gun control supporters what proper investigation of the evidence would show.
But there certainly is correllation. From the same article: “[M]ore states had loosened rules on gun ownership and the carrying of guns at around the same time that firearms homicide rates went up.“ That’s a negative example. For a positive example, there’s every nation, e.g. Scotland/the United Kingdom, to have had one mass shooting decades ago and in response implemented gun control only to have few or no more mass shootings since that first one in the same period of time that the U.S. has had escalating deaths from mass shootings. In fact, there’s the U.S., where certain types of automatic weaponry were banned for about ten years but the ban was allowed to lapse and the number of shootings per year has grown every year since.
Even if there’s no causation, when the correlation saves lives - as it demonstrably, statistically does - then the lives are still saved.
10. “'Lives or guns’? I choose guns.” Here I deliberately evoke the no-meeting-of-minds clause in the reprint post for declining to engage with you which is nevertheless not to be mistaken by you as any kind of concession. It’s not a rebuttal of anything I’ve written and says more about you than about me or about my argument.
11. The first few times I had cause to reprint this essay since January 6, 2021 I felt that my remark in my quoted Facebook comment’s paragraph about self-defense against tyranny, “good luck storming the capital” (a flip allusion to The Princess Bride dialog), called for some sort of comment or qualifier, since a storming of the Capital is now an actual historical event whose consequences to date to its top-level organizers have been minimal. But ultimately, while the insurrectionists brought onto the scene a gallows (ultimately unused), and while there were five deaths including a police officer, gun presence doesn’t seem to have had any significance (little enough that Fox News has even lied that there were no firearms brought in by the insurrectionists).
12 (conclusion). My stance is: nationally banning at least some kinds of guns is an effective solution to the problem of mass shootings, its effectiveness proven and documented for the purpose in every case it’s been implemented including formerly the United States, and therefore it needs to be reimplemented in the United States. The second amendment needs to start being treated the same way every other law/right in the United States is treated in terms of review and update against constantly developing status quo and technology. No counterargument to the statements in my reprint yet brought to my attention either 1) provides a proven alternative for mass shooting prevention other than the proven solution I advocate 2) fails to amount to answering, “Lives or guns?”, with, “Guns.” (Except “You called me racist!” which is untrue; what I called you was ignorant about racism.)
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hi hi hi. so I just got into the Hamilton fandom, I swear I am four years late where did everybody go, and, well. I am apparently a hamburr shipper. bcs that is my life now. anyway I saw your fic ifmlam and I swear it is my favourite of all the fics I've ever read (and trust me I've read literally thousands). I love it so so much, how do you write fics like that??? I cried about four times during the whole thing, I stayed up till 4am reading it even when I had to wake up at 7 because it is just. that. good. I could not stop thinking about it for days afterwards and ifmlam has just ruined me. I can't think of listen to Hamilton without thinking of ifmlam anymore.
on to my qursttion: is it abandoned? of course it's perfectly FINE if it is. don't let anyone tell u differently, your fic is YOURS and u are amazing.
but pls I really need closure from ur fic, it has been haunting me if its abandoned or ongoing and I've read ur other fics and they are just chefskiss and thank you so much for writing them all. thank you thank you thank you, I will never be able to thank you enough for writing this fic and for everything it's done for me. I am probably thousands of miles away but I am sending you virtual jugs through a co.puter screen right now.
(don't feel pressured to reply to this or update it flam, I know how overwhelming it can get with so many messages and after a while u get desensitized to it. u can literally reply "thx. itfmlam is abandoned" and I would still be amazingly star struck. anyway has gotten way too long and I need to sleep and I'm sorry u probably won't see this so I'm just talking to myself right now but bye!!)
and thank you so so much for writing itfmlam.
aaaah hello anon!
thank you so so much???? I am so??? honored??? that ifmlam rates so highly to you, and also that you've read my other fics??????
the answer to the "is ifmlam abandoned" question is probably the worst possible one, which is pretty much "I do want to finish it, both for the folks that still want closure as well as it bothers to me have abandoned projects that are in the public eye/ already partially published, but also, it is last on my current writing projects list"
my current actually active writing projects list, kind of in order of priority, is
I'm literally three chapters away from being Actually Fully Done with the not-quite-first-not-quite-second let's call it 1.5th draft of an actual?? full?? original?? novel?? Opus which of course then goes out to beta readers and then gets who-knows-how-much edited and then maybe beta readers again if a lot does change and then a copyeditor my mom, my copyeditor is my mom, and maybe my little brother he's one of the betas but is very good at catching typos and then I!!! get to publish it!!!! which is the single thing I am most excited for!!!!!!!!! this should be closed up in the next week or two, and then take a while for people to actually read the draft and get back to me.
I really desperately want to finish my open-but-like-90%-written fic, which means we raise it up, the final chapter of to the bottom of the river bc I realized that it was kind of incomplete, and the second chapter of a buried and a burning flame because any more work there will need to wait until the author publishes the next book in the series. this should be closed up in the next month or two.
Speedwrite the draft of the second book of the Opus series so that hopefully by the time book 1 edits are happening, I have an almost complete draft of the second book. this is mostly me side-eyeing myself about taking nearly four years to write the first book, but that is solidly in part because I had so many other open projects which point 2 is about clearing that docket. this should be done in the next year.
And then just have my major projects be, at least until books 1-5 are written and published, books 1-5 of that because that is arguably the first major 'plot arc' of the series, so if I'm looking for a pause point on writing, that's probably where to stop.
There are two or three other short side projects (a weird fun second person short story tentatively titled witch-queen, a collection of four short stories Memoirs about a not-so-evil necromancer and the shenanigans he gets up to trying to rule a kingdom, working title Perfectly Normal Recipe Blog which is a collaborative project about a perfectly normal recipe blog that definitely doesn't include anything out of the normal) that will happen when they happen
There are other projects that are on the backburner -- The Numanok Files, a series of probably 12-15 short novellas about a mercenary/ bounty hunter esque person in space whose specialty is dealing with hauntings, but, like, 80% of their jobs is actually "you are effectively a space home inspector pointing out faulty wiring reacting to solar flares/ there's a weird alien fungus/ it's carbon monoxide okay change your atmosphere filters" and 20% of it is punching ghosts; there's a post-post apocalypse novel that I want to write that I know characters and general pacing and half the setting but need to work out the other half and figure out how much aesthetic I want to commit to; there's Strangeside7 aka spacerace book that is my reaction to how much I love how Redline the anime movie commits itself to "no we are about a race, like 60% of the screentime is just fully going to be an utterly ridiculous sci fi space race"; there's even a ridiculous YA trilogy that I would have to completely transplant the setting but might end up writing because the interplay between angel-physics and physics-physics was one of my favorite things in the world. and I guess the weird ridiculous technically a sequel series to ifmlam that was going to be published as original books that was basically me having fun with 'okay I fucking love star wars prequels old rotting space bureaucracy galactic republic style' except with seers and that also still might happen because it does have some of the coolest sci fi concepts and honestly I thiiiink that's all?
but the tl;dr of that timeline is I'm trying to finish a punch of projects Right Now, so that I can write books 2-5 of Opus, and then when I'm done that (which honestly, my average fiction-writing output is close to 100k a year. if I'm concentrating purely on one project, and writing books that are about 100k, we are talking four years. although my job situation is super up in the air in that period and writing might get put solidly on the backburner as I try to make it in academia, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) I will re-evaluate which projects go next, and that's when ifmlam is likely to come up for review.
I do not have any expectations that I will make it as an original author. I'm planning on posting all of my stuff online for free, but, like. it is incredibly difficult to convince people to try out even a piece of free and easily accessibly original work even if one has a huge following, I am a very small fanfiction author, and from what I can tell the majority of the people who are interested in my work are mostly interested in me finishing ifmlam. writing is a hobby for me, and while I'm writing mostly for me--and hence the for me bit at least for the next five years is pretty solidly going to be this series that I am deeply excited about and have sunk my heart and soul into every single aspect of--I'm human, and I don't really like shouting into the void, and I expect if I spend five years publishing to absolutely no response I will either stop writing for a while and do other things gods know my life is busy enough, return to fandom in general to write some other fanfic about whatever I get deeply into, or return to a work that I actually get response to. so ifmlam will probably start getting worked on a bit at that point one way or another. unless, of course, we are in the incredibly rare timeline in which I do make it as an original author, there are people who are deeply hyped for my original works and an actual demand for them, in which case as you may have noticed there are enough ideas there to keep me busy for a decade or two, and they will just get my full attention instead of fanfiction*. in this timeline, I will do what I was considering doing a few years ago, which is officially declare ifmlam otherwise abandoned and make one more giant chapter update which is a full and cleaned up outline of what I was going to write, interspersed with the scenes already written, and have ifmlam be given at least that closure.
*I want to make it clear that I very much love fanfiction and am proud to have been a fanfiction author and in my heart of hearts would keep writing it forever, I just also have a lot of ideas for characters and settings and magic systems and Aesthetics and I have been biting at the bit to write something that is //mine// and all mine and only mine for a while, I don't see original work as superior so much as there are a dozen fandoms that I am currently in and bursting to make content about except oops these fandoms currently only exist in my head, and I want to correct that
of course given how much as writing is my vent activity and I write what I'm in the mood for, there's a chance I'll feel ifmlam cravings before then, just... expect it to take a couple of years for an update, but also for there to be an update one way of another in a couple of years? but as for right now, I'm turning to original writing, because that is what brings me joy.
but I am really deeply honored that it brought you so much joy!!! and while I will never publish spoilers in a public place, if you message me off anon I am perfectly happy to give a run-down of my current plans for the ending, bc I know "wait a couple years and see" is not the most satisfactory of answers! and hey maybe you'll be like me and once you've given Opus a try you'll decide you like it better too, it does have Seers although they are deeply different Seers than in ifmlam but imo it's very gay and fun and at least politics on one side
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