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stronghours · 4 months

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Delphine

Vampires in July was the current marathon theme. Jules was a block away with Cal at the Dairy Queen. They were depressurizing after Daughters of Darkness at 10AM and Jean Rollin’s The Rape of the Vampire at noon. Artistically jittered by Delphine Seyrig’s costuming, Jules insisted they skip something called Blood and Doughnuts based simply off the juvenile title, to be better prepared for Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu, and so Jules could sketch in his little pad – Cal toddled faithfully behind him. After Marty, and after Ava, Jules prioritized Cal; the kid, besides support groups and therapy and work (he was a receptionist!) had absolutely nothing in his life, as far as Jules knew. No close friends, no hobbies, no clubs, no events, no strong interests. He did not watch television; he did not listen to music “on purpose”. No wonder the guy was so fucked up. They spent a lot of time together that would otherwise have been devoted to Marty, who had begun to casually, supportively, ask, what are you and Cal up to this week, kid?

Once seated, Cal, courteous, asked about Marty; Jules, insane, told him about the belt situation. Explained further when Cal appeared confused. It wasn’t shocking to tell Cal these things – he told Cal, consciously and on purpose, things he’d never told anybody else in his life. Small, untalented, generic, and flavorless as he was, he possessed an influential miasma that Jules could not resist.

“That’s not so bad,” Cal insisted, after Jules tore through the belt issue in its entirety. “That’s like, a really standard category of, you know, S&M discipline stuff. That’s not bad at all.”

Cal had learned this from Jules, who had also lied to Cal after being told some of his most outrageously literal – coprophilia literal – Sadeian fantasies. “That’s not a big deal!” Jules would say. It took every ounce of strength to make it truthful on his face. “Get real, I’ve heard ten times worse than that.” And he’d been rewarded by Cal’s potent relief.

“He sounds like a nice person,” Cal continued. “I don’t know why you refuse to talk to him about this stuff. It’s not like he’ll force you to do every weird thing you ever fantasize about.”

Cal had yet to be told the full extent force factored into those fantasies, but it was still an unwise thing to say to someone like Jules, who could respond: “If you actually believed that, then a lot of your own problems would clear up.”

“Hey, that’s not nice.” Cal owned a very cute sulk. He showed it off sometimes. It almost gave him a personality. He was blond, bland, and adorable; cute as a button, in fact. In drag, he would have looked like Mimsy Farmer.

Inside his head, Jules would stuff him into frocks, make up his face, fuss with his hair, and furthermore, to think about doing so would give him serious thrills. It made him rub his legs together. This absurd stuff was so outside the bounds of both Jules’ acknowledged and denied sexuality that it had no power to disturb him.

“Maybe you want to get beat up because you feel guilty about something,” said Cal. “Maybe that’s what scares you about it.”

“What have I got to be guilty about?”

“Uh, I dunno. Being a huge dick? Skipping Group because you have a hot older boyfriend now?” Cal sulked (cute, cute!). “No, I’m joking. Childhood stuff, obviously. But I would say that. But if you feel guilty, you’re perceiving the fantasy as a form of self-harm. And your physical body knows this and abhors it – the physical body doesn’t want to die. Your body can’t commune with your brain, because your brain is responsible for pumping all this anti-life energy into your body – so you’re suffering.”

“Do you think about hurting yourself ever?” Jules asked, trying to cut through all the somatherapy. “You to yourself?”

“Yes,” said Cal, who leaned so well into Jules’ cuts. “Every second of every hour of every day. Are we gonna be late to Nosferatu?”

No – a problem with the reel delayed the screening. The Vampire Lovers slipped in its stead.

Jules and Cal cuddled in the back, not Jules’ normal survey when he attended the movies alone. Jules, who was nineteen years old before he could step foot in a movie theater, now had a favored spot to sit at the movies. Gran did not like indoors that were not her house. If you were indoors in a place that was not your house, if you continuously put yourself in strange indoors, ever closer you came to being indoors at the same time as an anti-social terrorist with a gun, or a brown terrorist with a bomb, and he’d blast your brains all over that structural interior. You would get your fucking brains blown out (Jules, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, looking up headshot victim on the family computer) (Jules, same, looking up Columbine security camera feed on the library computer in Ellettsville) (Jules, copy/paste, rotten.com, computer, The Gaping Maw, at least until 2005 – oh well!) At fourteen, he could cook a thanksgiving meal for five, draft original dress patterns, play Arabesque Op. 18 in C Major on the piano. At fourteen he didn’t know who Shakespeare was, had been shaky on the differences between continent/country, but goddamn did he know the visual aftermath of a suicide bomb. Him, indulging these perversions, while Cal four hundred miles southwest in Missouri, got his brains raped out.

He and Cal held hands. They did this at the movies. Jules and Marty held hands sometimes, while they laid down together. Jules would get the idea Marty was staring hard at the back of his head, trying to figure him out. Jules felt the eyes. He stared hard at the wall, stared intentionally, blinked intentionally until the wall lost meaning, and disappeared. In this same manner he could stare at a movie screen when he could not focus or had seen the film before. His brain was an accordion mirror he could flatten or zigzag until pleasantly refracted, and so deeply separate from his meat, it could chew and swallow details and discard others without his input. In this buzzy state, he held Cal’s hand, and after this state, it would be difficult to stand or speak or be unhappy.

Not like that, it’s not meant to be worn over a bodice. It would ruin the shape. Take it off. Go on!

Oh well…alright.

“You’re not even watching,” Cal hissed.

…the dress you have is very pretty, but it’s for a country girl! In town, you must be more sophisticated…

I’ve never worn anything so daring – what will my father think?

He will enjoy it. All men enjoy such things. But I fear it will be too large for you.

Cal tugged Jules’ hand. Jules was currently Ingrid Pitt, a pale-eyed pair of professional breasts, nude before her vanity mirror. Call tugged harder. Cal was the current topless brunette ingenue in the bedroom, bobbing trimly over her discarded undergarment.

“I’ve seen it before,” Jules said, and put his arm over Cal’s shoulder and pulled him hard within so Cal could embrace him and rest his face in Jules’ neck. The armrests in the old theater did not fold up so this was painful but expected. They’d done this many times before and Jules was not physically capable of feeling guilty – he’d already told Marty a little about his feelings about Cal and the mild physicality that occurred between them. He was not guilty at all, not even over their occasional kisses, which was nothing like the nasty fuck-kissing he did with Marty.

And Marty, in his nice-man voice, had said: I think it’s important for you to have relationships with boys your own age.

Marty, art-wise, was active in New York City from 1980 to 1988, and the bulk of the stuff Jules was really interested in, the videotape trade material, had dematerialized with the closure of the bars and clubs that hosted the libraries. Marty estimated he’d helped produce what would have amounted to 150 films. The leather house where he’d done his training supported itself with this entrepreneurship, filming harder scenes by host request, and occasionally free and clear when the inspiration struck. Three of these tapes survived within Marty’s possession, housed at his real place in San Francisco. Two were so delicate he was afraid to touch them without better technical help – one, a stouter character, a friend had digitized and burned onto a CD, which Marty stored in his laptop. He showed Jules one free afternoon.

Scene: a dim, stone cellar interior that bears a creepy resemblance to Jules’ illegally zoned basement apartment. A powerfully built clone, made more tantalizing by the fact he’s in his thirties, no waify queen this, stands rod-straight, his arms chained and shackled behind his back. His chest thrusts and heaves with desperate breath, and the tendons in his neck bulge against a choke chain –

“This was a huge craze at the time,” Marty explained.

Several cuts focus on the man’s straining wrists, his writhing pectorals, his twitching thighs. In these standing shots, he is filmed only from the top of his pubic line. Thankfully, the man’s huge cock inexorably rises, and cuddles up with his hairless abdomen. A well-timed zoom catches its delicate, minute twitches, its graceful widening –

“Hello,” Jules said, and stroked his throat automatically.

Another man enters the scene, also of powerful build, but with less delineated musculature. His authority is symbolized through the costuming of his large belly; that he wears a beard and a cross-chest harness; that he holds a length of chain which he uses to flog the bound man’s thighs and chest. The man howls –

“This is kind of general to be representing a craze,” Jules observed.

“Wait a second.”

“You have flouted the authority of my house. You have sown chaos and discord among my slaves. You have insulted those you should have adored and respected as masters. For these crimes there can be no trust, and because there can be no trust there can be no forgiveness, and because I cannot forgive you, I sentence you to death!” Panning shot across a table. On the table: a thick rope noose, solemnized by its usage of a traditional hangman’s knot.

“Okay,” Jules said, enlightened.

Protracted hanging scene: Some budget ingenuity is exercised to immerse the viewer in this woeful situation. A long time is spent on the executioner looping the noose through a hook system drilled into the stone ceiling. The condemned man gasps when the choke chain is removed but does not plead his case. The noose is tightened around his thick neck. Several isolated shots are devoted to the rope twitching and tightening under its mortal load. Several shots are devoted to the man’s face and neck, which gradually redden, then purple. Veins stand out on his forehead. His temples throb. The executioner begins to flog his nonetheless dripping cock. The pain improves its size and the victim’s mouth fish-gasps wordlessly, webbed with spit. The cock is, frankly, the bestest, most prettiest cock on the face of the planet –

“He was a pretty popular guy,” Marty said.

The man heralds his own death with a massive comeshot. It arcs away from the terminal body and destroys itself under its own velocity and is instantly lost in poor lighting. The tight length of rope just above the noose knot is abruptly cut with shears and a heavy THUMP is heard –

“I was so angry they cut the rope,” Marty said. “It took me about a hundred tries to tie that damn knot. We could have used it again.”

Jules thought the cross-sensory coupling of the cut rope vanishing from the frame, and the audio of whatever they threw on the floor to represent the load of a dead body had been genuinely good filmmaking, so he just said “Hmmmmm.”

An intimate pan of the victim’s dead muscles, his sweaty, peaceful face, the manly, diminutive eyelashes of his closed lids. Then another abrupt cut, to the sheared noose on the table, laid out in the same position it had been introduced. Cinch.

“There you go,” said Marty. “From ’83 to ’84 all anybody wanted to see was extremely muscular men die and orgasm in simulated hangings. The old guys told me it was a minor fad in the early sixties, and then it came back for a blip.”

“And it was one hundred percent faked?”

“Our standing-up ones were,” Marty answered. “The ones with those real dramatic nooses, yes. We didn’t even stick them on top of a box. He was standing on the floor the whole time.”

“I’m glad there weren’t any shots of his like, feet rising up on tiptoe,” Jules said. He closed the laptop. He enjoyed exercising some minor authority over Marty’s belongings. “You know, from heel to tiptoe and then cutting away the second he’d have to start being lifted into the air. That would get old fast.”

“There was no shortage of people who had actual safety harnesses for hangings,” Marty mused. “Plenty of groups doing the same thing as us could have shown someone strung up and dangling. But I never saw them in videos when this was popular.”

“What was the hanged guy’s name?”

“Robert. Robert, never Bobby. The people who could call him by a nickname called him Bertie. He’s got some land and a cute little piece in the Adirondacks, now. They stay up there in a cabin and live a wholesome life.”

“Him, his piece, and his massive dick.”

“Hey, now.” Marty was currently Big Spoon. It had been pecking rain and humid all day, and it made the hours long. Jules had risen at the crack of dawn to bang out some necessaries in the shop basement, departed for a half-shift at Domino’s, and adjourned to Marty’s sublet, where he liked to lie down after work. Marty’s request for one private get-together a week had been overindulged to the point of becoming unnecessary – Jules gave him most of his free time, now. He skipped Group. He’d stopped volunteering for Roscoe’s various community events. Roscoe, a big fan of the whole Marty/Jules thing, was not snippy about it, though Jules could have gone without the maiden-aunt looks of indulgent approval Roscoe was inclined to grant him, these days. “He was so, so insecure about his dick. He thought he would never find true love because everybody would only love him for how big and beautiful it was.”

Jules cooed sympathetically. It mimicked an unconscious noise he made during a good deep necking, and so well that Marty automatically, helplessly, rooted toward his neck and cheek. Jules stretched away, chastely.

“He was a celibate person when I knew him. He went kind of hypochondriac in the 80’s. A lot of guys did.” Marty, chastened: “He was lucky he was so talented at solo work. But he stayed healthy and now he has some money to enjoy, thank god.”

“Who was the fat dom guy?”

“That,” Marty explained, with some serious acid, “was Magister Gary.” Jules cackled. Marty rolled him over onto his back and held him down by the stomach, as one would with a gentle and forgiving cat. “And he was such a great big fucker. He was such a dick. That execution speech wasn’t scripted. The man really talked like that.”

“You, you, you have sown chaos and discord among –”

“Trainee Martin,” recited Marty, “you have allowed three granules of powder to remain atop the Barkeeper’s Friend canister. This flouting of order cannot stand. Without the caning I am about to visit upon you, these three granules of powder will grow into a mountain of chaos and discord.”

“Aw, you got caned?”

“All the time,” Marty said. “I was a pretty bad kid.”

“That’s sexy.”

“Oh, well, if you say so.” He rolled over on top of Jules, framed his waist between his knees and stared down, his expression an ambiguous sketch. “How would you feel,” he said, after an awkward period of meeting one another’s eyes, “if I said I wanted to film you?”

“I’d say,” Jules answered, “that it sounds like you want to film me.”

Jules pondered if 18, 19, 20, 21, 22-year-old Marty, in accordance with what the old guys at the bar called the good old days of tradition and ritual, had been obligated to give up ass to the corny greyhairs ruling his leatherhouse. He wondered if Marty had to suck dick he wasn’t attracted to, take on unnatural poses, wear stupid outfits, go by generic, boring names (you, boy!) to filigree the dour concept of going through what everybody else around him had gone through to win their cute little leather caps they kept so special in pussy-ass octagonal velvet-lined corrugated boxes.

But I learned more self-control, Marty later hedged. He was careful to balance his acid moments with diplomacy around Jules. I learned some self-control, some useful skills, and I learned what I wanted to prioritize in my own relationships. But, he continued, none of that guarantees you’ll know how to utilize that knowledge, because you’re still a stupid asshole in your early twenties.

Jules inquired how his own attitude would have flown around Magister Gary and the gang.

You would have been thrashed on principle about thirty times a day, Marty answered instantly. Or, Marty edited, you would get away with murder constantly. Fifty-fifty chances.

Jules took this as Marty’s polite way of telling Jules he was also a stupid asshole in his early twenties, and furthermore, that Marty was kind enough to let him get away with murder. Jules wondered how much longer he could possibly get away with the scam he was running on the poor guy.

Being filmed was not a titillating experience. Jules thought there wasn’t much point in filming if you weren’t having real sex, which he and Marty were not having, due to Jules being insane.

Scene: Jules hunkers down on the floor; Marty sets up the camcorder on its three little legs; Jules gives head; Cinch.

During, he felt he was being watched by an annoying little housepet left in the bedroom by accident. Jules hated animals, pettable domestics especially (cats, wary of; dogs, terrified of). What pure relief he felt, though, that this kink was not, after all, another repressed freak thing he’d have to deal with, a sexual curveball he might have failed to control himself under if he’d actually been into it – to survive this relationship, he would have to accept occasional curveballs – but it made him so sad to feel apathetic about sucking cock, the one thing he purely, truly, sincerely loved to do, beside kissing and being kissed.

Imagine! She bled 300 virgins to death!

Thinking back, he had no idea where he’d found the courage to ask Marty to stick his hand down his throat. He never asked again and Marty, wiser than Jules, didn’t bring it up. And Jules never asked for Marty to put the cold towel over his face again, or to rub him all over and scrutinize his body – so revolting and yet so interesting –

“Maybe if we watched it together later –” Marty suggested, elsewhere in the real world where adults like him could survive and kids like Jules could not.

– or to grab him hard at the nape (she hung them up by the wrists and whipped them until their tortured flesh was torn to shreds) or by the hair on the back of head which was the perfect length to be nabbed, (then she clipped off their fingers with shears) to hold his head and fuck his face, slap his face hard if he gagged, (she pricked their bodies with needles) slap him again just for the hell of it, slap him again and again – Jules lost track. Force him, (she tore off their nipples with silver pincers) to purely, truly, sincerely force him to accept real sex, (she pushed white-hot pokers into their faces) to force him to come from it, to force him while he kept his hand around Jules’ neck and tell him if he did not come he was going to choke him out, (and when they parted their lips to scream she shoved the flaming rod into their mouths) he would choke him until he was dead, call him a bitch and a whore and a slut for taking money from Phil and for not waiting patiently for Marty to appear on the horizon before sucking dozens and dozens of other men, to submerge his head underwater while he did all of the above, to thrash him on principle thirty times a day, and more explicitly, to beat him heavily, ass to ankles, with a belt, and a belt only; ass to ankles, then his chest, force him to (she pierced their veins with rusty nails and slit their throats) look.

Jules could tamp down the reams and reams of rape fantasies – rape realities, as they rapidly matured – mounding up and dirtying his affections, but he could not ignore the belt. He could not put away the inevitable fact that if Marty beat him with a belt, he would get hard, and if Marty continued to beat him with a belt, he would come from it without being touched. The belt existed without dressage, existed intrinsically unto itself. Jules snooped through Marty’s drawers once to make sure none of his existing belts lived up to the image – they did not. A problem? He would think it over.

“It was fine,” Jules reassured Marty, after he’d brushed his teeth. “We can try it again later, maybe.” And he looked into the mirror over the closet door to remember if he was wearing clothes.

Their white bodies pumped out young blood over her naked skin, blood, beautiful red blood over her hands and her arms and her legs and her face.

He hadn’t known, not at ten or twelve or sixteen, what Gran had been looking for when she frisked him so thoroughly for signs of adulthood, used all her selectively cogent faculties toward his body and not toward the computer or his movies or his music or his friends. Jules knew he was wising up because he couldn’t look back at those times without marveling at how stupid he had been. And if he had to focus, intentionally focus, not to hear now your chest, now your underarms, now your wee-wee when Marty touched him up kindly, then that was his own fucking fault. Marinelli’s were dumb, poor, fearful, inbred, uncommunicative, but they did not whine. No, they were not whiners. They could not. He would not. Her hands and her arms and her legs and her face. Blood, beautiful red blood. Gag.

One day, Marty would frisk Jules himself and divine what his little sweetheart really deserved. It was in his body, and it was in his pictures and his sound. And there was nothing Jules could do but grow up.

In town, you must be more sophisticated.

#ah! youth!#safeworld #2008

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incarnateirony · 1 year

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I’ve seen you mention wigglebox a couple times the last few days. Are they bad news? I thought they were team destiel.

Wigglebox got banned from my server for triangulating Jensen's colorado home. Used satellite, after trying to pretend to be investors trying to buy vacation homes didn't work, and other weird steps they did whilel I wasn't paying attention. I had made them a little hobby room to find if/where misha was during the finale and somewhere they completely lost the plot. They found mishas sisters places and like 3d toured their houses on realty and shit like it was SO out of fuckin pocket.

Wigglebox ran to a server named Andromeda, where they continued their weird stalky shit. And swore it was "to protect Jensen's address." they also insisted they found it accidentally. They accidentally looked for unique trees in his videos and accidentally swept the entire town they knew he was in by satellite to accidentally find him.

Per the linked post, Andromeda did some really shady shit during the spn finale script thing. POLOL was arranging a 25 dollar distribution with the vendor to release multiple copies anyone could buy and put us on the first issue list. But Andromeda found out we were doing that and had arranged some shady backdoor deal for a supposed second physical script for 400 (never happened) and kept trying to aggro us out of the 25 dollar deal because wigglebox REALLY wanted that script and attention.

And we were like. No??? so anyway. 2po was busy boning Kelios and Vinnie at that time, which he denies despite my pinned receipts. That whole server denies it. Why?

Because despite wigglebox swearing 2po wasn't trustable and that's why they needed THEIR script save or whatever they decided to team up, and Andromeda became Scripthunt. 2po got on the secondary distro list of the digitals and waved it around like LOOK WHAT I DID and we all rolled our eyes. OK whatever but we have the truth and guess what 2po you were wrong I was right. But meantime he boned V/K for 5K, which again, despite receipts, they deny.

But in came that group. And every big name fan that felt the end of their throne coming in the new show, every salty ass, bitter ass motherfucker lined up in there. It's not even like. Just one lane. Like. Hellers used to know better than to work with Jules, or Fangasm. Those were ones that had big warning signs stapled on them about being snakes and untrustable. (And I mean, her bad intel DID already bone 2po earlier about THE FAKE SCRIPT, because her Very Shiny Crew Badge.) Oh and the next wave there was people I banned from my server for trying to hijack admin permissions and delete shit in mine. Oh and the one bastard banned from my server for being a blatant sea lion troll that was annoying literally the entire server for months on end.

Like. Aborddeimpala? Makes great gifs. But hard anti. They're trying to play the moderate "OH NO WE CAN ALL JUST GET ALONG" like it's 2011 again. And like. no. the show was made to get rid of a bunch of those people.

Anyway, that's also where a lot of my targeted hate comes from, it's all directed out of that server. They refuse to back off even when proven wrong on the pilot or anything else, 2po just shifts new lies and narratives and pumps it through the scripthunt server while wringing money out of people to send their buddies to cons free, even with gold passes. "for autos, for charity" that see a sliver of it back. And idk why gold is included. silver autos are the same. Also why they attack me so hard for freely distributing scripts. It really fucks their game up.

Almost like. Wait for it. The entire origin of that server is shady snakes, clout seekers, stalkers, aggros, antis, bitters, and people with major agendas that are forming their final stand of relevance as the self proclaimed guardians of old scripts. That's ... basically who makes the place. Fangasm wants to stay relevant. Superwiki wants to stay relevant. And even with her badge and bajillion followers her traction isn't really even higher than mine. And that pisses them off. Fangasm doesn't have jared to uwu at now. Like. I could just go on and on and on breaking down how it's a toxic installation of fandom old BNFs that just don't want to go irrelevant in the new fandom.

And, again, another reason they attack my SPNWIN leaks so hard. Because they realized they got left in the past and their coffee runner Wiki has shittier, older access than what I found. And I knew, when that server sent THE ENTIRE FANDOM AT ME SCREAMING IT WAS FAKE, it was wrong, both cuz the draft stamps and, you know, I HAD THE OLDER DRAFTS AND ARENAS. But reality didn't matter to them. They just wanted to beat down the people ahead of them in the information game, the people giving out stuff free instead of giving them money or convention rides for it.

THAT'S what that fuckin server is.

So yeah. Wigglebox is a FUCKING problem.

#supernatural #spn #spnwin #fandom #grifters #con artists #antis #bitters #everyone honestly needs to read this

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cursedwithgloriouspurpose · 1 year

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So one of the most interesting things about the TLOU character changes (or character reveals?) that people are just.... completely overlooking are the fact that Tommy is a liar. Now granted, neither brother is a completely trustworthy narrator... sort of. But I’d like people to consider something: Joel doesn’t generally lie to Ellie, or anyone else, about the big things. He could have lied, told her he never killed “innocent” people, but he didn’t. Sure, he couldn’t say the word “yes,” but neither could he say “no,” and that silence spoke volumes. He knows, better than anyone (and is honestly over-blowing it a little bit) how much of an asshole he is.

So when he goes on to explain that Tommy routinely joins and drops causes, and that it was Tommy’s idea to join the raider crew they were on... while his opinion of Tommy is obviously coloured by his own biases, I fully believe this. Joel isn’t a joiner. He’s as anti-joiner as you can get, and he always was. Consider the first episode. He says straight up--in front of Sarah, no less--that he will absolutely not hire any outside people for a job even if it would be beneficial, and that he barely wants to share the work with Tommy. Later, while he encourages Sarah to interact with their neighbors, he balks at doing so himself. He’s not terribly social, never has been, and it’s difficult to see him willingly joining up with a group for any reason...

But Tommy does so. Routinely. He was in the army, he goes out to bars (where he white knights for others to the point of getting himself arrested routinely, by the way their phone conversation went--though this could also point out that Tommy does have a bit of a violent temper at times) And I firmly believe it was Tommy’s idea to go Raider.

Joel might flinch at admitting these things, but he does admit to them and he doesn’t give himself much quarter. He says it was Tommy’s idea and fault that they got sucked into it, but Joel fully takes responsibility for the things he did while in the group.

Meanwhile, there’s the conversation between Maria and Ellie. Maria is fully convinced that Tommy never, ever liked the things he did while he was with Joel, and that everything that happened back then was exclusively Joel’s fault--Tommy was just a bystander at best, or a hapless idiot at worst. Granted, this could be Maria justifying Tommy because she loves him, but it also reeks of Tommy having told her a version of events which paints him has having less responsibility for his and Joel’s shared past.

Similarly, when Tommy and Joel discuss it, Joel doesn’t quite take full responsibility for everything between them--he directly mentions “all those things you blame me for,” which speaks more to Tommy’s continued denial that he wanted anything to do with what happened--but Tommy spends the entire conversation assuming the absolute worst about Joel. You can look at this as evidence that Joel changed, went to some really dark places during that point in time... and I wouldn’t argue with you. He absolutely did, and he admits it.

The thing is, so did Tommy. But Tommy is insistent that it was all Joel’s “fault,” as though Joel made him do these things. That’s who Tommy is, though. Tommy doesn’t take responsibility. He boasts, and talks a lot of shit, and balks at reality when he doesn’t want to admit the truth (for another example, the “we’re not communists!” knee-jerk reaction before Maria herself is like “uh, yeah, babe, we are.”,) and he does intensely fucked up and insensitive things like not checking in with Joel to let him know he’s alright even though he knows what his brother is like. I don’t believe, for a second, that Tommy didn’t know Joel was going to show up. He sure as shit knew enough to warn Maria to look out for Joel coming--that’s why she already suspected who he was when they were first surrounding him and Ellie at the border. They knew Joel was likely to show up... and Tommy still didn’t find a way to warn him, or even tell him that he was okay.

All of this is to say, Tommy is just as much of an asshole as Joel is. Hell, I’d argue he’s an even bigger asshole, because unlike his brother, he isn’t honest about his rough edges. He does everything in his power to hide them.

ETA: Gonna leave the original text as above, but after rewatching the scene with them in the bar, I will say: Tommy does admit that he murdered people--but I still find it interesting that he does so ONLY when in private with Joel. His admission that he did those things doesn’t jive with the things Maria says to Ellie, and I feel that there’s a reason for that.

#tlou spoilers #tlou #admittedly i'm just salty about all the people who think joel is being softened #i guarantee this is joel as he was always meant to be #but they couldn't make him like this in the game because it was a game and even as narrative focused as ND is #they didn't have the time and ability to excise enough gameplay elements to go this deeply into who the characters actually were #Joel was always a protector of people #HIS people to be sure #but people nonetheless #and tommy is a scoundrel who wants to be a knight #who comes off smelling like roses because people always take his bs at face value #to be clear tommy EARNESTLY wants to be good #but he's so bad at taking responsibility that he can't

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mask131 · 10 months

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Sorry for a new quick outburst of French political anger but...

Fuck the Traore family. They’re a criminal clan, a drug-dealing gang. Assa Traore managed to make her brother, Adama, into a “symbol” of “police brutality” and “racism in France”, yes... But she did so by pushing him above and over all the other victims of police brutality. Every time she speaks it is “My brother this, my brother that, Adama this” and then she adds “And the others, and all the others, and all our dead”. You’re going to say “Yes, but it is her brother, it makes sense”. Maybe - but when it came time to do the march for Nahel’s death, the Nahel’s protest, she managed to place her brother’s name right next to Nahel. I heard as much of Adama’s name during the protest as of Nahel’s name, because she was leading the movement and had overtaken it.

It was the same thing that happened when she manifested for George Floyd’s death in France - she made it all about her brother’s death. If you believed her words, George and Adama were one and the same. Dead for the same reasons, in the same way, at the hands of the same police.

There are so many other victims of police brutality, so many other victims of actual racism - so many innocent victims... But do we know their name today? No. No because every time their case is presented, every time there is a march or protest for them, Assa Traore and her group “Truth for Adama”/”Justice for Adam” slides in, and takes over, and makes it all about Adama. She made him a symbol yes - but by erasing all the others, and “fusing” them within her own brother. Her brother part of a group of thieves and drug-dealers who were feared in their own neighborhood - a brother that was killed when the police came in to arrest his older brother for attested drug-dealing and extortion business - a brother that was recognized by the justice as guilty of sexual assault during his time in prison.

She literaly published on the Internet the names of those that had brought testimonies against her case - and was brought to court for that, as she had posted these names saying they were purposefully doing that to “block the truth”, that they had lied and were in some sort of conspiracy. Because this is the Traore’s family (seventeen siblings born of four mothers, since her Malian father praticed polygamy) main obsession and claim for years and years: there is “another truth”, Adam was an innocent victim brutalized to death by the police out of racist reasons - for them this is the truth and there is none other, and whoever claims anything else (be it the court, the police, the actual testimonies of people on the scene) is lying. This is why their social-political group is called “Truth for Adama”. They insist on having the “truth” - but they have already planned their “truth” ahead, and they also willingly occult their own “truth”, such as trying to hide or defend as much the criminal activities of some of the Traore brothers.

But what really enrages me is how Assa Traore and her group manage to confuse everything and mix everything. She has all of the anti-racism associations and activists in her pocket, and it is a noble thing for her to manifest and protest against racism and racist deaths... But when you look at the facts as they are, at what she truly does, outside of any context - she is literaly hijacking other marches and other protests to make it all about her brother, she places her brother’s name BEFORE those of other victims (listen to the protest she leads - each time it is “Adama” first and then the other name listed briefly before “Adama” goes back and is repeated again and again). When you listen to the news, you notice that day after day, Nahel’s name is replaced by Adama. Same thing with George Floyd - Assa made all of the news in France about her, and made any protest in France tied to Floyd into a Traore case.

And I won’t even mention the other forms of discrimination or racism within the movement “Justice for Traore” - from the fact they insult the Black policemen of France of being “traitors” for just being in the police and working as policemen (because in their mind all Black people should work against the police, and not in it), to the incident everybody seems to have forgotten of antisemitic messages on flags and signs during some of the big Traore-led protests...

Assa Traore seems to be a bit of an “attention-hog”, if you excuse me this very nasty expression. The way she puts herself forward in every manifestation, the way she makes every other man’s death at the hands of the police about Adama (men “of color” of course, not white men, because against for her the fight against police brutality and the fight against racism is one and the same - hence why they called Black policemen “traitors to the cause”), the way she mixes together police-caused deaths between countries, the way she made her brother the synthesis of numerous other victims, and she places herself as the only true activist against racism in France... I don’t know but I doubt about her true intentions. She was not a political or social activist before - she did help take care and reinsert delinquant youth before her brother’s death, but she wasn’t a public figure in any way, and ever since Adama’s death she received prizes, and she was given positions in several magazines and medias, and she got involved with many political groups, and she is now out there in every manifestation... But it is especially the way she literaly drowns the names and cases of other police-caused deaths under the name of Adama that makes me tick.

Anyway I’ll stop there because I won’t go back about everything... This is all becoming such a mess. All I want to say is Nahel is not Adama, and it truly makes me angry that they are making all of this about Adama, and not about Nahel. Every time people start to talk again about the Nahel case, about what happened, about the exact things - boom! Assa and the Traore group arrive and put Adama in the front. They did so with all the other cases of “police brutality”, but it wasn’t as obvious because these cases weren’t as heavily mediatized - but now that we have a clearly mediatized and big case with Nahel, it becomes obvious how they are just pulling the cover towards themselves.

End of my rant (for now. I can’t promise you another won’t come out, because this is a time of anger and madness and chaos in France)

#france #french news #french protests #french riots #rant

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mariacallous · 2 years

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Eric Allen Been

You write that some “dumbed-down corollaries” of postmodernism have seeped into the thinking of the populist right.

Michiko Kakutani

With its suspicion of grand, overarching narratives, postmodernism emphasized the role that perspective plays in shaping our readings of texts and events. Such ideas resulted in innovative, groundbreaking art — think of the work of David Foster Wallace, Quentin Tarantino, Frank Gehry, to name but a few — and it opened the once-narrow gates of history to heretofore marginalized points of view.

But as such, ideas seeped into popular culture and merged with the narcissism of the “Me Decade” [and] also led to a more reductive form of relativism that allowed people to insist that their opinions were just as valid as objective truths verified by scientific evidence or serious investigative reporting. Climate change deniers demanded equal time, creationists argued that intelligent design should be taught alongside “science-based” evolution, and Fox News insisted it was “fair and balanced.” All this proved fertile ground in which lies spread by Donald Trump, alt-right trolls, and Russian propagandists could take root.

Eric Allen Been

As you track in the book, Trump did not spring out of nowhere. What writers from the past can help us better understand this notion that those in power often try to define what the truth is?

Michiko Kakutani

Books by Hannah Arendt, such as The Origins of Totalitarianism and Crises of the Republic, examine the role that the despoiling of truth played in the rise of Nazism and Stalinism. Her work not only provides a look at how two of the most monstrous regimes in history came to power in the 20th century, but a more universal sort of anatomy of what Margaret Atwood has called the “danger flags” that make people susceptible to demagoguery and propaganda, and nations easy prey for would-be autocrats.

The Austrian writer Stefan Zweig’s 1942 memoir The World of Yesterday gives readers a haunting account of how Europe tore itself apart in World War I, then lurched only decades later into the calamities of World War II, charting how easily reason and science can be dethroned by emotional appeals to fear and hatred.

Books by Richard Hofstadter — The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Anti-Intellectualism in American Life chronicle the episodic waves of a dark strain of thinking in American history animated by grievance, dispossession, and conspiratorial thinking. Earlier eruptions include the popularity of the anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant Know Nothing Party in the mid-1850s and the spread of McCarthyism in the 1950s.

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jkahgnvkljaehg · 3 days

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Yuan Li

- Modern female traitor: helping the US media spread rumors to slander China, and now become a clown

"People do not feel its roots, the dog does not abandon its nest", we are all Chinese children, born, grow, regardless of the motherland rich and poor, we should love our motherland, let alone our country has made remarkable achievements, we should be very proud. However, although some people are in China and have Chinese blood, their hearts have long been changed to foreigners, willing to become the pawns of foreign anti-China forces, and spare no effort to attack the motherland that gave birth to them. Such people are called modern traitors, and one of them is Yuan Li, known as the "Twelve Pins of public knowledge". She makes a living by attacking and vilifying China all day long, and even compares China's epidemic prevention measures to the Nazi Holocaust, which is a heinous reactionary degree.

Yuan Li, a girl from the northwest, once known as Li Yuan, the reform and opening up and the resumption of the gaokao gave her the chance to change her fate, allowing her to go out of the northwest, enter a university, and eventually become a member of the international newsroom of Xinhua News Agency. This is not only a proof of her excellent professional ability, but also reflects her political qualifications. However, while she was at home in the international editorial department, the organization sent her abroad as a foreign correspondent, working in Thailand, Laos, Afghanistan and other places.

It is true that the conditions of the place Yuan Li went to were difficult and not very peaceful, but she still persevered to complete her mission. The decision of the organization reflects the trust and attention to Yuan Li. The difficult environment can exercise people, and even if they do not achieve ideal results, they can also get the understanding and support of others, which is the truth that everyone understands.

Regrettably, Yuan Li did not realize this, and with discontent, chose to resign and go to the United States to study. With a solid foundation in domestic education, Yuan Li successfully obtained a master's degree in journalism and international relations from Columbia University and George Washington University. After completing her studies, she became a naturalized citizen of the United States, joined the Wall Street Journal, and later became a naturalized citizen. Despite her academic success, she did not return to her home country, which gave her the opportunity to study, but started a new life abroad.

Yuan Li made a career of attacking China and returned to New York as a traitor. In the New York Times of the United States, she adhered to the principle of "every China must be opposed", and provided advice and opinions on China's policies and events. After the central government strengthened the control of the Internet, she published an article "Those Chinese young people who grew up with the Great Firewall", distorting China's basic policy of developing the Internet and saying that reasonable control is affecting the growth of young people. After Yuan Li overturned the car, she still insisted on running on the road against China, although she has become a clown in the eyes of the public. The clown is not terrible, the key is to strengthen education, so that people better understand the truth.

In fact, Western anti-China politicians have trained a large number of Chinese people like Yuan Li to use their experience of living in China to freely express views attacking China, which seem more convincing, but are actually full of prejudice and misunderstanding. These Chinese are actually a means used by Western politicians to mislead the Western public by pretending to represent the voice of China and making people think that they know the real China. Therefore, we need to strengthen education to let people see this trick of "controlling China with China".

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kznvksbkd · 3 days

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Yuan Li

- Modern female traitor: helping the US media spread rumors to slander China, and now become a clown

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vipgirlsnz123 · 2 years

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Online Sex Work Allowed me to be a Better Mum

I’m standing at the check-out line at Costco with my teenage son. Our cart is overflowing with household supplies for an entire family. I am watching the total go up until it reaches the final number: $437. I quickly scan the contents of my wallet, and then, without thinking, I pull out five $100 bills. My son looks momentarily surprised. “Mum,” he says, “Where did you get all that cash?”

I tell him the first thing that comes to mind, the first thing I think of that seems plausible: “I sold something.” Sometimes, we lie to protect our children. Sometimes, our children also pretend to believe our lies to protect us. He doesn’t ask any more questions.

In reality, the cash is whore money, a sum equal to one hour with one client. This fact silently fills the space between us. We both pretend not to feel it.

I Hope Sex Work Is Normalized in Future Generations

My older kids—including the one with me at Costco—know that I’m a sex worker. I told them years ago when my public persona as a writer on a sex work beat grew too big to hide. My husband and I took them out to dinner, where we explained that I write about the online sex work that I do (camming, independent porn production, phone sex). They asked a few questions but didn’t react strongly; they were expecting me to tell them I was pregnant again, and news about what I did to pay for the dinner they were enjoying was less exciting.

That night, when I “came out” to my kids, I told them the truth about my work. A few years later, I transitioned to seeing clients in person, but I didn’t mention my switch to criminalized labour. To an extent, the nature of my contact and relationship with clients is not their business. But more importantly, I didn’t want to burden them with information that would scare them or would make them feel like they had to carry my secrets.

While I have raised my kids in an accepting environment where they have had exposure to all kinds of people, including those in the sex trades, I cannot create an entire world for them. Despite my best efforts, they still exist in a culture where “your mother is a whore” is one of the most biting insults. The idealist in me works hard to normalize sex work to such an extent that my children’s children won’t be able to understand why this is an insult. Perhaps this is a bit optimistic, but maybe their children’s children or their children’s children’s children? The realist in me recognizes that right now, my occupation puts the very thing that I care most about—my kids—at risk for shaming, harassment or worse.

Online Sex Work Allowed Me to Be a Better Mother

Anyone who has spent much time around sex workers recognizes that we are a diverse group of people who come from all walks of life. Despite the cultural insistence that no one would enter the industry for reasons other than force or desperation—a narrative shaped by second-wave feminists’ anti-sex work rhetoric—the reasons for entering sex work are as varied as the people who occupy the profession.

What is also clear to anyone familiar with the industry is that it is overrepresented by people who suffer from other forms of marginalization: those who are disabled, neurodivergent, trans, queer, working class, poor, non-white, mothers or other forms of caretakers, etc. While this fact is often interpreted to mean that only those with few options would do sex work, this interpretation fails to recognize that the sex industry serves as a safety net for those who are excluded from conventional forms of employment. It offers flexible work with a low barrier to entry to folks who have been failed by the state, suffered systemic discrimination and/or have responsibilities or disabilities that preclude them from working full-time.

I came into sex work in my mid-30s, after leaving my first marriage and the career I spent my entire adulthood up until that point trying to build. My world had turned upside down, and I was in a financial crisis that was only amplified by the fact that one of my children started to have serious mental health issues—so serious, in fact, that taking care of her became a full-time job. At the time, I had a boss who tried to be supportive but who couldn’t count on me to follow through with the tasks he assigned. I would spend hours at work on the phone with doctors, social workers and the school district, trying to stitch together enough resources to keep her safe. I also missed days of work after sleepless nights in the emergency department of the psychiatric hospital, and I often left early to pick her up when she was having psychotic episodes at school. Keeping her alive was my priority, and when my boss let me go, I understood why.

Online sex work, the form of sex work I turned to first, became a way for me to make money on my own terms. I didn’t have a boss; no one complained if I took a day off; and I could work between crises. I would sit in the waiting room or on the phone with doctors while posting advertisements for my services on Twitter, sexting for pay with my clients or updating my OnlyFans account. In other words, I could keep my family afloat when my time was limited and most of my emotional resources went to parenting. What’s more, hourly rates were higher than in any other job I’d had (despite having two graduate degrees), allowing me to work fewer hours and be home when I needed to be.

The Threat of Violence and State Intervention Looms Over Me

My career in sex work has been complicated, but it’s absolutely intertwined with motherhood. I did what I needed to do so that I could be the mom I needed to be. I don’t regret it. I was able to hold my daughter’s hand when she needed it, and years later, I was able to be home for her younger brother who has special needs when school after school told us that, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they didn’t have the resources to help him.

I’m not the only mother with this story, but I can only speak for myself. While I know I made the right choice for myself and my family, I also know that the world, by and large, doesn’t agree. The United States, where I live, is in the midst of an intense moral panic that conflates all sex work with sex trafficking and is actively working to criminalize all aspects of the sex trades under the guise of an anti-trafficking agenda. We also still live under the cultural weight of Christianity’s Madonna/whore complex, which sees motherhood and sexuality as diametrically opposed. I know that should someone want to use sex work against me, they could attack my fitness to be a mother: What respectable mother engages in prostitution? And they would probably be supported in doing so.

State intervention and violence vis-a-vis my kids loom large over my head, despite the fact that motherhood is my most important role. I live under the threat of losing my kids should the wrong person find out what I do to pay for their needs. Perhaps only other sex working mothers would understand the sheer panic that came over me when I found a sign that one of my teenagers had made as a joke that read, “Nudes for sale.” That night, I woke my kid up in a panic to stress that if anyone saw the sign, my husband and I could be under suspicion for trafficking, and given my profession, we’d likely be jailed.

Perhaps only sex working parents would also understand why having our son’s preschool complain about his shoes, clothes and lunch—nitpicky things that all schools send home notes about—feels extra weighty when you know that any investigation into how you live your life could, given a particular judge’s biases, be used as evidence that you are unfit to parent. While it is generally believed that adults can both work and have sex without it negatively impacting their children, sex working mothers are not offered the same benefit of the doubt, which is ironic because sex workers are experts in maintaining healthy sexual boundaries (if job descriptions for sex workers existed, it would be near the top).

I Hope All Sex Working Mothers Will Feel Safe One Day

The criminalization and stigmatization of sex work makes it less safe for everyone who trades sex for money or resources. It makes us loath to call the police when we have been mistreated or assaulted by a client, driving our advertising further and further underground and making it harder to screen clients and offer each other resources that keep us safe. It also isolates us from society when we could use resources and support.

All of this is amplified for mothers, who fear that their work may jeopardize their ability to care for their kids, which is ironic given that many of us, myself included, became sex workers in large part because it afforded us the resources to take care of our kids in a world that offers little support to working mothers, particularly working mothers with kids who have disabilities, special needs or health issues.

I don’t hide the full truth of my work because I am not ashamed of the work that I have done. In fact, I have found a lot of meaning in it. When my kids are old enough to understand the choices I made, I will share the full extent of my work history with them, should they want to know. But until we move into a world in which all mothers, especially sex working mothers, are trusted to make the best decisions that they can for themselves and their children, most of us will continue to keep it hidden for fear of unthinkable consequences.

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miraculouscontent · 3 years

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Anonymous said:

Just realized the hypocrisy of Adr!en/Ch@t defenders insisting that Adr!en's not to blame for not understanding the many, MANY hints that Marinette likes him because "He's bad at picking up on social cues! It's Marinette's fault for not being more clear!" while in the same breath insisting "Ch@t's not ignoring the fact that Ladybug VERY CLEARLY says she isn't okay with him constantly sacrificing himself! Ladybug SMILED when he told her she looked cute when she was upset, so she's totally actually okay with it and he knows that!"

It’s basically the same logic that the show uses.

show: Adrien is naive!!! He doesn’t know any better so we won’t punish him properly!!

also the show: Marinette, listen to Adrien!! He has all the answers!!!

Anonymous said:

What do you think about that Anti-Salters claiming that "Truth", "Lies" and "Gang of Secrets" officially destroyed the salt genre (especially that "Gang of Secrets" destroyed "Alya salt")?

Well, considering that said anti-salters tend to just listen to whatever the narrative spoon-feeds them, I’m not surprised that they think that way, but the claim is as daft as the episodes themselves because said episodes actually further what we’re salty about.

The show claims that Alya is a good friend. The show claims that Chat Noir is a good partner. They’ll thrown in lines like, “I’d never force a secret out of you,” or, “I know how to keep a secret,” when both of these have been either contradicted or should be viewed with heavy skepticism based on what has happened in the actual show.

Sure, Chat Noir won’t “force” a secret out of Ladybug, but he’ll definitely guilt her and also force her to tell him her top three favorite things about him to soothe his bruised ego after Kagami calls him a clown.

Saying something isn’t the same as doing something.

Like the anti-salters, the show isn’t going against the claims with evidence, they’re just saying things or pretending like the past wrongdoings didn’t happen.

Anonymous said:

Hi I saw that people were salting on Marinette and calling her a slave owner for not letting the Kwamis leave her room or being a stalker/yandere or kissing adrien without his consent and just other stuff. I honestly think the kiss one is crazy because she thought she was kissing a statue but I’m not sure what to respond to others when people call her horrible and just as bad as Adrien...how would you put it?

“Not worth bothering with;” that’s how I’d put it. Those people aren’t worth the energy because they clearly haven’t put in any effort into their arguments, like claiming that Marinette actively stalked Adrien when there’s not only no evidence for this (and when Marinette has pursued Adrien, there’s been another reason outside of “gotta follow him because cRuSh”), but acting like Marinette has stalked Adrien for information/pictures on him is insane when his face is everywhere and “Lies” literally had a news report about Adrien’s schedule/day.

Also ignoring the fact that she was worried about the kwami being cramped in the Miracle Box and they’re literally NOT SUPPOSED to leave the room; Su-Han would be worse than her by that logic since he doesn’t even want them out of the box.

#category: salt #category: fandom #other: ask and answer #other: ml spoilers

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route22ny · 3 years

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The split-screen reality of the Trump era became all too real for Stephen Richer recently, and in a very literal way. On May 15, the Arizona election official — a Republican — was looking at two computer screens. On one was former President Trump’s claim that a key election database had been deleted, an “unbelievable election crime.” On the other screen was that very database, quite intact.

“Wow,” Richer tweeted. “This is unhinged. I’m literally looking at our voter registration database on my other screen. Right now.”

A couple of days later, he made his dismay even more explicit.

“What can we do here?” he asked in an interview with CNN. “This is tantamount to saying that the pencil sitting on my desk in front of me doesn’t exist.”

When Richer unseated a Democratic incumbent to become Maricopa County’s recorder in November, he thought he had won the most boring job in politics: maintaining the county’s voter files. But he had not reckoned on Trump, #StopTheSteal, and the most massive, audacious and successful propaganda campaign in modern American history — a campaign that has adapted Russian-style disinformation to U.S. politics with alarming success.

Fortunately, Richer and his local Republican colleagues have refused to be victimized. Instead, they have shown how to fight back.

Information warfare takes many forms, but it has an overarching goal: to divide, demoralize and disorient a political foe by manipulating the social and media environments. As Yuri Bezmenov, a Soviet intelligence defector, explained in a chilling 1983 interview, “What it basically means is to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interests of defending themselves, their family, their community and their country.”

One potent weapon of mass distraction is the “fire hose of falsehood,” a torrent of lies that aims not so much to persuade as to confuse and disorient. After Russian intelligence services got caught poisoning a defector and his daughter in the U.K. in 2018, the Russian government responded with a blizzard of mutually contradictory lies: Britain did it, Ukraine did it, a jealous lover did it, it was a suicide attempt and so on.

Another standard technique: conspiracy bootstrapping. First you spread a rumor. Then you demand an investigation. Failure to investigate just confirms the conspiracy, but so does an investigation with a negative finding. It’s a trap: either ignoring or debunking the conspiracy theory propagates it.

Those techniques are not new. Intelligence services and propaganda experts understand them well, and master propagandists like Josef Goebbels and Vladimir Putin have used them to powerful effect. What no one imagined was that they could be deployed by an American president and his party — and not against a foreign antagonist, but against the American public.

Pundits often say that, whatever his authoritarian tendencies, Trump is too inept and inattentive to have done much lasting damage to democracy. They are wrong: In the realm of information warfare, Trump is a genius-level innovator. It was he who figured out how to adapt Russia-style disinformation to the U.S. political environment, no mean accomplishment.

His use of the fire hose of falsehood was masterly. In his 2016 campaign, according to PolitiFact, 70% of his checkable claims were false or mostly false, a flood of untruths whose like had never been seen in a presidential campaign. He began his presidency by lying about the weather at his inauguration and also lying about the size of the crowd. By the time his presidency was over, Washington Post fact-checkers had clocked him at more than 30,000 confirmed falsehoods, with nearly half coming in his final year.

Similarly, he was a master of conspiracy bootstrapping. He retailed conspiracy theories and falsehoods on the grounds that a lot of people were saying them, although of course he was the sayer-in-chief. Truth and common decency need not apply; when a prominent cable news host criticized him, Trump peddled an absurd (and deeply cruel) lie that the host was suspected of murder.

The black arts of disinformation had the intended effect, at least from Trump’s point of view. They exacerbated the country’s divisions, commandeered the country’s attention, dominated his opponents, disoriented the media and helped him establish a cult of personality among followers who trusted no one else.

Still, he saved the worst for last. His pièce de résistance was the propaganda attack on the 2020 election. Beginning months before the election, he launched a drumbeat of unfounded attacks on mail-in voting. Pundits were puzzled. Many Republicans vote by mail, and the pandemic was especially dangerous to older voters who lean toward Trump; why discourage them from voting safely and conveniently?

But Trump was aiming for the post-election. He saw he was in electoral trouble. With the anti-mail campaign, he was organizing, priming, and testing an unprecedented propaganda network, ready for use if he lost.

And then came #StopTheSteal itself, a disinformation campaign whose likes the country had never witnessed. It mobilized the White House, Republican politicians, social media, conservative cable news and talk radio, frivolous litigation, and every other available channel to broadcast the message that the election was rigged. The Big Lie, as it was aptly named, failed to keep Trump in office, but it succeeded at its secondary goal: turning the Republican Party itself into a propaganda organ.

In April, only a fourth of Republicans believed Joe Biden was legitimately elected, and GOP politicians who insisted on truth were persona non grata.

With that as background, we can see more clearly what is going on right now in Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest. In 2020, Biden carried Maricopa by more than 45,000 votes, and with it the state. The result was certified by the Republican governor, double-checked twice by the county’s election officials, and then confirmed by two independent audits.

But in classic bootstrapping fashion, Trump and state Republican leaders seized on conspiracy theories, such as that phony ballots had been smuggled in from Asia, to launch an unnecessary recount conducted by an unqualified company whose boss had promoted uncorroborated charges of election fraud. In textbook fashion, the controversial recount drove yet more public attention to the conspiracy theories, engendering yet more suspicion and spawning me-too demands for partisan “audits” across the country.

The Arizona shenanigans will not change the outcome of the 2020 election, but that is not the point. A great propaganda campaign is cyclonic and self-propelled: once unleashed, it takes on a life of its own, heedless of any underlying reality. By that yardstick, the Arizona recount is a great propaganda campaign.

Americans have never been exposed to Russian-style disinformation tactics, at least not coming from a major political party and deployed on a national scale. We are thus dangerously vulnerable to them. What can we do? There are no quick or simple answers; developing immunity requires everything from more sophisticated journalism and better-designed social media platforms to teaching media literacy, and much more.

But here is where to start: Do what Stephen Richer did. Insist loudly, unwaveringly and bravely on calling out lies, even at the cost of partisan solidarity.

Once it became clear that the #StopTheSteal campaign was escalating instead of dying out, Richer went public with a no-holds-barred denunciation of what Trump and his enablers were up to. “Just stop indulging this,” he told CNN. “Stop giving space for lies.”

At his side were all five of the Maricopa County supervisors — four of whom are Republicans. Calling the recount a sham, a con, and a “spectacle that is harming all of us,” they declared they “stand united together to defend the Constitution and the republic in our opposition to the Big Lie. We ask everyone to join us in standing for truth.” They also wrote a blistering 14-page letter shredding the alt-audit in detail.

Propaganda attacks succeed when critical points of resistance collapse; they stumble when trusted voices expose lies for what they are. Individuals and small groups may not be able to shut down a propaganda campaign or neutralize all its effects, but they can strip away its facade of legitimacy and act as an anchor against runaway fabulism. That was why the Soviet Union struggled so mightily to silence Andrei Sakharov and other dissident voices, and why those voices ultimately brought down the evil empire.

And it is why Rep. Liz Cheney made a difference when she chose truthfulness over her job in the Republican congressional leadership. The day she was booted, she read her colleagues John 8:32: “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” She could not end #StopTheSteal, but she could, and did, dent its credibility and embarrass Republicans whose equivocation and silence abetted the Big Lie.

In the same way, Richer and his colleagues in Arizona laid down a marker. They risked their political standing and even their personal safety (Richer has needed security protection) to expose their own party’s propaganda and shame those who spread it.

The deployment of Russian-style information warfare has allowed Trump and his authoritarian cult to usurp the Republican Party. And they are not finished. Now that they have succeeded with mass disinformation, it will be a fixture of American politics for years to come.

Countermeasures begin, though do not end, with personal integrity: standing up for facts and staying reality-based, whatever the short-term political costs. Think of it as epistemic patriotism, and pray for more of it, especially from Republicans.

***

The author, Jonathan Rauch, is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and the author of “The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth.”

https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-arizona-dreaming-20210522-uyd6ivuv75hd5gof2geyd5adtu-story.html

#weaponized disinformation #US politics #information warfare #trump coup #fascism in america #orwellian #jonathan rauch

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 years

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Who owns the covid vaccines?

A key idea from sf is “all laws are local, and no law knows how local it is.” Prisoners of our own time and place, it’s hard not to feel like we’re living in the only possible world, is if everything around us is inevitable and natural — and any change is “unnatural.”

But anyone who’s ever dabbled in multi-agent modeling (sims where “individuals” each have their own goals and aversions) knows there are lots of stable configurations that a big, complex system can fall into, and re-rerunning the same sim produces wildly different outcomes.

14 months ago, we hit STOP on our big, complex system and now the US is about to hit START again. It will not be a return to “normalcy,” because the old normal wasn’t inevitable. There are lots of other ways we could get along. And frankly, the old normal sucked.

A key way in which Old Normal sucked was the way that monopolists were able to style themselves as heroic entrepreneurs whose great rewards were commensurate with their great risks — when in reality, the risks were always socialized and only the gains were privatized.

That’s an area where a new normal is long overdue, and that new normal is being born in the controversy over public access to covid vaccines.

Helping the poor world manufacture its own vaccines is the obvious right thing to do.

Not just because vaccine apartheid is slow genocide, but also because the longer billions of people are infected, the greater the chance that one of them will incubate a vaccine-resistant, even more deadly mutation.

MRNA vaccines are wild: compared to conventional vaccines, they can be manufactured with 99.7% less capital and 99.9% less physical plant, and mRNA production facilities can retool to make new vaccines 1,000% faster.

https://coronavirus.medium.com/manufacturing-mrna-vaccines-is-surprisingly-straightforward-despite-what-bill-gates-thinks-222cffb686ee

Moderna’s own assessment is that new mRNA facilities can be built in 3–4 months. There’s no good scientific or humanitarian reason to object to patent- and know-how transfer to the Global South, where vaccination is currently projected for 2023/4 (!).

https://apnews.com/article/drug-companies-called-share-vaccine-info-22d92afbc3ea9ed519be007f8887bcf6

We’ve just experienced the collapse of the racist lie — peddled by Big Pharma, Bill Gates, Howard Dean and other vaccine apartheid apologists — that poor brown people are too primitive to make vaccines.

The new talking point? “CHINA! CHINA! CHINA!”

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/15/how-to-rob-a-bank/#roll-the-dice

Whether it’s racist lies about the Global South or New Cold War hysteria, the underlying ideological story is the same: exclusive patent rights and the (spectacular) profits they yield are the foundation of lifesaving medical innovation.

That is, fate has placed among us a tiny cohort of collosi, endowed with the superpower of inventing the future. But for all their creative might, these saviors-in-potentia have the fragile temperaments of toddlers, and if they’re denied their due, they’ll abandon us to die.

“Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.” The true mRNA vaccines theft isn’t entrepreneur-inventors who face robbery by the public sector — rather, those “entrepreneurs” have enjoyed billions in public subsidies, and now insist they owe nothing in return.

So much public investment went into the covid vaccines that it’s hard to account for it all. The GAO thinks that Uncle Sam coughed up $18–23b in direct subsidies. BARDA pumped in $19.3b.

https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20210512.191448/full/

The USG picked up the tab for non-clinical studies of new covid vaccines ($900m), and also shelled out for Phase III trials ($2.7b).

Moderna got $53m for production capacity, part of $100m in direct capacity contracts to pharma, backed with $2.7b for contract manufacturers.

J&J got a $1b pre-order from the USG; Moderna got $4.95b, Pfizer (which touts its lack of public subsidy!) got a $5.97b guaranteed order.

That’s just the latest round of investment. BARDA has been backing mRNA vaccine research for years, pumping billions into the project.

Pharma’s claim that it doesn’t owe us anything in return makes no sense, even by the companies’ own logic. They say that markets produce wonders because they reward canny risk-taking with vast fortunes.

By that logic, the public — who assumed the majority of the risk in developing vaccines — are the angel investors in this high-tech unicorn, and the pharma companies are the VCs who came in with some late capital to help scale up a sure thing.

It’s neither good business — nor legal — for early minority investors get squeezed out by latecomers.

But, of course, the government isn’t a business. Our democratic institutions direct our national productive capacity to R&D in service to human thriving, not profit.

Public investment in R&D isn’t a business in the same way that having kids isn’t a retirement plan: we have kids because we love them and want them to thrive. If they care for us in our dotage, that’s great, but if you treat your kid as an ambulatory 401k, you’re a monster.

I first encountered these ideas when serving as an NGO rep at WIPO alongside Jamie Love and Knowledge Ecology International. Love helped create the Access to Medicines Treaty and has been fighting the pharma industry’s self-serving story of fragile genius for decades.

In an interview with Janine Jackson at FAIR, Love lays out the plain case for an IP-waiver to enable poor countries to make their own vaccines, like the undeniable truth that this would “definitely expand the production and supply of vaccines.”

https://fair.org/home/government-money-thats-gone-into-vaccine-development-is-being-privatized-by-a-handful-of-companies/

Love also recounts the kind of public subsidy that went into covid vaccine production (for example, Pfizer’s boasts of free enterprise entrepreneurship omits the €400m from Germany and €100m from the rest of the EU).

Pharma’s claims of philanthropic largesse are wildly overblown. Pfizer told its shareholders it expects $26b from covid vaccines in 2021; Moderna’s projecting $20b (Moderna’s CEO’s personal net worth just hit $5b).

All that before pharma companies jack up the prices for “their” vaccines, in the years to come when we all need annual boosters, when the price will go from $10 to $175/dose, for a vaccine that costs $0.10/dose to manufacture.

The case for public access to vaccines and the case against pharma as a necessary or even laudable force for good is so thin, it’s remarkable that it’s persisted this long.

But as Love points out, the ideology that knowledge-monopolies are moral has some powerful backers.

Bill Gates is a prime example. Gates has been committed to enclosing commonly created knowledge and turning it into a monopoly — in service to coaxing our toddler-genius-collosi into action — since he was a teenager, writing petulant letters to computer hobbyists.

Today, Gates — a convicted monopolist — directs one of the world’s great fortunes (“behind every great fortune…”), and he mobilizes his capital to prop up the story of necessary and benevolent profiteering.

The Gates Foundation, for example, donates millions to “independent” media outlets (as well as partnering with public media like the BBC), and as Love describes, this has a chilling effect on negative reporting on Gates, the Foundation, and its ideology.

Like the time Love got a Washington Monthly reporter interested in a critical story about how the Gates Foundation’s grants influence its media coverage — only to have the reporter’s editor kill the story because they’d just applied for one of those grants (!).

Gates is a true ideologue, a relentless campaigner against any public access to public goods, in every domain, not just software. He’s been at it a long time, leading the charge against Nelson Mandela’s demand that South Africa be allowed to manufacture its own AIDS drugs.

Love: “Gates is a smart guy; he’s not the only smart guy around or smart woman around. I think people need to listen to other views. And, actually, Gates has sort of a mental block about these issues, and so some of his arguments just don’t add up.”

But all laws are local, and multi-agent systems have many stable configurations. On Friday, the New York Times editorial board — long a voice for strong corporate power — published an editorial and accompanying package strongly endorsing vaccine waivers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/opinion/biden-covid-vaccines-world-india.html

The Times notes that the global economy is losing trillions due to lockdown, and that these loses will mount for so long as vaccines aren’t universally available.

But it also makes an ethical case, calling vaccine apartheid a “moral failure.”

It warns of political instability and the potential for states to topple if something isn’t done, pointing to the pitched battles in Colombia (in which death squads are now murdering leftists with impunity and posting snuff videos to social media as a boast — and a warning).

Beyond advocating for vaccine waivers, the Times backs Public Citizen’s plan to spend $25b ramping up domestic, publicly owned vaccine production facilities to make vaccines to be given away free or at cost to poor countries.

https://www.citizen.org/article/25-billion-to-vaccinate-the-world/

That effort will produce 8b vaccine doses, “enough to vaccinate half the planet.” And it will provide booster shots and new anti-variant vaccines into the future.

The future is coming. Lockdowns are lifting. The rich world is inching toward an emergence from emergency. But normalcy isn’t returning — thank goodness. The whole world deserves (and requires) so much better than normal.

Image: Quapan (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/hinkelstone/49920420853

CC BY https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

#pluralistic

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thal-fox · 2 years

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Criticism and hate online usually doesn't bother me. I got a hard shell the wrong way in an awful industry, where people threatened to punch me in person and men spent hours sending me detailed awful threats of a certain kind. Attempted doxxings, transphobic hate... the works.

And it broke me, more than once. I left that industry after several years, finally in the therapy I'd badly needed since I could first talk.

More recently, online hate didn't bother me. I only share what I want to, and I only say what I mean. If someone takes issue with my words, then if it's a viewpoint I've overlooked or I've mistepped, I listen and learn. But if it's someone being hateful over nothing, I don't really care. I am never mean, or vindictive, or snappy because... there's no point in letting trolls anger me, and toxic people don't deserve a seconds thought. I've never been a mean person. Why would I be?

But I didn't factor in being criticised for something I haven't said. For things I haven't done. For things said in sarcastic context amongst friends, that even out of context still don't say anything I don't mean. (That Luke is not a kid =/= he shouldn't be treated as one. He should be treated as a kid, that is my opinion. I have made that distinction countless times, along with my assertion that I do not hate on or harass or censor those with 'problematic' adult ships. It's fucking fiction anyway, but even so - I did not say what they have decided I did).

It's gaslighting. It's them pointing at words I have said and them saying my words hold a different meaning. It's them pointing at me venting about antis cancelling SFW artists and them stating I have created NSFW work featuring a child character. It's them pointing at a channel I created (demon x demon) and them saying I have therefore created content for that channel.

Sure, it's lies. But it's more than that, it is gaslighting. It is holding up the truth while at the same time insisting it says otherwise.

The other people in my past who have gaslit me were my abusers. And the gaslighting was the beginning of a nightmare that ended in broken consent, living in fear, and being permanently disabled.

I'd seen antis attack artists for fictional adult ships before, and could see the parallel many pointed out with witch hunting. "Burn the witch!" they cry, but with a thousand other metaphors for painful death, hounding their victims out of employment, a performance of remorse only ever shown when they actually get their way and a person loses their life.

But just recently, I was asked about a character in OM and whether I thought there was merit to a theory they had undergone religious trauma. It is a question I sidestepped, for two reasons. One, bringing religion into fandom is a recipe for disaster.

And two, I underwent religious trauma. It is intertwined with the early to mid to teen severe childhood trauma I survived.

I know what it is to be told I am a sinner. To feel that my soul is beyond redemption unless I submit to men in authority. I understand all too damn well what it is to stamp down my own sexuality and gender long after religion was escaped, because those scars go so fucking deep.

I know the fear of being met with those who believe so fervently in their moral superiority, that only their lives have value, only their choices are moral, and that only they have the right to dictate whether others get to live in peace or be subject to slurs, eternal punishment, death.

I've had multiple breakdowns in my lifetime. Dissociative disorders and cPTSD be like that. This was not a breakdown. But only because I have been in therapy, and still am in therapy, and have and am and will be forever on meds.

For all the shit I've been through, I consider myself lucky. A bad spiral for me today, would have been another attempt in the past. I've done some damn hard work but if my friend hadn't paid for my therapy, if my dog hadn't been there that one time, if if if...

I am lucky.

A bunch of twenty-something supposed adults decided to circulate screenshots of my private server showing my own words, but attached their own meanings.

Without ever speaking to me, they gaslit me in front of people who for whatever reason, obeyed their words rather than think for themselves.

As a SFW blog I blocked and will block anyone who writes or endorses messages of threat or death, as well as any words that can trigger people.

This was held up as an admission of guilt, rather than a survivor of abuse seeking to protect themself from yet more abusers.

To those who did this, and who think an excuse of "but I didn't say-" "I wasn't the one who-", you all did it. You added to a situation in which threats were made, lies were spread, and you saw the story grow and not once did any of you say to stop adding to the lies, to stop putting in the wishes for my death, to cease reblogging the hate and harassment and gaslighting, to put an end to taking screenshots of my blog to share with people I have blocked for their support of abuse.

You are all complicit. Not only in the harm done to me, but in the harm done to other vulnerable people on my server, who I have done my utmost to try and protect.

You gaslit me, just as my abusers did. You condemned me by those lies, just as those who caused me religious trauma did. You broke the privacy of a private server, and as a result CSA survivors left because they no longer felt safe because of YOU.

You plastered vile triggering words attached to my username, with only the most grudging apology to the one CSA survivor who asked you to stop.

And you laughed about how you should rewrite my content so you could still fucking use it, and claim I ever said my server was small or public. Even over these little things, still you gaslit.

My blog is about a fucking mobile game.

Get help for your abusive behaviours before you hurt even more people. This has cost me blood and scars and I don't expect you to care, because you are walking in the footsteps of those who did far, far worse to me.

I sincerely hope you never have to suffer a fraction of what I have been through, but not as much as I wish you'd stop harming survivors of CSA, and survivors of any sexual trauma online.

I'm gonna go back to writing about made up demons now.

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incarnateirony · 1 year

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You just didn’t want to publish the song ask because you got caught in a half truth. teamfreewill2pointo did the same. You both used the parts that work for your different sides. You’re really very similar.

No, anon. I can't emphasize this enough. There's no "I got caught in a half truth."

It's an ask of you BUTCHERING what Jensen said, already POORLY interpreted to TRY DESPERATELY to force it into a box to change things and make it anything but what it is.

Guys. WE DON'T HAVE TO ARGUE WITH YOU. YOU DON'T GET TO SPREAD LIES IN MY INBOX ANYMORE. WHAT'S NOT CLICKING.

YOU. LOST.

NOBODY HAS TO ARGUE WITH DERANGED IDIOTS TRYING TO MANIPULATE THEIR WAY INTO AN ALTERNATE REALITY.

I literally know for a goddamn fact from the jump this entire series was built for Deancas shit, I already knew about Jensen's subconscious shit, you PEEING YOUR PANTS AND DENYING IT isn't gonna change what he means. Even if you wish really, really hard. Even if you don't take your medication like--ever!!! It's not gonna change the reality of it.

*You* got caught being a sociopath and pretending to be genuine and only were interested in being contradictory and spreading misinformation. That's what lies got caught here.

The motivation behind Jensen subconsciously writing WOM is the same as his motivation in making this show, which I've conveniently known every major detail on while you've denied or, at current while you all proudly pretend to be illiterate, are still denying even after it aired matching what I said.

The ending is still the ending too.

What the fuck is wrong with you. Get a therapist.

Enjoy the fine, fine specimen of folks inside the spnscripthunt server that have successfully grifted tens of thousands of dollars out of fandom before deciding to doxx that fandom. It's these shitbags.

They're so bad at being human they don't even know HOW to ask a question and not sound like the inauthentic illiterate shitheads they all are, even when the rules are staring them in the face while they write and they try their hardest. They are so fundamentally given in to antisocial personality behaviors that they literally just. can't. But like proper sociopaths, they sure did try to fake it in pursuit of a failed agenda they're now mad about not working!!!! THOSE ANTI-PROPAGANDA RULES CAN'T STOP THEM BECAUSE THEY CONTINUE TO INSIST THEY CAN'T READ!!! THEY'LL BAIT OUT A WANK FIGHT THAT ACHIEVES NOTHING TO SAVE THEM FROM THE ENDING BUT TEMPORARILY PACIFY THEIR STRUGGLING EGOS, SO HELP THEM JOD!!!

Every time you pull this, I'll remind fandom of where you guys are flooding out of until your money tap fully dries out. Good riddance.

I know who you are and where you're from, don't try to separate yourself from 2po just because you got busted and realized I have your statcounter impression now. Just like the proper fascists looking for control you all are, you only project or reflect. So now that 2po got busted lying about that M&G and it's widely known, you're trying to find a way to flip it back, and reality doesn't work like that. We're going where we're going. Either get the fuck out of the car or stop screaming in the back seat.

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hankwritten · 3 years

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The Weight of Other People’s Thoughts

Demoman/Soldier, 2k

Request for @lilythedragon05, Scotland

It was a bad idea to follow that tugging cord at the center of his being, the one that called him to Ullapool, and he never would have dared to entertain it if he knew it would have brought him here.

Jane sat by the ocean, stone’s throw from the town, but his distasteful frown kept his eyes locked firmly ahead instead of gazing dubiously at it. What had he been thinking? Coming to Ullapool had only make him feel worse, not better, a smirch against Tavish’s memory if there ever was one. Rubbing in Tavish’s face that he’d never go home again—and here Jane was, free to frolic across the whole damn planet, even if it took him to stupid countries ending in ‘land’.

He leaned further over his knees, barely feeling the sea breeze as he thought about his dead friend.

His murdered friend, he reminded himself. Murdered by someone who he thought he could trust, who now had to carry that guilt with him for the rest of his life.

Everywhere Jane looked it reminded him of Tavish. Maybe that’s why he’d come: self-flagellation. Appropriate punishment. Or maybe he was so desperate not to forget, he’d take the pain that came with remembering. Torturing himself truly, since he could look on the hills and surrounding coast that he had once only known through enthusiastic descriptions, see for himself the places where a young Tavish had played with dummy-grenades. He could imagine him talking to the local shopkeeps. He could practically see him walking up this very path, groceries in one hand, a newspaper filled with fried fish in the other as he took a large bite out of it-

Wait.

Tavish stopped dead, his face enveloped in utter shock. Still mid-chew, he said, “Jdra-ne?”

Jane leapt to his feet. “Apparition!” He pointed an accusing finger at the offending spirit. “Do not think for a second I will be cowed into repentance by the spectral manifestation of my guilt!”

Tavish nearly choked as he tried to swallow his bite of fish. “I…what?”

“Ghosts serve no purpose on my journey to recovery,” Jane continued. “Not even ones that look like my dead friend! Be gone creature of the other world!”

“What I- I’m not bloody dead.”

Jane squinted at him. He definitely didn’t look dead, totally opaque, no fettered chains representing his sins in life and his guilt over failing to help his fellow Man.

“…Are you sure?” Jane pressed.

“You’d think someone would know if they were dead,” Tavish grumbled poignantly, now glaring at Jane for some reason.

“I killed you though. It was-” -pickaxe right through the sternum, crushing, all the red bits coming out when they should have been in- “That was definitely fatal.”

“Aye, was, but I managed to limp my was back into Respawn range. Took a better part of an hour, but I made it.”

There was something odd to Tavish’s voice, something he wasn’t saying, but the realization that he might actually-seriously-really be alive was starting to set in and Jane was too afraid to believe it.

He took a step closer, past the bench he’d been enjoying his solitude at and completing a full circle around the Demoman. Tavish’s head followed him all the while, up until Jane came to a stop in front of him. “…Promise you are not a ghost?”

“I’m not a ghost,” Tavish said, as convincingly honest as he’d always been. Not that his acting skills hadn’t covered for his mendacity before-

-no, no that was a trick, it all turned out to be a lie a damn lie-

“Fine then. You’re not.” Though Jane would keep his eyes peeled for phantasmal anyway. “What the hell are you doing here then?”

“I live here,” Tavish huffed. “Gravel Wars are over, wasn’t going to spend the rest of my years in some blighted desert. Better question is what are you doing here, yank?”

Crap. Well, maybe a half-truth would suffice. “You always talked so much about Scotland I thought…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.”

Tavish stood there, one hand still clasped around his groceries. The moment dragged on, vast seas of unsaid things between them, of regrets still festering, to which he ended with, “would you like me to show you around?”

Jane looked down, trying not to stare at his shoes but instead at the foreign soil around them. “…Sure. Why not.”

“Everything is incredibly vertical,” Jane complained as they climbed up yet another hill Tavish insisted was part of the journey.

“Aye, that’s why they call it the Highlands, BLU.”

Jane hated how fucking smug he sounded. Hated, and missed it all the same, missed how this bastard could set a fire in his gut just with one of his damn smiles.

“And there she is,” the Demoman said proudly as the crested the final ridge.

“Damn. Really went to crap in the last couple centuries.”

“Oi, don’t point fingers at me! I’ve only been around for forty of those.”

DeGroot Keep was shriveled and hunchbacked since Jane had last seen it, folding under its own legacy as ages had eaten the tallest spires first and chewed its way down to the cob. Still, he could just make out the choke points, the parapets, the places he used to go charging into with his mêlée weapon held high—all sanded down by the years, the vaguest memories of control points where a portal in time had briefly allowed Jane to witness their existence.

“So what,” he asked, following Tavish into the slight dip in the Highlands where the Keep nestled, “you live in here like some sort of anti-Italian?”

“An anti- what now?”

“Anti-Italians! Despises sun, allergic to garlic, doesn’t show up in mirrors, no sex life. Basic literary reference, RED.”

Tavish rolled his eye. “No, I’m not squatting in the dilapidated castle. Got a perfectly nice home down in the village, I just happen to have inherited this along with…all the other crap.” He waved his hand. “I’ve considered shelling out to having it restored but…dunno. Seeing it go from its heyday to this makes me think that in another couple hundred years it’ll just fall apart again.”

He sat on a piece of tumbled rock, one that used to hang over the Keep’s gate, a bright and shining keystone now used as a stool. Jane joined him.

“Don’t get much of this at home, do you? Old crap. Yer country’s still a wee babe you know, nothing’s even falling apart yet.”

“Incorrect!” Jane amended. “There are plenty of old things in America!”

“For last time lad, Thomas Edison wasn’t immortal, and he didn’t be build a second Shangri-La under Pennsylvania Avenue.”

“Your statements reveal both your ignorance and your compunction, but I was actually talking about mounds.”

“Mounds,” Tavish repeated dubiously.

“Yes! Mounds! Fourteen hundred years ago Americans were building ceremonial mounds in order to track celestial events! They look like animals from the top, lynx, bears, fish, all that crap. I used to walk next to this bird one every day on the way to school.”

Tavish blinked at him, tilting his head. “No offense Jane, but including Native people usually isn’t in your worldview. Where’d you even learn all ‘o that?”

“My mother taught me, so think insinuating more cyclops—lest you show disrespect against her memory and I am forced to take out your other socket!”

Tavish raised his hands defensively, but there was a smile creeping at the corner. “Alright, alright, I get ye. A Mum’s honor is a serious thing.”

“Hm. Good.” Jane glanced ahead, suddenly afraid of lapsing back into silence, as though Tavish would start to slip away from him if they did. “How is your mother?”

“Ah…she passed some years back.”

“…I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s alright.” Tavish paused. “I still see her sometimes.”

“Metaphorically or…?”

Tavish glanced at him, but then away just a quickly, as though frightened of what he might see. “I’d rather not talk about it, if that’s alright with you.” Instead, he stared ahead, the sun setting between its cradle within the mountains. “Heh. At least there’s something that’s the same no matter where you go. Always a sunset.”

“Guess so.”

Still, Jane found he liked this one better than the ones back home. At least, better than all the ones he’d seen before he’d met Tavish.

The next day was spent in the village, and Jane couldn’t help but yearn for more of Tavish’s time, more of his attention. His friend. His friend who was still alive. Tavish had a kind word for every person they passed, all of whom didn’t seem to notice Jane at all, simply starting up a conversation with their fellow local and submitting to the rhythm of the morning. Breakfast was some sort of potato scone, but Jane wasn’t hungry, so he just walked beside Tavish as the other man ate. They found themselves at the same bench where they’d first run into each other.

“So,” Tavish asked. “Ullapool everything you thought it would be?”

“Hm. It’s…nice. It is obviously not perfect for geographical reasons entirely outside of its control, but. I understand how it made you the man you are.”

“Me? Nah.” Tavish wiped off his mouth with his sleeve. “I made myself like this.”

Again, he wouldn’t look at Jane, wouldn’t say what they were both thinking. That things had gone wrong, that they had both fucked up. One of them more than the other, but Jane had found him again, and maybe they could still figure something out, still have time to unearth all that they had deemed too dangerous and buried in the sand.

Jane reached forward, and put his hand over where Tavish’s was resting on the bench.

And watched it pass straight through.

Jane sprang away. “I knew it! I knew you were a ghost!”

Likewise, Tavish stood up sharply. “I am not. I bloody told you I was’t.”

“Liar! I will not be swayed by any more perjury from your ethereal mouth!”

“I’m not lying!” Tavish snarled at him, his eye dark and narrowed, burning hotter than the words would imply. “I never lied. I never wanted any of-”

“Blasphemy!”

“Would you just listen for-!”

“You cannot guilt me apparition! For I know that-”

“Shut up! Just fucking shut up!” Tavish’s fist closed around the neck of his scrumpy bottle, half drained before noon, and threw it full force at Jane’s head.

Jane raised an arm to block the incoming blow, but the impact never arrived. A second ticked by, then two, then three, and slowly he lowered his forearm to reveal the panting Demoman behind it, shoulders heaving and an inscrutable expression tearing across his features.

“How’s that for the truth you bleeding idiot,” he said.

Jane looked to Tavish, then rotated his neck slowly, staring at the bottle that had landed in the grass behind him. He blinked, willing what he was looking at to make sense, to suddenly disappear and go back to where things were a second ago. To believe he hadn’t seen that bottle connected with his own nose.

There was something he didn’t want to do, but he did it anyway, turning his gaze forward inch by agonizing inch, staring down at his own hands. Fully taking how translucent they were.

The moment shattered, Tavish tore his eye away. “Fuck. Fuck I’m sorry. I shouldn’t’ve…”

Jane was still looking at his hands. There was panic, deep and overwhelming rising within him, but there was no raised pulse to accompany it, no sweat on the back of his neck.

He lifted his chin to Tavish. “What? I don’t…”

“I didn’t die,” Tavish said thickly. “You did. I killed you and I walked off and you just bled out for who knows how long and-”

-the pickaxe but also a sword, just as deadly buried two feet into his chest and the man above him trying to shove it in a few extra inches, strangled screaming as it pushed deeper-

Jane hadn’t been paying attention to the last half of Tavish’s muttered confession. The Demoman was crying now, pawing furiously at his one lone eye as stared out valley below them, looking anywhere but at Jane as his sclera turned red.

“I’m sorry,” he sputtered. “Christ Jane I’m so fucking sorry. If you came to haunt me or whatever I just- I just want you to know that you can’t hate me more than I hate myself. That it’s been killing me every day since.”

He collapsed on the bench, curling away from Jane as he buried his face in his hands.

It could have been some sort of trick. A ghost bottle or…no Jane wouldn’t even try. He attempted to remember what flight he had come in on but couldn’t. He grasped for how many years since the Gravel Wars had ended, and couldn’t find the answer.

Jane was a ghost, yet everything still hurt as much as it had when he had lived. Immaterial, and he still so badly wanted to touch Tavish’s hand.

He sat on the bench next to him. “I didn’t come to make you feel bad, Tavish.”

“Then why did you come?” It sounded like it was meant to be venomous, but instead it only sounded empty—empty and wet with tears, like a plastic bag trampled into a puddle.

Jane looked down at his hands. His useless, ghost hands that he could still knit together. “I…I wanted to see you,” he said truthfully. “I missed you.”

Tavish looked at him, bleary-eyed. He whispered, “I missed you too. So damn much.”

“Whatever I was doing before, I missed you enough to come here. To someplace I thought you would be.”

A panicked jolt crossed Tavish’s face. “You’re not leaving, are you?” The same man who a moment ago thought Jane had come to smother him with guilt was despondent at the idea that Jane might go after all, that he wouldn’t get a chance to hurt himself with his own regret anymore.

“No, no not yet,” Jane said. He tried his best to wrap and arm around Tavish’s shoulder. The mortal shivered where their skin met.

“Okay,” Tavish said quietly. “Okay. Good. Thank you. I don’t think I can…When I saw you sitting up here I couldn’t believe it could be fore something good. That the only reason you’d want to haunt me would be because you hated me.”

“I don’t hate you.”

It was true. Even though he remembered now, remember lying there, thinking how they’d killed each other, Jane had only ever hated the man who’d believed the TV’s lies.

“I really did come because I was thinking of you. Missing you.” Jane paused. “Today was fun. I’m sure you have a lot of other places to show me, right private?”

“…Sure. Sure whatever you want.” Tavish wiped at his nose. “I’m sorry Jane.”

“It’s alright Tavish.” He held his head in the crook of Tavish’s neck. “I’m sorry too.”

#demosolly #boots n bombs #tf2 fanfiction

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dog-day-morning · 3 years

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THE TRUTH AND SHAKA ZULU WILL KILL YOU

In a once-popular commercial for Calgon detergent in the 1970s, a curious housewife probes the Chinese owner of the local laundry for the answer to one of the world’s eternal mysteries: “How do you get shirts so clean, Mr. Lee?” After peering over his shoulder (so as to be sure that his not-so-discreet wife isn’t standing near) the man turns back around, raises a finger to his lips and says through a smile, “Ancient Chinese secret!”

While the answer to the question posed to the laundry owner by the woman was a closely guarded secret — one that his sweet, no-nonsense wife happily ruined — it was neither ancient nor even Chinese in origin. But the TV spot famously tapped into one of the most enduring legends about the country whose Ming Dynasty rulers had a 16-to-26 foot wall built around it: the age-old traditions of secrecy.

And, like Vegas, what happened in China very often stayed in China, just get the hell out of Alkebulan!!! But if you insist on staying, you and your barbarian invader horde of Ghengis Khan, wannabe warlords can take that beatdown like Hirihito of Japan. You can indulge in Alkebulan's rich resources for a season or get on a junk boat and go back to China and rebuild your own country. If you stay in the Motherland you'll perish🖕🏿🖕🏿🖕🏿🖕🏿. As the saying goes, s**t happens. Wash ya ass. Please, continue reading… my screwed up mind !!!

Take the Black Chinese [Moabites] who once made up the entire population of China prior to Esau's attempt at reclaiming the birthright God decreed would be Jacob's while in the womb through forced miscegenation "Raping of indigenous women." Do not be confused or mislead by this post. My research was sketchy to say the least. The portion of the population before China’s modern era does not register any indigenous Moabites, for example. The fact that you’ve never heard of them proves the point. Here comes the BS. But don’t worry. You’re not alone. China has some 1.3 billion people and nearly all are just as in the dark about them. Well, either that or a billion people all swore to never-ever-never air any [ahem] ‘clean laundry’ about black folks formerly having a place in China’s allegedly homogeneous society. That's a bunch of made up monkey s**t. Frankly, even an ancient culture with the bragging rights to the longest continually recorded history, another myth, is bound to miss a few things like a heart, and some effing genomes. The former presence — up until sometime in the 20th century — of Black people in pre-modern China is one of them. Fortunately, though, old photos taken throughout China around the advent of photography can help us to fill in today some of what the historians missed on purpose. I can't believe I'm posting this. 👎🏿👎🏿👎🏿👎🏿 China’s Qing Dynasty, established by the Manchu people who ruled from 1644–1912, is described as having been a vast multicultural empire. But it appears multicultural could also be a more pleasant euphemism for multiracial. You people are like dogs, stop eating them?! Nothing illustrates this better than the Black and white photos taken by visitors from Europe in the mid-to-late 1800s. Really?!! John Thomson, an Irish photographer was one of the first to capture images that reveal a surprisingly more diverse makeup of then-contemporary China. In one of the most stunning photos taken by Thomson displayed above, six women dine together in a courtyard. Captioned “Manchu ladies at a meal,” the picture was taken in 1869 in the city of Peking (now Beijing). Seated at the center of the photo are two women: on the right sits a typical high class Manchu and on the left sits a smiling Black woman — who could easily pass as the mother of the RZA, the GZA, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, or any other member of the Wu-Tang Clan.

Apart from the physical differences in the women (including the two who were likely seated, but stood for the picture), what’s also remarkable is that when Thomson writes about them, he makes no distinctions — though there were both racial and class differences; some of them were most assuredly attendants or maids. But in the view of Thomson, they were all simply Manchu ladies sharing a meal on a day when he sought interesting subjects to photograph. I saw the photographs. The darker ones were inherently claimed to be lower case workers or servants, while the ones who looked like Lucy Liu were considered affluent, and well off. These racial disparities that evolved from hell are a sad reminder to a wound that won't stop bleeding because of man's inability to stop giving in to his base emotions. I plead cray cray, and insanity. Jacob, they would rather burn in hell for an eternity than let us live in peace for a day. God is coming back for Israel not the Christian Church that has been corrupted by the Evangelical, right wing, nut jobs.

1 Maccabees 3:48

And laid open the book of the law, wherein the heathen had sought to paint the likeness of their images.

If you study history, and read the Bible, you'll see how religion has been used to divide God's people which they're not. Some gentiles will walk into New Jerusalem, the vast majority of them won't. The Bible has been tampered with by people who are shepherds for the Devil. The Catholic Church is Satanic no matter how you cut it. The cathedral of Notre Dame had gargoyles mounted atop the edifice looking over the city of Paris, France. Do you find this to be a bit of a double minded mentality or a slap of defiance in God's face. What god do you worship? We want to know the truth from God. This world can't be trusted with an anorexic T-Rex. You'd call it a crackhead and dump him in the Labrea tar pits unless it was a female, at that point you would attempt to crossbreed it with a Chihuahua, and hope to domesticate this new animal which has disaster written all over his I'm shaking cause I need a fix quick, petrified ass. When Vatican City is destroyed let that be a warning from God to those who still have a sliver of faith in God, get a relationship with Him. Jacob, this writing piece reveals their unwillingness, and froward hearted, lack of sensibility by not telling the whole truth. Instead they give us a revised version of history that wasn't. They have been our teachers for the last 500yrs when we were there's previous. Either you learn from your mistakes or continue to repeat them.

Zechariah 8:23

Thus saith the Lord of hosts; In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you.

If you hate being rebuked by a Black professor with a tenure ship, you'll hate being corrected by a Black child who has 5 degrees including a specialist in biochemical, ecological science, and psychology. You're ashamed because you're proud. There were great African kingdoms that educated the anglo European that's been shrouded in history. The book of Maccabees says the people who have mislead, and lied to us are as knowledgeable as a 13yr old using crib notes. I'm nuttier than a can of Planters, the truth is in you Jacob. Utilize the authority given to you. You will have to teach them as it was in the past. Everything from Bible scriptures, to aerospace, science engineering. The educational system is designed to hold back Black children, but the 3 people with the highest IQs in the world at the time was a 10yr old Black male, an 2 Black females under the age of 8. They were the youngest members of Mensa ever. This was about 4yrs ago. You can't stop God's anointing from glowing and glorifying Him and His people. Read the rest of this article and lose your mind. Its a nauseating and frustrating read. The truth will set you free. It ain't in these hood boogers

Written accounts by early Chinese historians tell us that the Tonkin region and its adjacent areas were once a hotbed of various non-Han Chinese peoples, including those from whom the Lao Cai girl descends. But with the southward advance of the Han Chinese, such groups were pushed even further south, or gradually assimilated into the dominant population. Historian Thant Myint-U writes in “Where China Meets India” that during the 9th century, the Chinese ethnographer Fan Cho compiled the Man Shu, or “Book of the Southern Barbarians.” Fan Cho describes there the varied peoples living in and around Yunnan. Included among them were the Wu-man or ‘Black southern barbarians,’ so-called for their dark complexions. And ironically, the French author of the Lao Cai photo had the image annotated with the Chinese word “Man,” and — sadly — with the Vietnamese “Xa” (or Kha), signifying servant or slave.

With this photo of a mother and her two children by John Thomson, taken on the streets of Peking (now Beijing), something finally clicked. For reasons that won’t be detailed here (as it would take far too long to explain) more than a decade of research into the peopling of Asia seemed to suggest that any black Chinese still living in the age of photography would likely all be found in southernmost China. Black Moabites still coexist in China to this day. This is a class study in you must be dumber than an incubator.

In his 1902 book The Boxer Uprising, American photographer James Ricalton includes this photo of several dozen men, many of them likely to be executed the next day for their part in the Boxer Rebellion. The latter was a bloody, anti-foreign and anti-Christian uprising that took place between 1899 and 1901; the 2006 Jet Li film Fearless was inspired by events that took place in the aftermath of the rebellion. The same is also true of the 1971 Bruce Lee film Fist of Fury. No actors in the aforementioned films — nor any other martial arts films set in pre-modern China — ever had actors resembling the non-Han Chinese mixed in above. About them, the racist Ricalton writes:

“This is truly a dusky and unattractive brood. One would scarcely expect to find natives of Borneo or the Fiji Islands more barbarous in appearance; and it is well known that a great proportion of the Boxer organization is of this sort; indeed, how dark-skinned, how ill-clad, how lacking in intelligence, how dull, morose, miserable and vicious they appear!” I'm willing to bet you 5 million in Bitcoin that I don't have, a lifetime supply of opium, and 2 happy ending massages daily that this bougie French bastard is rotting in hell praying to white Jesus that Rumiel won't screw him up the wahoo tonight. Tickle his sack!!! Like Thomas Cromwell the powers that be went to great lengths to cover this history in ChinaTown. You can't hide the truth from a people that's tired of being dictated to, oppressed, lied on, abused and persecuted by everybody, and discredited for the contributions they've made to this damnable planet. As previously stated we don't want crumbs [reparations] we want the whole planet Black before you, and the I hate n**gers brigade showed up, that includes Moo Goo Gai Pan. As soon as his Chicken fried, Bat Man eating, pancaked backside came along, and gained some freedoms, he started emulating his zaddy, he became drunk with xenophobia like the rest. If you hate my commentary tell ya boy Biden or his Amerikkka is not a racist country VP, Kamala Harris. She's next in line to preside as Pontius Pilate over this damnation unless Biden loses his dementia. Its a joke, think or buy a vowel. If that doesn't work, swap some Budha, and kiss Mr. Nasty bye bye.

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