rustedtusks.com

When I first started writing SLOP, the very first bit of hate speech I came up with was the term "Black Mouthed Cur". It should be followed up with "Yellow Cur" as an equivalent. If you call a canine species in SLOP a BMC, yellow cur, or anything similar, its like saying "Poor White Trash".

A not so nice term for the Cunni is Hopfoot.

Now its your turn. Pick a species or two from the comic and figure what insulting thing everyone else calls them. Be creative. If there are some good ones, I'll likely adopt them for the comic.

Have fun.

Since the cats are my area of interest (but there's also a few other possibilities based upon conversations Muley and I have had):
(and I'll further warn you, some of these will be grossly offensive, even in our world)

Klandagh: Slat-Cats (due to the reputation many of them have for being drunks and gas-sniffers)
Onçano: Virgin-Killers (due to ancient Mesoamerican legends of male jaguars trained to deflower and often eat young virgins in sacrifice)
Vazak: Pikey-Cats or Gyppos
Seer: (can't think of one for now, but they have a bit of a reputation for being witches and/or devil worshippers)
Tag: Stripey, Old Hairy-Face, Basmati (if you've ever smelled a male tiger's urine, you understand this one)
Pardine: Night-Fighters, Witch-Doctors, Baby-Snatchers
Gepard: Cousin-Fuckers, Kinmount
Téndwa: Yowlers, Piss-Lickers
Tlalocelotl: Coconut-Balls, Kilties (this second one will be explained later)

In the case of Singha and Oroslani, most of the names they'd be called would likely arise from names they call each other, most of these are based on religious differences—most Singha tend to be Hindu or Buddhist, whereas almost all Oroslani are Mohammedan, although there are two small communities of Hellenic and Abyssinian Orthodox Oroslani. Beyond the religious differences, both the Singha and Oroslani likely stigmatise each other for the common homosexual behaviour amongst the males, and the Oroslani would make fun of the Singha for having very sparse manes, or no manes at all.

And the final cat-related slur belongs to the SLOPverse answer to the bobcat, and is a rare case, where an insulting slur actually became the accepted name for the species itself. They were called Bribón by the Iberian Catechist Conquistadores, the term Bribón meaning "varmint".

A couple of non-cat related ones I can think of would be the well-known pedophile behaviour in many mustelids, where males will often rape and impregnate infant females, and with foxes, the fact that they just stink.

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"Popular lies have ever been the most potent enemies of personal liberty. There is only one way to deal with them. Cut them out, to the very core, just as cancers are..." - Ragnar Redbeard, "Might is Right" (1890).

Remember, much of the effect of a racial slur is dependant on who issues it. As an example I, a totally whitebread whiteboy, work for a company which is owned and run by African Americans, and whose clientele is also black for the greatest part. The two most poular terms in the offices are 'nigger' and 'motherfucker', issued freely. Neither is ever spoken by me or the other few tokens however - to do so would be the ultimate insult.

--lj

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Sometimes I wonder what tomorrow's gonna bring
When I think about my dirty life and times.
---Warren Zevon

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Emoticons are the wheelchair ramps for the humor impaired.

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"Popular lies have ever been the most potent enemies of personal liberty. There is only one way to deal with them. Cut them out, to the very core, just as cancers are..." - Ragnar Redbeard, "Might is Right" (1890).

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Emoticons are the wheelchair ramps for the humor impaired.

It's hard to run one dopwn when you're missing a foot.....

--lj

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Sometimes I wonder what tomorrow's gonna bring
When I think about my dirty life and times.
---Warren Zevon

In a not quite Slop story I'm writing- another Derrick Clydesbank tale- a slur for a Fel is "Wormy whitetail" or just "wormy." Other cervine species traditionally hate the Fel, who I see as based on whitetail deer.

There is a reason for this.

(spoiler, for my story anyway)


















Whitetail deer carry worms. These particular worms get into the brain lining and don't do much of anything- if you're a whitetail. However, in the case of moose and, I think, elk and caribou, they proceed to eat the brain alive...

They pick up these worms by eating slugs that are infected with them. Apparently whitetails eat more slugs than could be explained by random chance. Whitetails are adaptable, and quite strange.

Slug breath?

Either there is a lot more information in the comic than I realized or there's an outside source for info on the critters of "Slop." Since I'm running on "the-tank-is-empty-idiot-go-to-sleep" mode I just whip out a few likely origins for slurs and let y'all retcon it to the species most likely to be called those terms.

Stoops - critters deemed not evolved enough to properly walk on on two feet, also individuals that are more like their feral four-legged ancestors(?). Younger Slopizens often mistake this insult to just mean stupid and use it accordingly.

Bopos - A slangy version of a former euphemism (Bone Poacher) describing a person who has fallen in status and outwardly refuses help but secretly steals what he needs from his former circle of associates. To be called a bopo is to be called a conniving cowardly liar. Any carnivorous/omnivorous critter group that once had power but are largely outcasts living on the bottom rung of society are prime candidates to be labeled bopo.

Rawshanks - referring to the practice of using leg irons to prevent prisoners and slaves from running away, the chafing of the bonds wore away fur and scales until bleeding abrasions and scarred skin was all that remained. Species that were often enslaved became known for this scarring though the term to describe it can refer to a common lawbreaker. Defiant youths of species with such ancestry use fashions that use stark contrasting colors for their lower legs or bare them of both cloth and fur to flout the shame of their origins.

Greenclaws - an ethnic insult for any critter in the Federation who originally comes from any nation south of the border. Originally came about because a primary crossing point for illegal entry had a steep slope with viney vegetation on the Federation side of the border causing those who used it to stain their hands green. The site has long since been shut down by tight monitoring but the monicker stuck.

Shammies - okay, this one I don't have anything that seems cohesive but I think it could work with some effort (I really, really like this word). Was there a species that moved in small nomadic groups centralized around a charismatic/cult-like leader? This is perfect for any insular group that never mixed with the host races of the places they settled. My mind keeps looping this back to accusations by outsiders (true or not) that tainted their crafts as shams and shamanistic rituals. I don't know, can anyone else take this one and polish it?

Hurgurs - a species that has particular difficulty speaking North American Wolven (or whatever the language is supposed to be called for English in "Slop") without growling or making some other throaty noise. The word can also be used to refer to garbled or unintelligible communication.

Ruskie! Ruskie! Da, da, da! Okay, I need to get sleep now.

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"Y'know, if nothing else, living here has incredibly sharpened my 'Hey, there's someone coming for my dick!' defense skills." -

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Emoticons are the wheelchair ramps for the humor impaired.

One feature of the Slop universe, or of any "furry" universe with multiple sapient species, is that there are going to be many non-sapient creatures which resemble sapient ones. Or at least I assume so. It would be just too weird if all animals had become bipedal tool users and there were no bunnies, deer, geese or pigs that weren't actual bunnies and such any more.

Although if all creatures were sapient tool-users, that would mean that predation had to mean eating somebody who was as much a thinking, feeling person as you were. They would still do it, of course. In any society we humans have gone on doing horrible things to each other for as long as it was necessary and profitable to do so. (I do not think it is coincidence that we in the Western World suddenly discovered that slavery was an abomination at exactly the same time that it became more profitable to use machines to do the labor the slaves used to do, machines built by skilled laborers who were paid by the hour as long as they could work and then abandoned to die afterward. If slavery was wrong in 1830-1880, when it went away in the Western world, then, it was wrong earlier. But somehow people couldn't see that slavery was wrong while they could still make a buck off of it.) I don't think that furry societies would be morally better than our own. They too would do whatever they needed to do to make a buck, to get by, to go on struggling through, no matter who got cheated, or killed and roasted, along the way. You could argue that if they didn't do such things, they wouldn't continue to exist at all.

But I presume that in the furry universe as most writers would see it, there are still non-sapient four legged critters running around along with sapient tool-using two legged critters who resemble them. I know that they exist in the Slop universe. Tony Ray makes a living cleaning up deadstock, after all. In more than one way.

That leads to all sorts of strangeness in ways of insulting each other. If somebody calls you a monkey or an ape you probably don't take it as friendly. It seems likely that the Cunni might be insulted in the same way if you called them bunnies, the Fel if you called them deer, and so on. In that way a term which we would see as neutral could be a deadly insult in the Slop world. Of course the problem here is how you show that in the script. Calling my human neighbor "that monkey" is something other humans will read at once as an insult, but calling my Fel neighbor "that deer" won't be as easily caught. Especially since the author has to tell the reader, somewhere, that the Fel are deer-like.

And what about pets? I haven't seen any pets in the Slop universe, but if they have livestock they probably have horses, and if they have horses they must have at least the occasional favorite or pet. They might have dogs or cats who were just plain ordinary dogs and cats, who their ancestors brought into the home (or who, like cats, just moved in because farmers had such abundant supplies of granary mice to feast upon) for the same reasons ours did.

I have to wonder, especially in the case of critters like certain dogs, ravens, and such who are especially bright, whether the act of keeping a pet might itself be a deadly insult to members of whatever sapient species resembled the pet.

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"Y'know, if nothing else, living here has incredibly sharpened my 'Hey, there's someone coming for my dick!' defense skills." -

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Emoticons are the wheelchair ramps for the humor impaired.

On "prey"...

The Cunni got along amicably with the others they shared territory with.
It was the invading Canids that attempted to slaughter them.
And it was during that conflict the phrase "We are not prey" came to be.

Uncle.

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Emoticons are the wheelchair ramps for the humor impaired.

Apparent from the lack of responses, either our esteemed author overestimated us or this is a lot more difficult than it first seemed to be. I think it's option two because I have been researching insults and found many of them have cultural and ethnic (note: these two things are not the same) origins. Working from such a basis has bedeviled my efforts because I need to know details that just aren't out there for public consumption. Proper names, racial sub-groups, and regional areas factor heavily into most real world slights and slurs.

For example, "honky," a slur directed at whites often (but not always) by blacks, is derived from an African-American pronunciation of "hunky." As it turns out the "Hunkies" are composite Polish, Hungarian (Magyar), Rusyn, Slovak settlers in west Pennsylvania and Upstate New York but originally "hunkies" or "bohunks" were various Slavic and Hungarian immigrants who moved to America from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and were a source of cheap manual labor. It was a derogatory term used by indigenous working-class whites against immigrant whites competing for the same jobs and picked up by blacks. As you can see there is quite a bit of history involved and socio-economic influences at play.

Researching other terms revealed equally simple but historically involved etymologies. My first offering of slurs was vague and now I am realizing that they may have needed to be vague because to do otherwise would be to pen fiction into someone else's work, namely Mulefoot's. That doesn't mean I can't be more specific and continue to contribute, but that I may stop short of something truly worthwhile because I feel like I am starting to cross a line between fan and fanfiction.

That said, I still have some ideas.

Since the Tag of the Taikong War seem like the South Vietnamese of the Vietnam War the likely parallel would be the exodus of Tag after the fall of their country just like the Vietnamese boat people. The name invites mean-spirited play-on-words for this event: Tag-alongs, Tag Tugs, Tuggles, Tug Rats, Tow Tags, Tig Tag Tows (that could be a tow-truck company). Simple slurs can be Tigs, Tiggers, Slat Cats or Slit Kits (because of the stripes),and Strib Bitches (slang for "Striped Bitch" used by Tag against Tags who emulate or curry favor with the wolven majority of their host country).

N'buwalda just had Bubu and Nibubu just jump out at me. Zeboos, from the modern Hebrew word for hyena "tzebua" translating as "colored animal." Doobs, from "dhubba" the Arab word for striped hyenas. ... I backed off this one twice but here goes - Tucktails, so-called because the slope of their spine near their pelvis and the lack of flesh evident to other Slopizens makes N'buwalda look like they have flat asses.

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"Y'know, if nothing else, living here has incredibly sharpened my 'Hey, there's someone coming for my dick!' defense skills." -

Another one I'd thought of. Canines who want to be grossly offensive towards the Sekakwa (skunk) and Zorille (spotted skunk) peoples might call the adults 'hoarders', 'trash eaters' and 'dumpster divers'.

And as Muley had already suggested in the SLOPedia document, the youngsters are called 'stinkinines' (sort of like pickaninny). I also figured that since almost all adult Sekakwa and Zorille wind up needing glasses (due to the fact that both Peoples are naturally somewhat mypoic), the biggest danger for young Sekakwa and Zorille would be being hit by cars.
Canines that wanted to offend might refer to young stinkinines as 'speed bumps', as in: "Jesus fuck, get out of the street you dumbass stinkinine speed bumps!"
The Zorille get the further epithet of 'Cracker', because they're mostly found in the deep south.

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"Popular lies have ever been the most potent enemies of personal liberty. There is only one way to deal with them. Cut them out, to the very core, just as cancers are..." - Ragnar Redbeard, "Might is Right" (1890).

Tungka. Drawing from what information Mulefoot has laid out I have come up with sparse few insults for this group:

Koonks - derived from the name used by Prussian mercenaries to describe the Tungka, Konkbraue or "concrete brows" was both an expression of admiration for the Tungka's tenacity and derision for their stubbornness. The term is used mostly by "old money" families and the circles who cater to them: segregationist elites, trustfund litters, ivy-league legacies, union bosses, and mafia broods.

Yahtees - taken from a word for greeting in the Athabaskan language, yá'át'ééh, this slur is common among the populations surrounding Tungka communities. The use of "yahtee" is so great most utterances of this word are without malice, in spite of how the average Tungka feels about being called a yahtee. Corruptions of other words have likewise been applied for good or ill such as "yahtee yax" or "yax" for friend, "hatlee" for old man, and "dadjy" for girl.

Sore Eyes - a label for a drunken Tungka and a persistent stereotype of the people. Though the effects of heavy alcohol abuse on the imbiber's eyes and the vision impairment caused by intoxication seems to be a likely source for this moniker, the real culprit is a cheap whiskey brand - Score Rye Whiskey. Score got its name from boasting the 20 days allowed to ferment before bottling. Most races find the taste vile but the mustelid folk seem less deterred by the taste of this rotgut if all they are looking for is alcoholic euphoria. The Tungka are not majority drinkers but the association between Score Rye and alcoholic Tungka became linked in the public perception. "Sore Eyes" is a term of pity, condescension, and/or disgust and almost always refers to a Tungka.

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"Y'know, if nothing else, living here has incredibly sharpened my 'Hey, there's someone coming for my dick!' defense skills." -

Just so everyone knows...I am enjoying this thread. I like the speculation. Yes, some of it is tantmount to writing a bit of the universe yourself, but that's okay. People who write fan fiction to that all the time. Granted, I don't get a lot of SLOP fan fiction.

Also, delving into why a thing is a slur and where our own pejoratives come from has been an enjoyable read.

Great work, folks.

Drawing again parallels between the real world and the fictional, I figured there would be some unkind words transplanted from due South of the Federation border. The Itlins and the Federales.

Many latinos from many different countries consider it insulting to be called "indians." To have such indian blood in their ancestry is a source of shame and an object of ridicule. The conflict of identity in being latino but aspiring to be "white" is, frankly, confusing to me but since I am not latino I don't expect to really understand anything but the aggregate generalities and their effects. Indians do not get treated well and Europeans need to be mocked for their excess.

Aromalcampas - a very matter-of-fact description of the Weekahsah as a people with hoops and sterile fields (Weekahsah cannot produce offspring with any other Slopizens). Suelacampas are Weekahsahs intended for lurid activities whether willing or unwilling.

Bedocos - slang for "head points" derived from conquistadors' descriptions of the Sekakwa "cabeza del cono" which translates as "cone-headed." Punchagudo (pointy) and spino (thorny) are spinoffs of this name as similar only in referring to the tip of the cone.

Lamezucas - a Federale who can't hide his comparatively wealthy upbringing is often called lamezuca or "sugar licker." The lamezuca fulfills the stereotype of the Federales as pushy, elbowing people out of his way to work but kicking back at his desk where he props his feet up on the desk, chain smoking and drinking bottles of Coca-Cola all day, but despite having money to pay for more he greedily puffs down to the root and suckles every drop of cola spilt on his fingers.

Platrons - a word used to call the conquistadors... when wolven ears could not hear them spoken by the natives. "Silver thieves" doesn't just refer to the ancient exploitations but more modern commerce barons who come in and set up defacto control of an indigenous population even if it is Quetzlan citizen vs. Quetzlan citizen.

Perrito Fangos - Black Mouth Curs are called "mud puppies," but Fangoso can be thrown at anyone whose ancestry someone wants to... ahem, "muddy."

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"Y'know, if nothing else, living here has incredibly sharpened my 'Hey, there's someone coming for my dick!' defense skills." -

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Emoticons are the wheelchair ramps for the humor impaired.

Yet, the entire movement of "La Raza" is aimed at usurping the colonizing institutions as opposed to actually creating new or returning to old models of their own. The aim of La Raza in the U.S. seems to be seperation so long as it confers special privileges and rights over others but decrying any other groups who demand the same. La Raza seems to be on both sides of the argument regarding equality depending on whether denouncing or defending it provides an advantage for La Raza. There is hatred and there is pride, yes, but there is also envy directing their actions.

Time for the Vilken to get theirs.
Longmaws - translated name from Owohinskoikaka (O-woo-heen-sko-ee-kah-kah) which means "those who keep mouths open for many words." Longmaw is a sort of inside-joke because the wolves only know of the words as descriptive of their long-muzzled countenance instead of the code for a stereotype that Vilkas are jibber-jabberers more prone to talk about a problem than take effective action.

Hinkies - ironically, this term for the Vilken originated with Vilka whom established strong ties and cultural exchanges with the indigenous population of the North Eastern Americas. Frontier Vilkas, having less in common with the citified and overpopulating coastal colonists freely used Owohinskoikaka against the lawyers, merchants, and swindlers. Non-Vilken immigrants picked up only the emphasized parts (heen-kah) and the invective to create the slur.

Coatpickers - aimed at the affluent and the well connected Vilken by the canid underclass, this slur pokes at the concern by monied circles for pedigree and purity of bloodlines. Mean gossip of certain families hiding the shame of impure bloodlines tearing out fur showing blemishes or markings betraying less than a pure heritage from their own hides. This insult is used even among Vilkas to deride those who put on airs or act superior to others.

Fangers - another Vilka vs. Vilka slur, those who turn their backs on their brethren and join an outside group against their former comrades are Fangers or those who bare their fangs at those who helped them. Though this one started with the Vilka it has since spread to other Slopizens and is more commonly used by them as another word for "traitor." As such, derivatives of this original term have cropped up like "fangbreakers" for minorities who join authority enforcement (police, military) and "fangbangers" for females who seek out sex with males not of their own race.

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"Y'know, if nothing else, living here has incredibly sharpened my 'Hey, there's someone coming for my dick!' defense skills." -

I am impressed and slightly intimidated, with Andrick's knowledge and reasoning. If we ever meet I'd like to buy you a coffee.

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What call have I to dream of anything?
I am a wolf. Back to the world again,
And speech of fellow-brutes that once were men
Our throats can bark for slaughter: cannot sing.

Don't be impressed, George. What I do is something that is really easy. All you have to do to make something similar to what I've done is to take a subject, filter with a perspective, apply a premise, research that premise, play it out, then simplify it.

Subjects are easy because Mulefoot gave them to us - each specie of Slopizen: Vilkin, Todd, Tungka, Tag, Fel, Mong Cai, Black Mouthed Cur, Brock, N'buwalda, Singha, Oroslani, Cunni, Weekahsah, Coronado, Fitch, Sekakwa, Corvinka, Vepr, Hahursa, Grip, Coyano, and Shellers.

Perspectives can be easy or hard. Remember, it is not the race itself but how the race is perceived that gives rise to racial insults. The perspective could be as simple as Race A as seen through the eyes of Race B like the Oroslani and Singha situation or it could be as hard as how Race A's culture is viewed by Race B, C, D, & E's culture such as a separationist Tungka by the canid dominated Federated States.

Choosing a specie gives you a rough grouping of premises. For example, the Brock are a badger-like race of European origin, often depicted as being stocky but not particularly big, with flat heads, smalls ears, and broad-shoulders. Culturally the Brock may have much in common with the Vilken and other races may color their perceptions of the Brock with the same bias they have towards the Vilken since both inhabited much of the same ground during the colonial period. Similarities between the Tungka and the Brock may be a point of contention or comraderie that may be exploited or disdained by other races. Any one of these things may be picked up as a premise.

Now do a little research to pull together what information you can. Proper names of your subject and common languages of both subject and perspective should be combed for choice words or phrases. Everything from simple greetings to complex statements. Certain words carry negative connotations: back, black, deny, cargo, deny, and so on. Titles for old power since fallen or out of favor persist: chief, baron, master, driver, etc... Origins and destinations are also important.

Once you have your information on the subject as seen through the lense of the beholder, play it out. What did the Todd think of the Brock/Tungka situation during the initial conflict between the colonial powers and the natives? Would there be a reason for the Todd to have had a grudge back then or some historical event to add fuel to a more modern happening? Was it enough to stretch across an entire class of people? Was it enough to create a name that would be carried to even more people? Maybe settlements of Todd were believed to be attacked by the Tungka more frequently than close by settlements of Brock because of a Tungka/Brock friendship or the Tungka knowing the Brock would not help the Todd?

A rising epithet has origins in the supposed blood relation of Tungka and Brock, common shape of the upper torso/head, traitorous scheming, pact with devil, or Brock cooking is just that vile to ward off invasion. Rhymes and alliterations are fun to say and there's no reason for racists to not have fun when making fun of others. Tungka-kin, Brock Brothers, Vase-Face ( I actually kinda' like that one), Sunk-in-Trunks (the bigger shouldered Brock look like their heads are in the top of their chests), Blood-whilers (for whiling away the time while their neighbors bleed out before them), Guarded-by-Goulash.

Simplify, simplify. These are taunts used by kids, slurred by drunks, in corporate boardrooms to easily say why that candidate shouldn't be considered for hiring, in circles of gossiping women for who their children won't play with, and by punks in an alley to single out who to beat down. It must flow or be easy to say. Blood-whiler and vase-face are easy, no modification is necessary. Tungka-kin is ready to be inserted into a tongue twister but change to u to a short o and drop the ka makes Tonkin, the weather it through a generational produces Donkin, Donking, and Donky. I like how the English Blackguard is pronnounced blaggard so I can reason through a rearrangement of Guarded-by-Goulash to Goulash Guard to Googard which can be weathered to Googar. Or drop the guard altogether and apply the mondegreen to Goulash for Gool, Goosh, Gooly, and Gooshy. Brock Brother and Sunk-in-Trunk I tossed as just not good enough.

Simple, but time consuming. It takes me a couple of hours to make one of these postings because of the research and the roleplay as each idea is followed through and harvested or pruned for compost.

By the by, looking back through this thread I see I owe Wotan an apology. I am sorry for stealing one of your suggestions to call Klandagh "Slat-Cats."

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"Y'know, if nothing else, living here has incredibly sharpened my 'Hey, there's someone coming for my dick!' defense skills." -

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"Popular lies have ever been the most potent enemies of personal liberty. There is only one way to deal with them. Cut them out, to the very core, just as cancers are..." - Ragnar Redbeard, "Might is Right" (1890).

Ah, now I get the reference to huffing, Wotan. And thanks because that's a load off my conscience.

I don't know about the others who have posted here but I'd like some feedback on the words and phrases I've put up for public display. What seems right? What seems wrong? How can these be improved or are there better explanations for each? Please, do remember I am working from perceptions and what I see may not be what you see but the more perceptions brought to bear the closer to a less biased and more truthful view of "Slop," ironic as that may be.

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"Y'know, if nothing else, living here has incredibly sharpened my 'Hey, there's someone coming for my dick!' defense skills." -