"i feel besquintled", said no one ever. because that's not a word.

okay nevermind it IS a word now and this is exactly what it means.

Look I don’t care how implausible it is, I don’t care how ridiculous it is. Dick is eight years old when he becomes Robin. It’s the funniest fuckin thing and I refuse to ever make him older than eight when he bullies a grown ass Bruce into letting him go out at night with him.

Does Bruce take him on kiddie runs until he’s a little older? Maybe. Does Batman stand menacingly behind a brightly colored little bird to threaten the goons while Robin can’t see him? You know he does.

But Robin is still actually terrifying when he first appears on the scene, because he’s a teeny tiny fluttery little thing that does cartwheels and handstands and makes puns then launches himself full force to kick a man in the nose and then cackles when he bleeds. His laughter makes goons shiver, they hear it bouncing around warehouses and half of them bolt, because they learn very quickly what happens when a feral Robin appears.

The Gotham rogues all immediately have beef with a literal third grader because he took the bats attention away and also because he’s roundhouse kicked them all in the shins at some point and that shit hurt like hell, and then he laughed in their faces while making a pun about their villain name.

Majority of the rogues everywhere hate Nightwing because they all know he used to be the feral child that they all thought Batman should have put on a leash, half of them have been straight up bitten by him before he lost all his baby teeth, and they’re all so bitter about the fact that they’ve been beaten by an actual elementary school student. And now he’s all grown up? He’s fucking terrifying.

Maybe someone made a typo and it just got out of hand?

I kinda feel like panic!at the disco started the whole exclamation point thing and then it caught on around the internet, but maybe they got it from somewhere else, IDK.

The world may never know…

Maybe it’s something mathematical?

I’ve been in fandom since *about* when Panic! formed and the adjective!character thing was already going strong, pretty sure it predates them.

It’s a way of referring to particular variations of (usually) a character — dark!Will, junkie!Sherlock, et cetera. I have suspected for a while that it originated from some archive system that didn’t accommodate spaces in its tags, so to make common interpretations/versions of the characters searchable, people started jamming the words together with an infix.

(Lately I’ve seen people use the ! notation when the suffix isn’t the full name, but is actually the second part of a common fandom portmanteau. This bothers me a lot but it happens, so it’s worth being aware of.)

“Bang paths” (! is called a “bang"when not used for emphasis) were the first addressing scheme for email, before modern automatic routing was set up. If you wanted to write a mail to the Steve here in Engineering, you just wrote “Steve” in the to: field and the computer sent it to the local account named Steve. But if it was Steve over in the physics department you wrote it to phys!Steve; the computer sent it to the “phys” computer, which sent it in turn to the Steve account. To get Steve in the Art department over at NYU, you wrote NYU!art!Steve- your computer sends it to the NYU gateway computer sends it to the “art” computer sends it to the Steve account. Etc. (“Bang"s were just chosen because they were on the keyboard, not too visually noisy, and not used for a huge lot already).

It became pretty standard jargon, as I understand, to disambiguate when writing to other humans. First phys!Steve vs the Steve right next to you, just like you were taking to the machine, then getting looser (as jargon does) to reference, say, bearded!Steve vs bald!Steve.

So I’m guessing alternate character version tags probably came from that.

100% born of bang paths. fandom has be floating around on the internet for six seconds longer than there has been an internet so early users just used the jargon associated with the medium and since it’s a handy shorthand, we keep it.

Absolutely from the bang paths–saw people using them in early online fandom back in 1993 for referring to things.

I had been doing it for a very, very long time but never actually knew the actual name for it. This is exciting! I like learning things.

I am very glad this has been going around so folks learn the Lore, but also let’s encourage it because then we get to say “bang paths” more often.

we are losing the ancient art of full song-length amvs so bad. i keep seeing banger edits that just cut off at 30 seconds what are u doing FINISH THE SONG!!!!

saw someone on tiktok say they didn’t watch a 40 second edit because it was TOO LONG. we as a society can’t go on like this

Their mock election was so realistic the school even played the role of the CIA

your caption is doing numbers on copy-paste twitter

Oof

They stole my labor for profit. They did a capitalism to me on a communism meme. I can't decide if that's hilarious or infuriating.

life seeks to perpetuate

2022 / 2025

I know I haven't posted regularly on this blog in years but I'm not seeing a whole lot of posts on this site about what's happening in Minneapolis right now. And the posts I am seeing are not covering the scope of it. I'm genuinely surprised because tumblr is usually where I find out about things organically through my feed. So I'm making a post about it.

A brief summary of events, from someone who pays attention and also lives here, best taken with a grain of salt and some fact checking:

2020: George Floyd is murdered by Minneapolis police. There are weeks of protests about it. It makes national news. Protests happen in DC. The infamous Trump and his bible photo shoot happens.

2024: Gov. Tim Walz is Kamala Harris' running mate in the presidential election. He starts the "they're just weird" thing. Is folksy, Trump personally hates him.

November 2025: ICE starts showing up to "crack down" on "illegal immigrants" in our Somali community. I may remember the numbers wrong, but something like 90% of our Somali neighbors are either naturalized or were born here. People distribute ICE whistles and are on high alert. Localized to the twin cities.

December 2025: Nick Shirley is paid by a bunch of MN Republicans to do an exposé on daycare fraud. I didn't hear much about this. All I really know is this was an ongoing investigation that MN officials were already taking care of and some of the guilty parties have already gone to court from a COVID era food assistance program. Mostly, if not all, legal US citizens. He did a really bad job at doing journalism and just showed up to day cares with a camera crew and went "YUP nobody's here" as if they weren't in lock-down procedure because some fuck ass white men showed up with camera equipment that could easily be mistaken for guns. I believe. I will fact check all of this and will correct myself in a reblog if necessary. (source but not all the details that I remember hearing about but they said there was no recorded evidence of fraud)

Conservative internet explodes. Kristi Noem sends a mess of agents. I know it's more than a thousand more. They call it Operation Metro Surge. They are going everywhere. There are protests. People try to interrupt the arrests. It's a lot.

1/7/2026: Renee Nicole Good is shot by an ICE agent in the middle of a protest. A few blocks away from where George Floyd was killed. Broad daylight. In front of a crowd. While she was following instructions to turn her vehicle around. Jonathan Ross, the piece of shit Nazi who did it, was recording on his phone the whole time, switched his phone to his non dominant hand so he could more effectively shoot her in the face from 2 feet away. Claims self defense, several angles immediately disprove him. He releases his video, he calls her a "fucking bitch" as her corpse drives away. Does not help him at all. (source) He has not been seen since. Some photos/reports exist of a bunch of agents showing up to his house and taking some tubs and art away. His wife is an immigrant. (source but it's the daily mail so grain of salt.)

Not hours later they go raid a school and tear gas a bunch of kids. (source). Minneapolis has switched to distance learning. I'm not sure about St. Paul.

The last week: There are up to 3,000 ICE agents here. Keep in mind Minneapolis and St. Paul only have 600 or fewer police officers each. So these dudes are roaming in packs. It's 2-4 dudes to a car and 2-5 cars per pack. People are "commuting with" ICE agents to honk and alert people that they're there. People are going on patrols with their neighbors.

ICE is no longer asking "are you a citizen." They are simply walking up to you and taking you into custody. They are going door to door. They have started just breaking the door down if you don't comply. They are driving recklessly to just grab pedestrians and drivers alike (source). People are afraid to go get groceries. It's all over the state. I am learning names of cities in places I thought were just factory farm land and I've lived here my whole life because they're doing raids there. I had to text my family in the suburbs because I saw reports of my small little hometown an hour away getting door knocks today.

It's insane and I am not doing it justice. There are thousands of masked federal agents roaming around all of Minnesota with no warrant or specific goal. They are just trolling around looking for people. They are detaining anyone and everyone. They are beating people. They are pepper spraying people. They are kidnapping people. They are acting unconstitutionally, aggressively, and unpredictably. They are creating situations that are dangerous so that they can try to justify beating or shooting their way out. I will run an errand and then get fed a tiktok that was shot from the Cub Foods that I just left and there's 20+ ICE vehicles parked there now. They're taking people from work, from day care, from schools, from shopping centers.

Iceout.org tracks ice sightings. This is a screen shot with the date set to 12/1/2025.

And from today.

They have cut off SNAP and WIC benefits. Just for us. Not any other state, just Minnesota. They're saying it's because of fraud but I think it's because they hate that we use federal funds to give free breakfast and lunch to every public school student.

And this is breaking just now, 1/13/2026: the DOJ is trying to investigate Renee Good's widow. 4 people have resigned about it. (source). I don't even want to read the article to see what they're saying.

So that's a brief history.

Unicorn Riot is doing a lot of good reporting and they don't seem to have the spin that a lot of local news stations will have where they downplay everything. This article specifically goes into a lot of the specific instances of brutality.

It's also a rumor on TikTok that all of the videos of ICE and protests and the such and the like are being geo locked. So my feed is all footage of people being detained and talking about the "commuting" they're doing and what they're seeing but people outside of the state are not seeing it. So if you're also on that infernal app, try searching for Minneapolis or Minnesota and see what you see. I'm kind of curious if this is true. Because I've been living and breathing ICE and doomsday prepping content for a week. I'm sure those two topics aren't connected.

I don't really know what my goal with this post is. I'm tired. I'm in the first ring of suburbs, so it's been pretty quiet. But I have friends in south Minneapolis. And I'm worried for them. And I know it's a matter of time before my quiet pocket is affected. Because they're coming door to door.

Pay attention to Minnesota, I think an example is being made of us.

Update- Minnesota republicans are taking this opportunity to try to impeach Govt Waltz, who has already declared that he will not seek re-election in November because of Republican death threats against him and his family. Because of the "fraud". But actually because Waltz is speaking very plainly about what is happening here.

St Paul has gone to partial virtual learning for anyone who doesn't feel safe sending their kids to school.

Every school I know now has safety patrols.

The school districts are not mincing words about the clear and present threat. Everyone in the area is completely clear that we are under violent occupation.

Most of the white people ICE grab, are released within days, because ICE can't even keep track of who was grabbed by who over what. However, they are still subjected to beatings, gassing, having their home and car windows smashes, etc.

Local police are advising compliance with the blatant human rights violations and total lack of due process, because they are cowards.

Even conservative Minnesotans are balking at the total lack of due process and open violence against unresisting people for doing things like taking videos. I know a guy who was in his house recording ICE, and they smashed his home window, dragged him out over the broken glass, beat him while screaming slurs, smashed his phone, and detained for three days.

We need your help to spread the truth about what is going on. Find the videos and share them on any platform you have. Make noise about what's happening. Get your "don't tread on me" relatives whipped up about it if you can.

We need republicans to be afraid, otherwise ICE plans to be here for half a year attacking us.

If human rights can be revoked because Trump doesn't like your state, then they aren't rights anymore, they are favors dispensed by your king.

If you're looking for on-the-ground reporting, there are a few foreign news networks there. I've been seeing a lot of Sky news on tiktok and they have a female reporter who is very very good. As far as tiktok geo-locking, I think it's partly true? I'm not seeing a deluge of local Minnesota content, but I do still see it. Some are posts from individuals, but most are compilation videos of what people in Minnesota are filming. Different angles of the same event, or compilations of the same type of thing (ICE slipping on ice, car window smashing etc). So while I think individual videos aren't getting through like they should, it is still being seen.

If this is your first round on the 'US uses blatantly false evidence as an excuse to attack a country for purely selfish reasons' track, then let me save you a lot of future embarrassment:

You don't need to try to become a public expert on Venezuela or Maduro based on reading half the Wikipedia page or scrolling the Bluesky tags. You don't need to state any opinion on the former political situation of Venezuela at all. It's okay for now to admit that you know fuck all about it, or to just not speak on it.

An opinion like 'The US shouldn't use blatantly false evidence as an excuse to attack a country for purely selfish reasons' is a full opinion that doesn't require knowing exactly what was up in the country being attacked.

Don't fall for the temptation of 'the enemy of my enemy must be a friend, so I'm gonna get on their hill and write minimally-informed stuff about how great they are'. Trust me, you're gonna feel very silly about that later.

You'll notice that people do this in multiplayer games for much the same reason!

kink shaming is dead. I respect people with foot fetishes more than the president of the united states of America

Unironically I think the early to mid 20s age group in America has unbelievably bad consent boundaries on all levels and so much language to defend it but this makes me sound like elon musk if I say it however the commonality of someone who will be like “I had 47 panic attacks and it’s your fault” if you tell them no is insane

I rejected someone and got called “the scariest person I’ve ever met” with so much therapy speak interspersed like alright okay alright okay alright okay

“You just say whatever you’re thinking and I don’t know how to handle it” was verbatim part of this conversation. Also everyone hates to see an autistic bitch

When I was in this age bracket, there was a huge emphasis on improving consent culture via graceful rejection, and it's gone by the wayside. Which sucks.

Twice in my youth (once in high school and once in college) I was in situations where I was asking someone out and I could tell they were calculating in their heads the risks of rejecting me, and both times I said, out loud, "you can say no, I wouldn't have asked if I wasn't prepared for either answer." And then they said no. This wasn't some spark of special wisdom I had - I knew to do it because feminist conversations among my age group brought it up regularly. This isn't happening nearly enough anymore.

More recently, I was really glad when we got to "rejection sensitive dysphoria" in my IOP program and it was one of those symptoms where the therapists really emphasized how it affects others. Because it does.

Being someone who cannot handle rejection makes you much more likely to violate boundaries, and yes, that includes sexual ones. Yes, you, reader who has never hurt a fly. If you don't want to stumble backwards into sexually assaulting someone, fix your RSD meltdowns. If you keep them up it's only a matter of time. Because if you're nice enough to interact with, but are known to have RSD meltdowns, guess what happens when your friends and acquaintances need to reject you?

I hate when ppl act shocked that rappers know "high brow" cultural references. It's so condescending "this dumb black guy knows about art" as if they're not the main producers of modern culture.