This Is The Dawn Of My Chloe Gong Era

I--

Hate the Maximum Ride series I hate it. It had so much potential but James Patterson wouldn’t know consistency if it hit him in the face. Like the part where the gang went to Antartica? It felt like I had missed a book with how much had happened. And Izzy’s mom going from dead to actually being married and thinking he was dead? Whack. Within a couple of chapters too like. I could be remembering wrong but what kind of inconsistency was that?

I've never read this series, but because my brain is utterly broken, I have watched multiple hours long videos about it. And even then, with all that knowledge, having it all condensed down to it's most straightforward and coherent, I could in no way give you a cohesive plot summary. Like, I think they stop the apocalypse, stop the climate crisis, and then it doesn't matter because the apocalypse happens anyway? Maybe? I don't know.

I don't think even James Patterson knows.

I'm starting to think he's not even a real person. Just every now and then, a book appears in the world with that name on it. It never goes to an editor, no publishing house actually handles it, it's never even been to a printer. It just appears in bookstores and we as a society just don't question it

I'm gonna throw one of my hot takes out here real quick.

Speed reading is just skimming. You're missing out on so much of the book when you do it. It's really not worth it just so you can say that you read 90 books in one month. We need to stop encouraging it. The quality of a read is so much more important than how quickly you finished it. Might be mean, but I won't take your book opinions very seriously if you're just skimming.

leaving kudos on ao3 isn’t enough I need to be able to eat the fic

Honestly, this shit with Hogwarts Legacy is just like what happened with Chick-fil-A like ten or fifteen years ago. Some of y'all might be too young to remember it, but it went almost exactly like this shit today, only the target was technically gay people (not like we aren't all lumped together when push comes to shove, but gay was the political scapegoat in US politics at the time, as trans people were still on the fringes of social awareness).

It came out that the people who own Chick-fil-A were donating to organizations in other countries that were actively working to get gay people there killed, and were also very monetarily invested in stripping gay people of any legal rights they'd amassed in the US. So a lot of queer folks were asking for allies to boycott Chick-fil-A to show solidarity.

And it turned into a giant fuckin circus for bigots to rally around. There was even a support Chick-fil-A day, I remember it because I was a server at the time and our restaurant was empty most the day - while the line for Chick-fil-A down the road was like a mile long consistently.

But while that was obviously annoying, that wasn't what hit people the hardest. Cuz we expect clowns to wear the shoes, right, it's not shocking.

What disappointed people, or really demoralized a lot of young queers at the time especially, was the allies who would still go there. Because they like the sandwiches or fries or whatever. The people who'd march with them in the parade or be supportive of marriage equality, who would then turn right around and give their money to people who were trying to actively harm their friends.

Because the chicken was good.

I remember a friend of mine being really just absolutely broken up over that, trying to understand some of her friends reasoning and at the time I couldn't give her an answer. I could now, though.

And it's this:

Talk is cheap.

It costs nothing to say things. A person can say whatever the hell they want, any feel good flowery thing, and it doesn't really cost them.

But when they are asked to actually give something up - or put their money where their mouth is and just....can't do it. Well then there isn't much else for them to say, is there? At least nothing that's worth anything.

Some people had to find out the hard way that the choice between a chicken sandwich and funding people who did not believe in their dignity as a human being was, in the eyes of certain allies, apparently really hard. Too hard, in fact.

These allies would march in the colorful parades and go to the bars for drinks, but in the end, you couldn't actually depend on them to inconvenience themselves. They were fair weather allies, and they were there for the party and that's about it . They wanted entertainment, and it didn't matter if that came from having fun gay friends or a tasty sandwich.

This is the same thing, really, or pretty close to it.

These types of people just wanna have fun. Either you, their friend or whatever, are fun or the game is fun, and if you stop being fun by incidentally making them feel a little guilty about where they spend their money , then they might just choose the thing that doesn't make them currently uncomfortable.

And I'm not saying these people who say trans rights online but who also really, really want to play wizard game and already have are horrible people or anything - they're just not very good. They have no real character. And unfortunately there's not much you can do to change that, other than investing time and energy in people who do.

There is something really annoying to me about magic systems that are dependent on the sex of the user. Especially since it always seems tied to sex assigned at birth rather than identity.

Like, there's this super powerful force permeating the universe that allows those who harness it to perform amazing feats that no human would be able to perform otherwise.

But it all depends on what genitals you came out of the womb with.

Ohhhhhhhhh i have some RAGE against Normal People by Sally Rooney. Can I understand, intellectually, that there are legitimate reasons to like this book? Yes. Do I emotionally agree with any of them? ABSOLUTELY NOT. First off this book was impossible to read easily because of the lack of punctuation, what was up with that!! Beyond that the relationship between the two main characters was just bad and really imbalanced, and also I was not interested at all. Also the weak ass Marxist commentary??? Girl didn't even commit 🤣 And to top it all off, I read this for a bookclub for a college that I did all the precollege stuff for, and they DIDN'T EVEN LET ME IN!!!!!! Anyways fuck this book so much, enjoy my rant :)

I accept and appreciate your offering.

It's bullshit that they didn't let you in. Book clubs are supposed to bring people together, but some of them get so snobby.

I will be playing some more Diablo III on Twitch tonight at 10:00 EST

You should come watch

If the Ancient Aliens/Ancient Astronauts theory is true, then aliens must really hate white people

I am in Control.

Join me at 5 PM EST

This isn't so much beef but when I was back in school we read the book Unwind and we got to the part in the book where one of the characters was being unwound and how it happened and it scarred me a little bit. I also remember hating most of the characters. I haven't read this book since then, though.

I don't know anything about this book, but thank you for sharing with me