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@queer-folk-abroad

Queer, vaguely anarchist-ish.Maltheist, daemoniaphile.

Prosecutor: The hit was originally put out by Ayatollah Khomeini, with the state of Iran actually raising more money to add to the bounty over the years-

Defence attorney: Perhaps so, but have you considered that God in His infinite wisdom created the banana with its own biodegradable wrapper? Checkmate, atheists.

This gets so much funnier when you know that wild bananas had seeds in them. Human cultivation is why the bananas in your supermarket don’t.

This was offered as a counterargument at the time, but dealing as it does with selective breeding and documented facts it was never going to be received particularly well by the creationist crowd. Another popular response was to hold up the pineapple - actively hostile to being eaten, and purportedly acidic enough to be quite dangerous if you eat too much - as ‘the theist’s nightmare’.

hostile and dangerous fruit are perfectly biblical

This is a very good point! Unfortunately, invoking actual biblical canon when talking about religion automatically makes you a neckbearded cringe soyboy beardman bugman incel redditor euphoric gay marxist fedora shrek. Sorry mate, I don’t make the rules.

All pairings were submitted! Here are some submitter notes:

Red/Blue (Time War):

oh the whole book is about how gay they are. it's about letters they write to each other fighting on opposite sides of a war to control the stream of time and every timeline and iirc by the end they fight against both sides of the war to carve out a space for themselves

Jedtavius:

the actors played them as if they were a married couple. and jed quoted brokeback mountain
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I mean, Night at the Museum is a fairly well-known mainstream movie and TIHYLTTW is a recent semi-obscure indie book. Obviously Museum wins- more people know it!

sure both of these rhetorical elements come from completely different leftist instincts which mean they may not necessarily contradict (in their fully nuanced form), but when you put them together like this it's very funny

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Not really much contradiction between ‘stealing someone’s home is cringe’ and ‘stealing from faceless companies that screw both their workers and their customers is based,’ any more than it’s hypocritical to support lethal self-defense but not random murder.

Daughter of fantasy villains decides to rebel against her parents by actually going through with her arranged marriage to a local golden retriever of a prince instead of running off with some local villain-to-be or conquering said golden retriever’s kingdom and ruling it solo like her parents expect her to. Plus, sue her, she’s into the clean-cut earnest look.

At the same time, local prince charming discovers that he’s actually very into the gothic fiance his parents have landed him with in order to try and establish peace with the local evil lair down the lane, he would never have guessed a spiderweb pattern could look so fetching on a ball gown…?

Meanwhile, two pairs of parents in a tizzy because they both expected their offspring to whole-heartedly reject this union and give them an excuse to conquer their goody-two-shoes/evil neighbours, they’re not supposed to actually like each other-!

respective friend groups undergoing culture clash like all of prince charming’s knights are like what vile spell has been used to ensorcel our prince.  we must be on our guard for surely this is but a ruse for an assassination attempt

meanwhile the villain bride’s friends are all like clearly he loves you not, why do you persist in a manner that will ensure your own heart break, i mean if he was taking this seriously there would be at least three assassination attempts by now.  it’s like he doesn’t even notice that you have massive amounts of dark power to covet for his own

smashcut to

fully armored knight, clanging through the hallways in attempts at stealth, blades drawn: i’m just saying, i took an oath of protection.  this feels wrong.

prince charming: it’s not wrong, it’s celebrating cross cultural traditions for my beloved bride

knight: it’s attempted murder

prince charming: it’s a loving attempted murder

@chucktaylorupset  Meanwhile the bride has a bouquet of roses, cornflowers, and wheat sheaves on her desk in her room, and she’s not coming out until she’s written a beautiful and moving poem about how they favourably compare to her groom. It’s been three days. She’s gone through an entire raven’s worth of quills (unethically sourced). The ‘toads who used to be my friends’ list has gone up by one. But she’s bent dark forces and eldritch spirits to her will and, by the powers obscene, this will not be the thing that breaks her.

Sorceress friend: Please, just get him an amulet that will double his power at the cost of his soul, no one’s worth this.

Rebellious villainess: (nearly in tears) No, he brought his best knights to the castle and tried to kill me last week, at midnight, I can’t ignore something like that! He even kicked Cathulhu!

Sorceress friend: He nudged it with his foot. And then he apologized to it. In tears.

Rebellious villainess: (actually in tears now, for reasons of feels instead of poetic torment) He’s trying so hard!!!

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everyone shut the fuck up and listen. i love decadence, i love filth, i love perversion; i love depravity and deviance and hedonism. i love corruption, i love the obscene. i love debauchery, i love all things sordid, i love the thrill of scandal. i love reveling in being a sicko. it brings me closer to god

anime girl fascist who travels back in time to the era she considers the “golden age” of her country’s history so she can live amongst those she regarded as pureblooded [nationality]. however, when she’s actually there, she found that not only was society far different from how she had imagined it, but also no one during that time period regarded her as being part of their nationality either because her culture, language, beliefs, practices, etc. were all completely different from theirs. rather, they all referred to her as “the foreigner” because none of them can figure out where in the world she came from, and her politics are dismissed as extremism rather than what she thought they would also believe in. instead, she is forced to reckon with the fact that history and identity are constantly being constructed, and that despite descending from a specific group just a few hundred years ago, she has in fact little in common with her ancestors because time is always marching forward, and life is constantly changing

Everyone is so mean with Misty even though she is so helpful. « Oh she is such a psycho I bet she murdered her friend ». I mean yes. She literally did do that. But it doesn’t reflect well on you at all that you immediately jumped to that conclusion without any proof.

I'm not up to date on the latest terminology but I believe Misty is what's called a "Vriska" around these parts

Like, this is a lovely thought, but you understand that will mean that the barista's kids have to go to the same school as your kids? That your neighborhood will contain baristas? That some barista-income housing will exist in your neighborhood? That barista-type people will be 15 minutes travel from your home?

The barista will never be able to afford to live in the 15 minute city in the US, or we wouldn't call it a 15 minute city, we'd call it something uncomplenentary, parents would desperately try to get their kids out, and neither the police nor "nice" people would want to go there.

You are so close.

I just took a shit ton of mental damage from that comment. Like. Is there something wrong with living on the same street or a neighborhood or two over from a barista? Are the children of baristas that different that they can’t be allowed at the same schools as other children? We are all human beings. They are the same. If you don’t want them living near you or interacting with your children, then there is something wrong with you or your upbringing or both.

Have you met low-income people? Have you seen low-income neighborhoods? Low-income schools? Are you a professional social worker, medical industrial complex worker, or something like that where you actually interact with the low-income people? Or are you talking out your ass from a red-lined suburb with a "ban the beast" anti- affordable housing sign on your lawn next to a Democratic candidate sign?

Section 8 people don't want to live around Section 8 people! Why would you think people who aren't Section 8 would want a petty criminal moving in next door, or his babymamma with his kid who will proceed to disrupt your kid's education? (And yes, #notall, that's my entire point about how Section 8 people don't want to be around other Section 8 people, but absolutely everyone knows that the probabilities are not in your favor.)

Like, it would be lovely to do this a different way, but income-integrated housing will require essentially remaking society. Not necessarily a bad project, but absolutely not a minor one easily accomplished, or one that isn't going to piss off everyone or have a huge volume of downstream effects. Like, it sucks to be poor, and it sucks worse when the only grocery store you can get to is a Whole Foods, etc

So, how did we do it before? Specifically, when the ratio of '40 hours minimum wage' to 'one months rent' (Or, for that matter, one year of college) was much more in favor.

The bigger issue is that poor neighborhoods also have Starbucks. My roommate manages a very popular restaurant in Lake Oswego and can't get bussers who are at all reliable or able to work good hours because you can't live in Lake Oswego on a Busser's salary (It's getting hard in Portland, too) so why not just get a low skill job in a neighborhood that you can actually live in?

Section 8 housing tends to be full of people who don't have steady jobs; your assertion here must be that most low-skilled workers who can hold down a job are also violent and dangerous, which strikes me as a rather alarming belief.

In summary, America is cruel to the weak, who are dangerous enough when they are desperate, imagine how much harm we would do if left to our own devices?

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the essential reactionary myth is that everyone has some inherent character, and that this explains their behaviour and place in the social order.

This is a way of thinking that goes back at least as far as Aristotle, who noted that slaves tend to have a servile attitude and concluded that this was because they were natural-born slaves -- an obviously stupid position for any modern person, who would immediately recognise that the situation is the exact opposite of Aristotle's claim.

And it's a way of thinking that is repeated wherever there is inequality, in order to provide moral justification for that inequality -- it's natural, these people are inevitably going to end up poor due to their inherent nature, any attempt to change this is misguided and will have disastrous unintended consequences etc. The same essential argument is the basis for racism, sexism, and nationalism.

This fundamental (deliberate) misunderstanding of the nature of the human animal, which is in fact highly adaptable and sensitive to social structures such that if you change the structures then you will see the development of a different character, is the foundation of most conservative thought.

I live in a small rural town where a quarter of the population is below federal poverty line. A barista population sounds pretty classy?

Britney Spears was the Dionysian feminist sexual liberation figurehead of the postmodern matrix but now the Kardashians are wearing antlers and deer paint and banging 30 men a day to represent the divine feminine spirit as a fertile earth goddess. we must return to basics but we must not postpone dance madness to another day. the re-emergence of fakirs and snake charmers and hermits brings out the corruption of idolatry (modern idol, combo album with various music stars, brands, etc) the church will give us back the real. but did anyone think we’d ever come this far so quickly. look at the change in the world look at the rapid evolution of culture by means of technology, we need to get back to the basics. and women, i’ll tell ya. we must return to the old ways when women were bestial and flame haired and bathed in the souls of poets, i’ll say.

saw this without noticing the url and legit assumed it was a kontextmaschine post for several sentences.

we must return to the old ways when women were bestial and flame haired and bathed in the souls of poets, i’ll say.

Strong agree

they should invent shoes that don't rip themselves asunder within a year

If you can find them in your size, I swear by Army surplus boots.

I’ve had two pairs of desert combat boots from the thrift store, couldn't have paid more than 25 for both pairs together, and they’re still going strong and comfortable five years later, no sign of wear at all. And I’m still on the first pair, haven’t even touched pair number 2.

One of the absolute biggest failures of the US/Western "left" is the fact that most people are only capable of being anti-imperialist in the abstract and/or in hindsight. "Of course invading Iraq was bad!" people will say. "Of course invading Vietnam was bad! Of course the US lied about Iraq in the 90s to initiate the Gulf War!" (and Vietnam in the 60s, and Iraq again in the 2000s). But when it comes to what the empire is doing now people get fucking goldfish brains and are incapable of critically analyzing any new information. You see, we just have to stay in Syria to save the Kurds and defeat Assad. We just have to go to war with China if they try to reunify Taiwan to protect democracy. We should have stayed in Afghanistan to protect women and girls. Or people will try to both-sides it and say "well of course US imperialism is bad, but [insert Official Enemy State here] is just as bad if not worse!". Then when the empire makes its move and inevitably it kills thousands of people and makes the world objectively worse, then people will say "oh I guess it was bad after all", and the "anti-imperialists" of 20 years from now will pat themselves on the back for remembering that bad thing the empire did and knowing it definitely was bad.

All of this is supremely useless. If anti-imperialism means anything it means stopping the empire before it ever even starts, and if it does start, doing any and everything possible to sabotage and defeat it.

It’s simply untrue that opposition to the invasion of Iraq was mostly only adopted by us/western leftists retroactively. There was a gigantic antiwar movement! Possibly the biggest ever! It was decidedly not a majority among the American public, but it was definitely the standard position among anyone considering themselves a socialist, or even a left-liberal. It failed, tragically, but trying to write an enormous and energetic antiwar movement out of history is offensive to those who took part in it

I fucking marched in an anti Iraq War protest with my mother ffs. My mother hung the anti-war poster we held up when we marched on our fireplace- it’s still there today. Opposition to the war was a mainstream liberal opinion. The fucking Dixie Chicks protested the goddamned war before it was even formally declared for fucks sake, and it’s not like they were card-carrying Maoists or anything, just regular Americans who hated war and pointless death.

Is the tongue-in-cheek dudebro reputation that I see people attach to Infinite Jest because it's not very good but men seem to love it anyway (i.e. Rambo or Predator), or is it one of those things that's extremely good but has been over-praised by men who don't fully understand it (i.e. Fight Club or American Psycho)

Predator is astonishing shut all the fuck the way up.

Predator took the cheesy 80s action movie format and transitioned it halfway through into an action-horror slasher and forced Arnold motherfucking Schwarzenegger to be a Final Girl and the Predator is bangable as fuck

how to not get cancelled

dont talk about sex

talking about sex on your blog that people have to actively choose to follow is exposing them to sexual content they don't want to see and tantamount to sexual assault. doubly so if you're into thoughtcrimes maladaptive fetishes like cnc or petplay or [something else i personally dislike]

don't defend yourself

defending yourself is what abusers do, and definitive proof the accusations are true, never mind whether what you've been accused of is actually bad. humbly accept whatever penance is asked of you and come to terms with the fact that any harassment you receive isn't about you, it's about keeping the community safe for everyone

don't defend your friends

the only reason someone would defend their friends is if a) they're doing the same thing or maybe even something worse or b) they've been groomed/brainwashed/blackmailed into supporting an abuser

don't have friends in the first place

the only reason someone like you would have friends at all is to groom them or manipulate them into believing your own harmful beliefs about "private sexual practices between consenting adults" [read: sex crimes that you should definitely be locked up or chemically castrated for], so just avoid talking to others to begin with. this gives your enemies less ammunition and definitely doesn't socially isolate you

delete your blog

this doesn't actually stop people from trying to cancel you, but it does make it harder for them to send normal and well-justified harassment and suicide bait, so you should do it as a precautionary measure anyway