10/3/24 URGENT, Please RB

in the light of today's page...

I see a lot of posts saying "teach boys about consent".

While that is true, a lot of parents will do that and fail to see how their own actions are the problem.

If you've spanked him, he's less likely to understand consent.

If you've forced him to sit on Santa's lap, he's less likely to understand consent.

If you've forced him to give hugs and kisses to family members, he's less likely to understand consent.

If you've grabbed him in order to force him to sit still, he's less likely to understand consent.

If you've labeled him as "too sensitive" for not wanting to be touched, he's less likely to understand consent.

If you've assumed he's okay with something because he technically allowed it even though he felt pressured, he's less likely to understand consent.

If you're only going to criticize his actions but not your own, it won't work.

apparently a bunch of ppl on social media are trying to call for a boycott of rick riordan because of this statement in a blog post:

Becky and I are just back from a busy weekend with events at the Boston Book Festival and New York Comic-Con.

Before I get into that, however, some words to acknowledge the ongoing horrors in Israel and Gaza. As many of you may know, I am no longer on social media. My accounts post only updates on my books and related projects. I do not read posts, reply to posts, or share my thoughts about world events on those forums. That doesn’t mean I don’t have strong feelings and reactions. It means I am offline as completely as possible, except for the occasional blog post like this one.

I will say this: Over the last eighteen years, I have received many fan letters from young readers, both Israeli and Palestinian, who often told me that my books helped them escape the fear, grief and anxiety they were dealing with at the time. Some had lost family members to violence. Some were writing while in the distance they could hear explosions, gunfire, and the launching of rockets. They used my books as a way to escape into another world, where the monsters were fictional, and where demigods usually saved the day. While I am always glad that my books can help young readers find joy during difficult times, my heart breaks every time I hear about the things they have to deal with. I am grief-stricken by the horrific events now unfolding, especially because I know that they are part of a long historic pattern that has been robbing too many children of their childhood and perpetuating hatred for far too long.

I am also quite aware that when anyone, myself included, tries to speak about this issue, the reader is waiting to pounce, thinking, “Yes, but whose side are you on?” That is exactly the wrong question. If there are two sides to this issue, those sides are not Palestinian/Israeli or Muslim/Jewish. The two sides are humanitarian and dehumanizing. Dehumanizing has a long evil history. It is appealing and easy to buy into, because humans are tribal animals. We are hardwired to think in terms of ‘us’ versus ‘them.’ We are the real humans, the good guys, the ones with God on our side. Those other people are evil monsters who don’t deserve empathy. Hate mongers have thrived on dehumanizing for as long as there have been humans. It provides them with a purpose, a way to rally support, power, and scapegoats. It is easy to point to atrocities committed by our enemies, while justifying or minimizing the atrocities committed by ourselves or our allies.

Humanitarianism is a much harder sell. It requires us to empathize, to see other groups of people as equally deserving of dignity and quality of life. It requires not always putting ourselves and our needs first. But in the long run, humanitarianism is our only hope. If violence could end violence, if we could put an end to “those other people” once and for all, human history would read very differently than it does.

So yes, I am appalled by the Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians. I am appalled by the suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Both things can be true. Both things must be true. My thoughts are with all the people who have died, who have lost loved ones, who have had their worlds and their lives shattered, especially the children. More death and violence will not break this cycle, which has been going on for generations. There is no military solution. Even since I first wrote the post, only twenty-four hours ago, the Israeli government’s brutal retaliation against the entire population of Gaza has reached genocidal proportions. This is not only an atrocity. It is folly. Answering misery with misery only creates more fertile ground for extremism, dehumanizing the “other side,” letting hate mongers thrive, stay in power, and reduce us all to our most monstrous impulses. The only real solution is treating each other like equally worthy human beings, and negotiating a peace that allows all parties a chance to live in security and dignity, with hopes for a future that does not include bombs and rockets and gunfire. This means security and support for Israel, yes. It also means a secure Palestine which is allowed to get the international aid and recognition it needs to build a viable state.

Do I think that will happen? Unfortunately, no. Humans are simply too selfish, too ready to blame “the other” for all their problems, too ready to dehumanize, though I also believe, perhaps paradoxically, that most people just want to live their lives in peace and have a chance for their children to have a brighter future. The problem is when we don’t allow other people to have those same hopes and dreams — when it becomes a false choice of us versus them.

What can I do? I will continue to write books that I hope will give young readers some joy. I will resist the urge to demonize entire groups of people. I will call for less violence, not more violence. And when asked whose side I am on, I will tell you I am on the side of humanitarianism.

So with that said, I return to the world of books . . .

honestly, if you have a problem with this statement, it’s probably because he’s talking about you. this is exactly what legitimate activists (as in not just random westerners who share social media posts but on-the-ground activists who are doing real work) have been saying for decades. and i think all this really speaks to just how disconnected a lot of westerners who claim to be pro palestinian are from those activists.

if you can’t read a statement that says “i am on the side of humanitarianism and less violence” without immediately jumping to cancel them, you are the problem being discussed in the above statement.

“In a 1994 Harvard study that examined people who had radically changed their lives, for instance, researchers found that some people had remade their habits after a personal tragedy, such as a divorce or a life-threatening illness. Others changed after they saw a friend go through something awful, the same way that Dungy’s players watched him struggle.

Just as frequently, however, there was no tragedy that preceded people’s transformations. Rather, they changed because they were embedded in social groups that made change easier. One woman said her entire life shifted when she signed up for a psychology class and met a wonderful group. “It opened a Pandora’s box,” the woman told researchers. “I could not tolerate the status quo any longer. I had changed in my core.” Another man said that he found new friends among whom he could practice being gregarious. “When I do make the effort to overcome my shyness, I feel that it is not really me acting, that it’s someone else,” he said. But by practicing with his new group, it stopped feeling like acting. He started to believe he wasn’t shy, and then, eventually, he wasn’t anymore. When people join groups where change seems possible, the potential for that change to occur becomes more real. For most people who overhaul their lives, there are no seminal moments or life-altering disasters. There are simply communities⏤sometimes of just one other person⏤who make change believable.

One woman told researchers her life transformed after a day spent cleaning toilets⏤and after weeks of discussing with the rest of the cleaning crew whether she should leave her husband.

“Change occurs among other people,” one of the psychologists involved in the study, Todd Heatherton, told me. “It seems real when we can see it in other people’s eyes.”

The precise mechanisms of belief are little understood. No one is certain why a group encountered in a psychology class can convince a woman that everything is different, or why Dungy’s team came together after their coach’s son passed away. Plenty of people talk to friends about unhappy marriages and never leave their spouse; lots of teams watch their coaches experience adversity and never gel. 

But we do know that for habits to permanently change, people must believe that change is feasible. The same process that makes AA so effective⏤the power of a group to teach individuals how to believe⏤happens whenever people come together to help one another change. Belief is easier when it occurs within a community.”

⏤ The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg

Jesus christ, I wish to just one day be this pinnacle of wit, horniness, and sacrilege.

This is potentially life saving information everyone should know.

I am begging everybody, fucking begging them, to slow the fuck down and fucking look things up. Right now, there are a lot of people who are making money off of creating headlines that are meant to make you mad, and it's going to get worse as we get closer to the election.

If someone tells you that there's a secret conspiracy to [do a thing you don't like] and that it's unique to Biden, you better fucking look that thing up, because chances are you're going to find that it's been happening under every administration for the last 50 years. Is that good? No! Should you want to change it? Probably! Is it a unique crime to Biden? Nope!

"Biden said [bad thing] [X] years ago." Well, this bad thing he said happens to be true, but it looks like it was 45 years ago, and he changed his stance 40 years ago. "Biden said [other bad thing] [Y] years ago." What's the source on that? So there's one person who says he said it? And nobody else who was there has corroborated that account? Who posted the story?

These are all random examples of things I've seen over the last couple of weeks, with the details slightly changed from the Tumblr posts and news articles I've seen, because the point isn't the details of the particular story, so I don't want to get bogged down in particulars that don't matter to the point I'm making.

The point of this post isn't the specific things I'm referencing but the fact that in each of these cases, the reality was not what was initially presented. Either the reality was wildly different, or this story can't be corroborated and was told by someone with a clear and very well-known agenda of their own, which means that at the very least, the story should be treated with extreme suspicion.

And on that note, please don't believe that because you're a leftist that you can't be radicalized in the same way that right-wingers are. You aren't immune to propaganda either. I'm not saying you have to like, or should like, any particular politician or political entity. I am saying, however, that you should view a lot of the news with a gimlet eye, and that goes double for anything that makes you real fucking mad.

You need - need - to stop and read the whole article and ask yourself if you can verify the claims and who benefits from this making you mad.

Please. For the sake of the people around you who have to patiently explain to you that you've gotten fucking bamboozled again by propaganda if for no other reason. We're all very tired of you thinking that leftists can't be propagandized.

Alright, a sort of part two to this post.

About my “Mike is Gaster” theory.

I worked on this one with @allseeingmoth

Theory and long convoluted rambles under the cut

So, for context, i follow the headcanon that Sans, Papyrus, and Gaster all are related in some way. I won’t go into detail with that, it’s just the only way to explain some of these discord screenshots.

Entry #17 from the true lab is also important here, and i translated the whole thing because that makes this nice and easy. For those who don’t know, it reads:

“entry number seventeen.

dark darker yet darker.

the darkness keeps growing

the shadows cutting deeper

photon readings negative

this next experiment

seems

very

very

interesting

...

what do you two think?”

(This is actually written in all caps in the entry but i didn’t type it that way so whatever)

NOW. Crazy thoughts time. First off; the next experiment mentioned. What if that’s the roaring? This is a bit of a stretch but… well, to me, Gaster feels like something thats separated from the game. They can’t totally interact with it, just influence bits and pieces. And his question at the end, “what do you two think?” I’ve seen some theories about the two being Sans and Papyrus, but they seem a little far fetched… not that mine isn’t, of course, as i believe they’re talking to Jevil and Spamton. And this is why i think Gaster is Mike.

Below are screenshots of my original thoughts on this.

Now, i do admit, i hyperfixated on Gaster because i found them interesting, and canon may have blended a bit with my fanon, but i’ll try to keep it as unbiased as possible here. I believe the “next experiment” is the roaring because in the entry, they state that “the darkness keeps growing / the shadows cutting deeper / photon readings negative” (for non-sciencey people, photon readings being negative could mean a complete lack of any light OR the opposite of light/negative light). These all point to, well, darkness, “dark darker yet darker” after-all. And what’s in deltarune? Dark worlds. Boom, theres the simple theory.

Now, why is Gaster experimenting with the dark worlds and roaring? Possibly because he’s trying to merge Deltarune, the game, with the real world. Think about the in-game explanation of the roaring:

“When the LIGHT is subsumed by SHADOW

When the FOUNTAINS fill the sky

All will fall into CHAOS.

The TITANS will take form from the FOUNTAINS

And envelop the land in devastation.

The surviving Darkners, crushed by the darkness

Will slowly, one by one, turn into statues...

Leaving the Lightners to fend for themselves

Lost eternally in an endless night...”

It mentions Titans. Who could the Titans be? Us, of course. We see the characters as, well, characters. Fun toys to be played with and explored. If all the Darkners turn into statues, they will be dolls for the Titans to play with.

So what if Gaster is trying to bring upon the roaring, but is also trying to bring Darkners here, alive? Hence the manipulation of Jevil and Spamton. That’s their experiment. Can they merge our worlds while bringing those who were previously only code to life?

Now, of course, this is all fun video game stuff that can’t happen, but it’s fun to think about.

Anyway have an extra little joke i made.

This is now the only correct reading of that acronym