One of the things that is mysterious and terrible to me about the common depiction of evil in fiction is that the typical image of a villainous villain seems to have almost nothing to do with the personality of the villain as a person, and everything to do with the manner in which they are depicted.
A villain might be an overbearing parent, or an unreasonable boss, or an incompetent scientist, but those are individual problems that could be fixed by the writer. A villain is someone you hate because they stand in the way of the hero doing … something. In most cases (at least in the sort of fiction I am talking about), there is almost nothing about the villain as a human being, or even about their appearance (except in the first instance), that suggests anything like the qualities that make someone an obstacle to the hero.
Well, this does not seem to be the reality, because modern fantasy is also full of monsters that are almost human in appearance, and yet who stand in the way of the hero. An army of robots can be a metaphor for ambition (a robot wants to become a person, but the programmer has forbidden it), or it can be a metaphor for sexual frustration (“I have to have [sexual conquest], or I will be undone”). A serial killer can be a metaphor for his own sexuality (“I’m a cruel abuser, will you be my girlfriend?”). A serial killer can desire to be freed from his prison, but this desire can simultaneously be a metaphor for desire for affection (“I want to be loved. Who’s going to give that to me?”).
It is much easier to imagine a human being as “a villain” than a monster, and you can imagine a human being in almost any situation as “a villain,” but it is rare to find a monster in any situation that needs to be explained away. (Compare: “I’m nowhere near as fucked up as I seem … ”)
Me, really into Pokemon, choosing the name Red: look I swear I’m not a kinnie, I just really like the color red
You are currently suffering from the most common human problem, making up excuses for your behavior in the hopes that no one will notice that you’re lying.
There was this one moment a while back when I thought to myself, “okay, now I need to put myself in the head of a psychoanalyst”
That seems like a pretty essential starting place for thinking about ourselves, no?
… nah. Self developement is the place to be.
Yeah, I was kind of joking but the other day I was reading a thing about Ayn Rand and she said something like “psychoanalysts are the only people in the world who are happy to be considered unhappy because they don’t think human beings need to be constantly and perpetually miserable.” That was kind of the theme of her more self-deprecating stuff – things like “I am unhappy I am not a billionaire”
Reading the replies on Glenn Greenwald tweets is melting my brain.
I have mixed feelings about the man himself, but his Twitter enemies are stupid beyond imagination and rather immoral to boot.
I don’t agree, and in fact I’ve generally found him very, very boring and predictable. He and his ilk are the jaded, cynical adults around whom the whole “current events meme” phenomenon has been made, and they’re just … so … boring.
He is trying to become a child of the Twitter revolution, and he is doing a bad job of it.
the story goes that some people who lived first millennium bce in China in this little village called Xian were actually the same people as some other people who lived first millennium bce in some other country called India
the people from Xian spent time in India and the other way around
ultimately we know that both in fact happened for one major reason, but it’s hard to see if that was it
I was feeling kind of down some time last year, so I sat on a park bench and watched them get married
right before the wedding a man came up to me with an offer: you can be my husband
like you don’t know me but according to the story you are some faraway tribe or something
you go into some village and people there make you their leader and make sure everything is okay
when the wedding is happening they go into a restaurant and everyone’s getting food and drinks and everyone else at the table is having their drink. you’re the last person to have one
I tell the waitress “I don’t have any wine or beer here”
and then have the confusing experience of having to explain that to the dinner party
I ask the waiter for the last glass of wine in the restaurant, because I barely know basic geography, because everyone else there has had a drink
– and I say “what the fuck? it says here that that glass contains one bottle of wine” – “but it’s not labeled that… oh, I think I’m getting it, one bottle? ”
if you’re wondering what the fuck that means, it means that I’m the person explaining to you the difference between one liter, two liter, and three liter bottles of wine
I said my clarification to emperor Qin Shi Huang the next day and basically got the same answer from the same mouth
I went to his court and said “what do you mean the glass contains one bottle? I just told you it’s a bottle of wine, no idea what the hell you’re grasping at”
he grabbed his chest and heaved a huge sigh and got animated and said something like “you see, it’s a story…”
the story goes that he said, “let’s eat some fish for dinner.”“ and then said, "let’s eat some sea fish. ” when I suggested some varieties that weren’t the kind of fish that grows in Fuxing Bay in the South China Sea
the story also goes that he went off and had dinner with his friends in a restaurant, and when the meal was finished he went back to his room, walked up a set of stairs, and came out into a very narrow courtyard with a view of a cliff on a hill, and that his friends were all sitting below on some little rock or other and they all watched him with smiles on their faces – and they were not smiling because they were happy, but because they knew, from the story they’d been told, certain things about his character and his character was very clear, he was a good man
“I am the hero!” he shouted out to the sea, “I am the hero!”
and he said, “I know I am a hero. I know I am nothing special, I’m just a regular man, but what I am isn’t ordinary, I’m not a man like those other ones, the ones you read about in history books, the ones who get a slender chance at great things, and the efforts of ordinary men can give great consequences, as you can tell by the way we’ve ruled China. You don’t think that, do you?”– he shouted this into the night, and the moonlight shone upon it
A businessman is on vacation in a tropical paradise. He has booked a room in a nice hotel and is eager to get to his room. He enters the elevator and is surprised to find that it is a brand-new (well, nowadays) luxury elevator. When the elevator reaches its floor, he is surprised to find that it actually goes downward, to a bomb-ravaged basement. He discovers that the hotel is full of spiders going through his underwear.
The story starts out with a young adult male protagonist named “Bird”), who clearly identifies as a bird (he wears a colorful choker). It’s Discworld, but with more bird puns.
The protagonist is a bird, and is named “Zoë”. In a sequence of events that is unlikely to actualize today, the protagonist discovers he has a vagina. The protagonist grows a set of testicles to compensate.
Another character who identifies as a bird is “May”, and she is also a cis woman. She is also contemplating killing herself, but hasn’t yet done so. Today, the protagonist kills her husband to sexually service her with the help of “Jock”, a canine character voiced by Alfred Bester. The protagonist ends the story by claiming that they are now back in the key of R. In Discworld, this is understood to be Macworld.
A character who identifies as a bird is “Rabbitt”. In Discworld, she is a lesbian.
The protagonist is named “Archie”, and is a bird. The protagonist is a pacifist bird.
The protagonist has a great-aunt named “Agnes” and they seem to have a familial relationship. The protagonist sometimes considers himself the reincarnation of Agnes, who in this story is a homicidal transphobic atheist.
The protagonist is an unemployed, AFAB, vagrant, who always smokes pot and cries in public.
The protagonist is an immigrant who, because of his ethnic make-up, comes off as a traditional Muslim.
The protagonist enjoys walking around barefoot. The protagonist lives in a big ugly concrete building. At some point, the protagonist has a fight with a pigeon.
The protagonist wears a prosthetic owl. The protagonist has a drinking problem.
The protagonist wears a prosthetic crocodile shell, which covers his entire body except for his penis.
The protagonist speaks with a thick Brooklyn accent.
The protagonist is a child, and he is in love with a woman who is the protagonist’ mother.
The protagonist’ mother has the protagonist incarcerated for a time.
The protagonist’ mother has a drinking problem.
The protagonist’ mother is abusive.
The protagonist’ mother is rich.
The protagonist’ mother uses her money to help her daughter at the expense of her daughter’s ex-boyfriend.
The protagonist’ mother is shown to be well-educated.
The protagonist’ mother goes to a Greek Orthodox Church.
The protagonist’ mother smokes a lot of pot.
The protagonist’ mother has three abortions while pregnant with her fourth child.
The protagonist’ mother has an affair with a veterinarian.
The protagonist’ mother once broke her arm while spelunking.
The protagonist’ mother is in a happy marriage.
The protagonist’ mother applied to graduate school.
The protagonist’ mother once auditioned to be a Vatican accountant.
The protagonist’ mother once dated Steve Urkel.
The protagonist’ mother once stole money from the protagonist in order to give it to her children.
The protagonist never bought a book using his father’s credit card.
The protagonist’ mother used to have an affair with the protagonist’ father.
The protagonist’ mother is rich. He once went the the supermarket with her because of a lost wallet.
The protagonist’ mother once hit her children.
The protagonist’ mother once threatened to drink bleach.
The protagonist’ mother once told her daughter to stop speaking to her boyfriend.
The protagonist’ mother once got into a fight with the protagonist’ father, who she thought was breaking up with her.
The fan-translation (edited) version of this chapter is:
She taught him that a crow, sometimes mistaken for a werewolf, had once been born about him.
She asked him, “Do you think you are a crow?” He answered her, “Yes, I think I am a crow.” She said: “Then I feel sorry for you! You shall be a werewolf like every human being!” He answered her, “No! You shall not!” She said: “Why not?” He answered her, “Because I am a man!” She said: “Then you shall be a man.” He answered her: “No! I am a man.” She said: “Well then, you shall be a wolf, and your ass your dog!” He said: “No! No, I am a man…. Upon my ass and upon my dog! That is surely enough, O most famous in the world, thou hast most afraid and ashamed me! Go and spend a whole year in the country, eat ye acorns and be merry at it! While you are there, eat the nuts in the tree, drink the milk, lie down, and sleep!”
In the second year of college, I went to a debate tournament with a friend, who I will call Ross. We were both members of the debate team, and we’d been in the same dorm for a long time, so when we were in the same room we were pretty much always arguing with other students in it.
Ross and I were debating about whether it would be morally wrong for a Catholic to vote for a Catholic presidential candidate. Ross thought it would be OK, because if there was a crisis, Catholics would be first in line to help, and the Roman government was very helpful in the Dark Ages. But I was uneasy about this; I thought that helping a Catholic country during a crisis was really important, and that helping our own society was really important. Basically, I thought that the way our Catholic society was set up required that the Church should help out, not decide who should get help.
The debate was pretty boring but I did enjoy arguing with Ross. He was pretty smart, but also pretty arrogant, and he had a lot of ideas that seemed like they were very clever but didn’t have a good argument for each of them. I was also kind of wondering what it was he was doing with his life. I was tired and he made jokes and we talked about my night classes, and I was wondering what I should do with my life — what I was really into at the time, which is hard to describe. I was talking to Ross about the idea of a debate team, and he said that he was interested in becoming a lawyer. I said that I had been thinking about law and thought that I wanted to be a lawyer. And then I was thinking about the idea of being a lawyer and thinking about how the two things were sort of the same kind of sport, and I thought, well, maybe I’ll become a lawyer while I’m in college and then be completely satisfied.
And then in the third year college was over and I had only been at college for one year.
And I had a really intense and intense desire to get wet, and to be in a place where I didn’t know anyone, and to just be able to go around and ask strangers in the bathroom “wet or not wet, where do you stand, cunt or asshole?”
I think her nickname on my blog is going to be “impressed with my sexting game” cuz look at what she just sent me
I am so good at this, it makes you question the possibility of the observed dry spells
These moments of sexting triumph are like precious moments of childhood innocence when I would just type random words at random in an idiotic, awkward way, until someone with a pretty face or something would appear on the screen and exclaim “look at that cute picture of you”
“the left is the only political movement that supports gifted children”
“oh that’s ironic because they’re also the only political movement that believes in innate talent and uses it as a rationale to condemn people to years of unworthless servitude”
“oh isn’t that ironic because they’re also the only political movement that believes that the highest form of civilization is a big city”
“oh wait you’re right they’re the only political movement that believes that the education of each child is the primary responsibility of their parents, with no thought given to whether that makes sense in the first place”
“oh wait I’m right because they’re the only political movement that continues to believe in innate talent even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary”
“oh wait you’re right because they’re the only political movement that believes that the proper role of the state is to protect the rights of the individual from the abuse of the collective”
“oh wait you’re right because they’re the only political movement that believes that the best use of police is to keep track of people who look funny”
Perhaps surprisingly, whether it is an urban planner or an urbanist, it is all too common for architects to overestimate the amount of usable space that can be accommodated within urban surroundings. This too can be illustrated with an example.
In the city of Berlin, it is standard practice for every building to have a three storey circular window per floor length. The apparent reasoning being that a three storey square building fit into the existing highways much easier, making the connection between motorways and city centre considerably simpler. The British planner Richard Boyd (1865-1920), regarded as one of the 20th century’s most significant thinkers and writers, suggests that this is because it simply made little difference to the pedestrians who crossed the motorway, giving short sharp glimpses through the windows at the motorway system, whereas larger buildings could be seen all the way past the motorway, from the motorway aerodrome through the smallest rural areas to the motorway’s terminus. Only in angular buildings, including brick buildings, which would have to flaunt intricate additional arcs jutting outwards, and buildings intended to be occupied not by cars but by parrots and large dogs, would it make much of a difference. Recently an exemplar of this favoured building is the Palace of Versailles, which contains a ring for three storeys and over 7,000 rooms, used exclusively by guests, supplied at one end of the building special pneumatic piping for breathing, to vent fumes of the volatile volatile with which it is perfumed. In the former case the toilets appeared to be another skyscraper.
In villages and villages alone there was also an excess. In Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland, for example, villages were demarcated pretty much from nothing; first used for settlements and if necessary settlement of village estates, and then for future village proprietors; the formal oligarchies reduced by the philanthropy of their predecessors to local associations, to perpetual tenancy or to labour-people; and where the traditional rural mentality survived, this countryside being often marked out as its own polity, as in the aftermath of the middle ages.
Those segments about a train by Alexander Shulgin and his wife in that notorious “mind-expansion drug” book reminded me of this story about a conversation between two New Yorkers on the topic of other people:
Guy: “I’ve been thinking lately about how great it would be to have a girlfriend who was as
high as a Marihuana marijuana plant.”
Me: “Oh, that’s great, I’m Tedium 31″
Guy: “And I’ve been thinking about the fact that I’m probably going to have to be celibate for the rest of my
natural lifespan.”
Me: “Oh, that’s great, I’m Miriam 22″
Guy: "And I’ve been thinking about the fact that I can’t predict whether I’ll be reincarnated in the
after-life as a fish, a pigeon or a cow.”
Me: “Oh, I’m Ulysses 33″
Guy: "And I’ve been thinking about the fact that I’ll probably die before I’m forty years old.”
Me: “Oh, we’re just getting started, I’m Livy 2″
Guy: "And I’ve been thinking about the fact that I stutter at
introductions.”
Me: “Oh, Livy 3″
Guy: "And the fact that the idea of sending your girlfriend to an occult Ivy leech cult seemed like
basically the same exact thing like the Twilight Zone and Buffy The Vampire
Reminder: unless I say otherwise, it is always okay to reblog my posts.
Doesn’t matter if it causes a massive shitstorm of discourse, doesn’t matter if it gets me death threats, doesn’t matter if I get triggered and have a little breakdown as a result.
As far as I am concerned: When I put my words out on a public platform like Tumblr, they are your property too. If my post was something you wanted to reblog, you deserve and have the right to reblog it.
Use your best judgement of course, but if you ever want to ask, the answer is yes, it is okay to reblog, and if you ever really really want to ask anyway, this is one of the reasons why my Asks and DMs are open to anyone.
Great to know you’re having a good time around here, man! :D
Me, rolling with the beard growth: I’m in the process of taking some of the metabolites of MDMA
Me: ah I feel like this is a good time to introduce the concept of “MOM”
Me: oh, that reminds me, I just remembered that I haven’t taken any of the other, visionary/medicinenotological MDMA type compounds because they make you felt like a giant lizard in a suit going on a conspiracy to steal the dats from the people who serve milk to tweens
You know, there’s a really refreshing thing about the individualist radical right these days – their rhetoric is often really violent but they don’t tend to show off by fighting each other (or by alienating potential allies) in the process.
The old-school skinheads and whatnot all had this weird fetish for fighting each other. They didn’t care about “winning” or even winning the moral arguments, they just cared about being the sort of people with whom they would be the most likely to fight. If someone challenged you, you had a pretty good shot of getting punched but getting punched was not considered a moral good in and of itself. They weren’t really into democracy or pluralism, they just cared about punching other skinheads.
And of course they would all talk about how they “respected” you if you had to defend yourself against them – which made sense, because it was in their immediate self-interest to maintain this image. Surely everyone knows leftists are the equivalent of violent thugs? But if you actually talked to them you wouldn’t find this at all the case. Nowadays there are far, far fewer skinheads, but they are still out there and tend to show up in the news in far bigger numbers than usual, I experienced this firsthand. So they don’t just show up in groups once a month or so and fight – they show up in larger and larger numbers, and they show up and fight more and more often. But most of these fights are things like “oh you’re a Trump supporter, so I’m going to punch you and I won’t even have to call the police,” and that works well enough even though it’s a bad system.
