the gift of allegory

Over 500 years spent trying to cut down a whole trunk of human culture.

Despite all the talk about 'pedophiles' on tumblr, there is zero evidence that any CSA has been perpetrated by the people accused, there is zero evidence that any actual CSAM has been shared or surreptitiously circulated at any point. There is zero evidence.

Like, that's it. Despite all the bullshit, despite all the what-aboutisms, despite all the deliberate and constant misinterpretation, despite all the twisting and obfuscation, despite all the mass surveillance and gang-stalking of trans women, nobody has turned up a god damn fucking thing. And no screenshots of tumblr posts do not fucking count sorry!

so the accelerationist doomsday cults in this context are quite literally trying to facilitate the standard wtc game structure where the world/narrative ends and is completely reset for a second chance at a better world in the next chapter

but back to what reminded me of this, i think it'd be fun if, as a piece of that, we eventually found out that someone like vier was a false/manufactured 34girl who intentionally gave herself/was given a 34 name in order to literally create the conditions of a when they cry game. and maybe given her odd resemblance to bernkastel, she turns out to actually be a rika archetype who has, for her own reasons, decided to try and be a 34 instead. or she's trying, artificially, to be both! or she is the result of someone intentionally merging these two archetypes into a single person for reasons yet unknown

What A Beauty!

prefacing this post by saying i literally do not think this is of any consequence. i think these sprites were bashed together from existing gauntlet knight sprite assets because that is a convenient way to make silhouettes very quickly. so this is just for fun

the in-game sprites with the tops of many characters' heads cut off and nothing shown below the waist are by far the highest resolution images we have of the characters, so unless i specifically point out something unusual about a missing portion of a silhouette, assume it's either that or just a result of my "eh, good enough" lasso tool skills

gunhild's head with her rear ponytails removed was pretty simple to spot, as was chloe's body. not much to tell of there. the gauntlets here are all aou gauntlets

it took me forever to figure out where the top of not-mariana's hair came from, but it's the top of jayden's head adding a bit of volume to the back of her hair. the couple of small strands near the nape of her neck are too generic for me to identify, but don't seem to come from either mariana's or jayden's hair. it's possible ryukishi just added in a couple of loose strands himself or took them off someone else, but i don't foresee being able to easily find which specific strands of hair they are lol. specific parts of mariana's hair have also been removed. i don't know why so much effort went into modifying the hair on this one, especially for a sprite who has the right head on the right body. maybe the funniest aspect of this specific sprite is that they chopped off mariana's ahoge

stan gave me such a hard time, because it obviously looked like his hair but i just couldn't make it match, until my dear roommate suggested that his head might be on backwards. which it was

this batch really makes me laugh. naomi on koshka's body is pretty straightforward

the middle silhouette always reminded me of bernkastel, particularly the way the hair falls. hilariously eerie to figure out that she consists of meow's body with vier's slightly-oversized head (with some of the hair behind her head removed)

and then toujirou's head is literally just pasted on top of okonogi's full sprite with the head still on, giving toujirou a stupid little rat-tail. it looks like one of his little strands of hair was also duplicated to add one near his chin on the left there, as neither toujirou nor okonogi have a strand of hair there. he's also wearing miyao's gauntlet which could genuinely mean nothing. haha...unless?

Many, many people celebrated Pulse. We were told we deserved it. That it was God’s punishment for our sin of loving the same sex. We are sent messages like these I received in 2018:

We in the community often call the victim count 49+ to include the survivors who couldn’t live with the pain.

The event was never officially declared a hate crime or targeted homophobic attack and is rarely listed as one in databases.

At our vigils for those slaughtered, Extremist Christian groups showed up to protest, holding signs like this:

ID: Me kissing a woman I was casually seeing in front of an angry looking man with a “Sodomy is Sin” sign.

Please understand how much more than just a mass shooting this was. We are still to this day harassed and told we deserved it by some.

So some fanartist drew a “sexy” (read: booby) version of a (cartoon) character who is traditionally very non-sexualised. Fans of the character got mad about it because it’s kind of groundbreaking how that character is written and portrayed and this art totally ignores the entire point of the character. They demanded the art be deleted. In response to that other people said, well what the fanartist did may be distateful but they have every right to draw what they’re into. The two sides fight for days and each starts a harassment campaign and even report their “opponents’” accounts.

So far so typical. But things eventually come to a head and they decide that this will be settled by votes - not through a poll. Through donations to a children’s education charity via each side’s portal. Whoever can get the highest amount of donation wins.

day 2 at the beaches in Newport. we saw many creatures of many kinds! observe some striped shore crabs.

I also saw a family of California ground squirrels, including this cute lil baby!

also, there’s a me.