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sophieinwonderland · 1 year ago

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Here's an ask that (probably) stands out: Tell us, your followers, about a time where you or someone else from your system rolled a natural 20. (Figuratively speaking.)

Ghost: Soph spent a long time trying to figure out a good answer to this and drew blanks. She did come up with several but they all seemed too boring to her. So I'll snag this one.

And share a picture of my Maleficent!

I don't collect Funko Pops. Never had even the slightest interest in them. But Maleficent here is surprisingly one of my most cherished possessions.

Something you need to know about me is that I don't put myself out there. Ever. I like Reddit because it's safe. Nobody knows who I am there. Nobody even remembers my user name. Even on here, there's a reason I was more than happy just being known as "the host" for the first year of Soph's blog, only settling on Ghost when we decided to have a system blog.

The few times I've tried to dip my toes into something, I get scared and back out.

Being like I am, I don't actually have many accomplishments to speak of.

But I do have this one so I'm going to talk about it.

Some years back, I signed up with a fan website called... um... you know, I can't for the life of me remember what that site was called.

But that doesn't matter. There was a fan website where you could post articles, and I had recently read about The Disney Theory. This theory attempted to link together all Disney movies into a shared universe, using cameos from the various films to tie them together.

Now I grew up in the 2000s, with cartoons like Lilo & Stitch, Kim Possible and American Dragon: Jake Long. All of these shows crossed over, placing them in the same universe. And with Lilo and Stitch, they could be linked to the wider shared Disney Universe.

In American Dragon: Jake Long, there was a character called The Dark Dragon. As you can see here:

The Dark Dragon's color scheme bears a striking resemblance to a classic Disney villain. I'm sure you can guess who.

The Dark Dragon ends up getting a makeover in season 2 with a different color scheme with the purple replaced by dark blue, but the sharp purple spikes on his back get replaced with jutting black spines resembling Maleficent's dragon form.

They clearly wanted the Dark Dragon to retain his Maleficent influence, even if in a different way.

Additionally, Maleficent functions like the dragons in ADJL, having both a normal form and a dragon form.

Working off of these intentional design motifs and their connection through the Disney Theory, I theorized that the two were related somehow.

The theory that I presented was that Maleficent is the half-fairy daughter of the Dark Dragon.

And she likely would have been the World Dragon of her area. A World Dragon is a dragon that presides over a specific country in ADJL. I don't recall if the term "world dragon" is used in the show or if it's just a fan term, but the concept is very much present in the show. It's why Jake isn't just an American dragon, but he's "The American Dragon."

This would further contextualize Maleficent anger at being snubbed from Aurora's birth. World Dragons are supposed to be guardians of the magical. And during this period, humans and magical creatures were closely connected. One would imagine that a World Dragon would be highly respected, making it a severe insult when lesser fairies (who she refers to as "rabble") are invited but Maleficent is snubbed.

The site's staff would select a number of articles every week for their top list, and mine made it!

And then they sent this Maleficent Funko Pop with a letter congratulating me for making it into the top 16.

It may not be a huge accomplishment, but I'm proud of it. And I think it was really cool of them to personalized the Funko Pop to what the article was about.

To someone else, that Maleficent is a $10 toy. But to me, it's a trophy.

Unfortunately, despite common wisdom, things on the internet are not, in fact, forever. I believe the site I posted that theory on no longer exists today. But I still have my Maleficent.

#ghost post

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nevermindirah · 4 years ago

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I hope Simone Biles gets to curl up in the fluffiest blanket and hear the funniest jokes from her very favorite people today.

She's 24 years old — she's an adult, and damn did it show today when she was put in the position of announcing to the world that mental illness symptoms caused her to withdraw from an Olympic event. But fuck, 24 is so young. The idea of being forced to disclose what are probably very severe mental illness symptoms to a global audience while those symptoms are happening, my heart just breaks for her.

The media talks about Simone Biles like she's a superhuman. And hell yes, she's the most exceptional gymnast in history! Rave about her all day long! But she is a goddamn human being. I'd forgotten that Larry Nasser abused her, because the media attention is so laser-focused on her historic talent. The media didn't let me forget that asshole abused Aly Raisman.

I just, the human mind was not built for the intense scrutiny this young woman is facing. And so many of our institutions were built specifically to extract money from the dehumanization of Black women. I just really, really hope all the people who love her are holding and protecting her.

Simone Biles makes stunning withdrawal; U.S. women’s gymnastics takes silver

American gymnast Simone Biles withdrew from her final Olympics team competition in Tokyo on July 27, which ultimately lead to Team USA taking silver. (Allie Caren/The Washington Post)

full article under the cut

By Emily Giambalvo Today (Tuesday July 27, 2021) at 1:39 p.m. EDT

TOKYO — When Simone Biles soars through the air, her skills flow in an effortless rhythm that makes the extraordinary seem simple. She’s been superhumanly dominant for nearly a decade, even with a load of pressure and expectation always resting on her shoulders. But as Biles pushed off the vaulting table Tuesday night, her first flight of the evening, a peculiar sight emerged: She looked lost and shaken as she flipped and twisted, unable to perform the skill she intended.

So Biles did the unthinkable. She stepped away from the meet and her role in the United States’ quest for another Olympic gold medal in the women’s gymnastics team competition.

After her unusual vault, Biles scurried out of the arena with a medical staffer by her side. She said she realized she wasn’t in “the right head space.” When she returned to the competition floor, she pulled her sweatsuit over her leotard and hugged her three teammates, who suddenly became aware they would have to compete without her.

At first, they were stressed and in tears. Ultimately, they earned a silver medal, placing second to the Russian Olympic Committee team.

At 24, Biles is the veteran on the women’s team. But she says she doesn’t trust herself as she used to. The sport doesn’t feel as much fun, she says. Nerves bubble to the surface, especially in the high-stakes environment of an Olympic gymnastics team final. And on Tuesday, it all became too much for the world’s best gymnast.

“I know that this Olympic Games, I wanted it to be for myself,” Biles said afterward, tearing up. “I came here, and I felt like I was still doing it for other people. So that just hurts my heart that doing what I love has been kind of taken away from me to please other people.”

Biles stands among the world’s most popular athletes. She holds power to spark change with her words. She’s been an outspoken critic of USA Gymnastics, the national governing body she represents, and how it failed to protect gymnasts from sexual abuse. Biles is the only self-identified survivor of former national team doctor Larry Nassar’s crimes still competing at the elite level.

After the United States qualified for the team final in second place on Sunday, Biles wrote on social media: “I truly do feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders at times.”

When asked about those comments following her decision to withdraw from the team final, Biles said: “Yeah, that s---- heavy.”

Five years ago, when Biles led the United States to a gold medal at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, she probably wouldn’t have made the choice to withdraw, she told reporters. She said she might have pushed through, attempting dangerous skills while second-guessing herself and “fighting all those demons” that occupied her mind. In 2021, she said, withdrawing was the right option — for her safety and even for the team’s medal chances.

“We want to walk out of here,” Biles said. “Not be dragged out of here on a stretcher or anything. So it's like, got to do what's best for me and that was what was best for the team.”

Biles arrived in Tokyo with the expectation that she could earn up to five gold medals. Now she has a silver and a spot in five individual finals — the all-around competition, as well as the final for each apparatus. But she doesn’t know what lies ahead for her at these Games.

“We’re going to take it a day at a time and we’ll see what happens,” Biles said. She confirmed that she had no physical injury, “just my pride is hurt a little bit.”

With the all-around final Thursday, Biles admits that there will be a quick turnaround. Annie Heffernon, the vice president of the U.S. women’s gymnastics program, said USA Gymnastics has a plan in place to help get Biles the professional support she needs. Biles said in the past, therapy has helped with mental health challenges. But this high-stress atmosphere of the Olympics made the struggle on the competition floor too much to overcome.

“Going into the next couple days, it’s like …” Biles said, pausing to collect her emotions as her teammates wrapped their arms around her. “Sorry,” she then said. “It is what it is. Whatever happens, happens.”

Biles could return to herself — a dominant gymnast who understands that her performance here is secondary. Or she might not feel comfortable enough to compete again. Biles said her goal for the rest of the Olympics is to “focus on my well-being and [that] there’s more to life than just gymnastics.”

As Biles trained for her second Olympics, she said she wanted the Games to be about herself — not about what others thought and not all those otherworldly expectations that she can somehow usually meet anyway. As these Games approached, she said, she felt that mind-set drifting. The struggles seeped into her training, prompting mental errors. The vault in the team final was the first public sign that something was not right, but her teammates had witnessed similar episodes in practices.

“She was giving us a little heart attack,” teammate Jordan Chiles said.

“It just sucks that it happens here at the Olympic Games, because it can happen any other time,” Biles said. “But with the year that it’s been, I’m really not surprised how it played out.”

As Biles stood on the sideline Tuesday night wearing a white sweatsuit and cheering for her teammates, she processed the drastic decision she had made on the sport’s biggest stage.

“At the end of the day we’re human, too,” Biles said, “We have to protect our mind and our body rather than just go out there and do what the world wants us to do.”

#this is devastating #simone biles #mental health #abuse cw #misogynoir #i'm so tired #olympics #mine

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qqueenofhades · 6 years ago

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Re: the post you reblogged about Bush. I'm 21 and tbh feel like I can only vote for Bernie, can you explain if/why I shouldn't? Thanks and sorry if this is dumb or anything.

Oh boy. Okay, I’ll do my best here. Note that a) this will get long, and b) I’m old, Tired, and I‘m pretty sure my brain tried to kill me last night. Since by nature I am sure I will say something Controversial ™, if anyone reads this and feels a deep urge to inform me that I am Wrong, just… mark it down as me being Wrong and move on with your life. But also, really, you should read this and hopefully think about it. Because while I’m glad you asked this question, it feels like there’s a lot in your cohort who won’t, and that worries me. A lot.

First, not to sound utterly old-woman-in-a-rocking-chair ancient, people who came of age/are only old enough to have Obama be the first president that they really remember have no idea how good they had it. The world was falling the fuck apart in 2008 (not coincidentally, after 8 years of Bush). We came within a flicker of the permanent collapse of the global economy. The War on Terror was in full roar, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were at their height, we had Dick Cheney as the cartoon supervillain before we had any of Trump’s cohort, and this was before Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden had exposed the extent of NSA/CIA intelligence-gathering/American excesses or there was any kind of public debate around the fact that we were all surveilled all the time. And the fact that a brown guy named Barack Hussein Obama was elected in this climate seems, and still seems tbh, kind of amazing. And Obama was certainly not a Perfect President ™. He had to scale back a lot of planned initiatives, he is notorious for expanding the drone strike/extrajudicial assassination program, he still subscribed to the overall principles of neoliberalism and American exceptionalism, etc etc. There is valid criticism to be made as to how the hopey-changey optimistic rhetoric stacked up against the hard realities of political office. And yet…. at this point, given what we’re seeing from the White House on a daily basis, the depth of the parallel universe/double standards is absurd.

Because here’s the thing. Obama, his entire family, and his entire administration had to be personally/ethically flawless the whole time (and they managed that – not one scandal or arrest in eight years, against the legions of Trumpistas now being convicted) because of the absolute frothing depths of Republican hatred, racial conspiracy theories, and obstruction against him. (Remember Merrick Garland and how Mitch McConnell got away with that, and now we have Gorsuch and Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court? Because I remember that). If Obama had pulled one-tenth of the shit, one-twentieth of the shit that the Trump administration does every day, he would be gone. It also meant that people who only remember Obama think he was typical for an American president, and he wasn’t. Since about… Jimmy Carter, and definitely since Ronald Reagan, the American people have gone for the Trump model a lot more than the Obama model. Whatever your opinion on his politics or character, Obama was a constitutional law professor, a community activist, a neighborhood organizer and brilliant Ivy League intellectual who used to randomly lie awake at night thinking about income inequality. Americans don’t value intellectualism in their politicians; they just don’t. They don’t like thinking that “the elites” are smarter than them. They like the folksy populist who seems fun to have a beer with, and Reagan/Bush Senior/Clinton/Bush Junior sold this persona as hard as they possibly could. As noted in said post, Bush Junior (or Shrub as the late, great Molly Ivins memorably dubbed him) was Trump Lite but from a long-established political family who could operate like an outwardly civilized human.

The point is: when you think Obama was relatively normal (which, again, he wasn’t, for any number of reasons) and not the outlier in a much larger pattern of catastrophic damage that has been accelerated since, again, the 1980s (oh Ronnie Raygun, how you lastingly fucked us!), you miss the overall context in which this, and which Trump, happened. Like most left-wingers, I don’t agree with Obama’s recent and baffling decision to insert himself into the 2020 race and warn the Democratic candidates against being too progressive or whatever he was on about. I think he was giving into the same fear that appears to be motivating the remaining chunk of Joe Biden’s support: that middle/working-class white America won’t go for anything too wild or that might sniff of Socialism, and that Uncle Joe, recalled fondly as said folksy populist and the internet’s favorite meme grandfather from his time as VP, could pick up the votes that went to Trump last time. And that by nature, no one else can.

The underlying belief is that these white voters just can’t support anything too “un-American,” and that by pushing too hard left, Democratic candidates risk handing Trump a second term. Again: I don’t agree and I think he was mistaken in saying it. But I also can’t say that Obama of all people doesn’t know exactly the strength of the political machine operating against the Democratic Party and the progressive agenda as a whole, because he ran headfirst into it for eight years. The fact that he managed to pass any of his legislative agenda, usually before the Tea Party became a thing in 2010, is because Democrats controlled the House and Senate for the first two years of his first term. He was not perfect, but it was clear that he really did care (just look up the pictures of him with kids). He installed smart, efficient, and scandal-free people to do jobs they were qualified for. He gave us Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor to join RBG on the Supreme Court. All of this seems… like a dream.

That said: here we are in a place where Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren are the front-runners for the Democratic nomination (and apparently Pete Buttigieg is getting some airplay as a dark horse candidate, which… whatever). The appeal of Biden is discussed above, and he sure as hell is not my favored candidate (frankly, I wish he’d just quit). But Sanders and Warren are 85% - 95% similar in their policy platforms. The fact that Michael “50 Billion Dollar Fortune” Bloomberg started rattling his chains about running for president is because either a Sanders or Warren presidency terrifies the outrageously exploitative billionaire capitalist oligarchy that runs this country and has been allowed to proceed essentially however the fuck they like since… you guessed it, the 1980s, the era of voodoo economics, deregulation, and the free market above all. Warren just happens to be ten years younger than Sanders and female, and Sanders’ age is not insignificant. He’s 80 years old and just had a heart attack, and there’s still a year to go to the election. It’s also more than a little eye-rolling to describe him as the only progressive candidate in the race, when he’s an old white man (however much we like and approve of his policy positions). And here’s the thing, which I think is a big part of the reason why this polarized ideological purity internet leftist culture mistrusts Warren:

She may have changed her mind on things in the past.

Scary, right? I sound like I’m being facetious, but I’m not. An argument I had to read with my own two eyes on this godforsaken hellsite was that since Warren became a Democrat around the time Clinton signed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, she sekritly hated gay people and might still be a corporate sellout, so on and etcetera. (And don’t even get me STARTED on the fact that DADT, coming a few years after the height of the AIDS crisis which was considered God’s Judgment of the Icky Gays, was the best Clinton could realistically hope to achieve, but this smacks of White Gay Syndrome anyway and that is a whole other kettle of fish.) Bernie has always demonstrably been a democratic socialist, and: good for him. I’m serious. But because there’s the chance that Warren might not have thought exactly as she does now at any point in her life, the hysterical and paranoid left-wing elements don’t trust that she might not still secretly do so. (Zomgz!) It’s the same element that’s feeding cancel culture and “wokeness.” Nobody can be allowed to have shifted or grown in their opinions or, like a functional, thoughtful, non-insane adult, changed their beliefs when presented with compelling evidence to the contrary. To the ideological hordes, any hint of uncertainty or past failure to completely toe the line is tantamount to heresy. Any evidence of any other belief except The Correct One means that this person is functionally as bad as Trump. And frankly, it’s only the Sanders supporters who, just as in 2016, are threatening to withhold their vote in the general election if their preferred candidate doesn’t win the primary, and indeed seem weirdly proud about it.

OK, boomer Bernie or Buster.

Here’s the thing, the thing, the thing: there is never going to be an American president free of the deeply toxic elements of American ideology. There just won’t be. This country has been built how it has for 250 years, and it’s not gonna change. You are never going to have, at least not in the current system, some dream candidate who gets up there and parrots the left-wing talking points and attacks American imperialism, exceptionalism, ravaging global capitalism, military and oil addiction, etc. They want to be elected as leader of a country that has deeply internalized and taken these things to heart for its entire existence, and most of them believe it to some degree themselves. So this groupthink white liberal mentality where the only acceptable candidate is this Perfect Non-Problematic robot who has only ever had one belief their entire lives and has never ever wavered in their devotion to doctrine has really gotten bad. The Democratic Party would be considered… maybe center/mild left in most other developed countries. It’s not even really left-wing by general standards, and Sanders and Warren are the only two candidates for the nomination who are even willing to go there and explicitly put out policy proposals that challenge the systematic structure of power, oppression, and exploitation of the late-stage capitalist 21st century. Warren has the billionaires fussed, and instead of backing down, she’s doubling down. That’s part of why they’re so scared of her. (And also misogyny, because the world is depressing like that.) She is going head-on after picking a fight with some of the worst people on the planet, who are actively killing the rest of us, and I don’t know about you, but I like that.

Of course: none of this will mean squat if she (or the eventual Democratic winner, who I will vote for regardless of who it is, but as you can probably tell, she’s my ride or die) don’t a) win the White House and then do as they promised on the campaign trail, and b) don’t have a Democratic House and Senate willing to have a backbone and pass the laws. Even Nancy Pelosi, much as she’s otherwise a badass, held off on opening a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump for months out of fear it would benefit him, until the Ukraine thing fell into everyone’s laps. The Democrats are really horrible at sticking together and voting the party line the way Republicans do consistently, because Democrats are big-tent people who like to think of themselves as accepting and tolerant of other views and unwilling to force their members’ hands. The Republicans have no such qualms (and indeed, judging by their enabling of Trump, have no qualms at all).

The modern American Republican party has become a vehicle for no-holds-barred power for rich white men at the expense of absolutely everything and everyone else, and if your rationale is that you can’t vote for the person opposing Donald Goddamn Trump is that you’re just not vibing with them on the language of that one policy proposal… well, I’m glad that you, White Middle Class Liberal, feel relatively safe that the consequences of that decision won’t affect you personally. Even if we’re due to be out of the Paris Climate Accords one day after the 2020 election, and the issue of climate change now has the most visibility it’s ever had after years of big-business, Republican-led efforts to deny and discredit the science, hey, Secret Corporate Shill, am I right? Can’t trust ‘er. Let’s go have a craft beer.

As has been said before: vote as far left as you want in the primary. Vote your ideology, vote whatever candidate you want, because the only way to make actual, real-world change is to do that. The huge, embedded, all-consuming and horrible system in which we operate is not just going to suddenly be run by fairy dust and happy thoughts overnight. Select candidates that reflect your values exactly, be as picky and ideologically militant as you want. That’s the time to do that! Then when it comes to the general election:

America is a two-party system. It sucks, but that’s the case. Third-party votes, or refraining from voting because “it doesn’t matter” are functionally useless at best and actively harmful at worst.

Either the Democratic candidate or Donald Trump will win the 2020 election.

There is absolutely no length that the Republican/GOP machine, and its malevolent allies elsewhere, will not go to in order to secure a Trump victory. None.

Any talk whatsoever about “progressive values” or any kind of liberal activism, coupled with a course of action that increases the possibility of a Trump victory, is hypocritical at best and actively malicious at worst.

This is why I found the Democratic response to Obama’s “don’t go too wild” comments interesting. Bernie doubled down on the fact that his plans have widespread public support, and he’s right. (Frankly, the fact that Sanders and Warren are polling at the top, and the fact that they’re politicians and would not be crafting these campaign messages if they didn’t know that they were being positively received, says plenty on its own). Warren cleverly highlighted and praised Obama’s accomplishments in office (i.e. the Affordable Care Act) and didn’t say squat about whether she agreed or disagreed with him, then went right back to campaigning about why billionaires suck. And some guy named Julian Castro basically blew Obama off and claimed that “any Democrat” could beat Trump in 2020, just by nature of existing and being non-insane.

This is very dangerous! Do not be Julian Castro!

As I said in my tags on the Bush post: everyone assumed that sensible people would vote for Kerry in 2004. Guess what happened? Yeah, he got Swift Boated. The race between Obama and McCain in 2008, even after those said nightmare years of Bush, was very close until the global crash broke it open in Obama’s favor, and Sarah Palin was an actual disqualifier for a politician being brazenly incompetent and unprepared. (Then again, she was a woman from a remote backwater state, not a billionaire businessman.) In 2012, we thought Corporate MormonBot Mitt Fuggin’ Romney was somehow the worst and most dangerous candidate the Republicans could offer. In 2016, up until Election Day itself, everyone assumed that HRC was a badly flawed candidate but would win anyway. And… we saw how that worked out. Complacency is literally deadly.

I was born when Reagan was still president. I’m just old enough to remember the efforts to impeach Clinton over forcing an intern to give him a BJ in the Oval Office (This led by the same Republicans making Donald Trump into a darling of the evangelical Christian right wing.) I’m definitely old enough to remember 9/11 and how America lost its mind after that, and I remember the Bush years. And, obviously, the contrast with Obama, the swing back toward Trump, and everything that has happened since. We can’t afford to do this again. We’re hanging by a thread as it is, and not just America, but the entire planet.

So yes. By all means, vote for Sanders in the primary. Then when November 3, 2020 rolls around, if you care about literally any of this at all, hold your nose if necessary and vote straight-ticket Democrat, from the president, to the House and Senate, to the state and local offices. I cannot put it more strongly than that.

#politics for ts #long post #anonymous #ask

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benandstumpy · 4 years ago

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REWATCH: "in the army/powdered toast man" (2x01)

season 2 is a mixed bag for me. for some reason it sticks out in my mind as my favorite, but it contains some of (imo) the best and worst episodes of the show. "stimpy's fan club" alone bumps it up pretty high in my memory, but i guess we'll see as we get more into it.

"in the army" is a bit slower-paced, but bob camp's a talented artist and he did nice work on this one. something about this frame resonates with me in my soul btw

i like that we get to see stimpy behaving competently in this episode. i think i'm still struggling to articulate some of my more nuanced thoughts about his character, but while the "mean/stupid" dynamic doesn't need to be turned on its head all the time, i think having stimpy be better at a number of things than ren is is a large part of what makes their dynamic so much more watchable and enjoyable than it would be otherwise. (the ultimate plot twist is that this rewatch series is just me trying to untangle the complexities of characters who were not actually created with a high level of complexity in mind. oops. at least i'm having fun)

similarly, it's fun to see ren trying to cheat his way through boot camp and at times outright misunderstanding what he's supposed to be doing. he thinks he's so clever lmfao

stimpy should get to brandish knives more often i think. but this screencap reminded me of something, so as a tangent, i was having latkes with friends last night and while making them one of my friends was swinging around/pointing a giant chef's knife while he was talking. said friend apparently stole 3 girlfriends of a former friend of his (in a row) on complete accident, at which point said former friend vowed revenge.

nice pose + expression here. billy west laugh is also always appreciated

"powdered toast man" is not an episode that i have too much to say about. it's funny, but i think most of my thoughts on this show have to do with the title characters. i do like that frank zappa voices the pope though and i'm reminded that as the show went on, it had a number of celebrity guests. the show was obviously before my time and it's actually one of the nick shows i knew the least about prior to actively seeking it out (for a while i had seen stimpy's character design but not ren's,) so it's easy to forget what kind of chokehold this show had on pop culture

BREAKING: powdered toast man leaves pope hanging off pointy mountaintop (HEARTWARMING)

the boys show up for like 60 seconds which i always appreciate. i don't mind episodes where they don't have a big role on principle or anything, but i do miss them.

this scene also implies that strangely-voiced bill clinton's entire line of succession was suddenly rendered unable OR that ptm was vice president to begin with and both are excellent options if you ask me

a solemn oath to relieve the american people of their basic human rights seems about the standard at this point. kind of interesting that they paired up an episode poking fun at the u.s. military with one poking fun at u.s. power generally, not sure if that was intentional or a coincidence.

that's all for now!

#ren and stimpy #cartoon #rewatch #op

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rein-ette · 4 years ago

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Howdy! I'm going to ask your awesome question back at you ;) what do you think of England, both as a character and as a country? Do tell me all of your feelings towards the grumpy man 👀

Short Answer:

To borrow a phrase from my favourite writer/historian Barbara Tuchmann, if Canada is the country of my birth, England has always been the country of my heart.

Long Answer:

I actually fell in love with England the country a long time before I even knew England the character, but Hetalia certainly reinforced my infatuation ten-fold. I can't say when or how it started because I think I was pretty young (I remember my mom making me take notes on Greek and Roman history when I was like, 7, and uh, let's just say my obessession with Europe only grew after that). It's also kinda difficult for me to parse why I like the country because it's been a constant in my life for so long, but I'll try my best.

I think it might have begun with my fascination with WWII history. There's this Chinese idiom -- 乱世出英雄 -- which kinda encapsulates why the world wars and British history in particular so enchanted me. The literal translation of it would be "heroes emerge in turbulent times" but I think a better figurative approximation is the phrase "for darkness shows the stars." The world wars, British participation in the world wars, and British history in general has many, many dark episodes and in many ways exposes the worst of humanity. But I think it's also true that British history also brought out the best of us -- exposed the "heroes", so to speak. I refer not only to household names like Churchill but also the commanders on the ground, the suffragettes, the workers in the factories, and naturally the common soldier. Of course this is not a phenomenon unique to British history, but it was through British 20th century history that I first fell in love with history in general, so it holds a bit of a special place in my heart.

From a more objective perspective, Canadians are really steeped in British culture, ideas, and history, even if we don't realize it. I mean, most of the ideals we embrace, such as the rule of law or constitutional monarchy, as well as the things we celebrate -- the abolishment of slavery, for example -- stem from Britain. One cannot teach Canadian history in school without learning British history, and when you consider that Canada's massive sacrifices in the world wars also played a defining moment in its national identity, it's really no wonder that many still feel a kinship with the UK. Plus, like I mentioned in the response to needcake's ask, a lot of being Canadian is trying to differentiate ourselves from Americans, and one primary way we do that is by pointing to our loyalty to England and shared monarch.

I'm not sure if this is really obvious from the other side of the pond, but Queen Elizabeth also, like, plays a really insidious role. Idk if Aussies or Kiwis feel this way, but we really love Queen Liz and can't imagine a world without her on our money and all our fancy buildings and occasionally making her speeches. I was an air cadet as a teen too! We had to play God Save the Queen for closing parades every night, and I remember thinking, gosh, one day we'll have to sing God save the king, and they'll have to change all the lyrics and coins and bills and what not, and that's really weird.

But yeah, besides the history and the environment in Canada, I also follow British politics to some extent? It's not as common as following American politics here (if you talk to Canadians ab the American president it's not uncommon to hear people say "why did we elect him" etc.) but it isn't rare either. I mean, I read the Economist (no i'm not 10 billion years old) and I've done courses in British politics, read British authors, a lot of people like British actors and films and shows...the culture is just really widespread, I guess. I also have close friends who lived/live in London...oh, and I went to a British international school when I was young for a year. That might have played a role too. I should say here that I've never actually been to England in person so I can't comment on what its actually like, but it feels so familiar that sometimes I honestly forget i haven't been. I hope to actually study in London soon, actually, so if you have any advice/warnings, hit me!

Alright, onto Arthur. I just? Really? Love him? In particular I really admire his pragmatic worldview, even if I don't always agree with the conclusions it leads him to. When it comes to knowledge and analysis, he's someone who refuses to turn away from the truth, no matter how incovenient. Yet when it comes to his own emotions he's the complete opposite. That mix of cynicism and then escapism to relieve the emotional burden of his own cycnism is just...fascinating. I also really admire his intelligence in general, as well as his work ethic.

Perhaps what I love the most about Arthur, however, is his spirit. I mean, he's just so alive. Whether he's furious or devastated or overjoyed, he's someone who lives life so intensely, so fully, with such fury. When I write Arthur, that's often the feeling I try to capture: someone who cannot help but see all the suffering in life, but someone who cannot help but fight on, regardless. In a strange way, Arthur embodies hope at its most irrational. As Samuel Beckett wrote in the Unnamable, he's someone who is always telling himself: "You must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on."

Absolutely no one asked for fruk, but I'm just gonna seize this chance to throw out a little headcanon. I think this intense, somehow mortal quality of Arthur is what first captivated Francis. As I've written about a bit before, Francis to me has the most "eternal" feel out of the all the nations. He loves humanity and life as a whole, whereas Arthur lives like every second counts. For someone like Francis, who just adores beautiful, wild, transient things, Arthur is like mortality in a bottle -- so utterly enthralling that once he tasted it he could never get enough. Unlike Joan or other real humans, however, Arthur has proved far more durable to wear and tear :P

My final thought on Arthur is that he has so much contempt for fate, its actually both funny and admirable. If I may quote Tuchmann again, "no man ever lived who was less willing to be the victim of events." Arthur's someone who simply refuses to be bullied, even by grandaddy destiny itself, and I think we all love him for that, a little.

#hws england #ask #hcs #whoooo this was a long one but i had a lot of fun answering #its a little embarrassing to talk about how much i love england in front of a brit but #you said such nice things about canada i just had to be honest you didn't deserve some half-assed ironic answer #rainbowfruitpastilles

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minidigidestined · 4 years ago

Text

Antlion and Seung

A oneshot I started like a year ago and finished the other day. it is the meeting of two of my OCs, Antlion and Seung. Just something short, simple and fun... I may rework it and turn it into its own series!

XXX

"Alright, Bonk, let's get out of here. I think we've got about all we can carry." Auburn hair tied into twin tails with string fluttered in the spring breeze as a stout woman screwed the cap back on the last of the many canteens hanging from the belt at her waist, slipping a morel mushroom into the straps on her back. She wiped the sweat from her brow with the hem of her dress, squinting at the fading sun. "Plus it's getting late. Owls will be out." Each movement--down to the most minute--efficient, sure and almost mechanical. A round toad, pale white and studded with cheerfully ruddy warts, stared back at her with scarlet eyes. He stood about an inch or two taller than his possibly human companion--well, if you didn't count her absolutely diminutive stature or slitted eyes, along with a few other uncanny features. Bonk cocked his head, looking concerned and almost as uncanny as the girl with his wide mouth and unwavering stare. His throat swelled with a chirp of warning, but the tiny woman was preoccupied with situating the plump morel among her gear. "This'll be some great eating! Mix it up with some roasted crickets back at the hollow and we'll definitely be good to hole up for a coup--" The ground rumbled with the slightest of vibrations, but silence hung heavy in the air--with even the cicada choir gone quiet, that definitely meant there was some sneaky predator around. "Bonk, go!" Without a second thought, the tiny lady swung atop her warty steed, grasping onto his parotid glands for purchase. The albino toad lurched forward with a mighty hop, abandoning their puddle of rainwater and shooting toward the trail leading to their burrow in the gnarled roots of an old oak... ...And slammed straight into an open palm. "Hm. I'm sorry." The voice that rumbled above them was thoughtful, quiet, calculating. And yet no less terrifying. A human this far in the woods couldn't mean anything good. Bonk fell backwards, chirping desperately as he sprung up to cover his friend with his heavy-set body, flattening down on top of her. Terrified, she pressed her face into the soft bumpy skin of his belly, mind rushing to think of the old Nature Queens her mother had taught her about when she was young. Something to pray to. To cry to. And quite possibly to curse at. She had never once been this foolish and oblivious before, but she had just been so tired and hungry... She and Bonk both had lost so much weight during the barren winter, but she thought with the recent rain their luck was changing at last. She got too excited, a rookie mistake when out foraging. "Stupid..." She grit her teeth together, willing her tears away as she felt Bonk's rapid heartbeat thrum against her face. "An albino--how rare and pretty." The once-before dreary voice now seemed to hold a bit of sparkle. "Let me get a good look at you...you're a big guy for being so bright out here. Figured you would have been eaten by now. Lucky one." Long fingers gently curled around Bonk's abdomen, lifting the little toad right on up despite his now outraged wriggling. "Piss rocket, Bonk! Piss on him!" The girl grit between her teeth. She knew the human would see her any second now--and once he did, it was all over. Bonk began to squirm wildly, spraying a certain kind of liquid artillery as his tiny feet grasped for his friend's hands. His red eyes shone with terror, the woman's own black eyes reflecting pure rage. The human lifted Bonk completely into the air after getting a firm grasp on his back legs, turning the amphibian with a sure hand to face their visage head-on. The tiny woman finally got a good look at them--tall and rail thin, pale eyes and hair brushed away from their brow and tied in a high ponytail. Everything about them seemed pointed and grim, fragile like glass, a stark contrast to both the woman and Bonk's soft, rounded and much sturdier looking shapes. "Such bright colors." The human mused, flipping Bonk over to inspect his belly. "I just can't get over it. How did such a garish little thing like you survive so long?" The woman eyed a strange contraption hanging around the human's neck, a circular lens catching the last of the fading sun. Bonk smacked the human with his front feet and swelled his throat, all out of pee and struggling to escape. I can't let this go on, The woman thought. Who cares about the elf courts? The rules? No one's here to listen in now. No nobles have ever helped me, and I refuse to let a damn thing happen to Bonk! The tiny lass, no more than a few inches tall, whisked her blade from the strap at her hip--be it but a sewing needle, she knew it could still draw blood if neccessary. She slipped the morel from her back to use as a, uh... Club? Shield? She wasn't quite sure at this point, vision going red with rage and brain dizzy with fear. He's all I have left. "Put him down!" She cried at the top of her little lungs. "Or else my Deathweaver will have a taste of you, human!" The human seemed to startle for a moment, flinching inward and glancing around almost sheepishly. Then their gaze flicked down, jaw going slack. I'm all he has. Anything but leaving him behind, She reminded herself as her blood turned to ice. She tried to imagine herself as a human would--being tiny was shocking enough she was sure, but her long ears, mottled white and tan skin, black spots, slitted eyes, whip tail and her hands covered in setae? She had seen how humans reacted before... Knowing some kind of earth magic would be great right about now... Anything more than a knitting needle to keep from getting stepped on. Oh, how she wished she had been as talented as the rest of her family! "...You look like a House Gecko. Mediterranean." The human blinked. "But a person. At the same time. Huh." She blinked back, then sneered. "I am Antlion." The woman gripped her needle, growling. "And you will unhand my friend at once!" She was shaking uncontrollably. The human continued to stare, Bonk himself going still and cocking his head as if confused by the sudden stand-off. "Well, I'm Seung." The human said, plainly. "I need to get a look at you." "Excuse me?! I'll poke out your--" Her war cry became a squeal when the human reached forward with his free hand. She rolled out of the way--just how Honey-Lavender taught me--but it still wasn't enough. The human's fingers caught the strap across her back, lifting her right off the ground. Antlion snarled, kicking her legs and thrusting her needle upwards. She laughed when it raced across the human's palm, making them wince. "Bring me to your face, Seung!" She hissed out mockingly. "Let's see you look at me with no eyes!" Seung's lips twisted in a wry smile. "What a shame that would be." "Eeugh?" Antlion felt heat rise to her cheeks before baring her teeth. "Let my friend go or your nose is mine!" She pointed the needle right at their face, wincing inwardly when she noticed something more along the lines of a paper cut rather than the grievous wound she had been aiming for on her foe's wrist. "You've got attitude. Usually house geckos are runners. How interesting. You do have the markings though. Does your tail drop?" Antlion stared straight forward, her black and silver eyes locked into his own. The clear blue of a frozen lake. An early morning sky before frost. Delicate as glass. She burned. She'd do anything to melt that ice into nothing. The little woman cursed her diminutive size. "Hm. I could see why you'd be frustrated." They seemed to snap out of a fog. "I guess that was rude. I've just never seen anything like you. And your companion is an albino american toad? With your...aggression, I suppose I know how he's survived so long despite his color." Bonk croaked indignantly. Antlion's eyes narrowed, her sword arm unwavering. "We grew up together, I raised him from a tadpole. I'd do anything to keep him safe--even slay a giant like you." "There's no need for any slaying." Seung said dryly, the edge of their mouth curling into something like a smile. "Let me prove it to you." Carefully, they lowered both of their hands to the earth, placing each of his tiny charges back on the ground. "There." Antlion's heart was in her throat, even as Bonk pressed his face into her shoulders, his body loose with relief. "What are you doing, human?" "I would just like to talk. Ask some questions." Seung said delicately. "I'm studying herpetology right now, and I'm the president of the photography club. The only member of it, actually." "I do not know what your silly words mean." Antlion's eyes became angry slits, the human's shadow encompassing her. "That's okay, we'll get there." Seung nodded, as if this were all completely natural to them. "What do you mean?" Antlion demanded, eying them warily as she sheathed her Deathweaver. "We are friends now, are we not? I have a bit of cheese and crackers I'm willing to spare. Let us sit and talk awhile." The little gecko woman blinked. This human was...different. Intriguing and unflinching. She held tight to her anger. Anger kept you safe. But it had been so very long since she had cheese... So even though she was breaking about thirty seven different laws...in their shadow they remained. "I will speak in exchange for cheese." Antlion huffed. "But we are not friends. You giants are my enemy!" Seung smirked softly, reaching into their bag for the snacks. "Of course. So, why don't we start with what in the world you are, then?" Antlion sucked in a deep breath. Bonk nudged her arm, looking just as curious and hungry as she did. She had been lonely for such a long time. Quiet for even longer. And this human...odd as they were, they were also kind. Gentle. Even after she had threatened and spit and spat at them. Perhaps they could be useful to a beast elf like her. After all, there were no law keepers to punish her for simply...using the resources around her, now was there? So she let go for the first time in many years, and began to speak.

Patreon: https://href.li/?https://www.patreon.com/toadwarts?fan_landing=true

Ko-fi: ko-fi.com/toadwarts

A03: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToadWarts

#g/t #giant/tiny #my writing #antlion and seung

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seanhowe · 4 years ago

Photo

“For Dave Glover” by Bob Dylan, 1963

Dave Glover: “[Dylan] said, well, they called me up and they wanted something for the Newport Book, and they needed it like in a week, and I didn’t have it. I said, well, I don’t have anything. And they said, well, anything, have you got anything laying around, is there anything you started? He said, well, I got this letter I was writing to a friend of mine. And they said, well, great. So, actually about the first two lines of that are actually a letter to me as this pretext for writing this sort of recapitulation about where he is, and what he’s doing, and what he’s been up to. That was cool. I didn’t mind. It was okay. It was kind of weird.”

Yuh ask in the last letter how come I aint wrote lately

Yuh say that writin t me’s like blowin words at a stone wall

Yuh ask in a quiet way if I changed my ways so hard that I don remember old friends

Yuh even ask if I’m mad at yuh for somethin

An with each letter sent yuh never got a one back

An I know how yuh mus’ feel

Dave Glover—harmonica sidekick an guitar pardner

Dave Glover—best friend in the highest form

Dave Glover—true rebel an unconscious outlaw

Dave Glover—ramblin do-gooder a the best breed

Dave Glover—who knew me before I hit or got hit by New York City

Dave Glover—who's everythin I stand for or am a part of

An I don even answer a letter from ‘m

I don even answer one little lousey letter

An I ask m’self am I crazy

This is Dave writin t you, man

This is somebody you love

We used t drink cough medicine bottles a vodka t'gether

We used t stay up all nite laughin and singin

And we did that when there weren't too many people doin it

Hey man—I'm sorry— // I mean I'm really sorry

I wrote many lines in the past few years but there ain't no letters in none a the words t spell out how sorry I am

It's a complicated day

I keep rememberin the songs we used t sing an play

The songs written thirty fifty years ago

The dirt farm songs - the dust bowl songs

The depression songs - the down and out songs

The ol blues and ballads

I think a Woody's songs

I think a Woody's day

"This land I'll defend with my life if it be"

An I say t myself "Yeah that's right"

"Hitler's on the march"

"I don't wan''m takin my ground"

"I don't wan''m livin on my land"

An I see two sides man

I see two roads to pick yer route

The American way or the Fascist way

When there was a strike there's only two kind of views

An two kinds of tales t tell the news

Thru the unions eyes or thru the bosses eyes

An yuh could stand on a line an look at yer friends

An stand on that same line an see yer foes

It was that easy

"Which Side're You On" ain't phony words

An they ain't from a phony song

An that was Woody's day man

Two sides

I don know what happened cause I wasn't aroun but somewhere along the line a that used t be day things got messed up

More kinds a sides come int' the story

Folks I guess started switchin sides an makin up their own sides

There got t be so many sides that no eyes could could see the eyes facin'm

There got t be so many sides that all of'm started lookin' like each other

I don pretend to know what happened man, but somehow all sides lost their purpose an folks forgot about other folks

I mean they must a all started goin against each other not for the good a their side but for the good a jes their own selves

An them two simple sides that was so easy t tell apart bashed an boomed an exploded so hard an heavy that t'day all'ts left and made for us is the one big rockin rollin

COMPLICATED CIRCLE

Nowadays folk's brains're bamboozled an bowled over by categories labels an slogans an advertisements that could send anybody's head in a spin It's hard t believe anybody's tellin the truth for what that is I swear it's true that in some parts a the country folks believe the finger-pointers more'n the President It's the time a the flag wavin shotgun carryin John Birchers It's the time a the killer dogs an killer sprays It's the time a the billboard sign super flyin highways It's the time a the pushbutton foods an five minute fads It's the time a the white collar shirt an the white sheeted hood and the white man's sun tan lotion It's time a guns and grenades an bombs bigger'n any time's ever seen It's the time a Liz Taylor fans - sports fans and electric fans It's the time when a twenty year ol colored boy with his head bloody don get too much thought from the seventy year ol senator who wants t bomb Cuba I don't know who the people were man that let it get this way but they got what they wanted out a their lives an left me an you facin a scared raped world They frained the free thinkin air an left us with a mental institution circle They rotted the poor wind and left us mixed up mislead puny breeze They stole Abraham Lincoln's road an sold us Bill Moore's highway They shot down trees - buried the leaves an nailed "Profess" t the gravestone They damned up the clear runnin river of "Love thy neighbor" said by Jesus Christ a Bethlehem an poluted us with "I'll guard" "the school with my body" said by governor Wallace of Alabama They robbed the Constitution of the land an snuck in the censors of the mind They bought up everythin at the auction an left us with a garbage market a fools an fears an frustratin phoniness Yuh ask how I'm doin Dave I'm still singin - I'm still writin I'm still doin all a things I used to do I guess But the difference is probably that now I really ain't thinkin about what I'm doing no more I do worry no more bout the covered up lies and twisted truth in front a my eyes I don worry no more bout the no-talent criticizers an know-nothin philosophizers I don worry no more bout the cross-legged corner sitters who try an make rules for the ones travelin in the middle a the room I'm singin an writin what's on my own mind now What's in my own head and what's in my own heart I'm singin for me an a million other me's that've been forced t'gether by the same feelinNot by no kind a side Not by no kind a category People hung up and strung out People frustrated an corked in an bottled up People on no special form or field - age limit or class I can't sing "Red Apple juice" no more I gotta sing "masters a War" I can't sing "Little Maggie" with a clear head I gotta sing "Seven Curses" instead I can't sing "John Henry" I gotta sing "Hollis Brown" I can't Sing "John Johannah" cause it's his story an his people's story I gotta sing "With God On My Side" cause it's my story an my people's I can't sing "The Girl I Left Behind" cause I know what it's like to do it I gotta sing "Boots a Spanish Leather" cause I know what's like to live it But don't get me wrong now Don think I go way out a my way not t sing no folk songs That ain't it at all The folk songs showed me the way They showed me that songs can say somethin human Without "Barbara Allen" there'd be no "Girl From The North Country" Without no "Lone Green Valley" there'd be no "Don't Think Twice" Without no "Jesse James" there'd be no "Davy Moore" Without no "Twenty one Years" there'd be no "Walls a Red Wing" Hell no Them ol songs're the only kinda picture left t show the new born how it used t be in them times Them ol songs tell us what they had t run thru or walk thru or dance thru The ol songs tell how they loved an how they kissed They tell us what they rejected and objected to They laid it down an made the path They were simple an told the story straight They said who they fought an what they fought for an with what they fought with An who they fought against Now's a complicated day An all I'm sayin' is'at I gotta make my own statement bout this day I gotta write my own feelins down the same way they did it before me in that used t be day An I got nothin but homage an holy thinkin for the ol songs and stories But now there's me an you An I'm doin what I'm doin for me An I'm doin what I'm doin for you I'm writin an singin for me An I'm writin an singin for you I'm writin an singin for me cause I'm human an I'm breathin In a world that was made for me I'm writin an singin for you cause yer a part a me an everythin I stand for I don know why I aint written t yuh maybe cause I never write letters t'myself yeah maybe that's why See yuh when I get there yer friend Bob Dylan

#bob dylan

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bopinion · 4 years ago

Text

2021 / 31

Aperçu of the Week:

What matters most is how well you walk through the fire

(Charles Bukowski)

Bad News of the Week:

It burns. Everywhere. California set a wildfire record last year. And this year it has tripled - before the so-called fire season has even started. Probably, again, they didn't listen to Trump and did enough leaves raking beforehand. In Turkey, the strongest forest fires in a long time are destroying the most popular vacation regions and thus also an important economic factor. Which does not keep Erdogan from declaring the Kurds to be the real culprits. In Greece, the temperature does not drop below 30° C / 86° F even at night, and the elderly are dying like flies. The government now wants to buy more air conditioners, overlooking the fact that they are also a mayor factor in global warming. And the fires are now so close to populated areas that even suburbs of Athens have to be evacuated. In Russia, the area burned since the beginning of the year totals 14.3 million hectares! And the government admits in no uncertain terms that they would not even try to put out all the fires - after all, it's only nature.

An interesting explanation for climate change came the other day from the right-wing populist "Alternative for Germany." Windmills would take so much energy from the wind that the jet stream would therefore weaken. Says an editor of the science portal "Climate facts": "The jet stream is a band of strong winds that races around the North Pole at an altitude of about 15 kilometers and at speeds of up to 500 km/h - it's complete humbug that windmills close to the ground could have an influence on it." He probably didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

The conservative television star Tucker Carlson, whose Fox News program last summer became the highest-rated show in the history of U.S. cable television, is according to Time America's most powerful conservative. And once was the most retweeted source from a certain president - guess who. Of course his views on climate change are - to put it mildly - not undisputed. "In the hands of Democratic politicians, climate change is like systemic racism in the sky. You can't see it, but rest assured it's everywhere and it's deadly. And like systemic racism, it is your fault," Carlson continued. "The American middle class did it. They caused climate change. They ate too many hamburgers. They drove too many SUVs. They had too many children." He also compared the climate change movement to Mao's Great Leap Forward, saying, "And there you have the modern left's climate agenda: no drinking straws, no automobiles, no airplanes, no meat, no democracy." And just a few weeks ago he implied that climate change is a lie that's part of a plot to shrink human babies.

Hubert Aiwanger, top candidate for the "Free Voters," calculated in a 2019 talk show that all of Germany's greenhouse gas emissions could be offset with an annual reforestation of 25 km². A fact check by the TV program "quer," however, showed that this would require reforesting an area 6,800 times as large - 170,000 square kilometers annually. That would correspond to 47.5% of the area of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 2021 by the way, Aiwanger once again attracts attention with his dubious expertise by talking about side effects of the Corona vaccinations in his "personal environment" that would make you spit on your face.

What do we learn from this? If the only thing we have to counter climate change are stupid politicians, we are doomed.

Good News of the Week:

Even before Germany overtook the U.S. and China in new electric car registrations, one trendsetter - believe it or not - was our postal service Deutsche Post DHL. Since the car manufacturers were not able to supply appropriate vehicles, it simply manufactured them itself. Back in 2014, with a start-up from the Technical University of Aachen. The Group now has 11,000 of the battery-powered vehicles in use, so that it can deliver letters and parcels with zero emissions, at least for the last few kilometers.

Now, the postal service wants to address the problem of climate change more strongly also in the air - and in the future, it will also use electric cargo planes. To this end, the Group has now ordered twelve "Alice" aircraft from the manufacturer Eviation. Eviation expects to be able to deliver the aircraft in 2024, with the first flight of the aircraft type planned for this year.

So much for the prejudice of the snail mail...

Personal happy moment of the week:

Last night I experienced the trinity of earthly happiness: Poutine, Corona Extra and 2001 - A Space Odyssey. A solid soul food on the plate, la cerveza mas fina in the bottle and a cinematic highlight on the screen. What more could you ask for?

I couldn't care less...

...for the preprogrammed next hit by German pop starlet Helene Fischer. Everything I need to know is in the headline of the renowned weekly magazine "Der Spiegel": The song we will hear in our nightmares. Helene Fischer is back - with "Vamos a Marte", a duet with "Despacito" singer Luis Fonsi. A song of neoliberal flawlessness, spiced with a well-digestible pinch of Latin pop. Of course it will be a hit.

As I write this...

...I treat myself to an opulent breakfast: eggs in a jar, shrimp cocktail and burrata with herbs. Apparently, this is a weekend of culinary delights. Because tonight my wife is planning salmon Thai style. What more could you ask for? Oh, I already had that...

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kaypeace21 · 5 years ago

Note

Jonathan Byers (For your character questions Ask)

favorite thing about them

He’s incredibly caring and selfless to his family. He’s extremely devoted to Will and Joyce (frankly taking on more than such a young guy should have to). At 17 he’s discussing helping pay for his mom’s mortgage . Then of course, Jonathan is a surrogate dad to Will in a lot of respects. In s1 it’s cannon that he cooks breakfast for Will, wakes him up, drives him places, works extra shifts to pay the house bills. Gives Will coded pep-talks about his sexuality. And sometimes calls Will (coded fatherly nicknames that dads give their kids)- like “kid, buddy, pal, and sport”. He’s paralleled to all the ST mom’s taking pics of their kids in their ghost busters costumes, as well. I love Jonathan. He pretty much sacrificed his entire childhood to be the father figure for Will, that Lonnie wasn’t. He did all of this since he wanted Will to have more than he did (aka a Dad).Jonathan in s1 even said in the past Joyce had “anxiety issues”. And tells Joyce, “This is not an okay time for you to shut down,” implying there has been times when she has shut down, and left him with the burden of caring for Will and herself . Joyce even apologizes in s1 for not being there for him as a kid ( cause she was too busy working). Many s4 movies emphasize Jonathan’s devotion to Will and knowledge that he sacrificed his childhood to do so .

least favorite thing about them

He constantly think he’s inadequate and often refuses help. Calling himself a “weirdo”. Not telling Joyce of the supernatural threat cause “she’s been through enough”. And constantly apologizing for not being there for Will- and blaming himself for what’s happened to him.

Like joyce said “you act like you’re all alone in this world. But you’re not!” And Bob reiterates his trust issues saying “I’m really getting through to them- well except Jonathan he’s a tough cookie to crack.” Murray also parrots this saying “trust issues, am I right? Something to do with your dad.” Jonathan has severe trust issues and I hope he heals from that .

favorite line

"You shouldn't like things because people tell you you're supposed to.”

brOTP

Obviously - my brOTP is Jonathan and Will.

OTP

Don’t really have 1. I used to ship jancy (still wasn’t fond of the camera incident though). I like jonathan and nancy but after s3 I think they may be better off not together . I like both but I think maybe they’re not the best fit together.

nOTP

if we’re talking about popular st ships of him like Jancy and I guess... stoncy & steve/jon? I’m mostly indifferent. I feel like nOTP’s are more vitriolic.

But I just feel like Jancy isn’t right for each other, in the long run.Nancy only apologized for claiming Jon was sexist but not for making fun of him for being poor and his dad leaving -calling him “oliver twist” (a poor orphan). Which clearly pissed him off since when he talked to her on the phone later he did a clap back referencing the book saying he was with ‘Fagin and the gang’. Which is similar to Mike apologizing for being ‘jealous of Max’ but not for the fact he lied (the reason for the breakup in the first place). The fact Nancy says “here comes the Oliver Twist routine AGAIN”. Implies Jonathan has tried to open up to her in the past but she dismissed it as just bellyaching. I just can’t really get over that. I don’t think either was completely in the right though. I talked about all the pairings (including jancy) and their parallels to other ships, in way more detail- here and why I don’t see them as endgame.

random headcanon

- Since Nancy says in s2 Jonathan likes reading Vonnegut. I think it may reflects a lot about Jonathan!

Vonnegut like Jonathan was born in Indiana- like jonathan.He was an atheist and a humanist and served as the honorary president of the American Humanist Association.Some quotes by him: “I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without expectations of rewards or punishments after I am dead... purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”

A lot of his books critique society in a scifi form.

- In Breakfast of Champions (1973), Vonnegut vows to “clear [his] head of all the junk,” and race and racism are at the top of his list of “junk” to be cleared. In the book he critiques colonialism, and institutional and social racism predominantly focusing on the mistreatment of black people. “I think I am trying to clear my head of all the junk in there...I suspect that this is something most white Americans, and nonwhite Americans who imitate white Americans, should do. The things other people have put into my head, at any rate, do not fit together nicely, are often useless and ugly, are out of proportion with one another, are out of proportion with life as it really is outside my head.”

- Slaughter house 5 (1972) was based on his own experiences as a ww2 soldier. “It sees war as a tragedy so great that perhaps only the mask of comedy allows one to look it in the eye. Vonnegut is a sad-faced comedian. The book says Billy may be hallucinating about his experiences with the Tralfamadorians as a way to escape a world destroyed by war—a world that he cannot understand ( heavy Will foreshadowing). Even while Vonnegut admits the inevitability of death, with or without war, he also tells us that he has instructed his sons not to participate in massacres or in the manufacture of machinery used to carry them out”. The phrase “so it goes” represented the deep sadness and resignation to death- appearing with almost every death in the novel. This phrase become a popular mantra in the Anti-vietnam war movement.Mr. Vonnegut wrote at the end of the book, “was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes. Martin Luther King was shot a month ago. He died, too. So it goes. And every day my Government gives me a count of corpses created by military science in Vietnam. So it goes.”

- In a letter from 1965, he also recommended a novel to his wife. ‘here is a really lovely book about it in my study -- on a top shelf. It's red, and it's called The ABZ of Love." “Indeed, the book was in many ways ahead of its time and of the era's mainstream, pushing hard against bigotry and advocating for racial, gender, and LGBT equality with equal parts earnestness and wry wit.”

-his novels also had a lot of gay characters and this caused a lot of controversy at the time.

Reflecting how he’ll probably be supportive of Will- which was foreshadowed in s1 when he was encouraging Will not to behave a certain way cause his homophobic dad wants him to.

unpopular opinion

probably Jancy not being endgame

song i associate with them

-’should I stay or should i go’ . obvious cliche choice, i know.

favorite picture of them

Hmm... I’m not sure. I just find Jonathan & will exchanging looks with each other and laughing precious.

#jonathan byers #will byers #nancy wheeler #joyce byers

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bexterbex · 5 years ago

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A Soul to Mend His Own | Ch. 4

Warning, if it hasn't been obvious in the movies there is Nazi symbolism within the First Order. I will expand on this much more throughout the story. If this is something that bothers you, please just exit the story. The author does not condone any Nazi ideals, this is just for fictional uses only.

A Kylo Ren x Modern! Reader in a soulmate au with some canon divergence. —————————————SLOWBURN————————————–

He is already the Supreme leader, searching the universe to find you, his Empress. Your name on his wrist has been the only constant in his life, while you have doubts about his existence and his acceptance of you. He isn’t in the database and why did the name Kylo Ren cover Ben Solo?

Originally posted on my Ao3 Crystallclover. (Incase you missed it) Chapter Three

Chapter 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

Chapter 4: When the Machine Starts

Summary: “ALL REMAINING SYSTEMS WILL REMEMBER THIS, AS THE FIRST DAY OF THE NEW EMPIRE!!!” Cannon fire was heard in the distance.

_______________________________________________________________________

“Y/N? What do you think,” asked Carter.

You thought for a moment and answered, “I don’t know, this is all so much to take in. When are you guys thinking about registering? I don’t want to go alone, there will be too many people.”

“I was thinking about going tomorrow morning. The registration office closest to me doesn’t open until 9 AM but I want to guarantee that a line will start 6,” said Carter.

“I guess I really hadn’t thought that far to be honest. Too caught up in the alien thing,” said Hayden “Why don’t we plan on going together?”

“I think that would great, but Y/N do you need to go to a special registration center? As an American,” asked Carter.

“Let me check online,” you said while pulling up the government website on your phone. “It says it I should be fine if I go to the motor vehicle registration office, the social insurance number office, or the immigration office. I need my passport, social security card, immunization forms, birth certificate, driver's license, and work visa. It also says that I will be in a separate line and that my registration will take up to 1 hour to complete.”

“Sweet, I know you aren’t a fan of getting up early Hayden but what if we all go to the MVR office tomorrow at like 5:45 AM and just get it done together? We have no idea how long the lines will be or really how long it will take,” asked Carter.

“Fine, but like we need to get brunch afterward or I will riot in the streets. You guys don’t have to work tomorrow right,” asked Hayden. “Tony gave me the next few days off.”

“No, Henry gave us all time off. I’m pretty sure Scott and his wife will go awol. Like you should have seen him this morning. He was on his phone in the walkway for the first hour, late to our meeting. Ally had to message him asking if he was coming. He then walked finally went into his office and got ready. He blamed it on his wife being paranoid,” you said.

“Yeah but that is such a Scott thing to do, I am surprised Talia hasn’t evaluated him yet that man is a walking HR nightmare,” said Carter.

“That isn’t even the worst of it. Immediately after the announcement he kind flipped out. Talking about how the First Order will brainwash us and how we shouldn’t stand for it. Like I’m pretty sure he was going to blow a gasket. Daniel told him off and then he went to talk to Henry but not until saying that this may be the last time we will probably see our families, then Henry gave us the week off basically,” you ranted. “I honestly hate the man he’s late to everything, even deadlines, he also can’t organize his office even if his life depended on it. Plus he’s always on his phone with his wife. Just all around unprofessional.”

“Damn go off, I would hate to hear what you would have go say about me if I worked with you,” stated Hayden.

“Well, I’m glad we are just friends and not coworkers. Brunch sounds like a good idea to me, especially if we can start day drinking because guaranteed my registration is going to be more stressful than both of yours and I’ll probably need something to take the edge off. And if Scott is right about this being the last bits of freedom before the First Order starts brainwashing us or ‘probing’ us then I’d like it to be fun,” you ranted.

“Probing, damn I wish I thought of that earlier. You know we should start watching some really cheesy Sci-FI movies before the ‘Supreme Leader’ announcement,” suggested Hayden.

Both you and Carter agreed and you set up your phone to keep steaming CBC News and you set up “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” on your laptop.

After your third movie, you all just decide to pull up the news to avoid missing the announcement. The seemingly perfect white brunette anchorman and similarly perfect blonde anchorwoman were explaining once again where to register while also talking about the average wait time to register. You always found their perfect hair, teeth, and skin; they were just too perfect.

Live from Washington D.C.

The camera focused in on the Supreme Leader, “People of Earth, the First Order has so far been impressed by the cooperation we have received from you. As it was mentioned before, if you remain calm and follow all orders directed towards you, you will be able to live a long and prosperous life here.

Your respective nation’s leader should have informed you of more updates such as where to receive registration and changes to your planet's economy. The First Order and my self Supreme Leader Ren have a few more directives for you.

First as mentioned to you many times today, everyone on your planet must register with the First Order as citizens. Anyone refusing to do so will be dealt with justly. Second, all citizens upon registration will receive an education on the First Orders and the beliefs of the new empire. Any citizen who has an issue with this education should direct their comments and concerns to any Stormtrooper or First Order officer at their local registration station.

Finally, anyone found in favor of the New Republic or the Resistance will be dealt with immediately. The First Order would like to make this transition for Earth as smooth and as peaceful as possible. Any found being a traitor to the First Order may find themselves at a public execution!

My Allegiant General Hux has a few words for you.” He stepped to the side to reveal the ginger human-looking man.

“Today is the is the beginning of the new empire! And the end of a regime that acquiesces to disorder! At this very moment, in a system far from here, the New Republic lies to the galaxy, while secretly supporting the treachery of the loathsome Resistance,” The red hair man almost seemed to be foaming at the mouth while he was giving his speech. “Our alliance is a fierce machine that we will build, upon which we will stand, will bring an end to the Senate, and to their cherished fleet! ALL REMAINING SYSTEMS WILL REMEMBER THIS, AS THE FIRST DAY OF THE NEW EMPIRE!!!” Cannon fire was heard in the distance and the camera came to a wide shot of the podium’s stage.

On the stage, you could see the U.S. President, Supreme Leader Ren, Allegiant General Hux, and the silver armored soldier. Behind the stage, you could see the white house lawn filled with the white armored soldiers standing at attention. In the distance you could see there was now a banner over the white house, it was large and read with a hexagon with a star-like black symbol. You assumed this to be the flag of the First Order.

The camera cuts back to the news anchors who were now conspicuously wearing pins with the same symbol that was on the banner. “I like the sound of that, don’t you Karen,” asked the male news anchor.

“I sure do Jim. A new galactic economy and protection from a powerful new ally to protect us from the treacherous Resistance. I don’t think we could have asked for a better ‘alien’ invasion, do you, Jim,” responded Karen.

“Now it's almost as if fate was on our side, or should I say the Force. For everybody, at home, both Karen and I have been registered and have started our First Order education. That’s where we got these cool new pins that you will be required to wear once you’ve been registered unless directed to do otherwise,” stated Jim.

“Yes, it is important that all citizens register as soon as possible, and all citizens are asked to cooperate with the First Order. You all heard our new Supreme Leader Ren, they would like us to be peaceful and anyone found in contempt of the First Order may be subject to public execution,” stated Karen. “And I’m sure all of you remember 8th-grade world history when we learned about what happened to Marie Antoinette, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” She and Jim chuckled at her off-color joke.

“I’m sure no one wants that so if we all stay calm no one should lose their head. There will be nightly updates every night at 7 PM Eastern Standard Time from the First Order. We have been informed that it will be various officers as our new Supreme Leader is very busy,” stated Jim.

“I’m sure he is, and what a wonderful Supreme Leader we have. Dedicated to our safety and the safety of the galaxy. I can’t wait to learn more about him from my First Order education. Now stay tuned to the weather,” said Karen.

You muted your laptop once again. You, Carter and Hayden all sat in shock after what you just watched.

Carter was the first to speak, “well at least be getting the registration and education over an done with as soon as possible. That General Hux guy seemed pretty intense.”

“Your boss might be right Y/N we may just all be brainwashed soon. Why do I have a feeling like the First Order may be something out of a George Orwell's novel,” said Hayden.

“Just promise us you won’t do anything stupid Hayden, we will all have enough to worry about. Tomorrow at the registration office you might want to keep your conspiracy theories to yourself. I don’t know how much the First Order will like them,” you responded.

Carter seemed to be in agreement with you, “Why don’t we all just call it a night? We can meet in the parking lot of the MVR office at 5:45 AM and I’ll bring coffee for all of us.”

You and Hayden nodded in agreement. Both of them packed up their things and left. You cleaned up the kitchen and plates. Shut your laptop before preparing for bed.

You grabbed your pajamas and went into the bathroom and took a shower hoping it would relax you. Getting you changed into your clothes, brushed your hair and teeth.

You shut off the lights to your apartment and walked over to your bed. You plugged in your phone and set an alarm before crawling into bed and drifting off into fitful sleep.

#lets see if this works #kylo ren #kylo ren x reader #kylo ren imagine #kylo x you #star wars imagine #Star wars soulmate au #star wars #star wars first order #sw first order imagine #first order #feedback is appreciated #armitage hux #a soul to mend his own

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goose-books · 5 years ago

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darklingverse & magic

as promised! a look at the magical system in my speculative fiction loose-retelling-of-king-lear WIP, which you can find out more about here and here! this is a terribly, terribly long post, so i’m sticking most of it under a cut, but i can guarantee there are at least a few fun diagrams in there. (all character images used are from this picrew by cinnasmores!)

shoutout to waya @harehearts for helping me work out some of the kinks in this by asking incredibly helpful questions... waya i will untag you if you want i just wanted to appreciate your contribution. also going to tag @suits-of-woe because you mentioned wanting to see this!

Jasper’s dad talks about it like oil. Petroleum has to be refined before you can put it in your car. Unrefined, it’ll just as soon kill you as anything else. The natural clock ticks. A mage hits twelve, or thirteen, or fourteen. And then it’s roaring under their skin, like an electric volt, like a fever, burning in them, fighting tooth and nail to get out.

It always gets out. You pick the route. Or you don’t.

The first thing Vee ever learned was duplication. Small objects only. Jasper was crawling through stacks of post-it notes for weeks. It was like an illness: Vee would get too itchy, his magic nipping at his neck, and he’d clench his fists and then they’d have another goddamn stack of stickies. “He has to get it out somehow,” Dad had admonished Jasper, when he’d complained. “Otherwise it’ll hurt him. I do it, too. The difference is I’m useful.” And he had demonstrated by snapping his fingers and cleaning all the house’s dishes at once.

Jasper is loath to give his father props for anything. But he was, on that particular occasion, right. Within a year Vee could flick his hands and shut windows, heat leftovers, unlock doors, send laundry skittering across the floor into the hamper.

It makes sense; Vee’s an infuriatingly quick study, magically and academically. And he inherited their dad’s style of magic. Easygoing. Quiet. Unobtrusive. Less explosive, more creative. Nowadays the worst that happens when he gets hot under the collar is that he spawns another houseplant and Jasper has to brush the leaves off the kitchen table.

Because Vee followed Dad’s instructions. He annotated all of his textbooks. He mastered it early, by seventeen, because of-fucking-course he did, but he was already in control by fifteen. Everyone learns to control their magic eventually.

Most people do eventually.

— darkling, segment iv: control

okay so let’s get into this!!!

isn’t darkling a modern king lear retelling? what do you mean, “the magic system?”

great question! darkling is, in fact, a modern king lear retelling (well, very loosely; it’s my city now and i reserve the right to do what i want). it takes place entirely in and around a city called dovermorry, an extremely isolated place secluded in the mountains, surrounded by wilderness for hundreds of miles, and only reachable via a single train through the mountains. dovermorry is loosely in the american northwest, sort of, i guess. by which i mean that’s kind of where i’m picturing it, but also it’s incredibly vague and honestly i don’t really know. dovermorry is, like, you know… [gesturing] it’s around. [kicking any kind of definable map under the rug]

the plot is set in the modern day with modern technology. the magic that exists is woven into daily life alongside said modern technology, which is the primary reason i’m calling darkling speculative fiction. most people in darklingverse aren’t actually heavily affected by magic (for reasons i’ll get into but which basically boil down to “they don’t have much”); however, dovermorry as a city is mostly known for being The Place Where Mages Go. most of the families in the city have been there for a long time; they’re old money families with powerful magic who use their inheritances to study increasingly esoteric forms of magic that aren’t very helpful in praxis. this is because dovermorry is home to the large and powerful Mage’s Guild, which is in charge of setting the laws around what kind of magic can be practiced in the city and by who. if you want to study magic at a scholarly level, you’d better pay your dues to the guild, otherwise you’re gonna get the boot.

every large city has a guild, but dovermorry’s in specific is Really Big and, unusually, has more political power than the actual mayor / government of the city. partially because leovald stayer, the guild’s president, is just… ughghhebwfbefbdsbfbdsfsd. That Way. in dovermorry if you’re not getting the boot you’re licking it

“wait, slow down. what is a mage anyway?”

well, technically, anyone! everyone in darklingverse has at least a little bit of natural magic (though it might be very little) that develops during puberty/adolescence! so by its literal definition, A Person Who Does Magic, everyone is a mage. that said, in colloquial terms, the word mage has taken on a connotation that basically means… exactly the kind of people who live in dovermorry. like i just said: scholarly, probably rich, probably a little elitist. so your average working-class person is TECHNICALLY a mage, but if you asked they’d say something like, “oh, mages are those hoity-toity folks who join guilds and stuff, WE’RE just regular folks over here.”

“you keep saying magic. what are you talking about. magic is a word that means so many things”

don’t worry, in darkling it just means [gestures vaguely]. re: everyone has magic, it develops in puberty, and there aren’t really specifications - it isn’t like some folks get fire magic and others get shapeshifting magic or etc. it’s more like everyone has a certain amount of raw energy inside them that can be drawn out and funneled into different tasks/spells. some ground rules:

1. you can’t change the amount of magic you have. your magic develops naturally, and maybe you get a lot of raw energy, or maybe you only get a little, but that’s what you’re stuck with and no amount of practicing is gonna give you more.

2. that said, magic is hard to control when it first develops - and practicing WILL help you get better at controlling it. so while you’ll always have the same base amount, you’ll get faster and more efficient about concentrating it into tasks.

3. re: amount of raw energy: that shit isn’t limitless. whether you have a lot or a little, it will eventually run out and you’ll have to wait for your juice to recharge. like a battery. you are a battery. how long this recharge period takes depends on how much magic you have, how fast you used it all up (if you push your limits to do something Really Big, you’re gonna be wiped), and also just how you’re doing physically in general? if you use up all of your magic in one go and you haven’t slept in a while, you might want to, like, sit down. drink a juice box. take a nap

4. while magic isn’t limitless, you can’t just NOT use it, either. when you aren’t using your magic, that raw magical energy builds up in you. and builds up. and builds up. and it does not particularly want to be in you. it wants to be out in the world, actually, and by god your fragile human meatsack is not going to stop it. so if you don’t choose a task to funnel your magical energy into (eg, i use my built-up energy to send my socks scuttling across the floor of their own accord to get into the laundry basket), that energy will eventually decide to just come out on its own. more on this later.

5. like i said, the mage’s guild of any particular city sets the rules, but there’s generally one core rule and that’s “don’t do necromancy.” like, obviously you’re not allowed to kill someone magically, but you’re also not allowed to kill someone NONMAGICALLY, so that’s kind of a given? but necromancy is something only a few very powerful mages can do and it is a BIG no-no. don’t fuck around with death, man. people don’t come back right, but also, just, like, let them rest, all right? let the dead rest.

[image description: the “society if X” meme, showing a futuristic “ideal” society full of green landscapes, smooth silver buildings, and flying cars. the text on the top reads “society if no one did necromancy.” the text on the bottom reads “this post made by the official mage’s guild don’t do necromancy you freaks bottom text.” in the corner you can see the imgflip.com watermark that i could have erased were i less lazy.]

“so what CAN you do with magic?”

the average joe? not much. again, there aren’t specific categories of magic; there aren’t any ATLA-style bending divisions. if you and i have the same raw amount of energy, there’s no reason we can’t both learn the same spells.

that said, the average person doesn’t have a lot of magic! it is much less dramatic than i’ve made it sound. there are not big magical firefights happening marvel-movie-style on every city street. if you want to talk to your friend, you use your iphone, not some kind of distance-speaking spell (which would be hard to maintain anyway and oh my god the phone lines are right there). the average person, on a daily basis, will use their small amounts of magic to heat their coffee up, or to wipe up a mess or spill, or to clean their floor re: the socks i mentioned earlier. (while writing this post, i had to begrudgingly admit that the socks were not going to scuttle anywhere, and i was forced to pick them up with my hands, manually. tragic, i know.)

again. dovermorry is the exception to this rule. most of the people in dovermorry have a little too much money and a little too much magic and not nearly enough chill. but dovermorry has also been festering like a petri dish alone up in the mountains for decades so what can you do.

“hold on, are you telling me that people in darklingverse didn’t immediately start wielding innate magic quantities as a tool of classism? sounds fake”

regretfully i cannot retcon classism out of darklingverse as it is relevant to the plot. this is because the plot is “Incredible: This Rich White Guy Has Never Been Told No And Doesn’t Know How To Handle It Without Crytyping!”

[image description: a picrew of leovald stayer, a pale-skinned man with short blond hair and an angry-looking frown, plus tears that i drew onto him with the paint tool in paint.net. beside his head is red crytyping text reading “ii’mm sso; so..rryy i didn’t[ mme a nit wwhy . are yu,,o suiiicdee .bai,,it,ing MMe gr;;acen im yuour da[d,,,”]

the general implicit belief across the country, but especially in highly stratified cities like dovermorry, is that upper-class people from distinguished noble families are just naturally born with more magic, and lower-class people are born with progressively less as we trip down the social ladder. is this kind of true, demographically? yeah but everyone’s got their cause-and-effect turned around. class doesn’t dictate natural magic so much as natural magic dictates class. the people on top like to be on top. and having jacked-up magic is a nice way to stay on top. so rip to the rich kids born with piddly little amounts of raw magic, because your family probably is not going to help you get places. and rip to everyone else born with piddly little amounts of magic, too, because unless you’re REALLY good at something nonmagical, you probably are not going to Strike It Big because those in power are gonna keep you down. and if you DO make it to the top you’ll be viewed as an exception that proves the rule.

there is some magic that is genuinely naturally harder to work with. the upper classes are personally really invested in making sure that kind of magic is painted as rough and lower-class. this is because it is threatening to them! and they do not want to be threatened. unless, of course, it’s them with the hard-to-handle magic. and then they’re fine with it.

“but didn’t you say everyone’s magic is basically the same?”

everyone’s magic can be wielded to do basically the same things. you can’t control how much flows through you. you CAN control where/how it gets out. and everyone’s pathways for how to let it out are basically the same (see the examples i mentioned above!). but some magic is a lot easier to control than other magic.

you can’t just not use magic, because if you don’t use it, it will use itself. it will Do Shit On Its Own. and that’s where this gets sticky.

so let’s get into that.

active vs. passive magic

now with fun diagrams!

[image description: a rainbow spectrum stretching from blue to red. the leftmost end (blue) is labeled “’passive’ magic” and “way down here you can mostly do fun party tricks.” the rightmost end (red) is labeled “’active’ magic” and “way down here you’re officially a ‘witch’ lol.”]

when i say active vs. passive magic, i should specify that this is not a strict binary! i’m about to use the terms in a sort of binary way to simplify this post down, but magic exists on a spectrum.* generally the less raw magic energy you have, the more “passive” your magic will be, but that’s not a hard and fast rule! characters vee and rory, for example, both have comparatively passive magic; however, rory’s is smaller and generally good for party tricks, illusions, and sleight of hand, while vee has more magic that he finds is really good for things like Growing Plants Really Fast and Making The Plants Do What You Want.

*i know this looks like some kind of metaphor for gender but i swear it’s not. you can trans your gender no matter WHAT your magic looks like i promise <3

i mentioned that if it builds up for too long unused, magic will Do Shit On Its Own. with passive magic, the Shit It Does is, like, accidentally growing a plant where plants shouldn’t grow, or changing your hair color when you aren’t looking. slow seeping magic that just kind of oozes out of you until you notice, “wait, shit, my hair didn’t used to be blue.” with active magic, if you don’t control it, it will Break Shit and it will not be nice about it.

active magic is - if we simplify both the magic binary and human genetics until they’re really really blurry - the dominant trait. if you made a middle school biology punnet square, active magic would be the dominant allele and passive the recessive allele. (i haven’t taken a bio class in two years no one get my ass for this analogy.) the child’s magic will take after whichever parent has more active magic. so, to illustrate that, let’s look at a normal family with a normal non-scandalous family tree. by which of course i mean the greenwoods. [canned laugh track playing in the studio]

here are ara, griffin, and medea (parents) charted by how active their magic is:

[image description: the same spectrum, now featuring three picrews of characters. ara, a dark-skinned woman with wavy black hair, freckles, and glasses, is placed leftmost, closest to the blue/passive end. griffin, a dark-skinned man with short black hair and glasses, is placed near the middle of the spectrum, slightly to the left. medea, a pale-skinned woman with spiky white hair, freckles, and gold hoop earrings, is placed rightmost, at the very edge of the red/active end.]

...and here’s how that went for them, progeny-wise:

[image description: a little family tree. ara and griffin’s child, vee, a dark-skinned person with wavy black hair, a worried look, and band-aids on his face, is labeled “quiet unobtrusive plant-based magic” in green text. medea and griffin’s child, jasper, a lighter-skinned person with spiky brown hair and freckles, is labeled “once accidentally shattered 50 champagne glasses at his dad’s birthday party” in red text.]

(yes, i know i said there aren’t any ATLA-esque magical divisions; that’s still true; vee just happens to get on really, really well with plants. much like jasper gets on really really well with entropy and causing problems on purpose.)

so the thing about “active” magic is that it’s usually more powerful, but if it’s too powerful it gets incredibly destructive. like i said earlier - if you’re part of the upper class, it shakes out fine; otherwise not so much. your choices with this kind of dangerous magic are to either fight it and keep it tamped down, or to lean completely into it and embrace your massive amounts of dangerous power. if you are rich, you can do that second thing! that’s what leovald stayer does, and he’s the president of the mage’s guild! good for him! [i say, through gritted teeth.] but if you aren’t rich, you had better try to keep that shit on lockdown, unless you want to be branded a reckless uncultured social deviant and - in most cases - a witch.

mages vs. witches

everyone with magic is a mage. only a few mages are witches. it’s like squares and rectangles, you know? you can hear gracen talk about that here in nice prose (plus baby cressida!), but the bottom line is that “witch” is shorthand for “woman* who has magic so powerful it’s unsafe, who uses it to break shit and be reckless,” and anyone with the “wrong” type of magic who doesn’t have a trust fund to back them up is getting tarred with that brush. they’re nothing like those elegant learned mages casting down benevolent laws from their ivory towers, you see.

*this isn’t a gender specific thing but usually women are the ones who get called witches because Women Should Know How To Control Themselves But Men Are Just Like That. god we love misogyny <3

tl;dr: misogyny and classism real. if you have hard-to-control magic that breaks shit then you’re destined to be a pariah UNLESS of course you’re rich and powerful and then it’s COOL that if you got too out-of-control you could collapse a building or cause a monumental storm or something. you know. cool.

[image description: the same magic spectrum. medea is still there, placed exactly where she was before. leovald’s face is also there, right above hers; in terms of magic, they are equally placed on the spectrum. leovald is labeled “runs the whole city” and medea is labeled “lives in a cave in the woods,” both in white text. there are three thinking emojis at the very top of the image.]

funny how these things work out.

in conclusion

in conclusion, if you’ve read all of this, you’re braver than the marines and have my undying love. if you’re down here for a tl;dr: magic is a natural force everyone is born with; some magic is comparatively harder to control; classism & other social structures affect the way a person’s magic is viewed (there are a lot of double standards); i really enjoy making little oc diagrams.

if you have questions, comments, etc, about this post or darkling in general, my ask box is always open! thank you for reading! [blowing you a kiss]

#i dream of hitting leovald stayer with rocks <3 #anyway this is terribly long but i had a friend scan through it and they said it was comprehensive and helpful so!#oh also i hope the image descriptions work i should start doing those... if anyone has concrit on that come shout into my inbox #this post could also be called 'reasons why jasper acts like a neurotic prey animal all the time'#though i did try not to delve into specific characters unless i was using them as examples. this here crash course doesn't need 2 get longer #max.txt #darkling tag #leovald stayer #ara greenwood #griffin greenwood #medea the witch #vee greenwood #jasper greenwood

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americanredragger · 4 years ago

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A Letter to My Mother (That I am too scared to send)

Okay. We’re having this talk now. I have been putting it off because there’s never been a way for me to keep my cool long enough to say it straight. I’ve been nice, I’ve been polite. I’ve walked away from conversations rather than address this directly because I don’t want to lose my mom.

Yesterday was unlike anything in American history. There is no both-sides-ism to be taken here. There is no even vaguely similar violence unleashed by the Left. This isn’t to say that NO violence has ever been unleashed by the left, it can and does happen. But nothing like this. This is unprecedented in both it's scope and audacity.

Unless you can point to an instance in which a Democrat president (or Senator, or Governor) whipped up a riot and unleashed those rioters on the Seat of Government of the United States of America, causing it to be breached and overrun by a hostile force for the first time in 207 years, the things don’t equate at all.

Unless you can point to a riot held by alt-right wingers in which the police cracked down on them HARD to the level of being condemned by the International Criminal Court as bordering on war crimes, the things don’t equate at all.

This was a direct assault on our government by a crowd whipped up by a sitting president. This has never happened before.

The Capitol Police removed the barricades and guided the insurrectionists in.

They chatted and took selfies with them. Exchanged fist bumps with them.

The seditionists were allowed to leave with few arrests, just… gently guided out once the barbarian hordes had their fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaPTjQZBLhQ

And yes, Trump (eventually) told them to go home, but refused to condemn what they'd done and finished his speech with "We love you. You're very special." and continued to refer to his political opponents as "evil".

This is quite literally unprecedented in American history. As in, nothing comes close. That's what "unprecedented" means.

If this had been BLM, the response would have been entirely different. DC would be on lockdown. The police would be bringing WAR to the streets. There would be helicopters, APCs, and beat cops dressed like the US Army rolling into Baghdad in 2003. The DC area hospitals would be overwhelmed with rioters suffering from horrific head and spine injuries from trigger-happy use of rubber bullets and night-sticks. Hell, Trump tear-gassed ACTUAL peaceful protesters last summer just so he could stage an awkward photo op in front of a church, which even the Clergy called him out on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzBhYhu7NYI

Don't you DARE equate the two.

I'm tired of the whataboutisms. I'm tired of ignoring the evidence right in front of you. Donald Trump is the single most corrupt, evil man America has ever elected to the presidency. He has worked hard to transform the Republican party into something that actual Holocaust survivors and experts have called "Neofascist" and even less flattering terms.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/10/5/17940610/trump-hitler-history-historian

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/07/16/its-not-wrong-to-compare-trumps-america-to-the-holocaust-heres-why/

https://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/2020/10/25/holocaust-survivor-fears-rising-tide-ugliness-blames-trump-opinion/3740781001/

https://forward.com/scribe/455507/100-year-old-holocaust-survivor-compares-trump-to-hitler/

https://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/article223718330.html

Historians and victims of fascism the world over point to what Trump and his transformed Republican party have been doing as president when asked how the Weimar Republic fell and the Nazi regime rose.

The overwhelming amount of terrorist attacks in the last five years have been Trump supporters (Well over half stemming from that singular cause, with the rest divvied among a MASSIVE swathe of motives), but none more so overwhelmingly so than yesterday's.

There is no left wing equivalent for this in America until you go all the way back to the Weather Underground bombings, and even they were not goaded on by the incumbent politicians of a party.

Your party has been STOLEN from you. The Party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, and Reagan is no more. And now it’s stealing you from your children as we have watched you and dad drift further and further into the Hannity-Limbaugh-Carlson echo chamber.

88 years ago next month, right wing extremists set fire to the Reichstag in the Weimar Republic. Over the next few days, they seeded reports that it was actually the communists, maybe socialists, no, it was definitely anarchists… or was it trade unionists? Either way, it HAD to have been The Left who burned down the Reichstag.

This was used to expand and hold onto the power of the Chancellor, a man who need not be named. The next few years proved to be sorrowful for everyone.

That same blame-shifting is already happening again, but it's not in some far away country, it's happening here, where we all thought it couldn't.

This sort of event is unprecedented in the United States, or it was until yesterday. It is not so unprecedented elsewhere.

The only difference is that this attempt failed.

The attempt was made because Trump’s own administration found that this was the most secure election in American history, and Trump’s lawsuits to the contrary were laughed out of court by Trump-appointed judges, including his Supreme Court justices, and his exceedingly incompetent and well-documented attempts to get state officials to overturn a legitimate election all failed.

I still believe you and dad are good, honest people. Patriots who want America to do well in the world.

You can not-like Nancy Pelosi, or Obama, or Biden, or Hilary Clinton. That’s your prerogative, and we’ll agree on plenty in that regard. You’re well within your rights to believe that my preferred economics don’t work. We’ll disagree heartily, but that’s normal for families, especially between parents and their kids.

But your party has been hijacked by neofascists, malignant narcissists, and white supremacists.

I am on my knees BEGGING you to see what so many experts and victims have been warning you about for years.

The Left did not do this.

Trump did.

You have been led astray by an vain, selfish, greedy demagogue, a well documented honorless grifter who embodies everything Christ opposed, and uses people until they have nothing more to give him and discards them. He has cloaked this latest grift in the American flag and set a cross upon it, the only way Fascism ever COULD take root in America, as we saw with Joe McCarthy in the Second Red Scare.

It’s changing you. You can’t see it because it’s happening to you, but those around you can, and it’s scaring us.

Please, finally, truly see this. I want my parents back. You’re going down a path I can’t follow and it’s breaking my heart.

In 2016, I broke from the Republican Party because I saw calamity coming in the nomination of Donald Trump. Only 4 years later, and history has soberingly showed me that I was more right than I could have ever guessed, and my world view has never been the same since. I have looked back at the political opinions I wrote and posted then, and they were so selfish and hateful that it was physically painful for me to put myself through that review. I was a puppet. I couldn’t have seen it at the time because I was at the center of it, and I still live in dread of the monster I would have become if I’d kept to that path. I see that same kind of speech coming from you now - the jingoism, the recycled talking points, the Orwellian denials, and the near-unquestioning loyalty to the stars of the Republican Party and their mouthpieces at Fox, OAN, Newsmax, and the AM Radio circuit. I see the most selfish parts of who I used to be, and I know that deep down, you are not that person because I still see you constantly striving to be a good mother, a good Christian, and a model human being.

I’m imploring you to finally look at the evidence, the boundless clear and present evidence, and see what men like Gingrich, McConnell, and Trump have turned your party into. What they are turning you into, the same as they tried with me.

I know you wouldn’t be happy as a Democrat - I myself am only begrudgingly a Democrat because the system doesn’t allow for a viable alternative (and that’s a whole different issue that deserves it’s own library of articles). I’m not trying to convert you. I just need to know that you can look at the evidence with your own eyes like I did and see that you’ve been played for a sucker by men who cry wolf and distract you by having you chase shadows while they line their pockets with money and power. Please stop listening to these monsters, stop swallowing their poison. I know how easy it is to be in that world because I myself have lived in it for most of my life. I fully understand the appeal: there are easy answers for everything, you always know who the enemy is and who your supposed allies and benefactors are. But I also left that behind, and yes, it hurts. It hurts a lot, and frequently. But despite the pain, I know I am better off for having done it.

Yes, I have to question the people who claim to represent me more. I have to question EVERYTHING more because I now know that nothing is as clear cut as I thought it was - once removed from Plato’s Cave, I no longer had the luxury of a simple world. And yet I am still happier because I am so much more my own person now. Yes I falter, and worse still, some days I fall back into the old ways of thinking, but now I recognize that for what it is and it is easier to deal with.

You’ll always be a Conservative, Mom, but I see you on the path that I was on, a path that nearly robbed me of my critical thinking and objectivity, and one which would have weaponized my sense of patriotism to benefit people who are not me. You have kept that course far longer than I. Please put aside the whataboutisms, the both-sides-isms, and finally see the evil, ravenous monster that killed your party from the inside and now wears its skin to deceive you into feeding it further.

I don’t ask that you agree with my politics or economics. I AM begging you though to split from this political machine which is changing you into something I no longer recognize. I want the parents I used to have, the ones who could look at things objectively and form their own opinions instead of repeating talk show buzz lines.

Please, recognize the shadows on the wall of the cave that wicked men are showing you are NOT reality. Please, join me in the truth of the world outside.

#I very nearly sent it #but she's already having tremendous issues between her and my sister and I didn't want to compound those and split the family apart #more than it already has #at any rate #if she doesn't start cooling down by fall #well #at least I have it written down here for easy access #politics #family #trump #republicans #democrats #echo chamber #republican #mitch mcconnell #conservative #conservatives #family issues

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its-nyakemi-nya · 5 years ago

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Twisted Wonderland One Shot Raffle # 2: Jade Leech x Gender Neutral!Reader

asmahsan: Would it be okay if the MC whose gender doesn't really matter wanted to know more about the world around them instead of staying inside school grounds they went ahead and teleported themselves to a mountainside where the loving mountain club was having an activity of sorts and Jade approached MC and they talked for a bit? MC would ask Jade if they could tag along and he agreed so while they're probably collecting mushrooms and stuff Jade maybe asked MC about their world and how they're gonna get back *birb crowley is very suspicious* and he would also say that he preferred if they stay in the TW world rather than going back to their own world cuz REASONS SHDBSB I GUESS THIS IS A JADE X READER ONE SHOT SBBSB But you can always alter the story if u want!! And sorry if its not clear enough or anything :{

This is our second one shot raffle nya! Won and requested by @asmahsan nya!

Disclaimer: I do not own Twisted Wonderland nya. I only own the plot of this one shot nya.

P.S. I would like to apologise for Jade being OOC and my grammatical mistakes nya. Also the reader’s age here is 16 nya! Enjoy nya!

“Please, Dire Crowley? I’ve been here for a couple of months now but I haven’t explored that much around!” You begged the headmaster, kneeling on your knees.

It has been a couple of months since you’ve been here in Twisted Wonderland yet you have never gone beyond the vicinity of Night Raven College...well except when you went to the museum when you’ve made a contract to Azul to free the students from being controlled by him. Nevertheless, you knew nothing about Twisted Wonderland. You only knew about the two top schools and the museum.

Dire Crowley sighed, “Alright, alright. You may explore beyond the school for I am kind.”

“Yes!” You pumped your fist high in the air out of joy.

“However, you’re going to need to tag along with at least one student or so,” Crowley said while thinking when suddenly, as if a light bulb had lit up, an idea came into his mind, “Lucky for you, the Loving Mountain club has an activity at the mountains for the upcoming weekend. You can tag along with them. I’ll inform the president of the club that you’ll be helping them out with the activity.”

________________________________

“Oh my. This is a surprise to see you two here, [First Name], Grim,” Jade said looking at the both of you.

“[First Name] here wanted to explore around and literally begged the headmaster to-mmphh!”

“Don’t say it in front of him!” You blushed out of embarrassment as you covered Grim’s mouth with your hand, “But long story short, I’ve always wanted to explore Twisted Wonderland. I’ve never been beyond the school...well...except that time...when...you know.”

“Mmph! Mmmmph!”

“Sorry, Grim,” You removed your hand on Grim’s mouth. He simply glared at you.

“I’ll give you more canned tuna after we return from our expedition,” You said.

“Alright! Let’s get going already!”

________________________________

Your mouth dropped in awe. The mountains here are amazing.

“If you keep that up, insects might enter your mouth,” Jade chuckled, making you blush once more.

“Thanks,” You said as you immediately closed your mouth, “Sorry about that. The view is just breathtaking. Going out of the school grounds is nice. I’ve never have the chance to do this. Man, I wish I could go out quite often.”

“You may join in my club to do so. It will be fun if you’re around there,” Jade smiled. Your blushed lightly.

After the club leader gave all of you instructions, everyone started to talk to each other and partnered up. Only knowing Jade amongst the club members, you approached him, “Do you mind if I tag along with you?”

Jade smiled at you and said, “Of course not, [First Name]. Though I hope you don’t mind what I have planned to do for this activity.”

“Of course not. What are you going to do?”

________________________________

“I didn’t know you love mushrooms, Jade-senpai!” You said as you continued pick up the mushrooms he instructed you to picked.

“This is quite boring,” Grim groaned as he continued to pick some mushrooms.

“I’m glad that you’re enjoying yourself, [First Name],” Jade said.

“I mean why wouldn’t I? I don’t go outside the school grounds. Even if I was in my old world, you can’t enjoy the fresh air that nature brings,” You said with a smile.

“So, [First Name], I’m quite curious about your world and your life there. Will you share it with me?” Jade asked.

I mean why wouldn’t he. First, you’re an oddity. You don’t belong here in Twisted Wonderland. Secondly, he’s quite intrigued about it and you as well. You never talk much about your world and your life there.

“Sure. I don’t mind telling you about my world,” You said, “Though are you sure you want to know how my life was back then? It’s not as interesting as your lives here. It’s quite boring too.”

Jade smiled, “Of course, I’m sure. You’re quite...intriguing to me.”

Jade had been completely drawn to you during and after the anemones incident. He was quite interested how you’ve handled the situation and how you’ve outsmarted them. In addition to that, under your guidance, you were able to defeat at least five overblot incidents now. He was drawn by your strength and charisma as a leader and as a person. You’re quite ordinary yet you’ve done something so extraordinary that no one has able to do before. In fact, he admires you for it.

“Am I?” You started to twiddle your fingers.

“Of course. Your stories never bore me. It’s quite enjoyable to listen to you,” Jade said.

“i-Is that so?” You stuttered, blushing lightly as you tell him about your world.

________________________________

“I see. There really is no magic there? How do you humans cope up with it?”

“The education system of your world differs from each country. I see.”

“So Magift is similar to your sport in your world called American football. Tell me more.”

“Hahaha! That’s quite amusing. You’re different when you’re here and back to your world.”

Eventually, you guys took a break as the two of you sat under a tree. Grim on the other hand fell asleep by your side. You continued to talk about your world and life there.

Every information, every detail you shared...it sounds like you have a normal life there. It maybe average but it was your life. While Jade listened, he detected a hint of sadness from you. But that may be because you’re homesick.

“I had a fun life there but not as fun as being here,” You said as you giggled a bit.

“Don’t you miss your world?”

“Of course I do. I unintentionally left my family and friends there. I still haven’t found out why I’m here,” You sighed.

“Isn’t the headmaster working on it?” Jade asked.

You laughed awkwardly, “At this point, I’m not sure. Whenever Grim and I asked about it, he makes excuses after excuses after excuses.”

“If the headmaster has found a way for you to return your world, will you go back?”

“Of course, I will,” You answered without hesitation, “I have my family and friends waiting for me. They might be worried about me. I don’t know how time works here and there but I’m pretty sure that I’ve been gone for a long time in my world.”

“I see,” Jade sighed.

“Though I have to admit that I will have a hard time letting everything go,” You said sadly, “If I return back, the first thing I might do is cry. But I really must let go everything here and go back to where I belong.”

“I see,” Jade said, “Too bad. I will be having a hard time to let you go.”

“Eh?” You just blinked out of shock and confusion, “Why is that?”

Jade took a deep breathe as he holds both of your hands in his, “[First Name][Last Name]...”

You blushed at his actions, “Y-Yes?”

“I really like you. I really admire everything about you. You’ve overcome any adversities that you’ve faced. You may think you’re just an ordinary person but you’e not. You’re so much more than that. I find you very endearing,” Jade confessed.

“Jade-senpai...,” You just stared at his beautiful eyes as he continued to speak.

“You’re important to me. That’s why I don’t want to let you go. Not now, not ever,” Jade said.

The two of you started to lean in closer.

Closer

Both of your lips almost touched

Suddenly a growl was heard which made you two back off.

“I’m hungry! What’s for lunch?”

It was Grim’s stomach who ruined the perfect moment for you two.

“Grim...,” You said in a threatening voice while glaring at him which made Grim scared and confused.

“O-oi! What did I do?”

BONUS SCENE:

The trip made your bond with Jade stronger now. However, darn that you didn’t get your kiss.

You sighed as you tried to reach a book from a bookshelf in the library. You were on your tip toes.

Suddenly someone grabbed the book before you can.

You turned around to see Jade as he trapped you by putting his arms on either side of your head with the book on hand. You blushed as your heart pounds in your chest.

“Now, where were we?”

....And scene nya! Hope you enjoyed this nya! Hope this was to your liking, @asmahsan nya! That’s all, Nyakemi out nya!

#twisted wonderland #one shot #jade leech #octavinelle

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verycleverboy · 4 years ago

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And now, Joe...

It is January 20, 2021. Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was sworn in earlier today as the 46th President of the United States.

Let's start with something that apparently isn't obvious to everybody: In Joe Biden, the better man won, but he isn't the man a lot of people on the left wanted. He's the man we settled for, because we were intimately familiar with the alternative. That we settled for him in historic numbers shouldn't bury that fact, but since that's what seems to be happening, allow me a few short paragraphs to put a pin in this moment.

The cable news people are already treating Trump's single term as an aberration, a take which Mitch McConnell seems to be happy to encourage. But don't fool yourselves. Donald John Trump wasn't a hiccup in the system. He was the accidental recipient of a 50 year trend in American politics, a 30 year trend in the American media landscape, and (more directly) 12 years of the shadow of the Tea Party movement. All of this on top of the two centuries of America's baked-in racism, sometimes in the background, other times front and center. Trump foregrounded white grievance and rode it to the highest office in the country. Never forget.

Biden's inaugural address was a pitch to our better angels, which is an upgrade from Trump's borderline apocalyptic message of "Do what I say and nobody gets hurt." But what he was selling was bipartisanship and unity. And at this point in history, we have to ask a hard question: who's buying? Because it shrugs off the past four years of the Republican party (and, by extension, the Obama era obstructions) as a spicy summer fling. You had your fun, he seems to be saying, but now it’s time to come home and go back to work.

And as a reminder, that’s two weeks after a sitting president encouraged an insurrection against the American system because it told him “no”.

The sad truth about the immediate future is that we're still saddled with a split-level conception of reality, a situation we should be used to by now. The hard right of the spectrum views Biden and Harris as radical, cheat-to-win leftists who are going to take away everything (and, I dunno, maybe drink babies' blood while they're doing it) and ring in a new dark age of Communism. The hard leftists, on the other hand, couldn’t unsee a practicing Roman Catholic who goes to mass every Sunday, making them a little twitchy about the future of Roe v Wade, and an ex-district attorney, which, through the lens of last summer's heated protests, translated for some of them into "ex-cop".

One extreme sees Pelosi and Schumer as a two-headed dose of bile-dripping evil. The other sees a couple of old people clucking their tongues at the front page of the newspaper while they're clipping coupons.

The tl;dr version: The right sees an existential threat. The left sees the old status quo. And seriously, the status quo was a little too cozy with itself, a little complacent in the idea that what was the current situation would continue unchanged for the foreseeable future. A little too coffee klatschy for comfort.

In other words, the greatest threat to progressive goals was brunch. So when things started taking a turn, brunch took a beating.

Two things worked in the favor of sanity. First, Trump never stopped being Trump, which means he never "grew into the job". He was always defiantly confrontational, propagating (when not actively living in) a fantasyland of lies and half-truths, and frequently even seeming to lack what some people consider the basic human qualities that the office requires. It didn’t help that he was probably the first US president who desperately needed a Civics 101 class to figure out what his job was...and it was brutally obvious that he'd skip that class as often as he could. But the main thing was he was too theatrical in his execution, drawing too much attention to himself and the cheap stunts he was trying to pull.

Jeb Bush would’ve gotten away with it. I guess that’s what I’m driving at here. The next Jeb probably will.

The other thing is that having a US president coming this close to being a Bond villain made those of us outside of politics actually pay attention to what was going on, in many cases for the first time. We manned the barricades and we proved it was worth our time, because again, we were forced to consider the alternative.

Trump is over. Trumpism isn't going anywhere, at least not in the short term. Today was a good day for America, but it's up to us to make sure we get more of them. We’ll probably never get the best of all worlds, but with a little vigilance, we can leave the next generation a better world than the one we inherited.

So keep your eyes open. Stay informed. Stay engaged. And always remember how to build a barricade.

#Donald Trump #Joe Biden #us inauguration #trump post-mortem #these long posts are never popular #but they do me a world of good

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currentfandomkick · 5 years ago

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Miraculous Team and the Batboys

Longer update, wrote the ao3 version first this time. if you want to find me there, crazyjc.

Thankfully there weren’t any akuma attacks that day or that night. Marinette was glad to get some sleep for once. Her body, confused and used to a few hours a night, got her up early.

Marinette decided to help with the morning rush—quick to handle the register and make adjustments to some people’s orders (no extra charge for the exhausted high school and college students) when she managed to find someone as dead as she was after an akuma messed up her commission schedule and sleep was skipped for a week.

“Wow, you’re getting the ‘Please Don’t Let Me Die Again Yet’ special.” Marinette turned before the zombie could speak. “Maman, watch the register, someone looks worse than midterms and commissions me.”

Once Maman took the register again, Marinette worked on her disaster drink that only a few particular customers knew of from her personal menu--mainly the dead college and high school students insane enough to pull a weeks worth of all nighters like her. And baby parents that liked her parents bakery.

Gurarana beans instead for the extra caffeine with her special blend of licorice root, peppermint and green tea poured in--double the caffeine with less effort, glucose for the brain fuel, sweet and mint for wakeup and focus, and green tea for lasting energy boost.

“Here, this should keep you up and a bit more functional than usual.”

The man raised an eyebrow.

“Oh my god, what got Finals Angel up this early?” One of the regulars almost yelled, staring at her with a look that screamed the universe was going to collapse in on itself, and they were now anticipating this outcome until they got their morning fix.

Marinette shrugged, moving to the next customer as the dead man took a seat and pulled out his laptop. She continued to help until it was getting close to class.

“Maman, the rest of that brew is under the cabinet for the laptop zombie, I’m taking my morning delivery now.”

Maman took over while Marinette made her way to school, passing out the usual deliveries as she moved about.

“Adrien, your insult to caffeinated monstrosities everywhere.”

“Thanks Marinette!” The blond held his (essentially) hot chocolate with one pump expresso, and five three shots of caramel on top of whip cream.

“Chloe, why you have me grab something this sweet this early is only further proof of your crimes against humanity.”

“You’re welcome Dupain-Cheng.” The girl nabbed her (in Marinette's opinion) low caffeine sugar water--licorice root with half a bottle of honey, and lots of ice with whip cream and honesy drizzled on top. She would never understand that order, but was too afraid to ask at this point. She might be taking the Bee thing too far.

“Alya, thank you for being a sane coffee person, Nino, we are having a talk about your scheduling.”

“Thanks gurl." Because close or not, Alya was an addict with a simple and reasonable coffee that restored Marinette's sanity while making it.

Nino groaned as he took his pastries and three cream, one expresso. “Not again, I still haven’t recovered from the last time.”

Marinette shrugged. “Your mistake, not mine.”

“Oh, did you get my cookies?” Sabrina asked.

Marinette rolled her eyes with a fond smile. She likes Sabrina when she isn't in full cling mode, and giving her boxes of pre-paid cookies put together on Marinette's whims? Very calming after dealing with Adrien and Chloe's offending orders. “Yes. You paid for a different set everyday.”

“Thanks!” Sabina examined her current mix, more obscure cookies since Marinette got them before the morning rush.

“Markov, please tell me Max got some sleep last night?” Marinette asked as she handed another of her special “Max needs a nap but is to stubborn to” order--which is essentially an energy drink blend with a few slow-release teas mixed in.

“Affirmative. He got the requested minimum of three hours. I will ensure he gets more once school is out.”

“I’ll take what I can get.” He was less prone to akumatazation with more sleep, and Hawkmoth does like using Max. Marinette likes knowing she can have her teammate in the field without wondering if he'll pass out.

Marinette took her seat by Alya. They weren’t as close anymore, but it did mean Lila was alone in the back and didn’t see the group document.

“Class, we have a new student today!”

Marinette frowned. She wasn’t informed of any newcomers. She looked over at Chloe who huffed. She didn’t know either then.

“Class, this is Damian Grayson from America. His father is here on business and will be joining us for the semester!”

Chloe and her shared a look. With Chloe as the current president and Marinette as the head of the welcome committee, this was very last minute for them not to be informed. Especially as Bustier had the time to since both were here early.

Alya shot her a look.

Marinette shook her head. She really didn’t know, and it bugged her.

Alya narrowed her eyes as the new boy came in. Black hair, stood too straight and Middle Eastern. She wondered what his first language was briefly--someone in school was bound to be fairly fluent. If it was related to Arabic, Rose would be a good translator. Her and Adrien both have Mandarin now, and her English was passable to Americans--not so much for the UK. Alya has Spanish while Nino has Portuguese covered. Chloe was good for UK English and so was Adrien, but those two weren't good for new kids... especially from the America. Mylene, Ivan, Nathaniel and Juleka were bad at talking most of the time, so they were no-gos...

And she still had to finish Ali's commission… This would be a headache if they were an old Chloe-type.

“Damian, why don’t you tell us about yourself.”

“No need to. I do not plan on making friends.”

And he was worse than an Old Chloe-type. There went her free period for commissions.

The entire class shared a look, and Marinette wanted to groan. This boy would be in for a rude awakening—there was no escaping friendship in Bustier’s class. And anyone difficult? They would sent Marinette as envoy--hopefully Alya didn't make easy.

“I presume my seat is in the back?”

“Actually,” Alya stood up with a grin, “I was going to sit back with Lila to help her catch up in our next class.”

Marinette froze as she realized what Alya was doing. Keeping the new kid from Lila was good, but she also needed to keep Alya from falling for Lila’s lies again. And she has no clue on his preferred languages and uh!

“Alya,” she hissed.

“Don’t worry, I got this.” Alya moved to the back with ease before the boy could say a word.

Marinette hit her head. Why was her friend like this?

“I guess that means you’ll sit next to Marinette. Marinette, can you show Damian around during your free period?”

Marinette knew that tone. There was no refusing without a lecture on being a good role model and another reprimand for stepping down from class representative and student government when she got more commissions and needed more time.

“Of course Miss Buster.”

Damian took his seat without saying a word.

Marinette decided it was better to stay silent with this one--he didn't want friends, and would only be here briefly. She could respect that, even if she could feel the others scheming otherwise.

“What do you mean you know—“

“Oops,” Lila grinned. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

And that was what Marinette was hoping to avoid.

Damian twitched next to her. Marinette sighed, “One sec, I need to remind someone to check her sources before getting ahead of themselves… again.”

Nino shot Marinette a sympathetic look while Marinette linked three redacted articles that starred Lila as her main source.

“And done.”

Damian raised an eye brow at her. “You aren’t going to pester me, correct?”

Marinette rolled her eyes. Honestly? “You made your stance clear. I’m here as the actual head of the welcoming committee, and during free period I’ll just need to know your interests so we can avoid the parts of the school that aren’t relevant for you, and to make sure you have an idea how to handle akuma attacks since I’m going to guess they didn’t tell you about that before you applied.”

“tt,” Damian leveled her with a scowl. “Of course I know about them.”

Marinette didn’t bother to hide her surprise. “So you know where to go for shelter, the drills, the apps and news sources that are good for tracking, which hospitals are contactable during attacks and which ones go into lock down, oh and what actions are allowable and not as civilian aides to the miraculous team?”

The boy froze before her. He didn't then.

Her face slid into a more neutral one--keeping her gloating to herself.“That’s what I thought. I have a few flow charts in the committee room to grab since its an info dump and no one processes those well, and your learning style may benefit from it for all I know.” Marinette made sure not add ‘since some people can’t be bothered to tell me.’ The new boy clearly wasn’t interested in friendship, and despite what the class thinks, she is not friendship-nip.

“I…”

“Class, turn to page 67 of your textbook. Marinette, make sure to share with Damian.”

“Yes Miss Bustier,” Marinette moved the book between the two of them, ignoring Damian besides checking where his eyes were on the page before turning as they followed along.

Once their free period began, Adrien had a Chloe guarding him against the Lila octopus, with Sabrina flanking his other arm as backup.

“I take it those three are together?” Damian asked once they left.

“No, Chloe doesn’t share her friends well,” Marinette explained as they moved through the halls. “And it keeps away his fans, so no one stops it anymore.” Not unless they wanted the Mayor’s ire at least. It was very effective against Lila.

“I see…” He was watching her. She wasn’t sure if it was an American thing or just a tic of his. Possibly both.

“That’s where the teacher’s offices are for before and after school,” Marinette gestured to one wing. “All the doors are labeled, so its easy enough to find who you’re looking for as long as you have a name. You’ll find most of the school services there as well, minus the nurse who’s room is closer to the quad.”

Marinette smiled when they got to welcoming committee room. None of the other members were there at the moment, but the file cabinet was. She grabbed one of the ready-made packets and grabbed a spare Bustier Class packet too.

“Here’s the information for being new in Paris, everything from common places to eat, the good hole-in-the-wall places itemized by what you’re looking for, everything relating to akumas is on the red papers, and the yellow is the school’s map and procedures.” Marinette handed him the blue folder, then the orange. “This one is the Bustier-class specific one approved by Miss Bustier. It lists everything from class rules, what caused various akumatazations with the victim’s consent to disclose it, so not all are listed, and it has your schedule and the class outing dates plus who’s interested in what on the pink pages for possible friends, but you said you weren’t interested so we can skip that.”

Marinette watched him look over the papers for a moment, waiting until his attention was back to her. “Now, anything you have a vague interest in that you might have some random inclination to do at Dupont during your free periods, before or after school?”

Damian raised an eyebrow at her.

“Its you let me tailor the tour for you, or you have to go all over the school and talk to me the entire time, when we both know you’re really not interested.”

“Tt.”

Marinette shrugged. “Have it your way, now, on with the tour!”

Damian gawked at the core ciruculum including what he knew was more college level than high school level. Then there was the fact these students had access to multiple state of the art facilities tailored to current students interests on campus, with little issue getting them apparently.

“How does your school get all of this?”

The pigtail girl almost laughed at his question. “I guess they just sent you here since we have the most flexible curriculum routines then.” The girl shifted how she stood. “Dupont is an experimental school, everyone is given high expectations on entry but as long as you keep up with grades the school gets whatever any student requests—a few years ago we had one kid that was allowed to do rocket science as part of his program, he went to some German facility with a translator every other day. Alix has a blanket permit to do street art and installations on public property, as long as she gets her design approved and can give them her schedule as long as she helps other student with history classes. I get full access to any designing materials as part of my deal with the school in exchange for doing any school event costumes and tailoring jobs that I get a two week notice on.”

Damian nodded along, processing this new information. Suddenly, the high amount of akumas from graduates and current students of Dupont made sense. They were specialists, extremely skilled at their crafts and more likely to be knowledgeable than the general population on a variety of topics.

Marinette was glad for their hour-long lunch. “I’d ask if you wanted someone to eat with you, but you look like you need some time to process. I’ll check in before school ends.”

She ran home, noting that the man from that morning was still there but looked much less like he would keel over sometime soon. She knew that brew would help. She grabbed a croissant and ran upstairs to finish Prince Ali’s latest commission—a variant on his usual princely attire that was more maneuverable but still formal enough that no one would notice when he wore that one instead of the traditional one.

She had a feeling he was going to use it to sneak away from his guards.

She set an alarm and got to work.

She was quick to leave once the alarm sounded—she gave herself an extra five minutes this time.

“Hey, you’re the coffee angel, right?”

Marinette turned to see the man from that morning, now much more alive.

“I guess.” Marinette knew not to give out names to customers unless her parents deemed them not-stalker-y.

“Thanks, that thing actually worked. What’s in it?”

Marinette smiled at that. “Sorry, that’s a secret not even Maman and Papa get to know.”

“Huh,” the man processed her words. “Guess I’ll have to keep coming when I’m low then.”

Marinette nodded. “Guess so, good to see you’re no longer a zombie monsieur!”

She ran off at that, not sure what to think of them yet, other than if they needed that drink regularly, they might be worse than her. And she has heroing as an excuse. He doesn’t.

Holy shit was not expecting this response.

Thank you all so much, was not expecting this much positive response and i think my brain broke a bit, in the good way.

So, we have a new fan to Marinette's secret menu, and a Damian slowly realizing why the school is targetted who is also going with the 'I don't do friends' thing, again.

leaving this one as a poll: Damian calls out Lila by the end of the day for how Marinette and him end up as friends, or he puts together Marinette is doing a lot for the class by the end of the day and wants to figure out why, especially after reading the Ladyblog during lunch, or any other ideas.

Any ideas on how Marinette meets Dick and Jason for when she meets the next round of Batboys?

@worlds-tiniest-spook-pastry @littleredrobinhoodlum @northernbluetongue @kceedraws @pirats-pizzacanninibles @theatreandcomicfreak @daminett4life @catthhay @weird-pale-blonde-person @amayakans @chocolatecatstheron

#maribat #daminette idea au #miraculous team and batboys #my writing

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