soneaselene

[soneaselene]

Twelfth doctor era of doctor who was incredible because it was basically just:

Clara: I can fix him (makes him worse)

Missy: I can make him worse (accidentally fixes him)

Bill: Well, I'm a lesbian and I'm going to be his friend :)

[soneaselene]

Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc GLASS ONION: A Knives Out Mystery (2022) dir. Rian Johnson

[soneaselene]

No other website could ever possibly bind mutuals together stronger than tumblr. It's like this: I'm scrolling past your art which is beautiful and warm I love it I hope you get on the trending page, oh you finally posted your fic i'm so proud of you, i'm sorry that you're having a hard time with work, school or you think you're hard to love, you're not because I love you and it's so easy. you're being silly tonight on the dash, it's good to see you after your hiatus. I also like that ship, they're keeping me up at night, can you share your joy with me? I saw your tags on my post, did you see me like it? hey it's been months and I've grown quite fond of you. see you tomorrow, same time or perhaps when the sun rises for me and sets for you. Isn't that wonderful?

[soneaselene]

[soneaselene]

You love me. Why don't you want me?

[soneaselene]

She is my scar.

[soneaselene]

Okay fuck it. I was too nervous to post this at first, but I see tons of non-Germans wanting to know what's going on right now. So here's my summary. Thanks to my buddy @keldermans and another German friend not on Tumblr for taking a glance at it to make sure I didn't get anything too horribly wrong <3 Any remaining errors are my bad!

I spent much of today writing up an outline of the current soap-opera drama going on in the German government, for my non-German-speaking friends who'd like to enjoy the tea as well.

Disclaimer: I am not technically German, but I did my best to explain this all as accurately as possible (and I did get a couple of Actual Germans to check it over for me).

For THE GERMAN DRAMA, see below...

Cast of characters:

The German government coalition (known as the “Ampel” – traffic light – due to its colors):

Olaf Scholz, Chancellor (leader) of Germany. Party: SPD (color: red). - and the other Red party members in the coalition - this includes the Minister of Health, Karl Lauterbach

Christian Lindner, Minister of Finance of Germany. Party: FDP (color: yellow). - and the other Yellow party members in the coalition (four FDP members) - this includes the Minister of Transport, Volker Wissing - and the Minister of Justice, Marco Buschmann

Robert Habeck, Vice-Chancellor of Germany. Party: Greens (color: green) - and the other Green party members in the coalition.

Other characters: Friedrich Merz, likely to become the next Chancellor. Party: CDU (color: black).

The events I can recall so far, in roughly chronological order over the past five days:

1. The government coalition argues all day Wednesday, trying to pass laws while Lindner refuses to agree to anything. In the evening, Scholz loses his patience and fires Lindner with the legendary words, “Dann, lieber Christian, möchte ich nicht mehr, dass Du meinem Kabinett angehörst. ...So. Doof.” (In that case, my dear Christian, I don’t want you in my cabinet anymore. ...Well. Sucks.)

2. Scholz then calls a press conference and gives a surprisingly impressive speech in which his rage is barely concealed. He includes some sharp jabs at Lindner and sounds very personally betrayed by the breakup.

Scholz's speech includes the immediately-legendary line “Zu oft hat er mein Vertrauen gebrochen” (Too often has he broken my trust), which everyone here in Germany is now obsessively quoting.

He declares that he will ask for a vote of confidence in January, and if he fails it (as is expected), he will call for new elections in March, six months earlier than they would otherwise have taken place.

3. Lindner gives a very emotional and self-pitying speech in which he declares “Ich habe gelitten” (I have suffered) – another phrase that becomes an instant classic with those of us watching from the sidelines – and he includes some sharp jabs at Scholz.

4. Showing solidarity with their fellow party member Lindner, all the rest of the FDP members in the coalition resign from the government too… except for Wissing, who instead decides to quit his own political party, the FDP, in order to stay in government and keep his job. He is now a party-less politician!

5. Habeck gives an emotional statement to the press, practically in tears, coming across like a kid whose parents are divorcing and he doesn’t know how to handle it. In a maudlin moment of his speech, he compares the collapse of the coalition to the end of a relationship.

6. At the end of Habeck’s statement, a reporter calls after him: “Is Lindner going to apply for Bürgergeld benefits?”

(Background: There are two tiers of unemployment benefits in Germany. To explain it in a somewhat tasteless way, there’s kind of a class distinction. If you come from a “higher-class” profession, you typically get ALG I, which is more money. If you come from a “lower-class” working background, you typically get Bürgergeld. The stereotype about people on Bürgergeld benefits is that they spend it all on drugs and alcohol and sit on park benches getting drunk all day. Also, Lindner is known for trying to pass legislation to reduce social benefits of all kinds, including unemployment benefits.)

7. Background: After the failed assassination attempt on Trump earlier this year, a popular German comedian called El Hotzo posted a joke online saying basically “too bad he missed” and promptly got fired for saying that. He kept his spirits up and joked about the job loss, saying “Ich bin Deutschlands frechster Arbeitsloser” (I’m Germany’s cheekiest unemployed boy).

Back to the present: At a press conference, a reporter asks Lindner: “How are you handling the statements being made about you online right now, such as ‘This is Germany’s cheekiest unemployed boy’?”

Lindner seems to need a long moment to figure out how to reply to this question.

8. The next day, Habeck coyly soft-launches his candidacy for Chancellor by posting a mysterious video of himself on social media in which he’s wearing a cute beaded friendship bracelet that spells out “Kanzler Era” (Chancellor Era). This is apparently a Taylor Swift reference (?).

In this video, he’s sitting in an atmospherically-lit room, writing at a table. It appears that Lindner had posted a very similar picture of himself in the past, because he now tweets in response to Habeck: “All Democrats welcome here, Robert! You got the setup almost right – the lamp was on the other side. ;)” (and he adds his own pic, which indeed very much resembles Habeck’s video)

9. Angela Merkel muses publicly, “Maybe God only created the FDP in order to test us all.”

10. A mainstream German news podcast sassily comments on Friday:

“While Olaf 'Too often has he broken my trust' Scholz is enjoying his party’s admiration for his cowboy moment and Christian 'I have suffered' Lindner is going through his own personal St. Matthew’s Passion […]”

11. Buschmann (one of the FDP party members who resigned), who apparently moonlights as a composer of electronic music under the handle "MBSounds", drops a new self-composed track on SoundCloud about the collapse of the Ampel government. It’s called “To Go Is to Stand”.

The news comments dryly: “Well, at least he doesn’t sing on the track.” (Buschmann's previous biggest hit was simply an angry speech of Lindner’s, set to music.)

Lauterbach (one of the SPD party members still in office) tweets: “No offense, but I don’t think I’ll be listening to that song more than once. But still, it was good working with you, Marco.”

12. The media ask Scholz if he’s throwing his hat in the ring to run for Chancellor again. He says yes. They ask, in what ways is he different from Friedrich Merz (the dude who’s currently expected to win)? And he replies “Ich finde mich etwas cooler, wenn es um Staatsangelegenheiten geht” (I think I’m somewhat cooler [than him] when it comes to matters of state).

And now the German media is making up new words like "scholzen" (which I can only presume means "as the leader of a country, to fire other government members you don't get along with"):

[Headline translation: "Who Donald Trump will 'scholz' first"]

[soneaselene]

You’re the best friends anybody ever had. And it’s funny, but I feel as if I’ve known you all the time. But I couldn’t have, could I?

THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939) | AGATHA ALL ALONG (2024)

[soneaselene]

you'd rather fall apart than face your truth

[soneaselene]

It’s so interesting how Agatha Harkness loves being a witch, and everything about being a witch: Magick, the craft of Magick. The skill of figuring out how a spell works.

But not the other parts of it: Community.

And, Agatha’s definition what a Witch is, is so damned fascinating. As the hosts of Crazy Stupid Podcast mentioned, Agatha has a scarcity mindset.

For Agatha being a Witch meant being hardened, a survivor at any cost, because it was all Agatha knew of being a Witch. Witches are persecuted, so they do everything to survive.

(Meanwhile, Sorcerers are revered in the MCU.)

Agatha told Wanda there’s always men who want to tear down ladies like them… and it’s true but what she didn’t tell Wanda, is that Agatha would sell everyone else down the river to, to survive.

She’s the Apex predator of Witches.

(And 100% the reason why there’s not a lot of Witches around in both the United States and Europe since it’s apparent that she also went to Europe in her long life.)

And that makes Agatha so fascinating.

Agatha really is like my number one favorite girl, Katherine Pierce. (Who, I realize is older than Agatha too, since Agatha is only pushing 300, meanwhile, Katherine is 500 when we meet her in TVD.)

“Never trust a survivor,” my father used to warn me, with Vartan Mamigonian in mind, “until you find out what he did to stay alive.” - Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard

This is pretty much the SOP with both Agatha and Katherine.

Unlike Katherine Pierce, Agatha Harkness has a better chance of finding some kind of grace and peace because the writers actually think she’s interesting, complex and a character worth investing time in. Unlike the TVD writers who just used Katherine as a convenient chess piece to move around.

The thing about Agatha though, is apparently, if you managed to chain her to a group of witches and have her life tied to their wellbeing, Agatha does start to bond with a Coven.

Her paranoia and need to consume magick are the things that keep her from bonding with them. But she’s at her best when she’s guiding people and being a mentor, and a leader.

Unfortunately, Agatha also has a tendency to get people killed or harm them even though she doesn’t have any intention doing so.

‘Witch Killer’ is a nickname Agatha can’t escape from… because it’s true.

[soneaselene]

One of the (many, many) things I appreciate about Agatha All Along is that you really need to wait for the entire story to be told in order to understand what the project is going for.

With most other Marvel stuff you can pick up on where it's all going early on and they'll deliver more or less that by the end (not a complaint, tons of stories need a clear path) but holy fucking hell if you weren't familiar with comics there was NO predicting where that show was gonna end up based on the vibes in the first half. Very few stories even attempt that kind of shift, let alone pull it off.

Absolutely wild batshit storytelling. Feels maximally chaotic but once you've seen every single minute you can go back and chart the bonkers route they took to get there. They had a map that was entirely different from the one they handed the audience, just brilliant.

[soneaselene]

[soneaselene]

i love when tragedies are like —

happy birthday, @elssbethtascioni ❤

[soneaselene]

Just for fun, all of 'em together. This was my original intent, since I've done it before, but felt they could all stand on their own.

(I may have already started sketching some new ideas)

[soneaselene]

painted this today to keep the mind busy from the craziness. missing witch wednesdays 🌿🖤💀

•

[soneaselene]

I’m emotional right now

Beautifully done by @prol_x on twitter

[soneaselene]

This is going to fucking suck but I will not do my enemies’ work for them. I will not just roll over and fucking die.