#ally 400

[margarets-flowers]

JOEY MOTHER FUCKINY LOGANO YOU ABSOLUTE INSANE FUCKER YOU DID JT!!!!!!!!!! I WAS ACTUALLY PRAYING IM SO SERIOUS I ALMOSY CRIED THANK YOU GOD AND PENZOIL

[sortanonymous]

How to view this race?

Do I appreciate what an incredible war of attrition the first five-overtime race in NASCAR history was?

Or do I pull my hair out because Chastain was wrecked out of a potential win by others' carelessness (again), Truex lucked out of a good points day (again), and Logano bumped into another win over someone more interesting (again) in a season where he looked so close to finally having a bad season?

Yes

[harpoonsnotspoons]

HATE.

Part 2

[18catsreading]

I thought i was gonna be ready for it. But when Brennan, as Impressario "double death doggy style" i was so taken aback that when i finally started laughing i nearly peed my pants.

Brennan: he points for both if you to get in the ring. [As Impressario]: both your lives and $800 versus every brick of cocaine.

[lexicals]

Been working on my backup who will be filling in while we see if keo will be returning and this is possibly the most mechanically complex character I have ever built. This guy has got so much shit going on and also I took the tank assignment incredibly seriously so he's a fucking brick wall of a man. This is going to be very interesting to play lmao

[taonpest]

I am SO done with people going "the main character was not relatable therefor I think this story is bad". Sorry you can't enjoy a story in which you're not the main character, you weakling.

[darksxder]

EVENT!

ally’s birthday bash!!! / 400 follower celebration!

thank you so much for following and supporting me! sorry my work has been few and far between lately! but that changes with this event!!!

starts: 06/07/2023

12 PM EST

ends: 09/07/2023

12 AM EST

what will it include?

*headcanons

*drabbles

*mini fics (request away!)

*fics (easy target pt. 3 & to devour -ur welcome)

(FOR ANY CHARACTER(S) ON ANY OF MY MASTERLISTS)

rules

be polite & patient

max. 3 prompts for 1 request

can request without using prompts! be creative! go batty!

look at my request rules before submitting!

only submit a request once please!

but you can submit multiple different requests ( diff prompt / plot/ character(s) )

i do poly! pairings ( no limit ) !!!!

be detailed with requests! I love detail!! but know that it will be a mini fic!

prompts are under #prompts or #ally's birthday bash

reblog to spread the word ( if you'd like ) :)

this event also includes...

*personal questions

*thirsts!

*writing process talks

*fic recs

*moodboards

*snippets of fics near completed

thank you!!! i hope to hear from you all thursday to sunday! i couldn’t think of a better way to spend my 20th birthday tbh :,) ily guys <3

[bombusbombus]

Hey I saw your tags about maybe wanting to write Wikipedia contributer Clark again and 1) still working on that podfic of Masking I just lost my voice due to haunted house season AND 2) I WOULD EAT MORE OF THAT UP WITH A SPOON. NOT ME STICKING YOUR VERSION OF CLARK DIRECTLY INTO MY MOUTH. I HAVE INTENSE LOVE FOR HIM AND HIS WIKIPEDIA HABIT. <3

I LOVE YOU I'M MIND MELDING WITH YOU. One thing about me is that I love Researching things in my spare time as long as they're completely irrelevant to everything. Another thing about me is that I take comfort characters and absolutely blast them with my autism rays until they're just like me fr. Right now I am writing about gender affirming mad science, and unfortunately I only have the brainspace to write one thing at once, so. Here's some of my current (unedited) bullshit since I won't be writing about Clark until it's done:

[harleystuff]

📷 Ally Maki by Alison Engstrom

[helpfulbug]

was looking for the straight sex at the gay pride parade tiktok on youtube and it has like. 6k views thats so crazy I thought everyone on earth had seen it

[sentimental-boulder]

wintering live debut by jack and matty on 35mm film @ the ally coalition talent show, december 2022

[this-is-ally-and-im-confused]

Congrats on 400!!!

May I request a Nolan mood board of you two out in the wilderness together fishing, hiking, cozying up by the fire while roasting s'mores

🍂Granola life with Nolan 🍂

[cauliflowertree]

YAY!! congrats on 400!! can i get a uhhh 🍰 [lemon drizzle cake]?? fandom prefs are harry potter, hunger games, stranger things, vampire diaries (surprise me!) and gender pref is male! i love music and the arts in general bc i’m a dancer! i love to travel- i’ve only been to europe once but i would love to live there someday!! i’m relatively quiet and i’ve heard that i have a very bad rbf but i really try my best to be kind to everyone. my fav color is green, i love dogs, my fav drink is an iced vanilla latte with almond milk, and i LOVE crocheting! i love summer and do not enjoy cold weather at all. some of my fav music artists are elton john, billy joel, the beatles, and abba!! SORRY THATS A LOT OF INFO!! ur the best congrats again!! 🫶🫶

thank u sm ! & just thought i’d do all 4 babes.

i ship you with cedric diggory !

mans has a serious adventurous side, and would totally be up to exploring the world with you, venturing to each continent.

he’d love your crocheting — it’s all he’d ever want for christmas & his birthday, nothing more.

he’d definitely get up and dance with you whenever he could, even if he could never live up to your talent.

i ship you with peeta mellark !

peeta certainly has his own talents & creativity but he’d be completely in awe of yours, wanting to celebrate them all the time — especially your dancing.

he prefers a more peaceful existence but would be happy to travel to the ends or the earth with you if it made you happy, as long as he got to enjoy the quiet moments watching you crotchet or dance to music along the way.

he’d definitely, definitely be open to to having pets, like a little family.

i ship you with stefan salvatore !

he’d be elated to show you the world, its intricacies and hidden gems, laying out a world of possibility just for you.

he’d have memorised your coffee order by the first date, often surprising you with it in the mornings or after a tough day.

in the winter time, he’d whisk you off to some tropical country for a month or so, just to get you away from the cold.

i ship you with jonathan byers !

jonathan would have an abundance of pictures of you dancing — some in the house, studio, garden, wherever. they’d line photo albums.

he LOVES sharing new music with you & making you all sorts of mix tapes of songs he’d think you’d enjoy. sort of a love language for him & he hopes for you too.

he’d be a little intimidated by you at first, but he’d quickly open up upon realising how warm you are <3

400 follower celebration !

[glitter50000]

bitches be getting so happy watching the darkling being portrayed as a villain and a toxic lover. It’s me, I’m bitches

[popcorn-plots]

I should be doing homework but instead...

(idek if this is popular anymore, I just need motivation tbh)

1 note and I'll go take a shower

25 notes and I'll get off Tumblr and finish my homework.

50 notes and I'll put away my laundry

100 notes and I'll fix my sleep schedule

150 notes and I'll start eating breakfast before school for the rest of the school year

200 notes and I'll tell my parents what I want for my birthday

250 notes and I'll start handing out my resume/applying to jobs [did not get hired anywhere, and I'm gone most of the summer anyways]

300 notes and I'll start running 1 mile every week

350 notes and I'll finish/publish a wip [trans Stephen fic, the public has determined]

400 notes and I'll finish the next chapter of BtSA [posted here]

450 notes and I'll spend 10 minutes a day working on my novel (;-;)

500 notes and I answer my emails

550 notes and I get a pixie cut (I've been wanting a shorter cut for months) [LOOK HERE]

600 notes and I'll fix my Doctor Strange cosplay (and post pictures) [new magnets came, once I fix it, me and my friend are going to do a photo shoot]

(1000 notes and I'll come out as genderfluid to my therapist, despite how terrifying it is)

(1500 notes and I'll come out to my favorite teacher OR my ally YW leader)

(if, for some reason, and probably with divine intervention, we hit 20,000 notes..... I may consider coming out to my parents and/or my ward friends.)

[reasonsforhope]

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is, by some measures, the most popular leader in the world. Prior to the 2024 election, his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) held an outright majority in the Lok Sabha (India’s Parliament) — one that was widely projected to grow after the vote count. The party regularly boasted that it would win 400 Lok Sabha seats, easily enough to amend India’s constitution along the party's preferred Hindu nationalist lines.

But when the results were announced on Tuesday, the BJP held just 240 seats. They not only underperformed expectations, they actually lost their parliamentary majority. While Modi will remain prime minister, he will do so at the helm of a coalition government — meaning that he will depend on other parties to stay in office, making it harder to continue his ongoing assault on Indian democracy.

So what happened? Why did Indian voters deal a devastating blow to a prime minister who, by all measures, they mostly seem to like?

India is a massive country — the most populous in the world — and one of the most diverse, making its internal politics exceedingly complicated. A definitive assessment of the election would require granular data on voter breakdown across caste, class, linguistic, religious, age, and gender divides. At present, those numbers don’t exist in sufficient detail. 

But after looking at the information that is available and speaking with several leading experts on Indian politics, there are at least three conclusions that I’m comfortable drawing.

First, voters punished Modi for putting his Hindu nationalist agenda ahead of fixing India’s unequal economy. Second, Indian voters had some real concerns about the decline of liberal democracy under BJP rule. Third, the opposition parties waged a smart campaign that took advantage of Modi’s vulnerabilities on the economy and democracy.

Understanding these factors isn’t just important for Indians. The country’s election has some universal lessons for how to beat a would-be authoritarian — ones that Americans especially might want to heed heading into its election in November.

-via Vox, June 7, 2024. Article continues below.

A new (and unequal) economy

Modi’s biggest and most surprising losses came in India’s two most populous states: Uttar Pradesh in the north and Maharashtra in the west. Both states had previously been BJP strongholds — places where the party’s core tactic of pitting the Hindu majority against the Muslim minority had seemingly cemented Hindu support for Modi and his allies.

One prominent Indian analyst, Yogendra Yadav, saw the cracks in advance. Swimming against the tide of Indian media, he correctly predicted that the BJP would fall short of a governing majority.

Traveling through the country, but especially rural Uttar Pradesh, he prophesied “the return of normal politics”: that Indian voters were no longer held spellbound by Modi’s charismatic nationalist appeals and were instead starting to worry about the way politics was affecting their lives.

Yadav’s conclusions derived in no small part from hearing voters’ concerns about the economy. The issue wasn’t GDP growth — India’s is the fastest-growing economy in the world — but rather the distribution of growth’s fruits. While some of Modi’s top allies struck it rich, many ordinary Indians suffered. Nearly half of all Indians between 20 and 24 are unemployed; Indian farmers have repeatedly protested Modi policies that they felt hurt their livelihoods.

“Everyone was talking about price rise, unemployment, the state of public services, the plight of farmers, [and] the struggles of labor,” Yadav wrote...

“We know for sure that Modi’s strongman image and brassy self-confidence were not as popular with voters as the BJP assumed,” says Sadanand Dhume, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies India. 

The lesson here isn’t that the pocketbook concerns trump identity-based appeals everywhere; recent evidence in wealthier democracies suggests the opposite is true. Rather, it’s that even entrenched reputations of populist leaders are not unshakeable. When they make errors, even some time ago, it’s possible to get voters to remember these mistakes and prioritize them over whatever culture war the populist is peddling at the moment.

Liberalism strikes back

The Indian constitution is a liberal document: It guarantees equality of all citizens and enshrines measures designed to enshrine said equality into law. The signature goal of Modi’s time in power has been to rip this liberal edifice down and replace it with a Hindu nationalist model that pushes non-Hindus to the social margins. In pursuit of this agenda, the BJP has concentrated power in Modi’s hands and undermined key pillars of Indian democracy (like a free press and independent judiciary).

Prior to the election, there was a sense that Indian voters either didn’t much care about the assault on liberal democracy or mostly agreed with it. But the BJP’s surprising underperformance suggests otherwise.

The Hindu, a leading Indian newspaper, published an essential post-election data analysis breaking down what we know about the results. One of the more striking findings is that the opposition parties surged in parliamentary seats reserved for members of “scheduled castes” — the legal term for Dalits, the lowest caste grouping in the Hindu hierarchy.

Caste has long been an essential cleavage in Indian politics, with Dalits typically favoring the left-wing Congress party over the BJP (long seen as an upper-caste party). Under Modi, the BJP had seemingly tamped down on the salience of class by elevating all Hindus — including Dalits — over Muslims. Yet now it’s looking like Dalits were flocking back to Congress and its allies. Why?

According to experts, Dalit voters feared the consequences of a BJP landslide. If Modi’s party achieved its 400-seat target, they’d have more than enough votes to amend India’s constitution. Since the constitution contains several protections designed to promote Dalit equality — including a first-in-the-world affirmative action system — that seemed like a serious threat to the community. It seems, at least based on preliminary data, that they voted accordingly.

The Dalit vote is but one example of the ways in which Modi’s brazen willingness to assail Indian institutions likely alienated voters.

Uttar Pradesh (UP), India’s largest and most electorally important state, was the site of a major BJP anti-Muslim campaign. It unofficially kicked off its campaign in the UP city of Ayodhya earlier this year, during a ceremony celebrating one of Modi’s crowning achievements: the construction of a Hindu temple on the site of a former mosque that had been torn down by Hindu nationalists in 1992. 

Yet not only did the BJP lose UP, it specifically lost the constituency — the city of Faizabad — in which the Ayodhya temple is located. It’s as direct an electoral rebuke to BJP ideology as one can imagine.

In Maharashtra, the second largest state, the BJP made a tactical alliance with a local politician, Ajit Pawar, facing serious corruption charges. Voters seemingly punished Modi’s party for turning a blind eye to Pawar’s offenses against the public trust. Across the country, Muslim voters turned out for the opposition to defend their rights against Modi’s attacks.

The global lesson here is clear: Even popular authoritarians can overreach.

By turning “400 seats” into a campaign slogan, an all-but-open signal that he intended to remake the Indian state in his illiberal image, Modi practically rang an alarm bell for constituencies worried about the consequences. So they turned out to stop him en masse.

The BJP’s electoral underperformance is, in no small part, the direct result of their leader’s zealotry going too far.

Return of the Gandhis? 

Of course, Modi’s mistakes might not have mattered had his rivals failed to capitalize. The Indian opposition, however, was far more effective than most observers anticipated.

Perhaps most importantly, the many opposition parties coordinated with each other. Forming a united bloc called INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance), they worked to make sure they weren’t stealing votes from each other in critical constituencies, positioning INDIA coalition candidates to win straight fights against BJP rivals.

The leading party in the opposition bloc — Congress — was also more put together than people thought. Its most prominent leader, Rahul Gandhi, was widely dismissed as a dilettante nepo baby: a pale imitation of his father Rajiv and grandmother Indira, both former Congress prime ministers. Now his critics are rethinking things.

“I owe Rahul Gandhi an apology because I seriously underestimated him,” says Manjari Miller, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Miller singled out Gandhi’s yatras (marches) across India as a particularly canny tactic. These physically grueling voyages across the length and breadth of India showed that he wasn’t just a privileged son of Indian political royalty, but a politician willing to take risks and meet ordinary Indians where they were. During the yatras, he would meet directly with voters from marginalized groups and rail against Modi’s politics of hate.

“The persona he’s developed — as somebody kind, caring, inclusive, [and] resolute in the face of bullying — has really worked and captured the imagination of younger India,” says Suryanarayan. “If you’ve spent any time on Instagram Reels, [you’ll see] an entire generation now waking up to Rahul Gandhi’s very appealing videos.”

This, too, has a lesson for the rest of the world: Tactical innovation from the opposition matters even in an unfair electoral context.

There is no doubt that, in the past 10 years, the BJP stacked the political deck against its opponents. They consolidated control over large chunks of the national media, changed campaign finance law to favor themselves, suborned the famously independent Indian Electoral Commission, and even intimidated the Supreme Court into letting them get away with it. 

The opposition, though, managed to find ways to compete even under unfair circumstances. Strategic coordination between them helped consolidate resources and ameliorate the BJP cash advantage. Direct voter outreach like the yatra helped circumvent BJP dominance in the national media.

To be clear, the opposition still did not win a majority. Modi will have a third term in office, likely thanks in large part to the ways he rigged the system in his favor.

Yet there is no doubt that the opposition deserves to celebrate. Modi’s power has been constrained and the myth of his invincibility wounded, perhaps mortally. Indian voters, like those in Brazil and Poland before them, have dealt a major blow to their homegrown authoritarian faction.

And that is something worth celebrating.

-via Vox, June 7, 2024.