Cen-Cal Wizard

They're older than Florida. The Floridian peninsula is the solidified runoff of the Appalachians that got caught on some coral. It's why we're like this, I think. You don't stand a chance of being normal when you were created by the shed skin of an elder god draping itself over a hollow skeleton. You're always going to be a little Off.

Some people are like "The classic sci-fi novel Don't Create the Torment Nexus is Problematic because it features the Torment Nexus"

"No but see the only reason to write about the Torment Nexus is because the author has a sexual fetish for the Torment Nexus, which is both bad and relevant somehow. People only write about stuff they want to have sex with. Literary criticism is about reading everything in the worst faith possible to try to determine what weird sexual fetish the author has and/or whether they're trying to mind control readers into fascism or communism. The author just wrote the 'don't create' bit as a flimsy smokescreen to hide how much they want to fuck the Torment Nexus, thus they're a bad person, thus the book is bad and also Problematic and therefore devoid of value. If you see any value in it then you too must be hiding a desire to fuck the Torment Nexus (therefore proving you are a bad person) and/or you're a secret fascist. This is how literary criticism works."

Sometimes I’m the person who hates a work and can’t see any interpretation of what I’ve read/watched other than “creator wants to fuck the Torment Nexus.” But what I’ve gotten a lot of value out of in my life is just asking people who enjoyed it what they got out of it. This is a dangerous move for me because when I ask people questions, they often feel questioned. But no one likes something because it’s terrible and has no redeeming qualities. They like it for a reason.

Sometimes the creator does want to fuck the Torment Nexus. Usually they do not. Either situation is completely irrelevant re: the value (or Problematicness) of the classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus. There's this whole weird puritan branch of shitty internet criticism that basically boils down to "never mind the story; I am terrified of the possibility that someone, somewhere, might possibly be getting a boner that I don't approve of". And it's creepy and weird.

I think it's mostly a way to attack the intentionality of the story, and therefore it's value. If Don't Create the Torment Nexus was just written as an excuse for the author to put their fetish on a page, then anything worth discussing about the book, or the concept of the Torment Nexus itself, can be painted as a monkey-on-typewriter accident or a deceptive ruse intended to trick people into reading about the author's fetish by disguising it as something profound. As for the instinct, I don't think it's necessarily JUST puritanism. It's a nice triple-threat way of getting Internet Media Analysis points, a way of Showing Off Online. First, you declare I am SMARTER than you fools. Because while everybody else is claiming deep meaning in Don't Create the Torment Nexus, I can see that it's trash that only exists because the author wants to Fuck The Torment Nexus. You don't need to actually provide any real analysis. You're positioning yourself as the child in the Emperor's New Clothes. The whole point is to say that everybody else has been bamboozled either by the author, or by the book's status as a classic while you see the simplistic truth. Next, you declare that you are More Wholesome than the story and it's adherents. The Torment Nexus is so obviously horrible, why would anybody put that negative energy into the world by thinking about it? (Answer: Because they want to Fuck the Torment Nexus). You only think about/enjoy Good Things. Finally, you are Morally Superior to the book's adherents, being brave enough to call out such a beloved classic as worthless bait for a horrible, morally unjustifiable fetish. It's not enough that you dislike the thing, you are brave and moral enough to fight against it before it causes more harm. And that last bit is the key to the "They want to fuck the torment nexus" accusation. If the author was just writing about the torment nexus because they want to fuck it, then the implication is that they wrote about it in some way that's alluring and seductive, and therefore, the book must be PROMOTING the Torment Nexus, and you are therefore Defending the Moral Character of Society by fighting against it..

Gary Varvel is among the lazier politoon artists out there. i can practically guarantee he has at least five more derivatives of this same cartoon

Honestly the fact the sword looks vaguely Arabic already makes me assume that this is probably just a reuse of a drawing that originally just said "Creeping Shariah" or "Ground Zero Mosque" or some other bullshit.

the hot new tv trope…bottom storage.