And the amount of outrage was enough that people were willing to tolerate or overlook the stronger claims (especially with a friendly media) because they wanted to see some sort of reform when it comes to police accountability.
Sure, and that's not wrong either. But the over-reaction at the time had me shaking my head, and that was before I recently saw a video from the time where - gold-plated coffin? what is to all intents and purposes a state funeral? the mayor kneeling and weeping as if at the tomb of a martyred saint? What the hell???
That's way more than "let's have a national conversation about the police and if they do get too much leeway".
Fun fact: you guys lost the war before you even knew there was one.
Oh, I've been unassailably on the Wrong Side of History from the debates about contraception on down. Voted "no" in the Gay Marriage referendum, mostly because the "yes" side had managed to pull off driving me from what should have been tepid agreement about "meh, civil marriage is a morass anyways, why not?" into frothing "hell NO" opposition. (I am very Schadenfreudig about Graham Linehan's troubles right now, because back when he was being anti-Catholic Church* and pro-social liberalisation, he was feted for his wonderful views in line with right-thinking modernity, but the Overton Window kept on moving while he didn't so now he's one of the bad ones, just like us social conservatives were the bad ones back when he was in the right).
I expect to be on the Wrong Side about the trans stuff, too, until in fifteen or so years time we get the inevitable "but how were we to know?" backlash.
*The whole thing about the church in Ireland is very complicated.
You don't remember the Blue Check stuff? How after Musk bought Twitter, all the scrambling was to deny it ever happened, no, having a blue check just mean you were a verified account, nobody thought it was a big deal.
Conveniently forgetting, or desperately whitewashing, that Blue Checks were treated as the last word in authoritative sources, regularly cited in arguments, and used as "shut up" debate stoppers when A quoted "well Blue Check Z said..." and that was it. A bit like Wikipedia with what it treats as reliable sources, which can then be weaponised by the interested so that statement X is a reliable source but statement Y is not.
I think being older than thirty helps, because you can indeed remember for yourself the Before Times and how things were, both bad and good. The young'uns online don't have those memories so are inclined to "this is the first time ever this happened" and "we are the only ones ever doing anything about it" and of course forgetting the previous waves of "Maoism is so dreamy!" or whatever, for both sides, and the mountains of skulls that resulted.
But that also makes it harder to argue with them, because they don't seem to have the habit of "well what are the primary sources here?" They see it on TikTok or social media or their own little bubble and spread it around as Gospel (e.g. Trump really is a paedophile who rapes thirteen year old girls, this isn't exaggeration or rhetorical sarcasm, they are convinced this is all true).
"Centrist" has now become one of the damned terms, like Nazi and fascist and racist and transphobe. Being a centrist apparently means not that you have a moderate view, or can see good points in the arguments by both sides, but rather you are - at best - mushy, spineless, and indulging in the 'both sides are as bad as each other' fallacy (which is a fallacy because as any fule kno there is one and only one Good Right True side and one and only one Bad Evil Monster side), or at worst you are a Nazi fascist white supremacist transphobe etc. who is lying about your Bad Evil Monster views and are only pretending to be someone reasonable.
"Filthy centrist" isn't a joke anymore, it's an opinion a lot of the online left hold.
The trans stuff is definitely becoming more visible in Ireland (now that the gay rights stuff has been won, I guess). I'm seeing more articles in mainstream media recently about "coming out as trans", "when you're older and trans", "mother of trans kid" (that last one really literally the 'protect trans kids' meme).
So yeah, keeping my mouth shut in public about any doubts I have about the wonderfulness of total trans transformation.
I'm mostly amused by "oh this isn't about our world, it's about Tidus, a totally different place altogether!"
Also, funny how the way things work out on "Tidus" in minecraft - I mean, evolutionary psychology and evolution in general:
Men - evolve big brains, intelligence, sophisticated social networking, creativity, strategising abilities, progress, science, all the good stuff like that! Women - evolve big tits (because men like big tits)
Gro is such a complex character! He definitely has parts of his psyche that are quite happy to be "ends justify the means"; he would use assassination and ambushes against the Demons and not be concerned. But he also has finer and higher qualities. Whatever his fatal flaw is, that he naturally goes for plots and schemes and treachery, he doesn't do it for his own personal glory and profit.
Consider yourself hit over the head with a plushie for that
I can't help but think that it's a little suspicious that the world's greatest warriors keep finding themselves embroiled in wars
I think that's more to do with Eddison's philosophy of what the perfect life/afterlife would be - Valhalla, not Heaven. Warriors need war to prove their valour and win glory, see how depressed Juss and the other Demons are about the ending where they have beaten their foes and the prospect of peace is before them. I don't think Eddison means us to see the Demons as going around starting wars just so they can fight, but his world (Mercury, and Zimiamvia even more so) are worlds not of peace but where there's always a chance of a low-level conflict going on, where lords fight among themselves and where nations fight other nations for power, status, and influence (but mostly for the love of war and glory).
His is not a world of the common man, the ordinary soldier who gets dragged off to fight in these eternal battles; it's the world of the heroes, the mighty lords winning renown in battle. The Demons don't go to war for anything so vulgar as territorial advantage or resource extraction, they are the heroes of sagas and the Iliad and other such epics.
but it really seemed like they're all essentially human beings, despite names like "demons", "pixies", "goblins", "witches", etc.
Oh, yeah. Except the Demon Lords have horns, and I think the Imps are smaller than the other races. But that shouldn't be too much of a problem, and you can always put your own flourishes on them. And Spitfire literally breathes fire, what's not to love?
“Now turn thine eyes to him that leaneth on Juss’s left arm, shorter but mayhap sturdier than he, apparelled in black silk that shimmers with gold as he moveth, and crowned with black eagle’s feathers among his horns and yellow hair. His face is wild and keen like a sea-eagle’s, and from his bristling brows the eyes dart glances sharp as a glancing spear. A faint flame, pallid like the fire of a Will-o’-the-Wisp, breathes ever and anon from his distended nostrils. This is Lord Spitfire, impetuous in war.
It's an amazing work, and the perfect lead-in to the Zimiamvian Trilogy. You'll know whether this work is to your taste and if not, then don't bother. Eddison definitely had his own view of the perfect life and how it should be lived, and it's not really a Christian one but pagan. But it's fantastic world-building and genuinely both familiar and alien.
And everybody loves Lord Gro! I love Lord Gro! Even Tolkien liked him, though he didn't like Eddison's worldview:
I read the works of Eddison, long after they appeared; and I once met him. I heard him in Mr. Lewis's room in Magdalen College read aloud some parts of his own works – from the Mistress of Mistresses, as far as I remember. [Eddison in fact read from The Mezentian Gate] He did it extremely well. I read his works with great enjoyment for their sheer literary merit. My opinion of them is almost the same as that expressed by Mr. Lewis on p. 104 of the Essays presented to Charles Williams ['You may like or dislike his invented worlds (I myself like that of The Worm Ouroboros and strongly dislike that of Mistress of Mistresses) but there is no quarrel between the theme and the articulation of the story.'] . Except that I disliked his characters (always excepting the Lord Gro) and despised what he appeared to admire more intensely than Mr. Lewis at any rate saw fit to say of himself. Eddison thought what I admire 'soft' (his word: one of complete condemnation, I gathered); I thought that, corrupted by an evil and indeed silly 'philosophy', he was coming to admire, more and more, arrogance and cruelty. Incidentally, I thought his nomenclature slipshod and often inept. In spite of all of which, I still think of him as the greatest and most convincing writer of 'invented worlds' that I have read. But he was certainly not an 'influence'.
Gosh, how wonderful it is to be a man! And for a woman, all you have to look forward to is growing bigger breasts because these drive "males just absolutely crazy" (except for the alleged societies where women go around bare-breasted and the men are not crazy about boobies, this is a socially conditioned reaction).
How I wish I were a man! I'd be smart and active and heroic and achieve things in the world! I'd be, now what is that phrase? Elite human capital! But just being a woman means only babies, and if no babies, no worth at all, and if babies, worth for only a little while then I get old and the man wants young big titty girl so I get replaced!
Oh dear, I feel like I need to sob into my pillow.
Are those six kids from the past partner? Or from several past partners?
Anyway, I hope Ratty is a big earner because if they're going to have their own litter, there's going to be a lot of little paws pattering around the house.
To be fair, I do not get furrydom at all. And it doesn't help that a lot of the most visible stuff is yiff, and things like "snake women with breasts" which just makes me go "no!" If you're going to be an animal, why be unrealistic? Though yeah, I'm arguing about pretend human animals which is totally unrealistic in the first place. But, for instance, in what I suppose we can call classic 'anthropomorphised animal literature', there is no sense that Mole and Mrs. Otter can get together and have cute hybrid babies, because species are not cross-fertile like that.
(Also, I am now wincing at the idea of a mouse pregnant by a squirrel. More likely to explode while pregnant with the growing baby/babies, than to be able to successfully give birth to a hybrid squouse).
I agree with your points, but since this is (we are assuming) a trans person writing their self-insert furry character, then "I am a rat and you are a mouse" take on extra meanings. And the characteristics described are ones where rats are different to mice: mice have cute little short noses and hairy tales, rats have big pointy noses and long, hairless, tails. Picking those characteristics instead of "I want babies with your white fur" or "as tall as you are" reads, to me, like a trans person picking the traits where they don't pass as the gender they present as/the traits that made them not fit in to their assigned gender at birth, traits they find ugly or dysphoric, and then this is the fix-it by cute feminine (very femme) mousie loving the ugly bits and finding them in fact attractive.
I don't know who any of these people are and I don't know why I'm supposed to care.
Guys in two different sets of fake violence 'sports' get into real fight? Who cares?
Oh look blacks are violent thugs? If that is the real point of this post, then yeah I definitely don't care to fight over this one. If someone is going to post this sort of thing, then at least be honest about "this is what I want to say" and don't give a potted history of fake wrestling, some other boxing-substitute and a star of it I never heard about in order to cover it with a fig leaf as the lead-in to "oh look blacks are violent thugs".
Most likely explanation. Everyone will come out of this looking slightly seedy; you shouldn't be recording kids in the park, but kids in the park shouldn't be hanging around with knives.
Also... it really does seem like the "main character" in the sex scene I read was the female character. It was all about her.
You forgot the mouse insisting she wants babies by rat becasue she wants CUTE BABIES who will have his POINTY NOSE and BARE TAIL which are so HAWT and SEXXXXXY.
This is wish-fulfilment over "these are the parts of myself I hate and think ugly and think everyone else thinks are ugly, hang on, now I am being affirmed in my okayness by someone accepting me for who I am and moreover finding these things attractive?"
Imagine a guy writing a comic about a woman dying to have his babies because they'd have his cute lil' pot belly and bald spot (well, I guess some women might like a cute lil' pot belly on a guy, no accounting for tastes! dad bod is a thing, I have heard). He'd be slagged all over the place about it.
I dunno, in a kinda vengeful way I want the preferred pronouns in this case to be used. No dodging and 'no true Scotman' waving away of the Sophie Labelle kind.
They have the Transgender Day of Remembrance with the lists of people killed for being trans (very dubious reasoning in many cases*)? Well congrats, now you have your very own trans mass shooters! You're just like ordinary people and can be treated the same way!
*I went through one of those lists for every victim I could find any information on. Most were "domestic violence (like cis women); risks associated with sex work; traffic accident" and one was a trans guy involved in environmental activism who was in his tent during a police raid on the encampment and got shot. I don't see how you can possibly swing that last one to "killed for being trans" but his name still went on the list as a victim of anti-trans hate crime and violence.
insisting on putting a condom on it, because ????.
From the long-ago lectures about safe(r) sex in the days of AIDS, because fluid transfer via sharing sex toys. If Ratty has used this strap-on with other partners, then no matter how much they've cleaned it, there's always the tiny risk. Plus good practice to get into the habit of using protection with new partners until you both agree to be exclusive and have the results of your STI tests.
(Also, Ms Mousie in the linked comics seems to be rather promiscuous, or at least baby-crazy, so it's safer to assume she's been around the block and to protect yourself as well by using condoms).
There's always the beard.
Well, yeah. How else to show you're a guy/on T without growing a beard? Women don't gots beards!
(Honestly, the number one thing that drives me up the wall about the trans activism online is the retreat to rigid, and rigidly enforced, gender roles of the "pink is for girls, blue is for boys" type. Sure, someone once in a while will 'challenge the gender binary' by referencing cis women who are mannish in appearance or, say, have PCOS - one symptom of which may be hirsutism - or women post-menopause who, again, may become more hirsute so that breaks the rules around body hair and body type and so on hence gender is a social construct, but then they go right back to "hey, if you are AFAB and have this interest/look this way, consider you may be a trans man!")
I think it's closer to that of being a short, chubby, not very athletic, not very up-and-coming in the '6 foot, 6 figures, 6 inches' notion of dating man.
In other words, a low-status guy with low sexual market value. If they identify as gay, they're not gay enough for cis gay men. If they identify as straight, same for cis straight women. And then the experience of male social structures and how men are treated/how men treat each other is another whammy: they want to be guys but then complain about being treated exactly how a guy is treated.
At least, that's my impression from the complaints online. I guess a tall, tomboyish/masculine woman with 'male' interests who transitioned close to puberty would have an advantage when trying to pass, but the ones I see online (again, probably not the majority) clearly were short, fat, plain women and are now short, fat, plain men (but with scrubby beards).
The rat character just feels hunched over, passive, depressed. Maybe a desire is there, but if this resonates with the trans masc community than I don't know if they really get what men aim to be like.
Yeah. This is the whole thing about socialisation, and how defensive MtF get about "male socialisation prior to transition" and the same for FtM about not having male socialisation prior to transition. I do think it's a female thing; if you read slash, there have been plenty of times I've gone "no, this is not how two guys interact or talk to each other or talk about things, writing like this is how I know you're a teenage/early twenties girl".
The problem with those comics is that they left me wondering "but can rats and mice be interfertile?" which is probably not what the creator was getting at.
(Also, it had me going "wait, a rat and a mouse? why is this transspecies? ah yeah, FtM, being a rat means they can be sure of being bigger - i.e. more masculine - than their partner if the partner is a mouse" and also "hang on, the mouse already has kids? how many kids? how many does she want? does she have kids with each new partner? how many kids can they support, we're talking mice and rats here who have litters: average for mice is 6-8 pups, average for rats is 8-9" but since this is anthropomorphic rodents, probably it'd be twins or triplets and only one litter per year, not their animal counterparts multiple pups per litter and multiple litters per year).
(Also also, who the hell wants to be a rat? But I guess these are lab rats, not ordinary dump, harbour, and other wild spaces, rats).
Oh, yes? Like the allegations about Nancy Pelosi and insider trading? When you start going on about elite corruption, you have two choices:
(1) Investigate the said corruption. This may mean you piss off your deep pocket donors, which means no money, which means oops we can't run the party.
(2) "Investigate" the said corruption, but don't do anything about it really. This means the voters now know, rather than suspect, you're a bunch of hypocrites and as bad as the other guys.
If Ezra is expecting Mr. Deeds to show up and clean house, he'll be a long time waiting.
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