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mariacallous · 2 months ago

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I'm sharing this because I think it's kind of atrocious. Hasan Piker *and* Richard Reeves?! And it gets worse from there.

By the time I landed at LAX and switched my phone out of airplane mode, Hasan Piker had been streaming for three hours. I put in an earbud and watched as I filed off the plane. Visible behind him were walls of framed fan art, a cardboard cutout of Bernie Sanders sitting in the cold, and Piker’s huge puppy, Kaya, taking a nap. Piker had already shown off his “cozy-ass ’fit” (sweatpants with kitschy bald eagles, a custom pair of platform Crocs), and recounted his experience the previous night at the Streamer Awards, a red-carpet event honoring A-listers on Twitch—the popular live-streaming site where he is one of the biggest stars, and the only prominent leftist. He’d begun the day’s broadcast by rattling off a standard opening monologue: “Folks, we’re live and alive, and I hope all the boys, girls, and enbies”—nonbinary people—“are having a fantastic one.” To anyone listening for shibboleths, this would have pigeonholed him as a progressive. Also within view, though, were three towers of Zyn cannisters, and a “Make America Great Again” hat, which he sometimes wears ironically. He has the patter of a Rutgers frat bro and the laid-back charisma of a Miami club promoter, both of which he was, briefly, in his early twenties. Now he’s thirty-three—so old, in streamer years, that his fans call him “unc.”

I ordered a Lyft, then flipped back to Piker’s stream. By then, he was talking about the overthrow of the Assad regime in Syria, which had happened overnight. I watched as he cycled from BBC footage to Wikipedia, pausing every few seconds to add a diatribe or a joke. The angle he was developing was that Western journalists seemed too eager to portray the leader of the Syrian rebel forces in a heroic light. “I’m very skeptical of the fucking former Al Qaeda guy,” Piker said. A little while later, his doorbell rang, and he leaned over to buzz in a guest—me. I looked up from my phone to see him standing in his doorway. He doesn’t run ad breaks, so whenever he needs to do something off-camera, like answer the door or use the bathroom, he plays a video and attends to his business quickly, before his viewers can get bored. “I’m live right now, but we can talk when I’m done,” he told me, already walking away. “Try and stay out of the shot.”

In last year’s Presidential election, Democrats lost support with nearly every kind of voter: rich, poor, white, Black, Asian American, Hispanic. But the defection that alarmed Party strategists the most was that of young voters, especially young men, a group that Donald Trump lost by fifteen points in 2020 and won by fourteen points in 2024—a nearly thirty-point swing. “The only cohort of men that Biden won in 2020 was eighteen-to-twenty-nine-year-olds,” John Della Volpe, the polling director at Harvard’s Institute of Politics and a former adviser to Biden’s Presidential campaign, told me. “That was the one cohort they had to hold on to, and they let it go.”

Candidates matter; so does the national mood, and the price of groceries. Yet some Monday-morning quarterbacks also noted that, just as 1960 was the first TV election and 2016 was the first social-media election, the 2024 Presidential campaign was the first to be conducted largely on live streams and long-form podcasts, media that happen to be thoroughly dominated by MAGA bros. The biggest of them all, Joe Rogan, spent the final weeks of the campaign giving many hours of fawning airtime to Trump—and to his running mate, J. D. Vance, and his key allies, such as Elon Musk—before endorsing Trump on the eve of the election. “At no point was I, like, ‘Only I, a dickhead on the internet, am qualified to teach these kids why we need a functioning welfare state,’ ” Piker told me. “I just felt like no one else was really in these spaces trying to explain these things. Certainly not the Democrats.”

Piker has almost three million Twitch followers, and, as with most guys who talk into microphones on the internet, his audience skews young, male, and disaffected. At the peak of his Election Night stream in November, he had more than three hundred thousand viewers. He broadcasts seven days a week, eight to ten hours a day, usually from his house in West Hollywood, and he doesn’t use visual pyrotechnics to hold his viewers’ attention. Most of the time, what you see on his stream is an overlay of three things: a fixed shot of Piker sitting at his desk; a screen share of whatever he’s looking at on his computer; and his chat, where fans supply pertinent links, caps-lock shit talk, and puppy emojis, all surging in real time up the right side of the screen.

Although Piker hates Trump, he’s hardly a loyal Democrat. At bottom, he’s an old-school hard leftist, not a liberal. (On his bedside table he has some protein Pop-Tart knock-offs and a copy of “The Communist Manifesto.”) Many of his opinions—for example, that the “American empire” has been a destructive force, on the whole—would surely be off-putting to the median voter. But he is just one of many independent media creators with an anti-Trump message—in recent weeks, the political-podcast charts have included “The Bulwark,” “This Is Gavin Newsom,” and even a show called “Raging Moderates.” For a couple of weeks last month, a liberal show called “The MeidasTouch Podcast” beat out “The Joe Rogan Experience” for the No. 1 spot. “Corporate media, too often, has a both-sides perspective,” Ben Meiselas, one of the “MeidasTouch” co-hosts, told me. “We do not mince words about the threat to workers, the threat to democracy.”

One piece of fan art on Piker’s wall is a cartoon of him operating a day-care center, shielding a roomful of lost boys from the malign chaos of the open internet. “You gravitate to him because he’s just a voice you find relatable,” Piker’s producer, who goes by Marche, told me. “A lot of people don’t even put a political label on it, at least at first.” Piker gets up early every morning to work out, posting his daily stats so that his fans—his “community”—can follow along from home. He gives dating advice and motivational speeches. At a moment when there seems to be an ever-shortening algorithmic pipeline from bench-pressing tips to misogynist rage, Piker tries to model a more capacious form of masculinity: a straight guy, six feet four and movie-star handsome, who’s as comfortable wearing camo to a gun range as he is walking a red carpet in split-toe Margiela boots. Once viewers have come to trust him, they may be more open to his riffs on the rights of the poor or of trans people—delivered not as a primer on Judith Butler but in the register of “Bro, don’t be a dick.”

I pulled up a chair, just out of frame. Kaya ambled toward me, vetting my scent. Piker talked, almost without interruption, for four more hours, holding forth about recent internet drama, a documentary about the history of NATO, and the UnitedHealthcare C.E.O.’s assassin, who had not yet been identified. Within reach of his rolling desk chair was a mini-fridge full of cold brew and Diet Mountain Dew. Some of his takes were too unpolished for prime time. (“Bro, these guys are so cucked,” he said, critiquing a clip from a rival podcast on the right.) Then again, a live stream isn’t supposed to be a tight, scripted lecture. It’s supposed to be a good hang.

“I gotta end the broadcast here,” he said, shortly after 8 P.M. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” After turning the camera off, he seemed to deflate a bit. Comments were still floating up one of his monitors—the thousands of fans in the chat had dwindled to a few hundred, the inner circle who were devoted enough, or lonely enough, to keep one another company after the feed had gone dark. “The Democrats are smug and condescending, and everything they say sounds fake as shit,” Piker said. “Trump lies constantly, yes, but at least people get the sense that he’s authentically saying what he’s thinking.”

He put his feet up and reached for a fresh Zyn pouch. “Young men, like a lot of Americans, feel increasingly alienated,” he continued. They can’t afford college or rent, they can’t get a date, they can’t imagine a stable future. “The right is always there to tell them, ‘Yes, you should be angry, and the reason your life sucks is because of immigrants, or because a trans kid played a sport.’ And all the Democrats are telling them is ‘No, shut up, your life is fine, be joyful.’ ” No one has ever accused Piker of being a moderate, but in this case he is trying to forge a compromise. “My way is to go, ‘Look, be angry if you want. But your undocumented neighbor is not the problem here. You’re looking in the wrong direction.’ ”

In 2015, the economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton wrote that “white non-Hispanics without college degrees” were experiencing an anomalous spike in mortality from opioids, alcohol, and suicide. They later called these “deaths of despair.” In 2016, J. D. Vance, then an anti-Trump conservative, published a memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” about the struggles of white rural families like his own. Promoting the book on PBS, he explained (but did not yet excuse) why such voters were drawn to Trump: “I think that the sense of cultural alienation breeds a sense of mistrust.” The first Trump Administration didn’t deliver many material gains to the rural poor—deaths of despair continued to rise, and wages continued to stagnate—but at least Trump spoke to their anguish and seemed outraged on their behalf. In retrospect, the question may not be why so many non-urban non-élites became Trump Republicans but what took them so long.

Around the same time, social scientists started to notice an overlapping crisis. The statistics were grim—twenty-first-century males were, relative to their forefathers and their female contemporaries, much more likely to fall behind in school, drop out of college, languish in the workforce, or die by overdose or suicide. The title of a 2012 book by the journalist Hanna Rosin declared “The End of Men.” The following year, the economists Marianne Bertrand and Jessica Pan published a paper called “The Trouble with Boys.” In one survey, more than a quarter of men in their teens and twenties reported having no close friends. When Covid hit, men were significantly more likely to die from it.

“In the fifteen years I’ve been looking at the statistics, the outcomes for men have not changed,” Rosin told me. “What did change, tremendously, is the culture.” The last Democratic Presidential candidate to win the male vote was Barack Obama. When Bernie Sanders ran for President, he had a zealous male following, but many top Democrats treated the “Bernie bros” less like a force to be harnessed than like a threat to be vanquished. A “White Dudes for Harris” Zoom call raised millions for Kamala Harris’s campaign, but it would have been anathema to her base if she’d given a speech about what she planned to do for white dudes. This was, meanwhile, a key part of Trump’s appeal.

In a 2022 book, “Of Boys and Men,” Richard Reeves, a social scientist and a fellow at the Brookings Institution, blasts Republicans for exploiting “male dislocation” and misogynist fury at the expense of women’s rights. But he also lambastes Democrats for “pathologizing masculinity.” He gives an example from his sons’ high school in Bethesda, Maryland, where boys passed around a spreadsheet ranking their female classmates by attractiveness—behavior that Reeves describes as “immature,” even “harmful,” but not worthy of an international incident, which is what it became. He writes that “indiscriminately slapping the label of ‘toxic masculinity’ onto this kind of behavior is a mistake,” likely to propel young men “to the online manosphere where they will be reassured that they did nothing wrong, and that liberals are out to get them.”

At some point between Bill Clinton playing the saxophone on “The Arsenio Hall Show” and Hillary Clinton describing potential voters as “deplorables,” the Democrats came to be perceived as the party of scolds and snobs. Liberals used to be the counterculture; today, they’re the defenders of traditional norms and institutions. This may not have been the best political strategy at any time; it certainly isn’t now, when trust in institutions has never been lower. It’s impossible to know how many young men fit into this category, but there is clearly a kind of guy—the contemporary don’t-tread-on-me type who demands both the freedom to have gay friends and the freedom to use “gay” as an insult—who resents the idea of his morality being dictated by the family-values right or his speech being curtailed by the hall-monitor left. When pressed, many of these young men seem to have bought the pitch that, of the two parties, the Republicans were the less censorious. This may have been a miscalculation—the current Trump Administration has already banished dozens of words from government websites and, just last week, arrested a former Columbia student for what seems to be protected speech—but you can’t convince voters that they’ve been misinformed simply by lecturing them. The lecturing is part of the issue.

“Democrats got used to speaking about men as the problem, not as people with problems,” Reeves told me. “But of course men do have problems, and problems become grievances when you ignore them.” He knows a lot of well-connected Democrats in Washington, and for years he has urged them to campaign on men’s issues—“not in a zero-sum way, certainly not taking anything away from women, but just to show boys and men, ‘Hey, you’re also having a tough go of it, we see you.’ And the response I always got was ‘Now is not the time.’ ”

Rosin told me about a husband and wife she’d met in Alabama, in 2010. The husband lost his job, and the wife became the breadwinner, an arrangement he experienced as deeply shameful. “She would put the check down on the kitchen table, she would sign it over to him, and he would cash it, and nobody would speak about it,” Rosin said. “But then ‘man-victim’ became a viable identity.” As Rosin stayed in touch with the man, he started exhibiting a more “mischievous” expression of men’s-rights sensibilities, wearing a T-shirt that read “My Cave, My Rules.” This coincided with the rise of Trump, the man-victim’s patron saint. He didn’t offer detailed policy solutions to any of the underlying sociological problems, but, again, he addressed them directly. (“It is a very scary time for young men in America,” Trump said in 2018.)

Like most internet terms, “manosphere” is vague and protean; it has been applied to Ben Shapiro, a father of four who delivers conservative talking points in a yarmulke, and to Andrew Tate, a Bugatti-driving hustler who has been charged with human trafficking. In 2016, after a reedy Canadian professor named Jordan Peterson refused to use gender-neutral pronouns, he was taken up as a folk hero, like Galileo standing firm against the Inquisition. Peterson has almost nothing in common with, say, Dave Portnoy, another mascot of the bro-sphere, who mostly just wants to be left alone to eat pizza and drink beer by the pool. Yet they all seem to be meeting a demand in the cultural marketplace, one that could be as simple, at its root, as a dorm-room poster of Marlon Brando on a motorcycle or Johnny Cash flipping off the camera.

Last month, Richard Reeves was a guest on a popular podcast hosted by Theo Von, a formerly apolitical comedian who recently went to Trump’s Inauguration. Von, an infectiously affable guy with a mullet, presents himself as a curious goofball with essentially no prior knowledge on any topic. At one point he spoke—without much nuance, but also without apparent malice—about the plight of the white man. “I’m not speaking against any other group,” he said. “I’m just saying . . . you can’t make white males feel like they don’t exist.” Von grew up poor in a small town in Louisiana. “Yes, I know there’s privilege, but if you grew up with nothing you didn’t fucking feel any privilege sometimes.”

If Von had made this observation at a Trump rally, or on X, he might have been led from just-asking-questions guilelessness to more overt white aggrievement. If he’d made the same point in a liberal-arts seminar, or on Bluesky, he might have been shouted down. (When I got to this part of the podcast, I have to admit, my own inner hall monitor was on high alert.) But Reeves, looking a bit trepidatious, tried to thread the needle, introducing some academic caveats without coming across as a scold. “The U.S. has a uniquely terrible history when it comes to slavery,” he said. But he also noted that low-income white men were at particularly high risk of suicide. “Two things can be true at once,” he said.

The hallmark of social media is disinhibition born of anonymity. On the internet, no one knows whether you’re a dog, a Macedonian teen-ager, or the Pope wearing a puffer jacket. Podcasts, on the other hand, are built on parasociality: Michael Barbaro isn’t your friend, but, after making coffee with him in your ear a hundred times, you start to feel as if he were. And then there’s the world of always-on streaming, in which the temptations of parasociality are even more acute. The inputs are both aural and visual. The hosts respond to your comments in real time, at all hours. You can remind yourself not to bond with the pixels on the screen, but you may fall for the illusion all the same, like a baby chick imprinting on a robot. Piker treats fans in a way that can be confusingly intimate, giving them avuncular life advice one minute and thirst-trap photos the next. His Twitch handle is Hasanabi, “abi” being Turkish for “big brother”; his fans are called “Hasanabi heads,” or “parasocialists.”

Even as most of his fellow-streamers have drifted to the right, Piker has remained a staunch leftist. His explanation for this is that he is from Turkey, where “the idea that American economic and military power runs the world—that was, like, ‘Yeah, duh.’ ” He was born in New Jersey and grew up mostly in Ankara and Istanbul, in an upper-middle-class family, spending summers with relatives in the U.S. and watching a lot of American TV. (He speaks English with an American accent.) His father, an economist, is “more of a neolib, World Bank-loving type,” Piker told me. “We argue about it all the time, but it’s not heated.” His mother, an art-and-architecture historian, is more aligned with his politics. “The inequality is just so blatant,” she told me. “It was never fair, but now we have the internet—everyone can see it.”

Despite Piker’s brand as a brash outsider, he is, in an almost literal sense, a nepo baby. After graduating from Rutgers, in 2013, he moved to Los Angeles and got a job with his maternal uncle, Cenk Uygur, who happened to be the founder and host of “The Young Turks,” one of the biggest left-populist talk shows on the internet. The show had a considerable footprint on YouTube, but Piker helped it adapt to punchier formats that were better suited to Facebook and Instagram. “You’ve got to understand, I remember when this was a pudgy kid and I was changing his diapers,” Uygur told me. “Now, suddenly, he’s this handsome man, he’s dynamic, he’s killing it in front of the camera.” Piker hosted a recurring video segment called “Agitprop,” and picked fights with the right-wing influencers of the day, such as Tomi Lahren and Representative Dan Crenshaw. He got himself in trouble—“America deserved 9/11” was not a particularly good take, even in context—but he also expanded his name recognition. In 2017, BuzzFeed dubbed him “woke bae.”

Although he made some of the outlet’s most popular videos, he didn’t own the I.P. (Even when the boss is your uncle, you can still be alienated from the means of production.) So, in 2020, he decided to go solo, on Twitch. His mother joined him in Los Angeles, and they formed a pandemic pod in a two-bedroom apartment. “He was on there non-stop, shouting about video games or sex advice or whatever,” she told me. “His fans would see me in the background, cringing, and they would send me earplugs in the mail.” That year, he spent forty-two per cent of his time live on camera. (Not forty-two per cent of his waking hours—forty-two per cent of all the hours in the year.) In a call-in segment called “Chadvice,” Piker coached men through the small terrors and triumphs of daily life. One twenty-eight-year-old from Finland described himself as having an Asperger’s diagnosis and an “abject fear of rejection”; Piker, with solicitude and just enough amiable ribbing, spent half an hour talking him through the social mechanics of a first date.

When Twitch first launched, it was a niche platform where bored adolescents could watch other adolescents play video games. In 2014, Amazon bought it for nearly a billion dollars—an eye-popping amount, at least back then—even as mainstream analysts knew almost nothing about it. “My demographic hem is showing,” the columnist David Carr admitted in the Times; still, he concluded, “there is clear value in owning so much screen time of a hard-to-reach demographic of young men.” One article referred to Twitch as “talk radio for the extremely online.”

I first met Piker in February of 2020, on Boston Common, while covering a rally during Bernie Sanders’s Presidential campaign. Most of us travelling correspondents were youngish reporters from oldish outlets, wearing blue button-downs and carrying notebooks in the back pockets of our Bonobos. Piker wasn’t much younger, but he dressed as if he were from another planet, in black nail polish and cargo pants that, at the time, struck me as incomprehensibly wide. He carried an “I.R.L. backpack,” a portable camera setup that streamers use (I learned) when they venture out into the world. Admirers in the crowd kept interrupting him and asking for photos, a nuisance that, for whatever reason, didn’t afflict the rest of us. I still didn’t get why viewers would hang around on his stream all day when they could get an unimpeded view of Sanders’s speech on YouTube. Obviously, my demographic hem was showing. You might as well ask why a fan would watch a football game at a bar when he could concentrate better alone, or read a summary of the game in tomorrow’s paper. Piker’s followers wanted to watch the rally through his eyes because they wanted to be his friend.

In October, 2020, Piker spent a couple of hours playing the group video game Among Us with some special guests, including the congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They occasionally mentioned the ostensible purpose of the event—getting out the vote—but mostly they made easygoing small talk. On Election Day, Piker streamed for sixteen hours straight, chugging energy drinks. His mother made several onscreen cameos, delivering him plates of home-cooked food. “I wouldn’t do it for this long if it wasn’t for you,” he told his viewers at the end of the night. “Love you bro!” a commenter typed. “See you tomorrow.”

After the 2024 election, Democratic strategists argued that what the anti-Trump coalition needed was a “Joe Rogan of the left.” There once was such a person. His name was Joe Rogan. “I’m socially about as liberal as it gets,” Rogan said earlier this month. He has a live-and-let-live attitude about sex, drugs, and abortion. (He is also extremely open to conspiracy theories about 9/11, J.F.K., and Jeffrey Epstein, an inclination that was left-coded until very recently.) In 2014, when Rogan was a fan of “The Young Turks,” Piker met him at the Hollywood Improv, and they sat and talked for two hours. (The topics included “weed, psychedelics, the state of media and girls,” Piker wrote at the time. “Top ten coolest moments of my life.”) During the 2020 Democratic primary, Rogan interviewed three Presidential candidates—Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang, and Bernie Sanders—and concluded that Sanders was his favorite. “I believe in him,” Rogan said. “He’s been insanely consistent his entire life.”

It’s hard to fathom now, but Rogan’s support was then considered a liability. “The Sanders campaign must reconsider this endorsement,” the Human Rights Campaign wrote, citing transphobic and racist remarks from Rogan’s past. In retrospect, this was the height (or perhaps the nadir) of a kind of purity-test politics that was making some swing voters, including Rogan, feel less at home in the Democratic coalition. In 2022, Neil Young removed his music from Spotify to protest Rogan’s vaccine skepticism; Rogan took ivermectin, which CNN mocked as a horse dewormer. “I can afford people medicine, motherfucker,” Rogan told CNN’s chief medical correspondent, adding that the medication had been prescribed by his doctor. “This is ridiculous.”

In 2016, every one of Trump’s baby steps toward normalization—doing a goofy dance on “Saturday Night Live,” getting his hair ruffled by Jimmy Fallon—was treated as a scandal. But by 2024 anyone with access to Spotify or YouTube could find hours of flattering footage of Trump looking like a chill, approachable grandpa. While interviewing Trump at one of his golf clubs, Theo Von used his free-associative style to great effect, prompting as much introspection in Trump as any interviewer has. (Von: “Cocaine will turn you into a damn owl, homie.” Trump: “And is that a good feeling?”) Trump invited the Nelk Boys, prank-video influencers with their own brand of hard seltzer, to eat Chick-fil-A on his private plane. He sat in a Cybertruck with the baby-faced, fascist-curious streamer Adin Ross, testing the stereo. “Who’s, like, your top three artists?” Ross asked. “Well, we love Frank Sinatra, right?” Trump said. Ross invited him to pick a song, and Trump, “thinking that it’s gonna come back under proper management,” picked “California Dreamin’.”

Collectively, these shows reached tens of millions of potential voters. Most were presumably young men, many of them the kind of American who is both the hardest and the most crucial for a campaign to reach: the kind who is not seeking out political news. Trump ended his parasocial-media tour by sitting in Joe Rogan’s studio, in Austin, for three hours. That’s too long for anyone, even a champion of rhetorical rope-a-dope, to go without gaffes—which was part of the point. While repeating his timeworn case that the 2020 election was rigged, Trump let out a shocking Freudian slip—“I lost by . . .”—before quickly trying to recover: “I didn’t lose.” Rogan laughed in his face. No one cared. On YouTube alone, the episode got more than fifty million views, and the reaction was overwhelmingly positive. “Unedited/uncensored interviews should be required of all candidates,” one of the top comments read.

Harris tried. She appeared on a few big podcasts—“Club Shay Shay,” whose audience is primarily Black, and “Call Her Daddy,” whose audience is mostly female—but she never made inroads with the comedy bros. (The closest she got was an interview with Howard Stern, a former shock jock who now seems wholesome, like Little Richard in the era of Lil Baby.) Harris’s staffers tried to get her booked on “Hot Ones,” the YouTube show on which celebrities answer innocuous questions while eating sadistically spicy chicken wings, but even “Hot Ones” turned her down. Her campaign staffers insisted that she wanted to do Rogan’s show, but that it fell through for scheduling reasons. Rogan claimed that he was eager to interview her, and that he was even willing to keep certain topics off-limits. “I said, ‘I don’t give a fuck,’ ” he told Theo Von. “I feel like, if you give someone a couple of hours, and you start talking about anything, I’m going to see the pattern of the way you think . . . whether you’re calculated or whether you’re just free.”

Imagine the set of a prototypical man-cave podcast, and “Flagrant,” co-founded by the comedian Andrew Schulz, wouldn’t be far off: four dudes lounging around, with a few plastic plants and a shelf of brown liquor behind them. Trump sat with them in October, and Schulz and the other hosts buttered him up, asking him about his kids. “Barron is eighteen,” Schulz said. “He’s unleashed in New York City. Are you sure you want to reverse Roe v. Wade now?” An hour in, they cut to an ad break. “Hard-dick season is upon us, and you gotta make sure that you’re stiffed up,” Schulz said. “BlueChew has got your back.”

“Flagrant” is taped weekly at a studio in SoHo. I visited one Wednesday in February. Schulz arrived just after noon, opened a fridge stocked with cans of tequila- and THC-infused seltzer, and grabbed a bottle of water. He sports a mustache and a chain necklace, and his hair is tight on the sides and slicked back on top. (During a show at Madison Square Garden, a fellow-comedian described Schulz’s look as “the Tubi version of Adolf Hitler.”) He’s a throwback to an old New York archetype: the melting-pot white guy who tells hyper-specific ethnic jokes with a sly smile and, for the most part, gets away with it. He did a crowd-work special that included sections called “Mexican,” “Colombian,” and “Black Women.” His newest special, about his wife’s experience with I.V.F., includes moments of real tenderness, but he still insists on his right to do old-fashioned bits about the battle between the sexes. “We all have feelings that are a little bit wrong,” Schulz said. “ ‘Take my wife, please’—that’s a fucked-up premise, but there’s a seed of a feeling there that’s real. It’s the comedian’s job to make you comfortable enough to laugh at it.”

Schulz grew up in lower Manhattan, where his parents owned a dance studio and he went to public school. “My family was super liberal,” he told me. “This was in the nineties, when being a liberal, to me, just meant ‘I don’t hate gay people or Black people’—normal shit.” He now thinks of himself as apolitical, and he acknowledged all the reasons to distrust Trump, but the word he kept using, whenever Trump came up, was “enticing.” “I still appreciate a lot of the policies Bernie talked about, universal health care and all that,” he said. “But culture-wise? Vibe-wise? When all you hear from one side is ‘That’s not funny, that’s over the line’—realistically, where are people gonna feel more comfortable?”

Trump is known for his bloviating, but Schulz suggested that his greater talent may be a kind of listening. “Democrats are tuned in to what people should feel,” he said. “Trump is tuned in to what people actually fucking feel.” Schulz noted that, as a boundary-pushing performer, this was also one of his own key skills: gauging micro-fluctuations in an audience’s reaction. When Trump appeared on “Flagrant,” he talked about being taken to a hospital in rural Pennsylvania after he was shot, and how impressed he was with the “country doctors” who’d treated him. “I laughed at that, ’cause I just thought ‘country doctors’ was a funny phrase,” Schulz told me. “He clocks me laughing at it, and in the next sentence he immediately says it again, and he watches me to make sure I laugh again.”

“Flagrant” bills itself as “THE GREATEST HANG IN THE UNIVERSE!” I spent the rest of the day watching Schulz and his co-hosts tape an episode (and then an extra segment sponsored by an online betting platform, and then an extra extra segment for Patreon), and I could imagine some places in the universe that would have been greater. One of the running gags in the episode was that the hosts kept pronouncing the word “prerecorded” as “pre-retarded.” At one point, a host volunteered how many times he’d masturbated in a single day, and his record was so formidable that the others looked worried for him. In fairness, though, even a solid hang can’t be scintillating all the time. One function of a long-standing friendship, including a parasocial one, is simply to while away the hours, even when there isn’t much to say.

When it comes to parasocial media, MAGA has had a long head start. Before Dan Bongino was Trump’s deputy F.B.I. director, he was a popular, blustery podcaster; after Matt Gaetz withdrew from consideration as Attorney General, he announced that he would host a TV show and a podcast (his third). During the Biden Administration, about a dozen Republicans were both active podcast hosts and sitting members of Congress, while most Democrats hardly seemed interested in trying. Before the “Flagrant” taping, Schulz and I had been discussing which qualities the Democrats should look for in their next crop of leaders, and afterward he returned to the question. “They need someone who can really hang,” he said. “Obama could hang. Clinton, for sure—Bill, not Hillary. Trump can hang.” I ran through the shortlist: Pete Buttigieg? Schulz wrinkled his nose—too polished. A.O.C.? “When she’s being the working-class chick from the Bronx, I could see it,” he said. “But when she starts going on MSNBC and doing ‘We have an orange rapist in the White House’—then you start to lose people.”

Schulz said that he’d invited Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to appear on the show “numerous times,” to no avail. (The Harris campaign says that Schulz never sent a formal invitation.) He couldn’t be sure why Walz had stayed away from podcasts like his, but he had guesses. “If we’ve got on a guy who was in the military for twenty years, at some point I’m gonna go, ‘Cut the shit, Tim, you know how guys really talk,’ ” Schulz said. “And then let’s say we start busting balls, making gay jokes, whatever—does he laugh? If he does, he pisses off his people. If he doesn’t, he loses our people.” Walz was added to the Presidential ticket because he was able to talk like a regular person who could make the opposition seem “weird” by contrast. But, things being as they are, Schulz said, “the Democrats can’t let a guy like that loose.”

When Trump was on “Flagrant,” Akaash Singh, a co-host who refers to himself as a “moderate,” encouraged him to consider practicing self-restraint. “What we love about you as comedians is you shoot from the hip,” Singh said. “If you get elected, would you be a little more mindful of how powerful your words are?”

“I will,” Trump said. “And I’m gonna think of you every time.”

“Let’s go!” Singh said, jumping up and pumping his fist. “I might actually vote.”

Piker starts streaming at eleven every morning, so everything else has to happen before then, or at night. At 7 a.m. one day, he drove Kaya to a nearby park, to take her for a walk, then played basketball for half an hour. He saw me eying his car, a Porsche Taycan. “It’s not the flashiest model I could afford,” he protested, before I could say anything. “But yes, admittedly, it is a fucking Porsche.” When Piker is criticized by the right, it’s usually for soft-pedalling the brutality of Hamas, or the Houthis, or the Chinese Communist Party. (Piker is such a relentless critic of Israel that, last year, the advocacy group StopAntisemitism nominated him for “Antisemite of the Year”; when asked his opinion of Hezbollah, he once shrugged and replied, “I don’t have an issue with them.”) By the left, he is more likely to be dismissed as a limousine socialist who lives in a $2.7-million house. He has his own clothing brand, called Ideologie.

While driving home, he took a call from his manager. A major production company wanted to discuss a potential TV show, hosted by Piker, in the vein of “Borat” or “Nathan for You.” His manager asked if he wanted to be interviewed by Megyn Kelly on her radio show. “No.” A daytime show on Fox News? “No.” Buttigieg’s people had asked if Piker would interview Buttigieg on his stream. “Probably not, but I’ll think about it,” Piker said—too centrist. “If he’s thinking about running for President, I don’t really wanna be giving him clout.” In his kitchen, he took a few fistfuls of supplements: creatine, fish oil, Ashwagandha. Still on the phone with his manager, he sat at his desktop, skimming stories he might cover. Then, a few minutes before he went live, he started seeing news alerts: Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the UnitedHealthcare assassination, had just been arrested. Whatever else he’d been planning to talk about was now irrelevant. “Holy shit, they got him,” Piker told his manager. “I gotta go.”

“Mamma mia!” he said, on air. “This is the first day where there will be no Italiophobia on this broadcast.” Already, his chat was full of spaghetti emojis and “FREE LUIGI!” Piker walked a fine line—celebrating Mangione as “hotter than me” and speaking in generally exalted terms about “the propaganda of the deed,” but trying to stop short of overtly glorifying murder, which is against Twitch’s terms of service. “We, of course, do not condone,” he said repeatedly. “We condemn.” (Recently, he was suspended from Twitch for twenty-four hours after musing that someone may want to “kill Rick Scott,” the Florida senator.)

In fact, he reserved his condemnation for the finger-wagging from the “corporate media,” as exhibited everywhere from Fox News to CNN. “Bro, they can’t let anybody have anything,” he said later. For six hours straight, his chatters sent him links to new information as it emerged—Mangione’s Goodreads account, his Twitter history, his high-school valedictorian speech. On my own, I would have been tempted to spend the day following the same bread crumbs, struggling to retrace Mangione’s path to radicalization. But it was easier to let Piker and the forty thousand internet sleuths in his chat make sense of it for me.

Many of Piker’s viewers come to him with inchoate opinions. He aims to mold them. But, he told me, of the stream, “at the end of the day, it still has to be relatable and entertaining.” One of his maxims is “Read the room.” In his case, this means posting many hours of content about nothing in particular. Stavros Halkias, a comedian and a friend of Piker’s, told me, “He’s built up enough trust with his audience that, if he’s being boring and academic for forty minutes, they’ll stick with it until he starts doing something more interesting, playing a Japanese dating simulator or whatever.” Some days, he puts on a Trump hat and streams as Hank Pecker, a “Colbert Report”-style satirical character updated for the MAGA era. In another room of his house, Piker records a weekly podcast with three buddies, an apolitical chat show on which one of the most heated topics of recent debate was proper manscaping technique, and another was whether one of them farted. Marche, the producer, was proud to tell me that the podcast’s audience is about sixty per cent male—“which sounds like a lot, but actually most shows in this space are eighty-twenty male, or eighty-five-fifteen.” One theory for this lopsidedness is that, given all the “End of Men” statistics, women have better things to do with their time, such as holding down meaningful jobs and cultivating lasting relationships, while men are stuck playing video games with their imaginary friends.

Recently, on a MAGA-bro podcast, Piker reached across the aisle, adapting “eight hours for what you will” to the current decadent moment. “Deep down inside, most people just wanna be comfortable,” he said. “They wanna have a roof over their heads, they want a fuckin’ nice meal, get some pussy . . . play Marvel Rivals.” In recent years, Piker has stopped using the word “retarded,” but he still uses the word “pussy,” even though it may sound misogynist, and “lame,” despite fans who consider the term ableist. “I don’t give a shit,” Piker said. “If you can’t handle it, then I guess I’m not for you.” When his commenters try to tone-police him, Piker will often single one of them out and say, “Congratulations, chatter, you’ve won Woke of the Day.” It’s not a compliment.

The day after Mangione’s arrest, Piker had back-to-back interviews with Lina Khan, then the chair of the Federal Trade Commission, whom Piker called “the LeBron James of regulators,” and with the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, promoting his new book. In the chat, a user named PapiJohn36 wrote, “Not to be parasocial, but I love this man.” Piker’s mother stopped by during the Coates interview. “Hasan, check your messages!” she shouted from the kitchen. Piker, grudgingly but dutifully, read his mother’s message aloud: “I got his book for the content and fell in love with his writing.”

“Thank you, Hasan’s mom,” Coates said. In the living room, Piker’s father was sprawled on the couch watching “Love Actually.”

Halkias, the comedian, showed up later that afternoon, with a bag of dirty laundry and a calendar featuring photos of himself posing in the nude. While many of Halkias’s comedian friends have taken a reactionary turn, he has stuck to his progressive principles, but he has never been a hall monitor. (He got his start on a podcast called “Cum Town.”) “Ladies and gentlemen, boys, girls, and enbies,” Piker said, “we’ve got the left’s Joe Rogan here in the building!” In the “Rogan of the left” discourse, both Piker and Halkias are frequently mentioned as top prospects. Even if they were secretly flattered by the designation, the least alpha thing they could do—the least Roganesque thing they could do—would be to thirst for it. “Free Luigi,” Halkias said, taking a seat. “He’s too sexy to be behind bars.”

As a model for the future of progressive media, Piker checks only some of the requisite boxes. A while back, he was a guest on “Flagrant”; when I asked one of the show’s staffers about Piker’s performance, he gave it a middling review. “Good guy, clearly knows his shit, but he sort of comes off like he thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room.” Piker sometimes succumbs to the socialist bro’s cardinal sin of pedantry, and he can seem like a jejune know-it-all trying to reduce any societal problem to a one-word culprit, usually “capitalism” or “imperialism.” Some segments of the Democratic coalition would find Piker to be edgy, or crass, or even despicable. But, if “Rogan of the left” is to mean anything, it would surely mean a higher tolerance for controversy, even at the risk of alienating parts of the base.

On the scale of “whether you’re calculated or whether you’re just free,” Piker is freer than most Democratic surrogates, Ivy League overachievers who sound like chatbots trained on stacks of campaign brochures. But he is less free than the average MAGA bro, who is unconstrained by the need for any consistent ideology. “He’s funny, but not that funny,” Halkias told me. “You can tell him I said that.” Halkias has his own podcast, on which he gives advice to callers. On the normier part of the spectrum are liberal influencers like Dean Withers and Harry Sisson, who have transferred the “debate me, bro” spirit of early YouTube to TikTok Live.

One afternoon, in L.A., I visited the office of Crooked Media, which was decorated with some Yes We Can iconography and had glass-walled conference rooms with cheeky names such as “Sedition” and “Conspiracy.” When the company began, in 2017, its three founders, former Obama staffers named Jon Lovett, Tommy Vietor, and Jon Favreau, were treated as audacious upstarts challenging the media hierarchy. Now they are middle-aged bosses in Henleys and tapered jeans. We sat in “Legitimate Political Discourse.” A long table had been laid with LaCroix and PopCorners. “We have become the out-of-touch lib establishment,” Vietor said. Lovett added, “My, how time flies.”

Crooked now has more than a dozen podcasts, including its flagship show, “Pod Save America.” Vietor recounted a time, a few years back, when a friend invited him to appear on a show put out by Barstool Sports, a bro-y podcast network that leans right. Vietor, worried about guilt by association, turned it down. “Looking back, that was so stupid,” he said. “The ‘how dare you platform someone you disagree with’ era is over. Fuck that.” (He has since appeared on the show.) In 2018, Favreau was hosting a show called “The Wilderness,” about how the Democratic Party lost its way, and wanted to include a clip of Obama reaching out to the white working class. “A younger producer listened and went, ‘I’m not sure this plays well today,’ ” Favreau said. “And I went, ‘That’s part of the problem!’ ” After the 2024 election, Piker appeared on “Pod Save America.” Lovett got pushback from moderate fans, who objected to Piker’s anti-Zionism, and from progressive fans, who objected to Lovett’s next interview, with a Democrat who wants restrictions on trans women in sports—but he shrugged it off. “It’s a big tent,” Lovett said. “It’s got Dick Cheney in it. It’s got Hasan Piker in it.”

The “Rogan of the left” formulation isn’t entirely vacuous, but it’s easy to misinterpret. Rogan-like figures can’t be engineered; they have to develop organically. Their value lies in their idiosyncrasies—their passionate insistence on talking about chimps and ancient pyramids, say, rather than the budget ceiling—and in their authenticity, which entails an aversion to memorizing talking points. Many Democrats assume that what they have is a messaging problem—that voters don’t have a clear enough sense of what the Democrats are really like. But it’s possible that the problem is the opposite: that many swing voters, including Joe Rogan, got a sense of what the Democrats were like, then ran in the opposite direction.

The good news for Democrats is that the right does not have a monopoly on relatability. A week before his interview with Trump, Theo Von conducted an interview with Bernie Sanders while wearing a Grateful Dead shirt. “You ever see the Grateful Dead?” Von said, as an icebreaker. Sanders, apparently unfamiliar with the concept, frowned and said, “Um, no.” From any other politician, this would have been malpractice, but with Sanders the crankiness is part of the crossover charm. (“He literally just talks common sense,” one of the top YouTube comments read.) A few months later, Rogan interviewed Senator John Fetterman. “Trump is not polished, but you get a sense of who he is as a human being,” Rogan said. Fetterman agreed, alluding to a line from “Scarface”: “All I have in this world is my balls and my word.”

Reeves, the social scientist, told me, “There is a strong correlation between which Democratic lawmakers are in my inbox and which ones have the year 2028 circled on their calendar.” Senator Chris Murphy, of Connecticut, read Reeves’s book in 2023 and praised it on X; many of Murphy’s constituents, including his fourteen-year-old son, took issue with his post. Nevertheless, he persisted, writing a follow-up on Substack: “We should try to do two things at once—fight for the equality of women and gay people, while also trying hard to figure out why so many boys are struggling and why so many men are feeling shitty.” Sanders and Fetterman share what could be described as populist instincts, but ideologically they are leagues apart. On the level of pure affect, though, they may represent elements of a style that other politicians could crib from. “Personally, I find the performance of masculinity to be totally boring,” Hanna Rosin told me. “But if that’s what fifty-one per cent of Americans need—someone who reads as some version of ‘gruff, manly dude,’ but whose heart is still in the right place—then I’m willing to go along with it.”

Twitch stars often appear on one another’s streams, hoping to pick up some new fans. One afternoon, Piker headed to Zoo Culture, a gym in Encino owned by a streamer and fitness influencer named Bradley Martyn, to do a “collab.” It would also feature Jason Nguyen, a twenty-year-old Twitch star from Texas who goes by JasonTheWeen. “Bradley’s a big Trump guy, and we talk politics sometimes, but mostly we just talk about gym-bro shit,” Piker told me. “Jason probably leans Trump, if I had to guess, but his content isn’t really political at all.” (“I dont lean towards anyone,” Nguyen wrote when reached for comment. “I dont want anything to do with politics 😭.”)

By the time we got to the gym, Nguyen was already there, performing for the camera by flirting with a woman on a weight bench. “Is Jason rizzing right now?” Piker asked Martyn, who nodded. “Is it working?” Piker asked the woman. She replied, “A little bit.” Before she left, she gave Nguyen her Discord handle.

“Bradley, I’ve got something for you,” Piker said, removing his long-sleeved shirt. Underneath, he was wearing a tank top with a Rambo-style cartoon of Trump and the words “LET’S GO BRANDON.” “I was coming into hostile territory, so I had to fit in,” Piker said.

“It’s perfect,” Martyn said.

Martyn, who is six feet three and two hundred and sixty pounds, looks vaguely like Bradley Cooper on steroids. (Martyn has taken testosterone supplements, which Piker once brought up in a jocular debate about trans rights: You do hormone-replacement therapy, so why can’t they?) Nguyen is much smaller. “My chat just said, ‘There’s three muscleheads in the gym right now,’ ” Nguyen joked, not even pretending to look at his phone. Piker roasted Nguyen with a fake comment from his own chat: “Jason looks like a twink.” They wandered from station to station—first bench-pressing, then deadlifting—as their cameramen followed. “We’re just here to have fun,” Piker said. Then, dropping into a mock P.S.A. voice: “And also reach out to the young men out there who are lost—who feel anchorless, rudderless—by lifting some heavy weights.”

One flat-screen TV showed Joe Rogan interviewing Elon Musk, on mute, with no captions. Two shirtless guys, between reps, compared crypto wallets. “During Covid, they let liquor stores and strip clubs open, but they shut us down,” Martyn told me. “And then all the inflation, all the wars—it’s not like I trust any politician, Trump or Kamala or anyone, to be a perfect person. It’s just—if we never try anything new, how can we get a different result?” Last fall, when Martyn interviewed Trump, he brought up “the deep state” and asked, “How would you actually make an effective change there?” It wasn’t a specific question, and Trump didn’t have a specific answer. “We’re changing that whole thing around,” he said. Apparently, this was good enough for Martyn.

The day after the 2024 election, Martyn appeared on Piker’s stream to explain his support for Trump. They started with small talk. “Why do you have so many Zyn containers behind you?” Martyn said.

“I fucking slam those bad boys daily,” Piker said.

“Look at us relating, bro,” Martyn said.

When they got around to politics, Piker said, “One side at least acknowledges that people are angry—the Republicans.” The Democrats’ proposed solutions were inadequate, he said, but Trump would only make things worse. Martyn smiled and replied, “You’re gonna have to say sorry when he does what he says he’s gonna do.”

They ended the gym session by daring each other to take turns sitting in Martyn’s cold plunge. Piker resisted at first—“I didn’t bring a towel, a bathing suit, nothing”—but he went in anyway, in his gym shorts, and his commenters went wild. “Hey, Hasan’s chat, I hope y’all are happy he took his shirt off,” Nguyen said, facing Piker’s camera. Then he checked his phone: the woman from the weight bench had already sent him a message.

“Wait, she did?” Piker said, with a grin. “You’re about to lose your virginity, I think.”

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positivelybeastly · 3 months ago

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X-Force and Krakoa as a whole was a bad time to be a Beast fan. So for fun I just wanted to ask, if you were in charge of Beast during the Krakoa era, what storylines would you have liked to see done with him? I feel like there was a lot of potential there that didn't get realized because he was basically trapped in X-Force hell and rarely appeared outside of it. For instance, with the whole cloning thing, he could've technically gotten his human-looking body back for real, without the intelligence-draining drawback from X-Factor. It might've been cool to explore that temptation. Would he even still want to go back? Has he fully accepted who he is at this point? Maybe he'd view it as cowardice to erase his outward mutation when others can't. And then there's the potential for exploring his thoughts on mutants separating from the world as one of the more connected mutants who often worked to try and bring them together with humanity. I feel like a lot of his story potential with Krakoa was wasted due to the plot he was forced into.

So, I've had thoughts about this.

Yeah, I categorically have to agree, Beast was criminally wasted on Krakoa.

Like, even if you do take the view that his heel turn was done well (it wasn't), it was a logical place for his character to go (it wasn't), and that his villain arc was satisfying (it wasn't), it's still, objectively, the stupidest thing to do with him, in and out of universe, because Hank is actually fairly unique among X-Men characters in terms of how he can interact with the Krakoan status quo?

So, let's explore some of the stories that we could have gotten during the Krakoan era!

Now, in the interests of fairness, this thought experiment will have a few ground rules, most notably that it has to treat everything that came before it, up to 2018-2019, as hard canon, and it has to flow naturally from that point. We're also not going to radically alter the rest of the Krakoan story, in part because I hate the wankery of 'oh, everything would have been fine if this one character had been here,' and in part because Krakoa was designed to fail, so we're keeping those themes and intents intact.

Ah, but I hear you say! How can that be so when X-Force can't happen without Beast there?

Easily, I say! One, because X-Force doesn't actually do shit in the wider Krakoan story - it's, like, genuinely worthless as part of the wider narrative, there's a reason every recommended reading list for the era skips it - and two, because we can just put Dark Beast in charge of it instead, and the story doesn't change at all.

Why not? If Sinister can be on the Quiet Council, why can't Dark Beast get his shot at a position of authority? He's still alive, so we don't have to worry about justifying his resurrection under the no clones rule, and it would suit Sinister's wider story beats to have an ally who owes him for saving his life in such a useful position.

But yeah, this legitimately doesn't change the story one bit. All you have to do is tweak a few bits of Jean Grey, Colossus, and Domino's dialogue, and nothing changes. So, X-Force is completely intact. You're welcome. Now, on with the show!

Option 1-A: Exile/The Nonconformist

One of the more interesting and maybe divisive choices I think we could go with for Hank - what if he just says no, I wouldn't want to be on your kooky culty ethnostate island? Or, alternatively, what if the Quiet Council string him along, get him to create their miracle drugs, and then exile him from the island because he's considered a rogue, unstable element?

It's within their character, especially Shaw, Mystique, Apocalypse and Sinister, to not want him around, and frankly, I don't think Jean, Charles, Kurt, or Ororo would really vouch for him, either. The X-Men have been established not to fully trust Hank, thanks to the time travel debacle, and he doesn't like them much, either, after they stabbed him in the back during Inhumans vs. X-Men and got him fired from Harvard, so it'd be very easy to more naturalistically pick up on the story beats from there with him just not being welcome on Krakoa or not wanting to be there.

It also fits with the wider course of his character, where Hank has repeatedly expressed unease at being an X-Man and left the team as a result, multiple times. Hell, this is where he's at with Charles and the X-Men as of 2018.

Not exactly champing at the bit, is he? He sounds tired, and over it.

This opens up a more realistic and, let's be real here, interesting dynamic than we had on Krakoa, where everyone is, by virtue of editorial dictate, now magically fine with one another to the point where they'll all live on the same island and also completely fine with establishing a new nationality for themselves.

We can argue about Krakoa's isolationism, capitalism, human policies, etc, but the fact remains, everyone was made a monolith and they all moved in together, and it was kinda lame if you stopped and thought about it. They did it because the X-office wanted all their eggs in one basket so they could hand them out to their writers and not have to share, not because it was a natural move for a lot of these characters.

As you intimated, it especially doesn't really make sense for Hank to do this - he's been an Avenger for almost as long as he's been an X-Man, a lot of his best friends are on that team, and his friendships with the X-Men are rocky at best, textually speaking. His very human and pro-mutant parents are still in Illinois, and still alive, as of 2018.

I also think it's an interesting move from the Krakoan side - you establish early on that there's some real double standard bullshit going on, just like you do with Sabretooth, but EXACTLY as with Sabretooth, it's against an 'acceptable' target.

It's also a good springboard from which to spur Hank into action - maybe this is his penance for his actions, exile from paradise, the punishment he kept saying he was ready to accept but that no-one seemed willing to dole out. Maybe this pushes him to clean up his act. Maybe this is what Eva Bell was talking about, when she talked about the Trial of Hank McCoy - the trial that determines that he's unfit to be Krakoan. This is really interesting emotional ground for him, too, to be ostracised again - does it hurt as much, does he rave, does he go ballistic, does he quietly accept it and cut ties?

Where does he go from here? I don't quite know! Maybe Jed MacKay gets to use him for his new Avengers team, come 2023, and he gets to join the fight against Orchis as part of Fall of X. Maybe we get a Defenders reunion, with Gargoyle, Moondragon, and a few new members. Maybe we get a Beast and Wonder Man team up comic! Hell, get him to join the Fantastic Four or Spider-Man as a supporting character - Hank has so many connections, you can literally use him anywhere.

Option 1-B: X-Club.

An offshoot of the above - what if Hank appears to be exiled/a non-conformist, but he's actually on a secret mission for Xavier? More specifically, what if he's been given the directive that he SHOULD have been given from the start - to find a way to oust Sinister from Krakoa, permanently.

Think about it. Hank is objectively smarter than Sinister, he just doesn't obsessively focus on genetics. He is the single smartest X-Man. If anyone can rebuild, steal, or substitute Sinister's genetic database, the one bit of collateral keeping every X-Man from obliterating him on the spot, it's him.

Enter X-Club volume 2.

Beast, Kavita Rao, Doctor Nemesis - throw in every scientist you've got. Their one mission: get their hands on Sinister's database. I'm thinking a five issue miniseries, short, sweet, loaded with science and sass. In the end, they fail, because the rest of Krakoa has to unfold, but guess what? At least they tried! At least the Quiet Council is trying! Maybe they get away with a small victory, maybe a portion of the database, maybe they only put a stop to one of Sinister's schemes (which would make it intertwine with Hellions nicely), but at least they tried.

You also get to play with some of the more interesting aspects of being an undercover operative - namely, the emotional toll of lying to your friends and family about what you've been up to. Imagine the charge of Hank having to shit-talk Krakoa, knowing that Bobby and Warren and Jean are all going to hear it, and then he has to go and fight for it, and he can't say a word about it? There's pathos and tragedy in there!

Option 2: Temporal Guardian

The X-Men cannot escape from crossing fate - uh, I mean, temporal drama and bullshit. Krakoa especially was rife with it, thanks to shit like Sins of Sinister and Moira X, so, why not let's actually interact with it, using one of the characters who has both the knowledge and the power to interact with time on a higher level?

Hank McCoy canonically had: 1) intricate knowledge of temporal physics, 2) temporal senses that made him mentally immune to changes in the timeline, and 3) the ability to move, completely independently, through time using magic.

The guy's just a fucking Time Lord at that point.

So, let's let him Time Lord! Imagine a circuit between him, Rachel Summers and Tempus - Sins of Sinister would be over like that. You're worried about the timeline where mutants always win or always lose? Just use the mutants at your disposal to metagame your way to the timeline you want! You literally have the tools, you just won't use them!

This is the most 'comic booky' of the options, but I honestly think this could have been fun as a gimmick for a book, battling across centuries for the fate of mutantkind, taking on all comers - hell, maybe you could even use Orbis Stellaris for something instead of having him just sit around in his dumb orb, and he decides to try and engineer a win using temporal warfare!

It'd be neat, is all I'm saying.

Option 3: The School

Remember how Krakoa didn't have a school?

You know? The island nation, didn't have an actual place where you'd go and learn shit? The thing we had when we were a superhero team, but the instant we decide we want infrastructure and a nation and a full on population, we just don't want it?

Think I found your dude.

It always struck me that the move to teacher made more sense for some X-Men than others, but for Hank, it really was the most natural fit in the world. Highly academic, empathetic, good with kids, open minded, versatile - he's perfect to lead a school. And, now that you've divorced the school from the X-Men, you avoid the issue you had when Hank took over the school during Here Comes Tomorrow, where the pressure destroyed him - he doesn't have to worry about the fate of mutantkind, he's literally just a teacher now.

But, 'just' a teacher? Of mutants? Ha!

This would be a really interesting coming of age/community book, I think, maybe more slice-of-lifey and akin to Wolverine & the X-Men volume 1 in content, though maybe not as whacky in tone. Academy X students, nascent mutants, people who just want to pick up a community college class, people who never got a formal education, hell, characters who find they need qualifications in things that they never got - you could literally throw everyone in here, and Hank can bounce off them all.

This is maybe the 'safest' place for Hank, the most obvious and 'boring,' but I think a good writer who's interested in the mutant metaphor and the generational aspect of it, as well as the passing vs. non-passing mutant dichotomy, would have a lot of material to dive into - your ideas, of Hank grappling with his role as role model to these kids, of working on his complicated feelings regarding his mutation, would slot in well here, I think.

A story where Hank arrives to teach a class in his human form, much to the shock, worry, and disturbance of all of his students, and the ramifications of such a choice, would be really interesting, and a good opportunity to comment on the Krakoan tendency towards disposable bodies and the cheapness of death, too.

That being said, I do think it's worth noting that Bendis' choices with Hank and the subsequent story flow seem to indicate that Hank's dysmorphia and dysphoria were associated primarily with his feline form, since he'd come to terms with his classic form and seemed more comfortable in his modern form immediately.

The switch from full kevlar vest, bandolier, pants and body coverings to the shorts says it all, doesn't it? One of these bodies is acceptable to display. The other is not. But, even if Bendis took away the feline mutation in favour of a design that appealed more to nostalgia, that doesn't mean we can't use this book to unpick that idea, and talk about Hank's feelings on that and why one is okay while the other isn't. There were aspects of this in New Mutants, and this would be a good way to handle it from yet another perspective!

Option 4: Reunion and Reconciliation

So, it's pretty fair to say that the O5 have drifted apart.

So.

Let's DO something with that, shall we?

O5 reunion book. Let's hash it all out. Every petty grievance, every massive failure, every way they've hurt one another, not been there for one another, let's DO IT. Let's hear Hank tear Scott a new one for not saving him from Osborn until the time was right. Let's hear Scott tear Hank a new one for breaking the space-time continuum just to try and hurt him. Let's hear Warren tear Jean a new one for the shitty way she treated him when they were time displaced. Let's do EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. Let's put it all to rest.

Maybe this could only sustain a big giant size issue, but fuck it, it's a better use of page space than that Original X-Men one-shot that ended up being nothing but an advert for yet another Wolverine book! And it would be high key dramatic as fuck. Let's do that thing that often makes for the single best episodes of a TV show or movie - people in a room, around a table, TALKING at one another. There is so much history there, and you wouldn't know it by looking at Krakoa as it is! Scott, Warren and Bobby never even speak Hank's name, and god knows that Warren got shit fuck bugger nothing to do for most of the era once X-Corp died, so let's DO something, like, my god. These people are meant to be family - let's treat them like one.

And hell, while we're at it? Let's settle what happened with Abigail once and for all, too! Are they together? Are they not? What's the story, morning glory? I hate existing in this nowhere space where we don't know shit about fuck!

Option 5: X-Forces Beyond Our Control

All right, so, I've been outlining all of the above, and the assumption has always been that X-Force just ends the way it does in 616, though it's probably a little less homoerotic, Dark Beast probably just bites it at Logan's hands and it's all as uncritical as Percy's normal work.

Well, what if X-Force were good, actually?

What if we leverage some old history?

Bring Beast in as a supporting cast member for X-Force once Dark Beast, their Director, goes rogue.

Let's explore and unpack Sage and Hank's relationship - let's look at the way that Xavier wronged them both, made them both child soldiers, brought their genius to bear, left them emotionally unprepared for the future they faced.

Let's unpack Hank's lingering resentment over the choice that Sage made for him, that saved his life but 'trapped' him in the feline form for years.

Let's unpack Sage's jealousy and confusion over Hank being Charles' favourite, let's take the old man to task, let's see where this goes.

Hell, while we're at it, let's even do something with Colossus, and dive into Hank's guilt over Piotr's taking of the Legacy Virus cure so many years ago. Does Piotr even realise Hank felt that way, realise that he feels he probably killed Piotr? Does he forgive him? Does Hank forgive himself?

And then we lock in. Beast vs. Dark Beast. The final confrontation. It's been brewing since 1996, and it's about time we settled it.

So, those are my thoughts on what Beast COULD have been up to Krakoa, instead of being stuck in a 100 issue long diatribe about how 'Kissinger Was Bad, Mmkay?' by a sub-par writer. I also think that while you could choose one of these options, it's not out of the question to do ALL of them, if you really wanted to maximise your Beast per year values. They're not exactly mutually exclusive, if you think about it!

Hopefully that answers your question, friend!

#koalaguru #outofmuffins #gif warning #epilepsy warning #bright light #hank mccoy #henry mccoy

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eretzyisrael · 3 months ago

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by Tammi Rossman-Benjamin

Harvard University, responding to two anti-discrimination lawsuits threatening its Federal funding, recently agreed to acknowledge on its official website, “For many Jewish people, Zionism is a part of their Jewish identity. Conduct that would violate the Non-Discrimination Policy if targeting Jewish or Israeli people can also violate the policy if directed toward Zionists.”

The same day that Harvard’s agreement was announced, the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) — also party to a recent agreement following a Federal investigation into charges of faculty antisemitism – made a different kind of announcement, which thumbed its nose at the US government and doubled down on condoning faculty antisemitism.

Prominently displayed on UCSC’s campus-wide Events page was an announcement for an Education Department talk subtitled, “Centering an Anti-Zionist Commitment in (Early Childhood) Teacher Education,” clearly suggesting the speaker would be advocating for instilling in children as young as pre-school age a hatred of Israel and its supporters.

The only thing missing from the announcement were the words “Jews not welcome here” – though that message came through loud and clear.

Tellingly, this talk was also promoted on the website of UCSC’s Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) chapter, a group that shares the speaker’s “anti-Zionist commitment” and passion for expressing that commitment in educational spaces. It’s worth noting that more than 40% of the university’s Education Department’s core faculty have publicly allied themselves with this group, which was established a few weeks after Hamas’ October 7, 2023, massacre, mutilation, rape, and kidnapping of more than 1,400 Israelis.

UCSC’s FJP is one of more than 160 chapters of the FJP National Network, a project of the US arm of the Hamas-linked Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. Established as the academic brigade of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, FJP is tasked with promoting an academic boycott of Israel, or academic BDS, urging faculty to boycott their school’s Israel-related programming, agreements, or projects, with the ultimate goal of eliminating Zionism and Zionists from academia.

Since its founding, UCSC FJP has diligently executed its marching orders, engaging in academic BDS-compliant behavior that has included: calling on faculty to cancel classes “in solidarity with Palestine” and praising graduate instructors for withholding students’ final grades to blackmail the university into boycotting Israel; co-authoring statements demanding the school cut all ties with Israeli universities, including popular study abroad programs, and boycott Jewish campus organizations such as Hillel; and rallying students and faculty to participate in an anti-Zionist march to disrupt a Jewish student-led “Unity Walk,” posting: “UCSC … Let’s make it clear — Zionism is not welcome on our campus.”

#harvard university #ucsc #faculty for justice in palestine #ucscfjp #university of california santa cruz

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cadencewishes · 8 months ago

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youtube

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justinspoliticalcorner · 1 month ago

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The Guardian:

In early March, the Trump administration sent warning letters to 60 US universities it said were facing “potential enforcement actions” for what it described as “failure to protect Jewish students on campus” in the wake of widespread pro-Palestinian protests on campuses last year. The president of Cornell University, which was on the list, responded with a defiant op-ed in the New York Times, arguing that universities, and their students, could weather debates and protests over the war in Gaza. “Universities, despite rapidly escalating political, legal and financial risks, cannot afford to cede the space of public discourse and the free exchange of ideas,” the Cornell University president Michael Kotlikoff wrote on 31 March. On Tuesday, the Trump administration froze over $1bn in funding for Cornell University, a US official said. The administration also froze $790m for Northwestern University, which hosts a prominent journalism school.

The funding pause includes mostly grants and contracts with the federal departments of health, education, agriculture and defense, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The newly announced funding freezes at Cornell and Northwestern come as Brown, Columbia, Harvard, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania face similar investigations. The New York Times estimated that at least $3.3bn in elite university federal funding has already been frozen by the Trump administration in the past month, with billions more under review. In a statement Tuesday night, Cornell officials said that they were aware of “media reports” suggesting the federal government was freezing $1bn in federal grants. “While we have not received information that would confirm this figure, earlier today Cornell received more than 75 stop work orders from the Department of Defense related to research that is profoundly significant to American national defense, cybersecurity, and health.” Cornell officials said the affected grants “include research into new materials for jet engines, propulsion systems, large-scale information networks, robotics, superconductors, and space and satellite communications, as well as cancer research.” Northwestern also said it was aware of media reports about the funding freeze but had not received any official notification from the government and that it has cooperated in the investigation. “Federal funds that Northwestern receives drive innovative and life-saving research, like the recent development by Northwestern researchers of the world’s smallest pacemaker, and research fueling the fight against Alzheimer’s disease. This type of research is now in jeopardy,” a Northwestern spokesperson said.

[...] Trump has attempted to crack down on pro-Palestinian campus protests against US ally Israel’s devastating military assault on Gaza, which has caused a humanitarian crisis in the territory following a deadly October 2023 attack by Hamas. The US president has called the protesters antisemitic, has labeled them as sympathetic to Hamas and foreign policy threats. Protesters, including some Jewish groups, say the Trump administration wrongly conflates their criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza and advocacy for Palestinian rights with antisemitism and support for Hamas. Human rights advocates have raised free speech and academic freedom concerns over the crackdown by the Trump administration.

Tyrant 47 freezes funds to Cornell and Northwestern Universities in a crackdown on pro-Palestinian speech under the guise of “protecting Jewish students.”

#Cornell University #Northwestern University #Academic Freedom #College #Higher Education #Campus Protests #Gaza Genocide Protests #Israel Apartheid #Trump Administration II

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batboyblog · 10 months ago

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Do you think there is any benefit to the idea that Biden should just not bother with these TV debates anymore? With how the media is so strongly stacked against him, that it might be more beneficial to focus on things where he excels at like town halls and meeting people in person?

I think he agreed to do it, so backing out would look worse and be more damaging than any benefits from sticking to events that play to his strengths. Indeed the media attacked him pretty heavily for being over choreographed in events and interviews (sounds like Hillary being "over prepared") I do think Biden should, and if you look at the last few weeks he has, do more events with the people, and if he can wrangle a televised town hall that'd be great.

but on debate, we shouldn't think Biden is some historically bad debater. In 2012 Obama BOMBED his first debate with Romney, people were writing the death notices for his re-election (much closer to E-Day then July!) and it was Biden who swung into action at the Vice-Presidential debate, laughing in Paul Ryan's face and mocking him easily showing Ryan up as unlikeable and trying to destroy social security. Biden is good at being the every man reacting to "Malarkey!"

I think what went wrong in the first debate is two fold. First of all when you're President and you care to do the job, there's never ever gonna be enough time, there will always be one more call, one more meeting, one more thing that needs your attention. Biden mentioned aids adding things to the schedule. If you're a President like Biden who is good at the job and likes it, I can see how it becomes hard to say "no" because we're talking huge things. So Biden had been working too much, too hard, for too long. That week he went to Europe, did the G7 meetings lots of meetings lots of work, flew back to the US to California to do a fundraiser with Obama and George Clooney, flew back to Atlanta to do the debate. Along the way the guy gets a cold, so what we all saw was a guy who was tired from months of working too hard, jet-lagged, and sick. Trump did nothing that week, he golfed and hung out with friends showed up rested and not having a head cold.

The other thing is the prepped for the wrong debate. One team Biden pushed for rules that ultimately helped Trump. The rule of mics being off when the other is speaking, people hate when Trump interrupts, he's at his worse when he does that, you made sure he couldn't do that. Second no crowd, all politicians feed off crowds, read their energy. crowds cause Trump to lean into his worst instincts always reaching for the next big reaction, but also Biden feeds off people's reactions, in a way that is much better for him than it is for Trump.

outside the rules, clearly Biden and his team gamed out the debate assuming the moderators would do the heavy lifting of fact checking Trump and calling him on his lies and Biden's job was to look like the smart normal politician and spit out facts and figures. As a life long stutterer being able to recall and recite exact numbers and data points in just the way they were written down is not and never been a strength of Biden's, he's NOT dumb, but I can say you carry the baggage of people thinking you're an idiot from when you were a disabled kid your whole life, and I've read a lot of stories that some times in a room full of Harvard and Yale people he can get rattled. And I think that happened they pushed him to try to memorize their talking points their data sets and he got in his head. And when the debate turned out to not at all be what he planned for, when the moderators showed no interest in pushing back on Trump, Biden was caught off guard, a not sick, not jet-lagged, not tired Biden would have turned it around more quickly. We saw later in the debate Biden figure out what debate he was in and how to act and start to ditch trying to remember data sets and just throw out quips and lines "morals of an ally cat!", had he been feeling better, he'd have gotten there much faster.

So I think if Biden takes better care of himself, is strict about not adding more to his work load, takes time off to relax and rest before a debate (work on his tan like JFK did before the Nixon Kennedy debate) and also focuses on being himself, he's not Obama or Bill Clinton who are great masters of explaining complex issues with facts and figures that makes you feel like you're in school with a favorite teacher. That's not Joe, he knows the stuff, he does, but his skill his being everyone's favorite uncle telling it like it is, let him do that and he'll be fine.

#Joe Biden #2024 election #ask #answer

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daphnefisherofficial · 8 months ago

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bugna: TAKIPSILIM | destiny's twilight

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Pairing: MCU Moon Knight System (Marc/Steven/Jake) x Avatar Fem!Reader

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(A/N: This update took a lot longer than expected, because I really wanted to flesh out Darius Carter's character here. As we discovered in the latest chapter, he is the avatar of Anubis and the past life of our moon boys (Marc, Steven and Jake). I can't wait for you to finally meet him and discover how he first met our beloved Mira (you) and became an avatar. Sooooooo, I will no longer keep you waiting. Enjoy!)

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE - LIEUTENANT DARIUS CARTER

The year was 1914, and the world was on the brink of an inferno. The scent of gunpowder and the sound of marching boots echoed through the continent, war slowly rising on the precipice as the entirety of mankind braced itself for a conflict of an unprecedented scale. As the avatar of Mayari, the goddess of the moon, your immortality has not shielded you from countless conflicts that you have witnessed over centuries. But something about this one felt different.

As the majority of Europe has been set ablaze with the flames of war, you found yourself walking on foreign soil, far from the shores of your own homeland. Leaving the tranquil halls of Harvard University where you had just earned your medical degree being a pensionada, you have answered the call of duty in the first world war as you were dispatched to the epicenter of battle.

Not as a warrior, but as a healer.

It was a time of uncertainty, and your only duty was to save lives and alleviate the suffering caused by the horrors of war. It was a daunting task, but you were determined to do your part.

It was in a military outpost in France where you crossed paths for the first time. The air in the barracks was thick with anticipation and a hint of apprehension as fresh soldier recruits started to fill the encampment, their faces a mix of youthful enthusiasm and the dawning realization of what lay ahead.

You stood among the medical personnel sent by the American Red Cross, observing the nervous yet determined faces of your comrades as you were being introduced to one another and your regiment officer. Your crisp, white medical uniform felt heavy with responsibility, yet you bore it with the quiet strength of someone who had seen far more than her youthful appearance suggested.

It was here that you saw him for the first time.

His towering stature caught your eyes immediately, standing tall and proud among your peers as his striking hazel brown eyes seemed to pierce through the haze of bodies and chatter. He stood out, not just for his imposing presence but for the way he carried himself—confident, yet with an air of humility.

His olive brown skin was littered with nervous sweat as he saluted, his military uniform crisp and new.

"Lieutenant Darius Carter, reporting for duty," he said, his voice steady and confident.

“At ease, Lieutenant”, the regiment officer said, patting the young soldier’s back encouragingly before his eyes fell on you and your colleagues. “You will be in charge of this unit, together with our friends and allies from the American Red Cross. Why don’t you introduce yourselves?”

It was there, amidst the sea of young, eager faces, that your eyes met for the first time. Darius found himself tongue tied as you stepped forward, his heart pounding loudly in his chest as he witnessed you raising your right hand to salute before introducing yourself to your superiors and your fellow army recruits altogether.

“Myrna Katigbak, reporting for duty,” you spoke, managing a polite smile despite yourself as you felt a hundred pairs of eyes on you. And yet, Darius's gaze stood out from the rest of your comrades, his eyes sparkling with bold admiration as he felt a strong connection in that moment, an inexplicable pull towards you that he couldn’t possibly ignore.

Something about your enigmatic presence drew him in. Having grown up in a family with a deep connection to Egyptology, you were like an undiscovered pharaoh’s tomb to the young lieutenant waiting to be unravelled. And like any archaeologist and Egyptologists he has known his whole life, he has made it his first mission to seek you out and fulfill his quiet curiosity.

The next time you saw Darius Carter, it was in the makeshift soup kitchen. The scent of broth and bread filled the air as you ladled portions into bowls, your hands moving with practiced efficiency. Your fellow medics and soldiers, both weary and hungry after their intensive training, lined up at the long table with gratitude etched on their faces as you started to distribute lunch.

The young lieutenant was but a few steps away from the long table as the line progressed, almost chickening out as he neared. As he slowly approached, you looked up and met his gaze fully for the first time. Handing him his bowl of soup and a half loaf of bread, you noticed him trying to linger, his eyes bright with a mixture of hope and shyness as he struggled to find the words to speak.

“You can come back for seconds later, Lieutenant Carter”, you smiled, amused by his poor attempt at small talk which you find endearing.

“Right, thank you, Miss Katigbak”, he stammered as he ended up butchering the last name of your latest alias.

“You can just call me Myrna”, you corrected with an amused smile, bidding him goodbye as your attention shifted to the next man in need of sustenance. “I don’t expect everyone to get my last name right”

Darius internally groaned as he mildly shook his head, managing a soft chuckle despite himself as he continued moving forward and out of the lunch line. He found himself sitting at a nearby table, still gazing longingly at the long table where you were as he started to eat. As the hours slowly progressed and the early afternoon finally made its way, the number of people in the soup kitchen slowly dwindled until the only ones left were him and you.

This time around, Darius no longer allowed his nerves to get the best of him. With careful steps, he approached you once again, his eyes emanating the same spark from when he first laid eyes on you.

“Excuse me, Miss Katigbak”, he asked, finally pronouncing your last name correctly with his rich, baritone voice that resonated pleasantly in the empty vicinity. “May I help you with anything?”

“You got it right this time,” you nodded in his direction as you started preparing your workspace for your upcoming chore. “And yes, you can help by carrying those empty bowls from the lunch tables and I’ll wash them here.”

He eagerly obliged, his movements careful as he balanced multiple trays of empty bowls on his hands. As soon as they piled up, he worked alongside you and shared your dishwashing workload. It was a mundane task for a soldier like him, but it didn’t matter as he had you to keep him company.

Besides, observing you from afar was becoming his favorite pastime. Your smooth and flawless skin was the first thing he noticed, a warm, sun-kissed brown with golden undertones that radiated health and vitality. Your hair, ebony-black and rich, fell in long, soft waves around your shoulders, framing your face perfectly. Your facade possessed a delicate heart-shaped contour that added a touch of youthful charm, along with high cheekbones and small, slightly upturned nose that accentuated your femininity. Your lips, full and naturally mauve, curved into a smile that reflected the warmth of your spirit, a genuine expression that made him feel at ease.

But it was your eyes that truly captivated him. Almond-shaped and chestnut brown, they glistened with warmth and mystery, capable of conveying joy, sorrow, and strength in a single glance. Framed by long, thick lashes, your gaze had an intensity that made those who met it feel uniquely seen. Your naturally arched brows added depth to your expression, giving you a look of quiet confidence.

“You never did go back for seconds, Lieutenant Carter” you spoke out loud, slightly startling Darius from his own reverie.

“I’m sorry, what?” he asked, his voice warm and earnest as you ended up laughing at his amusing response.

“I meant you could go back in line earlier after finishing your meal to get a second serving of soup and bread”, you ended up explaining in which Darius sighed with pure relief. “I was waiting for you”

“Oh, right”, he seemed to relax at your friendly tone. “I’m too shy, unfortunately, so I will most likely die of hunger before I ask you for seconds, Miss Katigbak”

“You can just call me Myrna”, your amusement grew as you observed his quiet awkwardness which you find endearing. “Miss Katigbak is too formal and besides, it’s only the two of us here”

“Myrna it is”, Darius nodded, testing your name in his lips. “And please call me Darius, Lieutenant Carter is also too formal”

“Sure, Darius”, you obliged, prompting a warm smile from the lieutenant. “And now that introductions and our collective nerves are out of the way, care to tell me why you’re really here?”

"Well, to be honest, I was hoping to engage you in a conversation since we’ve first met”, Darius scratched the back of his head, his gaze locked onto yours. “I've heard that you're a medical graduate, and I thought I might pick your brain about a few things."

"I'm happy to help, but I have to warn you that I'm not the most exciting conversationalist”, you laughed softly. “I spend most of my time tending to wounds and doling out soup."

“That’s quite all right”, Darius's eyes sparkled with interest. "In fact, I have a penchant for Egyptology. Did you know that the ancient Egyptians were pioneers in the field of medicine?"

“Egyptology, you say?” you couldn't hide your surprise. "That's an unexpected interest for a soldier. But I must admit, it's a topic I find intriguing as well."

“I could spend all day talking about it if you’re interested”, Darius started, his positive energy overflowing at finding an outlet to share his interests. “I came from a family of archaeologists and Egyptologist, hence my knowledge”

As he started going on about his recent discoveries in the history of Egyptian medicine, you slowly fulfilled his curiosity by answering his questions in correlation to your current expertise, marking your longer interactions with the young lieutenant. He didn’t keep the conversation one-sided and challenged your insights, asking about your journey from America, your studies at Harvard, and your impressions of the war. You answered every question with polite brevity, finding his earnestness both charming and amusing as the two of you find companionship amidst the harsh reality of the ongoing war.

Your paths crossed once again in the crucible of battle. The frontlines were chaotic and brutal, the air filled with the deafening sounds of gunfire and explosions, serving as a constant backdrop to your work as a medic. You and Darius found yourselves deployed and stationed together with him as the commanding officer of your sector. As a medic, you worked tirelessly to fulfill your duty to save as many lives as possible and tended to the wounded from your unit, often under fire.

It was during one of these intense battles that you truly began to see the depth of his character.

Darius was brave, almost to the point of recklessness, always throwing himself into the fray to protect his comrades. It was after one such skirmish that he found himself injured, and you were the one to tend to his wounds. As you worked, he watched you with a mixture of pain and admiration.

"You have a steady hand," he remarked, his voice strained but appreciative.

"Years of practice," you replied, focused on your task. "Hold still, this might hurt."

He winced but remained silent as you cleaned and bandaged his wounds. When you were finished, he looked at you with gratitude. "Thank you, Myrna. I don't know what I'd do without you here."

You smiled softly. "It's my duty, Darius. Just as it's yours to fight."

In the days that followed, your interactions grew more frequent and meaningful. You shared stories, hopes, and fears, finding solace in each other's company amidst the horrors of war. Your connection deepened, and it became clear that Darius's feelings for you were more than just admiration.

One fateful day, your barracks were under siege, almost overrun by enemy forces. The chaos was overwhelming as German soldiers started to storm the base. Recognizing the dire situation, Darius Carter ordered your unit as its commanding officer to evacuate.

“Myrna, take the others and head to the trucks”, he said, handing you a slip of paper with coordinates. “You and the rest of the surviving sector will be taken to the rendezvous point.”

“Understood, Lieutenant”, you nodded, saluting Darius as you started to help your fellow medics and other soldiers escape first, ensuring they reached the safety of the military trucks stationed on the outskirts. As the alarm sounded, signaling the order to retreat, you urged the remaining few of your comrades to make haste, barking orders left and right as you refused to leave anyone behind.

“Darius, you need to go”, you shouted amidst the chaos around you, seeing the lieutenant fought bravely as he clutched his rifle close, firing shot after shot at the advancing German soldiers merely a few feet away.

“I’m not going anywhere without you, Myrna”, he declared, his voice firm with resolve.

“I’ll be right behind you”, you insisted and started to push him away to safety, but he held his ground unwavering.

“No, I’m not leaving you!” he shouted, his eyes locking onto yours with pure determination as his tone left for no argument. “We’re in this together”

You sighed in defeat, allowing him to stay by your side knowing there was no time to debate. The situation grew more perilous by the minute as it became clearer that the enemy was closing in on the barracks. But you and Darius continued to stand your ground, determined to aid your fellow comrades and guide them to safety.

Together, you fought your way through the turmoil as the chaos and destruction intensified, dodging bullets and explosions while glancing left and right to ensure each other’s safety. The moment of truth came when the last of the military trucks departed, and the two of you finally decided to make your escape.

The barracks were in shambles, and you could hear the sounds of enemy soldiers drawing nearer. The two of you made a run for it, racing toward the outskirts where an abandoned motorbike was stationed.

But fate had other plans. Just as you were about to reach the vehicle, a group of German soldiers appeared on the scene, hot on your heels. They spotted your position, and before the two of you could react, shots rang out followed by a sharp crack that rang out. Darius staggered as he cried out in pain, clutching his shoulder where a bullet had struck. You watched in horror as he fell to the ground, the world seeming to slow down around you.

Panic coursed through you as you knelt beside him, trying to assess the situation. The German soldiers closed in, their weapons trained on you both. Your heart pounded wildly in your chest as you let your own instinct take over. There’s no way in hell that you will let him die on your watch.

Without hesitation, you drew upon the ancient powers bestowed on you by your patron goddess Mayari, summoning her very essence that lay dormant within you all these long years until this precise moment. In a blinding flash, your form shifted as the ceremonial armor slowly materialized in a shimmer of moonlight, replacing the former medical uniform enveloping your body.

You, Myrna Katigbak, a simple medic, began to change before Darius’s wide eyes. The initial shock and disbelief he felt witnessing your transformation slowly turned into awe, marking the beginning of your intertwined fates being woven together.

END OF CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

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