Latest Posts by chaosinciter - Page 8

bro it is 3 am for me i just woke up and amigops and technoblade on tribe nine???? dream talking about being queer on MAIN??? what is HAPPENING

i dont care about anyones opinion on dream except the little kids who gossip about dnf on the playground

Sometimes nothing hurts more than watching an old hyperfixation and thinking about how much joy you used to get just from the thought of it but now there’s just nothing

Renowned Feminist Philosopher Judith Butler Tears Transphobic Feminism Apart

Judith Butler says that J.K.Rowling and the transphobic TERFs do not speak for feminism at large.

If you haven’t heard about Judith Butler before, here is a short summary: She is one of the most important gender theorists in modern times.  

When right wing extremists despair about postmodern gender theory, she is probably one of the thinkers they are referring to (not that they have ever read her). 

She has shown how social structures, language,  the stories we tell and the roles we play strengthens the oppression and marginalization of women. In other words: For her gender is definitely a cultural and social phenomenon, and because of that she is on a collision course with the so-called “gender critical feminists” (TERFs) who want to reduce gender to biological sex.

I strongly recommend that you read the recent New Statement interview with Butler, where she addresses the thinking and the tactics of TERFs in very clear terms. The interview is behind a paywall, but you should be able to access a couple of articles for free.

Still – in case you are locked out – here are some important excerpts.

She refuses to think of transphobic TERFs as mainstream feminists.

I want to first question whether trans-exclusionary feminists are really the same as mainstream feminists. If you are right to identify the one with the other, then a feminist position opposing transphobia is a marginal position. I think this may be wrong. My wager is that most feminists support trans rights and oppose all forms of transphobia. 

So I find it worrisome that suddenly the trans-exclusionary radical feminist position is understood as commonly accepted or even mainstream. 

I think it is actually a fringe movement that is seeking to speak in the name of the mainstream, and that our responsibility is to refuse to let that happen. 

She dismisses J.K. Rowling’s idea that allowing people to identify as they want will be a threat to women in women’s bathrooms.

The feminist who holds such a view presumes that the penis does define the person, and that anyone with a penis would identify as a woman for the purposes of entering such changing rooms and posing a threat to the women inside. It assumes that the penis is the threat, or that any person who has a penis who identifies as a woman is engaging in a base, deceitful, and harmful form of disguise. 

This is a rich fantasy, and one that comes from powerful fears, but it does not describe a social reality. Trans women are often discriminated against in men’s bathrooms, and their modes of self-identification are ways of describing a lived reality, one that cannot be captured or regulated by the fantasies brought to bear upon them. 

She dismisses the idea that the term “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” (TERF)  is a slur.

I wonder what name self-declared feminists who wish to exclude trans women from women’s spaces would be called? If they do favour exclusion, why not call them exclusionary? If they understand themselves as belonging to that strain of radical feminism that opposes gender reassignment, why not call them radical feminists? 

My only regret is that there was a movement of radical sexual freedom that once travelled under the name of radical feminism, but it has sadly morphed into a campaign to pathologise trans and gender non-conforming peoples. 

My sense is that we have to renew the feminist commitment to gender equality and gender freedom in order to affirm the complexity of gendered lives as they are currently being lived.

She does not accept the idea that the term gender can be defined once and for all, for example in reference to biology.

We depend on gender as a historical category, and that means we do not yet know all the ways it may come to signify, and we are open to new understandings of its social meanings. 

It would be a disaster for feminism to return either to a strictly biological understanding of gender or to reduce social conduct to a body part or to impose fearful fantasies, their own anxieties, on trans women… Their abiding and very real sense of gender ought to be recognised socially and publicly as a relatively simple matter of according another human dignity. 

She also says:

It is painful to see that Trump’s position that gender should be defined by biological sex, and that the evangelical and right-wing Catholic effort to purge “gender” from education and public policy accords with the trans-exclusionary radical feminists’ return to biological essentialism. 

It is a sad day when some feminists promote the anti-gender ideology position of the most reactionary forces in our society.

So there you have it: One of our leading feminist philosophers are comparing TERFs to the transphobic extremists of the right. And she is right to do so.

It is important to stress this: TERFs are not representative of feminism. They represent a toxic fringe movement that at this point in time does more to help right wing misogynists than women. 

Judith Butler on the culture wars, JK Rowling and living in “anti-intellectual times”

Pink News has also covered this interview.

Butler criticized TERFs back in 2014, as well, as reflected in this interview.

Judith Butler: the backlash against “gender ideology” must stop

Photo: Adorno Preis

some people are like “c!dream is an amazing villain” and then their takes on him are like generic villain trait #1, generic villain trait #2, trait he literally doesn’t have, has zero depth and could be replaced with any badly written one-dimensional bad guy you could come up with

We always joked about that, like, if like, he, if his visa got denied, like, if we were to get - if we were to like, get married... Like, what are they gonna say, like? 'Oh, you're getting married for the visa?' be like no, look, like, just google, just google us, like, look. Look, there's proof right there. Look, there's like, there's fanart, there's us kissing, right there, look. Look. Look at it. Look, you need to do the research, visa office. Look at it. Google it. You don't believe us? You think we're faking our marriage just to get in the visa? Well, look. Google. Look, we have a whole, like, ship, like google.. D. NF. Go to images. Yes. Scroll. They're like, covering their eyes, they're like, what! What is all this?! Like yeah! Yeah. You still don't believe us? We can show you--show you a little worse, if you want. He's like, no! Please! Please! Like, alright, fine. Cool. Let us in. Let him in, you better.

You can only reblog this today.

AU where the Dream SMP is literally just. Dream’s house, and everything else is the same. He invites his closest friends to be roommates. He invites a few people over for a party and they don’t leave. Wilbur announces the attic is claiming independence and won’t move out. Tommy and Tubbo steal Dream’s i-pod even though it only has two songs and become outraged when he tries to take it back. Dream can’t make anyone leave but he can exile Tommy to the spare bedroom closet. Jack Manifold has somehow been stabbed, buried in the garden, and crawled back out alive and well. Snowchester is the kitchen and Las Nevadas is the room with a pool table and Techno and Phil sleep in tents on the front lawn. Sam and Quackity conspire to lock Dream in a shed they built out back. It doesn’t occur to anyone that they shouldn’t murder each other over a house

i had to write something for this LMAOO this is such a fucking funny prompt - that being said, enjoy absolute crack and c!dream having enough!! please send me more asks like this because this is the funniest fucking thing KJEFKJNL i love writing crack i miss doing it so much

tag for this au is > l’houseberg au !!

warnings: fire, violence, fighting, alcohol + smoke mentions, pure crack LMAO

“Hey man,” his neighbour says conversationally, “so how’s things?”

Dream doesn’t even wince at the sound of screaming coming from his house. He’s used to it by now. “Oh, hi Techno, uh, you know-” He ducks under a flaming book thrown at the back of his head by a yelling Tommy, watching it land in his lawn and start burning freely. “Uh, things are a little quiet recently-”

“Quiet?” Techno’s eyebrows fly into his hairline. “You’re callin’ this quiet?”

“Um, well, things are better than they were last week,” Dream says optimistically, “so, um, the attic has been taken over by some guy I let into my house because he said he was homeless and had two kids with him, but you know, I’ve decided that’s fine. A few other people have showed up, for some reason, I don’t really know who they are, but-”

“Is- Is that the guy that stole your attic?” Techno points to Wilbur, who saunters by with a peanut butter sandwich from the kitchen while two others scream at him. “Wilbur Soot?”

Dream blinks. “You know him?”

“Yeah?” Techno scoffs. “Dude, he’s not even homeless. He lives with Phil. You know, like, the guy who lives next door to me?”

“He’s not homeless..?”

“You’ve been exiled!” A man in a beanie yells at Wilbur. “That means you can’t come into the attic again! Stop trying to break back in!”

“Let me talk to Schlatt,” Wilbur demands, “he’s been keeping the peanut butter from my people. I want to talk to him. He needs to treat my people better.”

“He’s passed out drunk in the attic, dude, I don’t know what you want from me-”

“Dream.” Techno interrupts their listening with some concern. “I hate to pry, but when was the last time you slept?”

“Oh, you know,” Dream laughs, voice cracking, eye twitching at the sound of something being smashed from the inside, “uh, like, a week or so ago!”

So that explains why he’s so calm. Techno winces, and then eyes the blanket and pillow in his hands. “I didn’t wake you as you were tryin’ to sleep, did I?”

“No, no,” Dream claps him on the back as he heads outside to a deckchair in the front yard, putting the pillow down and putting on sunglasses, deliberately ignoring the dismal weather and the fact his window cracks very suddenly behind him as someone is flung into a wall, “I decided to take a break for a bit. It’s like... vacation, you know?”

“Have you considered therapy?” Techno asks politely, as the sound of screaming gets louder. “This is pretty rough luck, man.”

“It’s okay,” Dream says absently, pulling the blanket over himself, already half asleep, “wake me up if they burn down my house, please.”

“TECHNOBLADE!”

Techno finds himself being yanked inside, and by the time he gets his bearings, the door is firmly shut and locked behind him. Heart sinking, he turns round to see a hyperactive TommyInnit and a very tired looking Wilbur Soot, one of them beaming, the other scowling.

“Hey,” Techno greets warily, “what’s goin’ on?”

“We’re taking back L’Attic,” Tommy says dramatically, throwing his arms out and shattering a photo of Dream and his friends that had been on the wall, “and you’re going to help.”

Technoblade glances upwards, where he can smell the faint stench of alcohol and smoke. “You mean Dream’s attic?”

“Revolution,” Wilbur stresses, crossing his arms, “we’re rebelling against the government, Technoblade. Are you in?”

...Techno turns to the door, still very firmly locked, and then to Quackity and Tubbo, who are yelling at each other over Dream’s bills.

“Yeah,” he sighs, resigning himself to his fate, “yeah, I’m in.”

months after the prison, the plan, the half-assed apologies everyone on the server had given each other in order to move on, dream adopts a cat.

he calls her patches, because she has patches over her face and body and okay, maybe he isn’t the most creative, but shut up, punz, it’s a nice name, and it suits her. patches seems to like it: when dream hangs a loose little name tag around her neck, she nuzzles against him, blinking sleepily up at him. drizzles of sunlight spill across her body from the open window. dream lets her lie on his chest that afternoon as he sleeps — he never sleeps during the day, no matter how tired he gets, but somehow, with patches, things are different. she’s small and soft and sleepy and it feels like a crime to put her somewhere else to rest.

it’s with patches that dream feels like he can trust himself again. since the prison, he hasn’t trusted himself with nice things — living or otherwise — and maybe it has something to do with the pets that came and went in the prison, he’s not sure, and he doesn’t want to think too deeply about it. but patches is so unafraid of him and so affectionate that dream can’t help it: he trusts himself, and only himself, with her, and okay, maybe ranboo and techno from time to time.

not punz, though. punz and patches maintain a very healthy rivalry, in which patches scratches punz every opportunity she gets and punz attempts to persuade dream to adopt a dog instead. but dream caught them both playing together when they thought he wasn’t looking, so, smugly, knows punz loves patches as much as he does, even if they pretend otherwise.

and maybe it’s through her teasing of punz, or maybe just through her staunch love for dream, that patches learns… just a few tricks, as the months pass.

she learns to paw at dream’s face when he’s having nightmares in so specific a way that he doesn’t lash out when he wakes up, and instead is greeted with a face full of fluffy cat. nightmares now dissolve in light of his baby, and where dream used to pace the floor for hours after nightmares, he now drifts off back to sleep, patches’ purring soothing him into better dreams.

she learns how to diffuse tension between her loved ones — whenever she senses dream being stubborn or punz being abrupt or one of the syndicate members being infuriatingly secretive, patches will find her way in between the conflict, staring up with big yellow eyes and meowing plaintively. arguments and brewing fights are forgotten in the wake of patches being demanding, and are resumed later when emotions have calmed and logic kicks in.

“i think she’s just learned to stop fights because she knows uncle techno will give her, like, a ton of fish for being good,” dream grumbles one night, eyeing patches sitting smugly with a full bowl of food, “you’ve pavlov’d her, techno.”

“whaaaat,” techno drawls, dropping an extra fish into patches’ bowl that’s almost larger than her whole body, “what’re you talkin’ about, i would never.”

“you spoil that cat,” philza calls as he enters the room, shaking snow off his coat and wings, “and you say you’re not soft, mate.”

ranboo chuckles while techno scoffs.

“soft? no, no, phil, you don’t understand. we’re raisin’ a warrior here. she’ll be the best one of us all, wait and see.”

…and dream isn’t sure whether or not techno really is training patches, but he starts noticing some suspicious activity that leaves him squinting at patches in a new light.

the way unfamiliar footprints in the snow approach the cabin, and heavier, hurried ones leave very abruptly, almost as if chased away by something. the way shadows seem to shrink off of walls whenever patches looks at them. the way sam and quackity seem very loathe to ever approach the house, and the way patches is always very threateningly chewing something red and tentacle-like whenever one of the eggpire appear for a visit.

bad actually brings it up to dream, one time. “i think your cat’s possessed,” he says nervously, eyeing the closed door like he expects patches to float through with glowing eyes, “i’m not even memeing around. i think she’s possessed or something, dream.”

“patches?” dream chuckles, warily. “she’s harmless. literally just last night she, um, got stuck in a two block hole in the ground and sat there meowing for ages for us to free her. she’s just a baby.”

“a baby demon.” bad shifts uneasily. “maybe she plays the innocent card in front of you! but i dunno, dream… quackity was telling me—”

“well, that’s quackity, of course patches isn’t gonna like him,” dream scoffs, “she probably picks up on his horrible, horrible vibes.”

“it’s not just that! he says some… creature chased him away from the cabin one night. okay, so— he admitted, he was having like, an awful day and he wanted to come and pick a fight with techno— which is stupid, and he was a jerk, but this was ages ago— and all of a sudden, a huge, cat-like creature with glowing red eyes and tendrils of black magic appeared in front of him, hissing and yowling— he thought he was gonna die.”

quackity is more stupid than dream had originally thought. still… dream thinks dubiously of his baby cat, who hasn’t learned not to hiss every time she goes out in the snow because she’s still surprised how cold it is and who acts like she’s dying every time she’s forced to bathe. “and he thinks that’s patches. my patches. what, was he drunk or something? or, like, i don’t know, out of his mind? patches is a baby. and her eyes don’t glo—”

he’s cut off by bad’s screech and stumble back. hands raising protectively, dream whirls around, ready to fight, but instantly relaxes when he sees who it is. “oh, patches!” he says, scooping her up. patches offers him pathetic eyes and a whimpering little meow. “oh, come on, now, i’m gonna get you lunch soon, i promise. you literally had breakfast an hour ago, how are you hungry?”

“you— you didn’t see that?!”

dream blinks, bemused. “what, patches?”

bad’s mouth is agape, and he points a trembling finger at patches. “you didn’t— her shadow grew on the wall and her eyes glowed, all her fur stood on end— dream,” he babbles, “you’ve literally adopted a demon. a demon cat. patches isn’t normal!”

“…that’s mean. look, she just— sometimes when she’s hungry or in a bad mood, she gets a little agitated, but she’s a sweetheart.” patches purrs affirmatively. “see? she’s not— a demon cat, bad. look, you’ll see. let me get her food, and then you’ll see she’s calmer.”

but it’s as dream leaves the room that the lights over bad flicker and go out completely, leaving the spooked man in the dark. when he turns around to leave, all he can see are patches glowing eyes, looking down on him evilly from dream’s arms as he exits the room. a gust of cold wind hits bad out of nowhere, and if he’d been outside, he would have seen the lightning strike right above his head.

instead, he just hears an imprint of words in his head, like someone — something — is speaking directly into his mind. it’s nowhere near as evil as the egg, but it’s ten times more powerful, and ten times more scary.

don’t tell my secret, badboyhalo.

bad gulps, and hurriedly follows dream into the kitchen, where patches is being given a generous helping of fish. as she wolfs it down, she blinks up at bad, and bad shivers. there’s ancient wisdom in those eyes, the very forces of good and evil reflected back at him.

but dream is smiling fondly at his kitten, and bad hasn’t seen him smiling in a long time. so, he ducks his head in understanding at the benevolent god cat eating fish in front of him, and patches — whisperer of worlds, echoer of eons, guardian of realms and bringer of dreams — purrs softly back.

Love at first sight : classic, seen over and over, bland, boring

HATE at first sight : new, exciting, spiteful, refreshing, sassy, spicy

“Where on earth did you get a harmonica?”

Connor took his harmonica away from his mouth with mild annoyance. “You didn’t get your prison-issued harmonica when you got locked in here?”

The enderman guy in the next cell over, Ranboo he said his name was, looked taken aback, which was the biggest change in emotion Connor had seen from him. “No?”

“It was a joke man, don’t worry.” He didn’t want the guy to have a heart attack or something. “I hid it in my onesie. I mean, there’s no radio in here so I had to make do.”

“What was that song you were playing? It was really nice.” Ranboo still sounded kind of rough- he’d been crying on and off since Sam had brought him in yesterday.

“It’s- uh- it’s Mask Sus Remix.” Connor looked down at the harmonica and then up at Ranboo.

“Sounds interesting… is it a classical piece?”

“Uh… yeah, definitely.” Connor replied after a moment of silence. Ranboo nodded. Silence fell between them again. Connor wanted to pick up the harmonica and start playing again to mask the silence, like he had when Ranboo was crying, and even put the thing to his mouth, but lowered it again. “Hey, Ranboo?”

Ranboo looked at him, those red and green eyes so jarring to see. “Yeah?”

“Why are you in here? What the hell did you do?”

Ranboo laughed. Well, he gave a single, dry “ha!”, at least. “It’s a long story. What about you?”

“You clearly don’t understand how the exchange of information works, so I’m not telling you.” Connor folded his arms.

Ranboo shook his head. “Really, I just don’t want to talk about it.”

“Is that why you’re crying all the time?” Connor asked, figuring he might as well ask all the emotionally invasive questions now.

Ranboo shook his head, looking more and more distressed. He didn’t say anything, though, just turned away and pressed his shirt cuffs to his eyes.

“Sorry man, didn’t mean to upset you.” Connor said, mentally kicking himself. He put the harmonica to his lips again and began to play again, this time something a little more relevant. A song called “Folsom Prison Blues”, although still as incomprehensible as the last, as he’d only leaned to play a few days ago.

Time wasn’t dictated by clocks in prison. This wasn’t particularly new to Connor, the null of time, but it was still a weird feeling. The warden was their time god here, when he came with food. A full meal delivery passed before Ranboo spoke again.

“I just really miss my kid. And my husband.”

Connor had been drifting off on the floor, but sat up to look and listen. “You have a kid? And a husband? I didn’t know anyone was, like, able to form meaningful connections anymore on this server.”

Ranboo chuckled at that. “Yeah. Me, Tubbo, and Michael. I miss them a lot.”

Having come from nothingness, Connor couldn’t relate to the whole family thing, but it still was sweet to hear Ranboo speak so lovingly about them.”

“Hey man, it’s gonna be okay.” Connor wasn’t quite sure why he said it, but it felt like the right thing to do. “We’re gonna be okay.”

The prison alarms were still blaring when Ranboo was slaughtered in front of the prison. Connor watched his body collapse to the ground like a puppet that’s had its strings cut.

Connor heard Technoblade’s yell, the gasps from the crowd. It was the middle of the day, blinding hot and hostile. His now dirty onesie stuck to him like a second skin. And he watched Ranboo die.

He slid into the ranks of the gathered crowd of locals like he has always been there, and no one even gave him a second glance. So forgettable he might as well have just been there the whole time, that’s who Connor was.

He watched the place where Ranboo’s body had fallen for a long time after the crowds had left. He was mildly sad, as one would be for who, in all reality, was essentially a stranger. But it was the husband and the kid that he couldn’t stop thinking about. Even that much love wasn’t enough to stop a blade.

Connor dug a small hole in the bloody sand and buried the harmonica. An unfair grave for an unfair death.

Techno: It's been quite a year, huh?

Phil: ....Techno, it's February.

Techno:

Techno: And?

hello little disabled people in my phone. do yall have POTS? are you also queer? im wrote up a pretty short survey for yall to take to give some insight into POTS and its effects on queer bitches. ill be posting the anonymous results pretty regularly as i get new information in, so itll be fairly easy to stay updated on the results.

Google Docs

POTS in Transgender Patients

Studying the effects of POTS on natal sex and gender identity. Answers are anonymous.

no pressure to take the survey of course, i just like to conduct research in my spare time. plus im going on hormone replacement therapy and my mom and my fiance are worried about how it would affect my physical health.

theres also the "other" option for yalls assigned sex at birth, but its not for joke answers. be respectful.

pizza delivery straight to hell

based on this tweet:

version without the flames:

baby girl is a beautiful name for an adult man

They, the powers that be, the establishment, idiots, fools, brigands, naysayers and cuckholds: all musicals should have an 'I want' song to establish the protagonist's principal goals in the narrative

The Guy Who didn't Like Musicals: I'm about to blow your tiny little minds

Pls someone make it happen, especially the first and last ones

i don’t have a reddit but i want to take that spotlight thing as a challenge to write, in less than 2k words:

a magic realism action-adventure centered on dream going on a quest to retrieve george from the airport

a fantasy mcc fic centered on Red Rabbits All Stars Sands of Time

a soulmate au where your soulmate’s first touch gets tattooed on you, and sapnap and george are both his soulmates

noir fic for Detective Dream where he solves the case of who ate the salmon he’d been saving (it was patches but george was an accomplice)

Into the Dreamverse: cc!dream, alongside Detective Dream and Manhunt Dream, gets roped into saving c!dream from prison

Sometimes I'm just going about my day and then remember Helluva Boss exists.

It's so unique and refreshing after decades of Family Guy and Rick and Morty and the rest of those adult shows that use their status to play their adult jokes like they're still something taboo, like they're sneaking candy.

"Ooh, ooh we're not supposed to do this! Can you believe we're doing it??" They're proud of all their characters being rude narcissists who hate everyone, including their friends, kids, and partners. They're so excited to portray people who are are stagnant in their negative characteristics and have shows where the brightest things about them is their colors. They make light of mature concepts. The art styles are all bland and intended to be cranked out as fast as possible. Inexpressive and mass-produced. Jokes are lazy and bigoted and immature at best. No thought or effort is put in whatsoever.

Meanwhile Helluva Boss is on the other end of the spectrum. "Yeah, we're doing this, that's why we're here. If you're not going to at least try to engage you're gonna get bored." They're proud of showing multiple types of relationships and the varying aspects of them, especially when so many of those are positive, working towards being positive, or experiencing the consequences of characters' actions that might hurt them instead. They're excited to show the depth to these characters and how they affect each other and how brightness is not only something they can show visually but portray in the world too, even in a setting like hell. They occasionally make light of mature concepts, but only when they aren't the focus and have no bearing on the overall episode or character. Otherwise, heavy topics are respected and communicated with the expectation that the audience will treat them accordingly. The art style is expressive and takes time to animate - time and effort is put in. They give the middle finger to bigots and make the entire cast some form of character that would be ridiculed by others. There is an incredible amount of effort and thought put in to this project.

We have an adult animated show that unapologetically and enthusiastically shows queer people and queer relationships without implying that they're inherently bad, shows people who feel like outcasts or experience difficulties with life and are dealing with those, shows difficult and negative people who are developing and growing in real time. It expects its viewers to act like adults and doesn't try to take itself too seriously or too flippantly.

It's an exceptional relief that this show exists, I'm so excited to see it continue.

this is what tommy's particle that ive just discovered looks like. kind of. this is a theory. but anyway it just acts chaotically and the force of its wavelength may seem annoying at first s- *gets shot*

The final one ...

Manhunt 💗⚔️

polish government has opened a website for ukrainians seeking safety and trying to cross the ukrainian-polish border:

ua.gov.pl

as of 13:10 polish time, it has been said as many people as possible will be let through the borders. they are also supposed to let through children who do not have passports, as to not divide families.

Always more dramatic writing, at this point it's more of a personnality trait than a funny quirk

It's a constant escalation

george not found lore is that he sleepy. hes a sleepy little guy who puts a cap on, doesnt take his glasses off, and goes to bed to snork mimimimim.... Sometimes he goes zzzzz *SAW CUTTING WOOD* zzzzz......

fuck you fuck you fuck you georgenotfound lore is so complex and heartbreaking you dont understand him like i do

if tumblr dies im going to replace it with an expansive discord server where you get your own channel and your mutuals can go in there and see what you post and then put it in their own channels. this of course will give us all the feeling of being trapped inside a small box with thousands of strangers we hate. the discourse will be fucking lethal.

I’M ON TUMBLR. WE’RE ALL ON TUMBLR.

In light of the news that Hasbro is considering using multiple properties it owns for NFTs, including D&D, I would just like to remind everyone that PDFs of virtually all D&D source books are available online for free if you look and it's always moral to pirate from WotC

soooo today i learned that back in the early 90s, coca cola tried making this thing called “ok soda” as a marketing stunt to beat out pepsi since they had way more of a hold on the “younger/rebellious” generation at the time, and their way of doing that was naming it “ok soda” so that they could copyright the word “ok”, the most popular word in the world, and at the same time brand it as an…ironic soda??? like the whole thing with it was that they tried to brand ok soda as a counterculture soda but instead of making it about typical 90s RADICAL EXTREME!!! fodder the theme of it was uh. unsettling capitalist brutalist dystopia. instead of being bright and colorful the color scheme was only stark whites, grays and reds and the cans looked like this. bold shapes and labels stating ominous, robotic things with a figure always staring dead into you on the front, no coca cola branding on it at all.

sometimes there would be “prize cans” of this stuff where instead of having soda inside it there would be hats. and they didn’t sell this option in boxes by the way they just put prize cans in random vending machines. and put like 25 cents in it so hey. you could get an actual soda that isn’t just hats. maybe.

did i mention that this soda also had a fucking MANIFESTO??? because yeah it sure had that printed on some cans and it goes as follows

and there’s these things called “coincidences”, which… yeah it doesn’t make it sound any less ominous

and you might be wondering how the soda itself tastes like does it taste good? ok? well apparently it was just a regular “citric” tasting soda but somehow they fucked it up so bad that it was compared to “carbonated tree sap”, and instead of trying to make the drink taste better they included that it tasted like shit, INTO THE ADVERTISING SCHEME ITSELF. they would literally advertise that it tasted like ass as a part of the ironic marketing, no i am not kidding.

but if you thought that’s where it ended there’s one more curveball and without any exaggeration, you will not expect what i am about to tell you.

take a look at this guy.

this guy is the “face” of ok soda, as in he was printed on the most cans and technically served as a mascot of sorts for the entire thing. his face was a major part of the branding, and this design for the cans was one of if not the most common.

okay. cool. no issue there right?

take a guess on who this guy is based off of.

the artist’s coworker? a generic guy? the artist himself? a relative? some random reference model they hired?

CHARLES MANSON. YES, THIS IS REAL. MEANING FOR A BRIEF MOMENT IN TIME, CHARLES MANSON’S FACE WAS USED AS A MEANS TO SELL COCA COLA.

the lead artist himself has even come forward to say this is the case. and now you may be asking wait. how’d he do this? how’d he possibly get away with this, years after the crimes had been committed?

well according to him, it was simple. apparently none of the contracts he signed said anything against putting a mass murderer on the can. so. there’s THAT.

unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you look at it, ok soda never really caught on since *surprise surprise!* teens really don’t want to buy soda that looks like a brutalist art museum, and it never had a wide release so it was only a thing for like two years between 1993 and 1995. but from what i’ve heard there’s still people who are giving this soda a small modern following, collecting all the cans and merchandise and even coming up with stand in recipes for the soda formula itself.

so yeah! that was ok soda.

what the fuck

i support bi rights. but more relevantly i support bi wrongs