fantasy novel idea: there’s like six or seven different wizards, they all specialize in different varieties of magic but they’re all archetypal robed elderly wizards with huge bushy beards, and they all hate each other and are constantly trying to fuck each other over. there’s no deeper meaning or real story arc, just a series of short stories about wizards trying very hard to ruin each others’ lives as much as possible. why they dislike one another is unknown but it’s probably due to petty jealousy. absolutely nothing is at stake and none of the wizards are necessarily good or evil. each chapter is written from a different wizard’s perspective
tier 5 (ridiculous, unacceptable, pls don’t): anything to do with beer cans, baby-maker, bishop, choad, donger, dragon, fuck wand, fun stick, hog, johnson, jimmy, lap rocket, little [insert name], love muscle/rod/stick, meat stick, one-eyed [anything], piston, private eye, schlong, trouser snake, wiener, winkie
tier 6 (you’re literally a fourth grader): baby arm, baloney pony, beaver basher, beef whistle, custard launcher, dude piston, flesh flute, heat-seeking moisture missile, krull the warrior king, luigi, mayo shooting hotdog gun, meter long king kong dong, pig skin bus, piss weasle, purple-headed yogurt flinger, purple-helmeted warrior of love, schlong dongadoodle, single barreled pump action bollock, spawn hammer, steamin’ semen truck, tan banana, thundersword, wang doodle, whoopie stick, wing wang doodle, yogurt shotgun
tier 7 (you are like a little baby. watch this): the symbolic collage, the multiplier of motions known, a pillar of fighting styles terrible to behold, the ability to infer significance in something devoid of detail, cornered sphere, a letter written in uncertainty, flesh-metal, a bubble of foul water and fire, invisible scripture, the sex-death of language, power throat, the heart bone, the mercy seat, the irrefutable-for-a-span, the enigma that must be removed, the new phlogiston, a throne of wonder why, the idiom stroke, non-spatial space filling to capacity with mortal interaction and information, a bit of string shaped like your favorite color, the sword not held, estrangement from statesmanship, the reptile wheel, the treasure wood sword, a million-eyed insect dreaming, the dome-head demon, a dead carapace of memory, the mythic epidermal, the ethos knife, flute-and-pipe ogre, the red jewel of conquest, a walking star
The pretty boy is being so mean to him for NO REASON. Like what the hell, Bryce is being helpful. He’ll show how fucking helpful he can be. He’ll help him fix his backhand, and his ATTITUDE, and by the end he’ll think Bryce is the best coach ever and tell Evanson. Because obviously this is about Evanson yelling at Bryce for not getting involved, even though he doesn’t even WANT to be here, not that stupid…pretty….mean kid. Except that maybe Evanson will be extra impressed by a recommendation from him. And then he’ll tell Summers. And Summers will stop calling Bryce a fucking moron.
It has nothing to do with Jared particularly at all. Bryce doesn’t like him. And he ESPECIALLY doesn’t like that guy who keeps hanging around him. Who does he think he is, being all…around? Bryce didn’t volunteer to coach HIM. Well. Kind of. But. He didn’t really VOLUNTEER to coach anyone. That was Summers. SUMMERS IS THE FUCKING MORON, NOT BRYCE.
…Bryce Marcus’ POV brings me both joy and despair.
A useful script to deploy when faced with bigotry or similar disruptions to a group or workplace culture without going into ‘right vs. wrong’ talk that someone awful could attempt to argue with.
That’s really useful.
My favorite remains “taking it literally and acting as though it’s an enthusiastically positive thing”. This usually gets people to stop immediately, because in fact, they are almost certainly vaguely under the impression that “gay” is “bad” and if you act like they’re saying it’s good, they freak out.
Because of the Fifth Amendment, no one in the U.S. may legally be forced to testify against himself, and because of the Fourth Amendment, no one’s records or belongings may legally be searched or seized without just cause. However, American police are trained to use methods of deception, intimidation and manipulation to circumvent these restrictions. In other words, cops routinely break the law—in letter and in spirit—in the name of enforcing the law. Several examples of this are widely known, if not widely understood.
1) “Do you know why I stopped you?” Cops ask this, not because they want to have a friendly chat, but because they want you to incriminate yourself. They are hoping you will “voluntarily” confess to having broken the law, whether it was something they had already noticed or not. You may think you are apologizing, or explaining, or even making excuses, but from the cop’s perspective, you are confessing. He is not there to serve you; he is there fishing for an excuse to fine or arrest you. In asking you the familiar question, he is essentially asking you what crime you just committed. And he will do this without giving you any “Miranda” warning, in an effort to trick you into testifying against yourself.
2) “Do you have something to hide?” Police often talk as if you need a good reason for not answering whatever questions they ask, or for not consenting to a warrantless search of your person, your car, or even your home. The ridiculous implication is that if you haven’t committed a crime, you should be happy to be subjected to random interrogations and searches. This turns the concept of due process on its head, as the cop tries to put the burden on you to prove your innocence, while implying that your failure to “cooperate” with random harassment must be evidence of guilt.
3) “Cooperating will make things easier on you.” The logical converse of this statement implies that refusing to answer questions and refusing to consent to a search will make things more difficult for you. In other words, you will be punished if you exercise your rights. Of course, if they coerce you into giving them a reason to fine or arrest you, they will claim that you “voluntarily” answered questions and “consented” to a search, and will pretend there was no veiled threat of what they might do to you if you did not willingly “cooperate.” (Such tactics are also used by prosecutors and judges via the procedure of “plea-bargaining,” whereby someone accused of a crime is essentially told that if he confesses guilt—thus relieving the government of having to present evidence or prove anything—then his suffering will be reduced. In fact, “plea bargaining” is illegal in many countries precisely because it basically constitutes coerced confessions.)
4) “We’ll just get a warrant.” Cops may try to persuade you to “consent” to a search by claiming that they could easily just go get a warrant if you don’t consent. This is just another ploy to intimidate people into surrendering their rights, with the implication again being that whoever inconveniences the police by requiring them to go through the process of getting a warrant will receive worse treatment than one who “cooperates.” But by definition, one who is threatened or intimidated into “consenting” has not truly consented to anything.
5.) We have someone who will testify against you Police “informants” are often individuals whose own legal troubles have put them in a position where they can be used by the police to circumvent and undermine the constitutional rights of others. For example, once the police have something to hold over one individual, they can then bully that individual into giving false, anonymous testimony which can be used to obtain search warrants to use against others. Even if the informant gets caught lying, the police can say they didn’t know, making this tactic cowardly and illegal, but also very effective at getting around constitutional restrictions.
6) “We can hold you for 72 hours without charging you.” Based only on claimed suspicion, even without enough evidence or other probable cause to charge you with a crime, the police can kidnap you—or threaten to kidnap you—and use that to persuade you to confess to some relatively minor offense. Using this tactic, which borders on being torture, police can obtain confessions they know to be false, from people whose only concern, then and there, is to be released.
7) “I’m going to search you for my own safety.” Using so-called “Terry frisks” (named after the Supreme Court case of Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1), police can carry out certain limited searches, without any warrant or probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed, under the guise of checking for weapons. By simply asserting that someone might have a weapon, police can disregard and circumvent the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches.
U.S. courts have gone back and forth in deciding how often, and in what circumstances, tactics like those mentioned above are acceptable. And of course, police continually go far beyond anything the courts have declared to be “legal” anyway. But aside from nitpicking legal technicalities, both coerced confessions and unreasonable searches are still unconstitutional, and therefore “illegal,” regardless of the rationale or excuses used to try to justify them. Yet, all too often, cops show that to them, the Fourth and Fifth Amendments—and any other restrictions on their power—are simply technical inconveniences for them to try to get around. In other words, they will break the law whenever they can get away with it if it serves their own agenda and power, and they will ironically insist that they need to do that in order to catch “law-breakers” (the kind who don’t wear badges).
Of course, if the above tactics fail, police can simply bully people into confessing—falsely or truthfully—and/or carry out unconstitutional searches, knowing that the likelihood of cops having to face any punishment for doing so is extremely low. Usually all that happens, even when a search was unquestionably and obviously illegal, or when a confession was clearly coerced, is that any evidence obtained from the illegal search or forced confession is excluded from being allowed at trial. Of course, if there is no trial—either because the person plea-bargains or because there was no evidence and no crime—the “exclusionary rule” creates no deterrent at all. The police can, and do, routinely break the law and violate individual rights, knowing that there will be no adverse repercussions for them having done so.
Likewise, the police can lie under oath, plant evidence, falsely charge people with “resisting arrest” or “assaulting an officer,” and commit other blatantly illegal acts, knowing full well that their fellow gang members—officers, prosecutors and judges—will almost never hold them accountable for their crimes. Even much of the general public still presumes innocence when it comes to cops accused of wrong-doing, while presuming guilt when the cops accuse someone else of wrong-doing. But this is gradually changing, as the amount of video evidence showing the true nature of the “Street Gang in Blue” becomes too much even for many police-apologists to ignore.
One of the biggest realizations with dealing with cops for me was the fact that they CAN lie, they are 100% legally entitled to lie, and they WILL whether you’re a victim of crime, accused of committing a crime or anything else
Everyone needs to reblog this, it could save a life.
The amount of parents I’ve met who’ve told me, as a soon-to-be father, how much kids ‘ruin your life’ makes me so fucking sad.
These are all people who had kids because it was ‘the next logical step’. Like they have this mentality of ‘Marriage? Check. House? Check. Well, guess we better have kids!’ And then bring small dependant humans into the world…and get upset when their lives are inconvenienced or changed as a result.
It really saddens me because there’s this damaging culture of children being part of the standard. So people who shouldn’t be parents (and I mean that in the simplest of terms – not in a judgemental way, but a ‘it’s just not for you’ way) feel pressured to have children and regret it. And then the poor child grows up feeling like a burden.
It’s not fair on anyone. The parents, the children.
As a post on this site once said – children and the decision to parent should be ‘hell yes or hell no’. If you think for any reason at all that you might not be big on raising kids, do not actively go out of your way to have kids. Having them won’t magically make you want them.
All the people I know who wanted – really wanted – their kids and to raise kids have said ‘it’s difficult but I LOVE it. I love being a parent.’
Can we please eliminate the idea that parenting should suck? And that having children is a necessary part of adulthood?
And can we please eliminate the idea that people who don’t want children are somehow lacking? And that those who do want children are doomed to misery?
Signed, a very excited father-to-be who understands it’s not something everyone wants or should want.
just moving along like everyone else 