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coelasquid:

the1001cranes:

danielle-mertina:

I now know firsthand that going to a car dealership is…an experience.

I went going exactly what car I wanted and I imagine that if you don’t know that much it’ll be easier for a dealership to screw you over when you get there by feeding you misinformation about a car, manipulating you into buying a more expensive model, and etc.

I had already done all my research online so I knew what I wanted. Down to the color. (Green is my favorite color!)

So boyfriend and I went (I followed Tumblr’s advice about bringing a man lol). And I test drove the car and loved it just like I knew I would. And THEN the real dealership experience began.

The bottomline is that I knew my credit score and so I knew what kind of interest rate (APR) I should expect. I also knew the manufacturer price of the car (MSRP) and I knew how much they were selling for on average in my area ($3k less than MSRP).

So I knew what I was going to pay and I had already decided on that in my head.

So dealer #1 (a white guy–this is relevant to mention lol) brings back the first set of numbers. He cushions it with making small talk and flattering me on starting my PhD in August. He also chats up boyfriend.

The numbers were bad. I could tell looking at it. Although they didn’t say the APR, I knew that my monthly rate shouldn’t be that high based on the number of months I’d be paying it. Also they only gave me $2k off MSRP.

I noted that the sticker price was too high because I can go to another dealer and get it cheaper and they knocked off another $1k.

And then I asked him what the APR was. He was very evasive and kept telling me to look at the monthly payments because that’s what “really matters.” No, what really matters is what I’m paying for the car overall which is the sticker price + state fees (unavoidable) + interest rate.

Dealer #1 finally told me the APR and it was 3x the rate I knew I was eligible for. I told him that’s not gonna work. He turned aggressive and said that I’m a first time buyer and I can’t expect better and that I’m being unrealistic to expect a lower rate and etc etc.

So I said that my bank quoted me a rate half that much and I’ll just go through them and buy later (at a different dealer). Because I want the car but there’s 2 other places I can go to get it in my area.

Then all of a sudden dealer #1 could get me a better APR. His next offer was 2x what I wanted to pay. I said nah that good enough.

Then they brought out dealer #2, who was a Black guy. He didn’t sit down and instantly start talking about the price. He said a bunch of small talk and said some stuff about being Black lol. Tryna be chummy chummy and connect with us on a racial level.

Then he tried to push the same numbers as dealer #1. I said I know I’m young and I don’t have a math background but you’re charging me way too much for this car and I’m not going to buy it at that price. Period. I said: get the APR down and I’ll buy the car. He kept telling me it wasn’t possible and I said okay…I won’t buy it.

But then he was like wait…lemme run the numbers. And ta da! He came back with the right APR. Also zero down. And payments lower than my target.

This whole process took 5 hours.

Moral of the story:

– know as much as you can before going to a dealership so you can focus on the numbers
– know your credit score so you know what your APR should be
– get approved through an independent bank for a loan so you have leverage to negotiate with a better rate from the dealer
– don’t focus on monthly payments. Times that by the amount of months so you know what you’re REALLY paying
– threaten to walk because stuff magically happens at dealerships when you do lol

YES. and I will also swear by The Toast’s How to Buy a Car Without Interacting With a Human

All these horror stories about car dealerships just do that much more to keep me on motorcycles.

jamesgordon:

flour based gravy skeeves me out. I was obsessed with it for years because it was an american thing my mom never made but now that I’m old enough to cook I can’t justify eating it

shadesofmauve:

pacificnorthwestdoodles:

A lot of folks don’t like flour based gravies. They can be weird and if you don’t know what you’re doing, they can be very bad. At least they bother making some kind of roux at the market and don’t go the ‘fast food’ route where they just add water to a mystery powder and heat it up. >.<

You should ask @tepuitrouble for his onion gravy recipe sometime. It’s a good gravy by itself if reduced enough, but it’s also a great base for other dishes. <3

I love flour-based gravies, but A) the roux is vital and B) I really don’t think they hit their best until you add some wine. (not a schnockered amount of wine, but a decent glug).

…in fact, as someone who grew up pampered by having parents who both loved to cook, it was a deep and painful shock to me to go to college and taste gravy that had not been made with wine. I complained to my mother. She illegally mailed me wine to cook with because I was under-age. Shhh.

Now, I do use the same basic ideas with other thickeners now, because both my folks were diagnosed celiac within the last three years. But nothin’ beats flour+butter roux + meat drippings + wine. Mmmmmm.

annalisekeatting:

procrastimonium:

gracielovesjesus:

misterelguapo:

We blindfolded 15 homophobes and asked them to hit piñatas with a stick. The piñatas were actually deadly Asian giant hornet nests. What happens next will warm your heart.

This is disgusting bigotry against Christians at its finest.

I love the part where this post never mentioned Christians but you saw the word homophobe and jumped to your own defense anyways.

ohdeargodbees:

Oh boy it’s another totally unedited blog post about my legal proceedings because apparently I don’t learn!

Last time I wrote about my legal entanglement with Eron Gjoni, the man who started GamerGate after I walked away from him, it was after asking the DA to drop the criminal harassment charges that the state wanted to bring against him.

I touched on the ongoing appeals process for the restraining order, and how it ironically tied me to my abuser even more, and became another tool for him to control my life and send the mob after me. The detective on my case had warned me that this might be an outcome with someone as chronically abusive as he is. While I had successfully persuaded the DA to drop criminal charges because the courts involvement was making everything worse, his appeal was still going. Despite his flat out refusal to abide by it (he actually started actively siccing people on my partner at the time immediately afterward), and despite my move to vacate my own restraining order to get him to finally fuck off, he was determined to milk it for everything he could – both the attention from GamerGate, the renewed harassment against me and my family, and the money he was soliciting. 

What this meant for me is that for the last year or so, despite having relocated and completely reorganized my life to keep him and his new friends away from me, I’d have to deal with the legal proceedings. This essentially turned this man I had spent two years trying to get away from into a pop-up ad in my life. This is really bad news for someone with PTSD who has to take pills to stop having nightmares about their abuser. It constantly interrupted any kind of recovery or closure I could make for myself, and a call from a lawyer about some new bullshit he was pulling, or a flood of gross links to his diatribes on Kotaku in Action from his new best friends in my mentions would hamstring whatever I was trying to do. Just before I had to take the stage at XOXO, I had to talk with my lawyers about asinine legal moves that he was pulling. I was on the other side of the country and I still couldn’t get away from him. 

I’ve been in a holding pattern since the appeals court heard oral arguments on a restraining order that had not only been destroyed, but would have already expired on it’s own months prior. My pro-bono counsel was optimistic, since the courts seemed to see that my ex was using them as a talking point since he had long since had any legal relief they could have granted him. I was told to expect a phone call, probably, in the next 3 months, though sometimes courts take longer. I’ve been holding my breath ever since.

The good news is that it’s finally over. The courts ruled that I acted within my rights, and dismissed his appeal as moot. I had gone into this asking that the court drop this and let me move on with my life, and they reassured my legal right to do so. My ex wanted to use me to set first amendment case law – what happened was a ruling that reassured the rights of domestic violence survivors to modify and terminate their restraining orders if they’re causing more harm than good. This was the outcome I wanted – not just for myself, but for anyone else that’s tried whatever they could to get away from their abuser without fully realizing how the legal system might make everything worse.

Quoth the court:

“We agree with
Quinn’s argument that this rule does not apply in the sui
generis context of c. 209A abuse prevention orders. Pursuant to
statute, an abuse prevention order that has been issued can be
modified “at any subsequent time.” … This provision serves to
protect victims of abuse by allowing them to tailor the terms of
abuse prevention orders as (often rapidly) developing
circumstances may warrant… “A victim of [domestic] abuse is
in the best position to decide what course of action will
provide more safety. At a given time, an abuse prevention order
might exacerbate the plaintiff’s danger”. With the parties
having a recognized statutory right to seek modification of
existing orders, it follows that a pending appeal of a 209A
order does not deprive the trial court of its ability to modify
the order.”

The courts found the “deluge of harassment” to be “uncontested”, that despite my ex’s constant bullshit claims “nothing in the record suggests that Quinn committed a fraud on
the court”, and that my ex still has to obey court orders even if he doesn’t agree with them.

I’ve uploaded the court’s opinion here. It’s not too heavy on the legalese, and has a pretty good tl;dr of this last of the legal battles.

Naturally, his fan club is trying to spin this as a win because of a single footnote that lower courts should generally care about free speech, despite the court stating that the entire appeal is moot. I find my ex and his ilk clinging to a single footnote as a victory in a 12 page document detailing his complete failure to be nothing more an apt metaphor for his role in the last two years. 

They’re trying to claim it a a loss because I’m choosing to walk away from a legal battle that hasn’t protected me, but an end to this is all I’ve ever wanted from the beginning.

I cut contact with Eron because I wanted an abusive creep out of my life, so he launched GamerGate. I didn’t retaliate against him because I wanted an abusive creep out of my life, so he invaded every digital space that I occupied to spread his hate & yell at my friends and fans. I got a restraining order because I wanted an abusive creep out of my life, so he used it to solicit funds from GamerGate while promising them more nonsense about me while “joking” in their raid IRCs about breaking into my house while I couldn’t go home. I dropped charges and gave up on having to see or hear him ever again because I wanted an abusive creep out of my life, and he doubled down in spite of that. 

Now that the courts have said “no thank you”, I’m hoping that this is finally the end, and that maybe we *both* can move on with our lives. I’m hoping that I finally have the abusive creep out of my life, even if it won’t undox my friends and family, cure my ptsd, undo the harm caused to my friends and the industry, or fix the fact that to this day, strangers still claim that I fucked a writer at a press outlet that I *already had written for* simply to obtain coverage (that never existed) of a free game about mental health. 

But it’s a pretty fuckin big milestone in the healing process. 

By all signs, this marks the end of nearly two years of having to bag and tag my ex’s abuse against me for courts, judges, and law enforcement officers who have a loose understanding (at best) of what they’d even be looking at, and a seeming lack of resources to obtain any of that themselves. I don’t have to plan my life around court dates anymore, or get calls about what new stunt the man who ruined my life is pulling this time that I absolutely have to respond to or face legal repercussions. That alone is a tremendous weight off my shoulders. The Abusive Ex Popup Ad feature on my life is hopefully disabled – or at least this aspect of it is. His abuse is still a perpetual motion machine, and the threats and harassment is still the background noise of my life and likely always will be. I still have a way to go before I’m what I’d consider out of the woods, both in terms of unfucking my personal situation, healing the mental and emotional scars the last two years have left, and fully being able to talk about GamerGate in a past tense way. Creep Throat can still file for additional appeals, and after the last two years I’m not going to assume anything is impossible.

I can’t unfuck the last two years, not for me or anyone else he’s hurt. But this is at least one win. This is regaining control over my life and being able to finally ignore bargain bin Kilgrave. This is me being able to joke about how shitty my ex is without being afraid of how his lawyers will use it to justify what he’s done to me as they have previously. This is reaffirming the rights of domestic violence victims to walk the fuck away when they choose to. This means more energy for Crash Override and my ridiculous comedy games and the people I love.

Finally, I can move on from this ridiculous legal battle and focus on my energy on my ridiculous unicorn smut games. 

What more could I possibly want?