#and at least there our votes would make a difference

[freyalorelei]

I'm just so very tired.

[lovecolibri]

.

[theamazingannie]

One thing I’ve noticed both with parenting and with wider topics like politics is that people often don’t seem like their goal is to get their goal achieved. When you want a goal achieved, and that goal is not on track to being achieved, you need to try something new in order to get that goal achieved. Instead, some people see that their goal is not being achieved and they decide to punish the ones not achieving their goal. For example, my brother is bad at getting his homework done and perhaps I might threaten to take something away from him. If he does his homework, great it worked. If it doesn’t, then the threat was not adequate. The goal was not achieved. But I still want the goal achieved, so I find something else to motivate him. My parents, on the other hand, will go through with the punishment, and be done with it. The homework is still not done, and they no longer have their leverage, but they stop at that. The end goal was not having the goal achieved, but to inflict punishment at the goal not being achieved. This may be cathartic, but it does nothing to help in the long run. We see this now politically. We want our government to do a specific action, and we may threaten to withhold our vote if they fail to achieve said action, but if that doesn’t work, we can’t just keep going with our punishment. Because the goal is not yet achieved, and that is indeed the goal, right? And in addition, because you made a threat and went through with the punishment, the people you want accomplishing these goals don’t really want to help you anymore. It’s very frustrating, and you can wish all you want that they will want to do it anyways, but as I see with my brother all the time, they won’t. And now you have to live with the consequences because you were unwilling to adjust your methods and cared more about punishment than achieving your goals. And many people, like my parents, seem to be okay with that. But if you aren’t, if you genuinely want that goal achieved, then I suggest you change tactics before the deadline for late work passes

[sillimancer]

2024 us political landscape as someone on the lefter end of the spectrum feels kinda like the end of that one spongebob episode where he finally starts doing fry cook shit after pissing everyone off trying to act and sing and everyone's cheering for him as he gradually figures out people don't want him to act and sing they want him to make their fucking krabby patties

[nientedal]

What progress at home has biden enacted? What policies of his show that he is making progress that prove he is actually different than trump?

I like to pretend I have faith in humanity, so I'll answer as if you're asking this in good faith.

Biden's DEA has lifted restrictions on telehealth prescriptions to make appointments and assistance more accessible.

He put a funding package into place to help unhoused people get access to mental and physical healthcare, as well as short-term and long-term housing.

He has attempted and is still attempting to get student debt relief through - this was blocked by Republican judges appointed by Trump, but he's still working on it.

Infrastructure repair - his administration has budgeted funds to actually fix some severely-damaged and frequently-traveled bridges.

Trying to expand access to healthcare to include undocumented immigrants who came to the USA as children (Dreamers) under the Affordable Care Act. Support for Navigator programs and outreach has also been increased.

He has vetoed Republican-led bills that were attempting to overturn environmental protections - one that would have forbidden investment fund managers to consider climate change in their portfolios (I have two degrees in accounting and this is actually huge), and another that would have overturned restrictions on agricultural runoff into our waterways.

He and his administration worked for ages to get rail workers paid sick days.

This is just some of what he's been doing. Meanwhile, Trump and other Republicans want to criminalize the lives of LGBT people like you and me. They want to eliminate no-fault divorce and force births that will kill parents or devastate them financially. They have stated flat out that they want to install a military dictatorship in the USA. They attempted to put that in motion on January 6th, 2021. They failed once. They will do better next time.

One party wants to house the homeless and expand social safety nets, while the other one wants to criminalize homelessness. One of them wants a future in which I might be able to vote to change how much of a war machine my country is, while the other one wants to eliminate my ability to vote entirely. Those are not the same. Those literally are opposites.

At the end of the day, all you and I can do is choose to do the least amount of harm possible. You and I cannot choose to do no harm. This is the USA, we sell war, you and I cannot choose to do no harm. I wish we could, my god do I wish we could, but that is not an option. So we grieve for the harm we couldn't eliminate and work to minimize the harm that is done. Despite all the crap they support, Democrats are the minimum amount of harm right now. Acting like they aren't is exactly what brought us to an election where our options are a future where we are either wading in blood or drowning in it.

Not voting for Biden will not help Palestine. Not voting for Biden will guarantee a Republican president who will make the situation in Palestine WORSE. AND it'll hurt a lot of other places as well, both at home and abroad, because Republicans are about business and the USA is in the business of war! And I would very much like that to change someday! I would very much like to someday be able to choose to do no harm! And I know what I have to do to try for that future, so what are YOU going to do? There is no standing off to the side in this. If you aren't helping pull, you're the dead weight we're pulling. Are you going to dig your feet into the mud and blood and drown us there? Or are you going to get the fuck off your ass, grit your teeth, and help us pull free?

[evilwickedme]

It's so clear to me that so many so called "anti Zionists" - especially the non Palestinian goyim - have no idea how the Israeli election system works, and how bibi remains in power, and why we had five elections in like, three years, despite elections supposedly being every four years - because he couldn't keep a government stable enough to stay in power. Bibi netanyahu is MASSIVELY unpopular, and his approval rate has tanked even more since the war started, even among likud voters, the people who vote for HIS party (although their approval rates ranked less than the rest of the population). He has an extreme right wing government because if he didn't cooperate with right wing extremists and haredim he straight up wouldn't have the majority he needs to be our prime minister in the first place. He's been on trial for corruption for years at this point, and tried to completely restructure the judicial system just to avoid prison - leading to nearly a full year of protests until Oct 7. Luckily it didn't end up passing.

If elections were held at any point in the last five months since this war started, not only would he not be PM, we'd straight up have a center-left government. My recent transformation into a Yair Golan stan account is a joke but also 100% real - according to polls from the last three months or so, if he does what he's campaigning to do, leading a combined avoda and meretz party, he'd get enough votes to have an actual influential left wing party in the government for the first time in decades. An unbelievable amount of Israelis are calling for bibi to resign, many of them not calling for it to happen after the war ends, but right now.

I am sourcing this information from polls conducted by channels 11 (kan), 12, and 13, as well as by the Israeli democracy foundation, all but one of our important news channels - channel 14, the last channel, is our equivalent of fox news, and despite their numbers often being extremely different due to what is in my opinion biased reporting and flawed methodology, even they at times have had to admit that gantz is currently leading in the polls.

(Disclaimer that I work for a company that provides subtitles for channel 13, but i do not directly work for channel 13. Channel 13 leans mostly center left, and employs several (self identified) Arab Israelis in front of the camera, including Lucy Aharish, who makes considerable effort to bring Palestinian and Bedouin perspectives to her show. It also employs at least one massive racist though.)

I write this post because I keep seeing an unsourced claim by goyim that there's a poll showing a high rate of approval - 88%! - of the destruction and/or deaths Israel and the IDF are causing in Gaza. I went down a rabbit hole and simply couldn't find a poll asking about approval of deaths or destruction, although maybe I was looking up the wrong keywords? As a result I have just... So many questions. Because with the information I have from trustworthy local news sources, from the news channels I mentioned above and papers such as yediot aharonot/ynet and Haaretz, it doesn't fit with current public opinion, including many recent protests for more efforts towards a ceasefire. So my questions are thus -

Who conducted this poll? Was it a think tank, a government agency, a paper, a news channel? If so, which one? Are they left leaning, right leaning? Was it conducted by an Israeli or foreign institution?

Who did they ask? Was it a sample of likud voters; all Israeli adults; did they include only Jewish Israelis or also Arab citizens (approx. 1.5 million out of our 8 million population), Bedouins, and other minorities?

When was the poll conducted? Was it in October, immediately after the Oct 7 massacre, before the death toll in Gaza grew? Was it conducted more recently?

What, exactly, did they ask? Did they ask about destruction in general, or about the death toll in particular? Did they ask about the attempts to rescue hostages with military means, or all military actions? Did they ask about the number of Hamas operatives dead, about their estimated ratio of Hamas to civilians, about the total deaths?

What was the size of the pool surveyed? Was it conducted on a few dozen, a few hundred, or a few thousand people?

Because without this information, that one, sole statistic is essentially useless. As Mark Twain said, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. Always look at the source and ask: who asked the questions, who got asked, and what the questions were.

More specific statistics and sources under the cut.

I did find one survey by the Israel democracy foundation that asked if the IDF should take the Gazan suffering into account - an entirely different question, although it did still have a horrific 89% Jewish Israelis and 14% Arab Israelis and Palestinian citizens who said they shouldn't. That said, the pool they were drawing from was not very large - 500 of the interviews were conducted in Hebrew, 100 were conducted in Arabic. Also, of the people who supposedly said that they shouldn't, a little more than half of both populations said they should "somewhat" take it into account - that is, they didn't say they shouldn't take it into account at all, just not make it their first priority. This survey was conducted mid December.

In another survey by the same source with a slight larger sample size (a little over 600 Jewish Israelis and a little over 150 Arab Israelis), an insanely low 15% still wanted Bibi to be the PM, with the only candidate who received more than 6.5% being the center candidate Benny Gantz, who historically has tried to cooperate with center and left parties, with a whopping 23% of the votes. The survey included 10 candidates, as well as five other non candidate options. 4% voted "just not Bibi", and an actually insane 30.5% voted they were undecided. Only a quarter of those surveyed believed Bibi would manage to maintain a coalition after the war, a number that includes more extreme right wing voters, and only the ultra Orthodox haredi population had a majority of people (60%) who believed he can. This survey was conducted in January.

The channel 13 news survey from early March - barely over a week ago! - covered more specifically which parties would manage to get into the government and how many seats they would get, as under a certain amount of votes you simply do not get seats. Not all seats get into a coalition. According to their poll, the amount of seats the likud would get is halved, from 32 to 17, while gantz's the state camp would grow from 12 to 39. While currently meretz gets 4 seats and haavodah do not get enough votes to get a seat at the table so to speak, a combined haavodah and meretz under Yair Golan gets 9 mandates. In total, the right wing only get 47 mandates, well short of the amount of mandates necessary to create a government.

Channel 12's corresponding poll from January shows 35 mandates for gantz, and bibi had 18 mandates. Channel 11, in the same month, gave gantz 33 mandates and bibi 20.

I also sources an English Jerusalem post article which reports on channel 14's polls; jpost is a right wing biased paper, and yet even they report 36 mandates for gantz and 18 for bibi as of February.

Sources

The Israel democracy institute: 1 (English), 2 (Hebrew), 3 (Hebrew)

Haaretz: 1 (English) (paywalled)

Channel 13: 1 (Hebrew)

Ma'ariv: 1 (Hebrew) (reporting on channel 12)

Podcast which summarizes the above article: 1 (English) (includes transcript)

Kan 11: 1 (Hebrew)

Jpost: 1 (Hebrew)

[hedgehog-moss]

Forgive me for making yet another post about the French Revolution but one small detail that makes me laugh is when, as things started to go seriously wrong, one of Louis XVI's advisers tried to persuade him & Marie-Antoinette to get away from Paris and wait for things to calm down (the idea was "if you lay low and wait, the newly-created National Assembly will vote something stupid and lose popular support" which was a solid plan honestly.) But he was also like "whatever you do, DO NOT go East or South or people will think you'll get help from other monarchies to restore your power and that won't calm things down"

So the King was advised to flee to Normandy, which... is just a short ferry ride away from another monarchy. But that's completely different since it's England. To be fair to the English, the French monarchy had basically bankrupted itself a few years back to send millions in support of the American revolutionaries because it would be a shame not to take advantage of "perhaps the best opportunity for centuries to come to put England in its place" (actual quote by France's minister of Foreign Affairs in 1777)

—still I love the realistic approach of the King's adviser telling him, Sire you can't go near any of our borders rn, it'll escalate the situation, Parisians will know you're trying to get another country to help. Obviously you can go set up camp right across the sea from England though, that's fine since everyone knows the English wouldn't piss on us if we were on fire¹

¹ Perfidious Albion was like "aw no France is in turmoil and possibly weakened :) a shame :)" exactly like France re: them at the start of the US independence war ² they also thought well these backward french are finally following our glorious example and entering civilisation (parliamentary monarchy) ³ and only when the Girondins started being like "let's spread the French Revolution to the whole universe!!! or at least Belgium" did England finally decide "it's been a while since we last declared war on France actually" (but it was too late for Louis XVI) ⁴ That's not how footnotes work sorry. Trying to make my post look fancier

[cuephrase]

Most Disliked Robin Results!!

at long last, (some of) the data you've all been waiting for.

for those of you who are new, i put out a questionnaire to gather data in the interest of discovering if my personal hypothesis that knowing someone's #1 Robin tells you nothing really, but knowing their top two, now that gives you insight. i have since closed that questionnaire, and we are in the data crunching stage. in this anon ask, anon was curious which Robin was getting the most dislike votes. i shared the current numbers w/o revealing who was getting which votes, and invited y'all to vote for which Robin you thought was getting the most dislike votes.

these were the results of the prediction poll:

before i share the final results, with 745 responses, a disclaimer:

the data pool is extremely small in the grand scheme of things!! this data cannot be used to make definitive claims about fandom at large. this is simply what we observed from the small group of fans, predominantly from tumblr, who filled out my questionnaire. cool? cool.

for our purposes, a "Stan" is someone who marked X Robin as their #1 fave Robin, and a "Fan" is someone who marked X Robin in their top two. additionally, whenever you see a top two Duo, for example, Dick & Damian, the character mentioned first is that person's #1. so Dick & Damian duos are distinct from Damian & Dick duos!!

for the non-math nerds, the 95% CI*, or 95% Confidence Interval is there to show that if we were to poll a random 745 responders again, from the same communities, we're about 95% sure the true value is somewhere in here range. *this is a bit of a simplification, but uh, i am not a math teacher + google is free. (i thought about finding a snappy youtube vid but as soon as they started talking math i zoned out whoops.)

finally a big, big thank you to @chinajousama and @tevyaa for their data-crunching + formatting!! none of this would have happened nearly as quickly (or successfully) without them!! 🫶

overall dislike

raw count

converted to percentages with 95% CI

the most important takeaway here, imo, is that ~74% do not dislike any Robin. (shoutout to the Jason & Steph Duo who disliked Dick, Tim, and Damian tho, iconic.)

also, it is not at all what tumblr predicted!! tumblr predicted that dick would be least disliked (by virtue of him getting the least votes) and that's...about all that was correct from the prediction poll.

now how does this breakdown depending on Stans/Fans/Duos?

Stans' dislike (Y is responders #1 Robin)

raw count

converted to percentages with 95% CI

"hey!!" you say, "the math is not mathing- if i add up the bottom row i get 774/104%, not 745/100%." correct!! this is because responders were able to dislike more than one Robin.

if we gave the percentages for each row of the very first chart, (the one that lays out how people voted in all the permutations), those percents would add up to 100%. but since we're only breaking it down between the Robins, there's overlap. 14.8% of everyone disliked Tim, that number is true. however, that 14.8% of Tim Dislikers includes people who also disliked other Robins- it's not the percentage of people who exclusively dislike Tim.

tl;dr: it doesn't add up, but the math is right, trust.

"okay, fine, but why don't you have a 95% CI for everyone?" if the sample group was too small to make a prediction (received less than 5 responses), we decided not to give one because there's simply not enough data to give one worth having. tl;dr, if there's a 0.00%* in the 95% CI chart, don't read into those stats too hard!!

Fans' dislike (Y is in responder's top duo)

raw count

converted to percentages with 95% CI

already you can see some differences compared to the Stans' Dislikes- most percentages go up a bit, but a few go down.

now let's see what happens when we look at the breakdown over Duo's Dislike

Duo's dislike

raw count

converted to percentages with 95% CI

note the differences!! for instance, all Jason-first Duos are more likely to dislike Tim than the percentage given for Jason Stans, except for Jason & Tim duos, which duh, but also, Jason & Tim is the second most common Jason-first Duo, making up 25.3% of Jason-first Duos.

also!! Tim fans are the least likely to dislike overall, with 83.2% not disliking any Robin, however, Tim stans, specifically Tim & Dick Duos are the most likely to dislike Damian. (*cough* lingering Red Robin grudge, perhaps? *cough* Tim Stans: i can let a lot of shit go, but that. that i cannot. [i'm a Tim Stan, i'm allowed to tease them, okay?])

another crucial thing to point out here is that the percentages represent how likely Y Duo is to dislike X Robin. this distinction is significant because while it is correct to say that, (based off this data pool), Steph & Damian Duos are the most likely to dislike Tim, it is incorrect to say that most Tim dislikers are Steph & Damian Duos.

"huh??"

something, something squares and rectangles If you grab a random Steph & Damian Duo responder, they are the most likely out of all the Duo responders to dislike Tim. However, if you were to grab a random Tim Disliker responder, the odds of that responder being a Steph & Damian Duo are pretty low.

by number, Dick & Damian Duos make up the biggest portion of Tim Dislikers (26 out of 110 votes). however, they also make up the biggest portion of responders overall with 92 votes, whereas Steph & Damian only got 22.

(side note, if you're like, whoa but Dick & Jason won the tumblr poll- overall, there were more responders that had Dick and Jason in their top 2, however they were split 82/64 and Dick and Damian was split 92/29. those splits are also super interesting to see, bc some are pretty even and others aren't.)

okay, so what's the takeaway here? repeat after me: everybody 👏hates 👏 Tim!! ��� loud incorrect buzzer yeah, no so the main takeaway here is that so far, it's looking like there is visible variation depending on a Stan/Fan's Duo compared to Stan/Fan opinion. also, that most Robin fans don't dislike a Robin. you can relax, odds are blorbo is not under attack. unless you're a Tim stan. jk jk, i'm sorry, him having 14.8% dislikability is just hysterical to me, like do you see the social distancing, Jason is the second most disliked and Tim has more than double his numbers LMAO.

especially bc that 14.8% is just like, out of all responders, how likely Tim is to be disliked, right, follow me here, hehe. 110 of 223 dislike votes cast were for Tim, right, so of the dislike votes cast there is a ~49.3% chance that a dislike vote is a dislike Tim vote.

but!! if we condense that 223 (dislike votes cast/remember that 1 responder could dislike multiple) to 194 (the actual number of responders who disliked), then it's 110 out of 194, so if a Robin fan dislikes anyone, there is a ~56.7% that they dislike Tim.

try not to laugh at that, i dare you.

now, as a Tim stan, i think this makes sense because out of all the Robins, Tim has the most on panel interaction with every other Robin compared to the others, so like, if any Robin is going to show up and annoy you, odds are it's Timbo. factor in fanfic trends and uh...look, do i love Tim? yes. (i love them all, but that's beside the point.) do i think he's annoying af. also yes. it's part of the appeal, i mean hot people get it, i mean this data is not shocking to me but it is, clearly, deeply amusing. that being said, you might be under attack, because responders were wayyyy more likely to find a Robin Stan annoying than they were to dislike a Robin hehehe. sorry, sorry, i swear i'm not trying to shart shit. i mean, start shit. that was an honest typo but i'm so tired rn and it's funny so i'm leaving it, forgive me. what are your thoughts? any of this surprising to you, or does it track with your predictions? tysm for participating if you responded to the questionnaire!! and if you didn't, no worries, enjoy the Findings. please remember that the goal of this questionnaire/sharing the Findings is not to grade other fans on whether they're "good"/"bad"- discuss to your heart's content but let's try and keep the wank/bad faith takes to a minimum, yeah? thank youuuuu

also enjoy this at a glance graph!! the bars are error bars, they represent that 95% CI :)

anyways!! i just threw a ton of data at you, if there's anything you would like to see me elaborate on/any questions you have, please feel free to send me an ask and we'll do our best to deliver!! there's truly so much to unpack here.

[tinydefector]

Rut Cycles- Optimus Prime

Human x gen 1 Optimus

Word count: 1.5k

Warnings: smut, size difference, breeding, Alpha/Omega hinted, mating cycles, scent kink.

Masterlist

Rut cycle masterlist

Optimus prime Masterlist

Is it 1am? Yes, did I spend all night editing this yes. I'm posting this rather than heading to bed. The votes for the next character are still up, but the next fic piece is gonna be out of my Request pile.

_______________

"Hey boss Bot, how'd the meeting with the Cons go?" A soft voice breaks Optimus out of his daze of reading over reports and signed documents. He tenses his plating as they make their way up onto the table, the ever present scent that lingers on their skin makes his processor turn and twist in anticipation And want. 

Optimus vented deeply, attempting to cool his systems through will alone, he didn't need this now, everyone from autobot to Decepticon had been hit by the rut cycle and being around humans wasn't helping one bit. The meeting with Megatron had been, taxing, to say the least, as his counterpart struggled through heightened arousal akin to Optimus' own condition. Finding a solution had been their main concern outside of setting out rules of war while in rut. 

"It went as well as could be expected, given the circumstances," he replied wearily to the human who now sits on his desk, they are less worried about being in the room with the large thorny cybertronian that they should have been. Whether it was due to Optimus' unwavering control over himself or them just being oblivious was a different matter altogether. They look up at him for a moment, the sweet energon like scent wafts off their skin. Making Optimus breath hitch, his systems whining, craving desperately to claim what he so desperately wanted" strange seeing Cons in the Ark" they state while looking over their shoulder at the door. 

"Our cycles affect us all strongly, and it results in a domino effect. For your safety, little one, it may be wise to refrain from proximity until it has passed." He tries to explain hoping that he wouldn't have to spend too much more time in the room with them, their sweet electrum like scent would still hang in the room even after they left.       

Optimus vented unsteadily, intake dry, a deep rumble echoes from him as his optics move to where they look. "Their presence here was... unavoidable, it was only a matter of time before this became an issue between our factions" he replied, struggling to focus past rising mating coding demanding he seize this delectable temptation sitting infront of him as if they were a offering from Primus.

"Please, little one," Optimus rasped, field pulled taut as battle-thickened wires. "For both of our sakes, do not test my control overly long, even if I have my limits." He grumbles as he watches the door, finding it was best he not look at them less he be tempted to pin them down to the table and have his way with them. 

"I'd rather take my chances with you OP, I don't really want to deal with the Seekers who have been stalking me around base since your meeting ended" they mumbles, partly under their breath. 

A heavy sigh leaves Optimus as he looks back down at them, part of him now wanted to claim them just to spite the lingering Cons looking for easy pickings, the other part of him shouted that it was wrong. He reaches out a shake servo to grab his cube, Optimus gulps a draught of energon, processors whirling. “You're testing all of our instincts, do you wish for me to escort you out of base?”  he asked which only earns him a head shake of a no from them. 

"Very well," Optimus rumbled gently. They hum softly as Optimus stands there looking down at them, a shutter runs up their back as they look into his optics, biting their lip. " Optimus. Name one reason someone would willingly walk into a room with a large half freal horny cybertronian" they shoot back as their hand presses gently against his frame Optimus shuttered his optics briefly, vents catching at their bold reply. 

“You were planning this?” He grumbles but doesn't pull away, A slight creak of hydraulics announces his closing fist against the table as he struggles to hold back ravaging them.

 They slowly begin undoing their shirt, throwing it across the table as they hook their hand into his plating as if to usher him closer. “Don't ask for this little Light, I can't,  not like this” he clenches his denta as he desperately tries To change their mind. 

“Optimus.  Stop being a Prime for once” they shoot back at him. Optimus' optics darken with a mixture of desire, his servo to trail up their body, his digits tracing over their skin.

they let out a sigh of relief feeling the cool metal trace over their hot skin. Optimus leans in closer, pressing his frame against theirs, his servos continuing their exploration. The contact between their skin ignites a fire within him, and he can't help but let out a low growl. “I warned you little light, reconsider now, less I hurt you because I will not stop once I lose control” he nearly snarls out. 

They cling to him bringing him down into a kiss which makes his engine roar in delight as he presses them down into the table, his servo drifting down between their legs, pressing and rubbing against them. "Optimus please don't make me beg" they whine out while grabbing onto his arm plating. 

A growl rumbles from his vocalizer as he tightens his grip, his servo responding to their urgency. He wants nothing more than to take them as his and he would be damned to the pits if he was letting them go now. 

Optimus's frame trembles with need as he takes charge, his actions becoming more urgent and possessive as his digits tease them not bothering to work them open fully. He lefts out a feral snarl as he brings his digits to his mouth, savouring the sweet taste of their arousal. If his processor wasn't so consumed with the need to claim he would have taken it slow, eaten them out until they had begged, been gentle as he could, the gentleman that he swore he was but his rut had him acting like a beast. 

 His hungry optics focus on their sex enjoying the way the whimper and moan as his dripping spike lays across their stomach as he admires the size difference between them both. A sinful whine escapes their lips, and Optimus's spike throbs in response, aching to be sheathed within them. He positions himself above them, slowly grinding his spike against them as he paints their skin with the bright pink hue of transfluid. 

He watches the way his transfluid runs down their sex, it makes something primal in him snap with the need to have his spike bulging their stomach, filling them and breeding them. "Such an eager little thing," Optimus huskily replies, his voice dripping with desire. 

He positions himself, his spike throbbing with anticipation as he aligns it with their entrance. The hunger in his optics burns through them as he presses forward, slowly but forcefully breaching their tight heat.

"Oh, you feel so good," he groans. "You're mine to breed, to fill with my transfluid.” He states, optics hald hazed over as he grinds into them until his spike settles as far as they can take it. Optimus's thrusts become more powerful and relentless as he hunches over them, gripping their hips and lifting their smaller body to meet each of his thrust that knock the air out of their lungs. 

He relishes in the gasps, cries, and moans that escape their lips, the sounds of their pleasure echoing with the slick slapping noise of their coupling that bounce off the wall of the office. Their scent pushes him further into the depths of his rut and driving him to give them even more. "That's it," Optimus growls, "Take me, Primus so tight. You are mine, my rut mate."

He continues his relentless thrusts, each one driving them both closer to the edge of pleasure. The sight of his spike stretching them, bulging their tummy has his engine purring in delight with the thought of them carrying his sparklings. He knows if the rut is affecting his processor but at that moment nothing else mattered. 

Optimus Prime's vocalizer emits a low, primal growl as he thrusts into them, their desperate moans and arching body driving him further into a state of overwhelming pleasure. He pushes his spike as deep as they can take it, relishing in the way their walls clench around him. "By the Allspark," Optimus gasps, his voice laced with desire and need. "You feel incredible... so tight, so perfect."

His frame shudders with a powerful overload, waves of electricity coursing through his circuits as he releases a floor of transfluid deep inside them. His systems whine out almost in agony from how mind blowing the release is for him as he hunches over their body. Fans blowing heated air against their panting body as Optimus' systems struggle to register the need to stop before he's grinding into them again. 

He lets out a few heavy vents as he presses his face into their shoulder. “I'll Alert Ironhide to let everyone know that we are not to be disturbed” he mumbles against their skin as he pulls away. Optics focusing in on their stretched hole as even more bright pink transfluid gushes from them. They squirm under his gaze as he lets out a rumble of appreciation at the view.

“my berth now” he states, not even giving them a chance to protest before he's walking out of the room towards command deck. 

___________________

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@desertrosesmetaldune

[hayatoseyepatch]

𝕯𝖊𝖘𝖈𝖗𝖎𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓: Karasu thought you needed to stop spending so much time online, especially after you let your doom-scrolling lead you to ask him to fuck you in a Ghostface mask. But hey, what was he if not an accommodating partner, he did so love it when you screamed. 𝕮𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖆𝖈𝖙𝖊𝖗: Tabito Karasu (Blue Lock) 𝖂𝖔𝖗𝖉 𝕮𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖙: 2k 𝕮𝖔𝖓𝖙𝖆𝖎𝖓𝖘: Fem!Reader x Karasu. SMUT. 𝕮𝖔𝖓𝖙𝖊𝖓𝖙 𝖂𝖆𝖗𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌𝖘: Hunter/prey dynamics, mask kink, degradation, praise, penetrative sex, spanking, mentions of slut/whore, choking, dacryphilia.

𝕬𝖚𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖗’𝖘 𝕹𝖔𝖙𝖊: This is one of my two submissions for the "No, You Hang Up" Ghostface server collab that I'm hosting with our other server owner @rindous-starlight for our server! This was so much fun to do and thanks to everyone who voted on my poll a little while ago to help me select the characters! I hope you enjoy, the full masterlist for my kinktober can be found here.

“You want me to do what?”

The laughter following your boyfriend’s statement makes your cheeks flush, almost embarrassed for asking. However, truth be told there was just something about the idea of Karasu chasing you, his identity “concealed” before fucking you in the woods behind your home. In the moment you had, shrugged it off as a joke, that you hadn’t been serious upon your boyfriend’s reaction. However, he knew better than that, knowing just how serious you had been. And if Karasu was honest with himself he couldn’t deny the way his cock throbbed at the idea. He just needed to find the perfect time to execute his plan.

You had been alone that night, Karasu having told you he was too tired to drive back from practice and he’d be crashing at Hiori’s. So why was it that you had gotten a notification that there was movement in your back ring camera? Brushing it off as the stray cats you and Karasu fed, grabbing a bowl of food and taking it outside, only for the door to slam shut behind you. Panicking, in nothing more than your house slippers and one of Karasu’s jerseys, you try the doorknob. Locked. Sighing, at least you both kept a key hidden by the front door, before you could go anywhere you felt a hand curl around your throat. Ice flooded your veins as a muffled voice met your ear.

“Don’t you know never to come to the door when you’re all alone pretty little dove.”

The grip on you was lose, allowing you to easily break free. Adrenaline surging, your feet carrying you before your brain could catch up, fight or flight kicking in. Making your second mistake of the evening, you ran into the woods that bled into the back of your shared home. Running through the wooded area as fast as your feet would carry you, dodging between trees as you tried to put as much distance between you and the mysterious figure as possible. Once you were sure you had done just that, you pressed your back against a tree, concealed from sight as you caught your breath. Hand over your mouth to muffle your shaky breaths as to not draw attention to yourself. However, it seemed there hadn’t been enough distance, watching as the figure walked past the tree you were hiding behind, mask concealing his face as his voice rang out once more.

“Haven't you ever watched a scary movie, dove? Don’t you know you never run into the woods?”

The voice carried through the night, but now that your heart wasn’t racing in your ears from fear, you quickly recognized the voice. Karasu? Your heart now raced for a different reason, realizing he had set you up. Telling you a lie earlier to catch you off guard, to make this feel more real. Karasu was nothing if not thorough, putting his all into all he did, this was no different it seemed. You werent sure if your relief outweighed your fear anymore though. Karasu was a professional athlete, body honed after years of training. And one thing you knew for certain from watching his games was that he was fast. Incredibly so. Which meant the chances of out running him were slim to none. But that wouldn’t stop you from trying.

Your feet slam against the ground as you ran in the opposite direction of his footsteps. Karasu’s ears perked immediately, the sound of branches snapping under your feet alerting him to your location. He was quick to turn on his heel, long strides having him caught up to your form within moments. Large hands reaching out to grip your hips, pulling you flush against him, knowing if it weren't for the mask you would feel his breaths on the back of your neck.

“Gotcha, sweetheart.”

He purrs, hands roaming your body, one settling around your throat while the other pushed the hem of his jersey up past your hips. He groans upon realizing you were in nothing but a cute pair of panties underneath, taking advantage of your state of undress as he slides his fingers past the waistband of your panties. His eyes rolling back in his head upon being met with your drenched cunt, sliding two fingers past your entrance with ease from the sheer amount of slick that seeped from your opening.

“God.” He groaned, dragging out the word, fingers delving deeper into your cunt. “You're fucking drenched. You this wet from being fucking chased by a stranger? God you're such a good little slut for me, baby.” He slid his fingers from your walls, the pads of his fingers circling your clit, relishing in the delicious sounds he pulls from you. Eventually he pulls away fully, swiping a foot under your own sending you to the ground below. You squeal form your loss of balance, just managing to catch yourself on your hands and knees. Karasu was quick to drop to his own, a strong hand finding purchase on your back, forcing your back to arch and expose your ass to him. He tosses up the hem of his jersey, hooking two fingers in your panties to tug them to the side. You let out a shiver as the cold autumn air hits your now exposed cunt. Karasu lands a harsh slap to your ass, followed by three more in quick succession, using your distraction from the sting as a means to lower the sweatpants from his hips. His cock springs free from the material, slamming the entirety of his length past your velvety walls with ease due to just how wet you were for him.

“God, princess you’re sucking me in like such a good fucking slut.”

He groans, his setting a steady pace, a thumb parting your folds so he can watch his cock disappear inside you with every pass of his hips. With one hand he grabbed you by your arms crossing them using them as handlebars to pull you back on his cock, only to bounce you back with every harsh thrust. He picks up speed, allowing you to hear all the filthy noises he was making while pounding into you with abandon. He let out a strangled groan, your velvety walls suffocating his cock as he fucked you. He wasn’t sure if it was the remnants of adrenaline from you earlier chase or if he was just so into the way this scenario allowed for him to use you completely in a way he never had, but he could feel himself losing control. Releasing the grip he had on your arms, he lets his hand come down on your ass once more, taking pleasure in knowing your skin would darken from the blood rushing to the impacted area.

“God, dove, so fucking good.” He droned, gripping the flesh of your ass to force you back on him. “This fucken pussy drives me insane, tryin’ to fucken milk me for all I’m worth, isn’t that right my pretty little dove.”

He continues his assault, missing the feel of your skin under his mouth but god if you were this wet from him fucking you with a mask on, who was he to complain? He never knew he would be so into it, but he’d be lying if he said this wasn’t the hottest sex the two of you had ever had. Karasu’s hand wrapped around your neck, bringing you flush against his chest as he fucked up into your cunt. Karasu’s much larger frame always made it so easy for him to manhandle you into whatever position he pleased. He kept with his brutal pace, the sound of skin slapping against skin echoing in the woods. Groaning, the feeling of your slick against his thighs as your cunt gushed for him was sure to drive him mad.

“God kitten, you feel how fucking wet you are? So wet over getting fucked by someone whose face you can't even see.” He groans, laughing sadistically, the sound being muffled by the mask that still covered his face. “What a good girl you are, doing so well for me. Such a good fucken kitten”

He used his free hand that wasn't wrapped around your neck to reach around to rub harsh slow circles into your clit. The movement of his fingers in time with the thrusting of his hips. Your eyes rolled back in your head, the rough terrain of the ground below digging into your knees adding a delicious mix of pain into the pleasure you were receiving, making your head fuzzy. After a few moments of his ruthless attack on your poor cunt, he slowed his movements to a halt, grinning beneath the mask at the delicious whine it pulled from deep within your throat. He kept his movements slow, dragging his cock in and out of your cunt slowly, allowing you to feel every inch and vein of his dick. His movements were so incredibly frustrating just enough to keep you on the edge of what you needed most. Eventually, his movements stopped altogether, pulling out of your cunt, rewarded with a desperate whimper from you. At this rate he didn’t even need to ask, begs and pleas falling from your lips in a desperate scramble, needing so badly for him to make you cum.

“Please Tabito.. please, wanna come, please.. I don't care baby just need to come all over your cock, need to feel you come inside my cunt want you to breed my pussy Tabito.”

Your pleas were like music to his ears, pulling a groan from him. You felt the world shift, him easily manhandling you to lay on your back beneath him. “I wanna see that beautiful face, when you cream all over my cock, dove. I want to see every face you make while I fuck you baby. I want watch you go dumb on my cock like the slut you are. Wanna watch you come undone on my cock.

He growled, your tear-stained cheeks and completely fucked expression had him wasting no time slipping back into the drenched walls of your pussy. He ripped the mask off with one hand, throwing it god knows where as his hips resumed their abuse on your cunt. Two large hands found the backs of your knees, forcing them to your chest so his cock could reach even deeper inside of you. Your cries muffled as he finally kisses you, tongue invading your mouth instantly. The kiss is desperate, filled with need, his thrusts were getting sloppy, letting you know it wasn’t just you who was reaching the precipice of orgasm. Karasu gripped at the plush of your thighs, being sure to hit every single nerve and spot inside your cunt. He could feel the clenching, the want, the desperate need for you to come all over his cock.

He attacked your neck, leaving kisses and bites along the surface area of your exposed skin. He lets out a breathy chuckle, seeing the way you had thrown your head back, making a sad attempt to meet his thrusts with your own hips. You sob, moaning almost embarrassingly loud as he hits every spot, angling his hips just right in the ways only he knows how to. His ministrations finally being enough to throw you over the edge. He feels your thighs clamp shut over his hips, body violently shaking with cries as you came. Walls clamping down on him in a vice grip, eventually hurtling him towards his own release. So lost in pleasure as he paints your walls white in his cum, he is barely aware of the added moisture from you having squirted all over him. He slows his hips, riding out your highs until the point of overstimulation, a shudder wracking his spine as he stills. His head dropping into your neck as he catches his breaths, a breathy laugh leaving him.

“Who knew all it would take for you to do that was to chase your horny ass through the woods, little bird.”

𝕯𝖎𝖛𝖎𝖉𝖊𝖗𝖘 𝖇𝖞 @/𝖈𝖆𝖋𝖊𝖐𝖎𝖙𝖘𝖚𝖓𝖊 & @/𝖘𝖆𝖗𝖆𝖉𝖎𝖐𝖆-𝖌𝖗𝖆𝖕𝖍𝖎𝖈𝖘.

𝕿𝖆𝖌𝖑𝖎𝖘𝖙: @pixelcafe-network @interstellar-inn @littleplantfreak @maruflix @umemiaa @stunies @eevees-hobbies @143-ilyuu @uzxotic @princesstiti14 (𝖕𝖑𝖊𝖆𝖘𝖊 𝖋𝖊𝖊𝖑 𝖋𝖗𝖊𝖊 𝖙𝖔 𝖈𝖔𝖒𝖒𝖊𝖓𝖙/𝖉𝖒/𝖆𝖘𝖐 𝖎𝖋 𝖞𝖔𝖚 𝖜𝖔𝖚𝖑𝖉 𝖑𝖎𝖐𝖊 𝖙𝖔 𝖇𝖊 𝖆𝖉𝖉𝖊𝖉 𝖙𝖔 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖙𝖆𝖌𝖑𝖎𝖘𝖙 𝖋𝖔𝖗 𝖘𝖔𝖒𝖊 𝖔𝖗 𝖆𝖑𝖑 𝖔𝖋 𝖒𝖞 𝖐𝖎𝖓𝖐𝖙𝖔𝖇𝖊𝖗 𝖋𝖎𝖈𝖘) (ᴗ͈ˬᴗ͈)ꕤ.ﾟ

[darcylindbergh]

I’m a queer minor with an unsupportive Republican family and I feel so fucking helpless about the election. What can I do or at least how can I stay safe?

listen to me. i am taking your face in my hands. i am looking into your eyes. listen. your second question is the right one. your safety is your priority. have you ever been on a plane? and they do the little safety routine? and when the masks fall down, they say, "put your own oxygen mask on before helping others?"

as a queer kid, this is a put your own mask on before helping others situation.

there are things you can do to get involved but first and foremost, you gotta be safe. if that means you don't come out and you don't talk about politics and you don't get involved in activism until you can be independent, that's what it means. i know it sucks to hear. it really sucks saying it, tbh. i want you to be big and out and loud and proud, and i never want you to have to make yourself small, but more than anything i want you to be safe.

so everything i'm about to say is with this caveat. safety first. your own mask before helping others.

here's a link to the lgbt national youth talkline. this service won't call outside agencies (like 911) on your behalf, unless you're making a credible threat to someone else.

the Trevor Project also has a hotline and chat services. they do call outside agencies on your behalf to report imminent harm to yourself or others as well as reporting child abuse. i'm not saying one is better than the other. i just want you to know what each service does.

the Trevor Project also has trevorspace, which i guess is like social media for lgbt youth? i am not a youth so i didn't sign up to check it out but it could be a good place to find folks to talk and connect with. connections are so good.

here's some things you can do. i tried to include a bunch of things with different amounts of involvement so you can pick your safety level.

read. read so much. read about people who are like you and who are not like you. read fiction that celebrates queer joy and read nonfiction books about antiracism and intersectionality and the history of queer people in the US. do you know who has a cool amount of information on queer history in the US? the national park service. watch queer movies, even (especially, tbh) old ~problematic stuff, look up what people say about it now. read through the articles on decolonizepalestine.com. watch interviews about Black joy. know your rights. read banned books. if you can't do, learn. read. just because it's happening inside your head doesn't mean it's real work.

check out scarleteen, which is a fantastic resource for queer sex ed and relationship information. a lot of their articles are older now, but still 100% great reads.

watch what your family is watching - debates, news stories, whatever - and ask yourself how would i respond to that? look up how to respond to that. you can use this time to start learning how to dissect political speech and how to respond to it. both sides do this! read news from both sides and see how it compares.

make your daily 5 calls. they give you scripts and everything. if you don't want to talk to a real human person, calling in the evening will usually get you a voicemail. talking on the phone is a hugely important social skill - if you don't have it, the 5 calls are a great way to start and to start addressing your discomfort with phones.

20 states allow 17-year-olds to vote in the primaries.

Pre-register to vote if you're eligible.

Vote Forward puts on a letter writing campaign you can participate in.

NextGen America has in-person volunteer opportunities in 8 states, and virtual opportunities globally. Although they target voters 18-35, volunteers can be any age. (hey adults - you listening?)

here's even more information on phone or text banking! for most of these, you don't have to be 18.

Organize a voter registration drive at your high school. the Civics Center has a free, one-hour online workshop that will walk you through how to host a drive and they'll even send you swag for it. check out their "for students" tab - they have sharable graphics, workshops, lots of stuff.

in some states, people under 18 can sign up to be poll workers. (hey adults - we can do this too)

CIRCLE is a civic engagement center that focuses on getting youth out to vote, but also educating folks. check their website out. listen. politics are so boring like, 99.9% of the time. the more you know about how it works, the more effective you can be when you want to get involved.

look up your local political body, find out when they meet. attend the meetings. in my county we have a board of commissioners that meet once a month, and a couple of committees as well. i don't go every time but now that i can log into the meetings via Zoom, I do about every other month or so. did you see that video of violet affleck speaking at the LA board of supervisors meeting? that could be you, babe.

so there's a lot you can do actually! here's some more stuff you can do!!

know, with 100% certainty, in your heart of hearts, that there are so many people who want you to be out and proud and loud and yourself. and there are so many people who are fighting for you to be able to do that. there are so many adults, queer and non-queer, rooting for you, standing up for you, putting ourselves between you and a future where you have to keep making yourself small. and you will get older and i know it's trite but THINGS REALLY DO GET BETTER, and someday you will be the queer adult on this side of the screen protecting kids like you. you gotta keep on keeping on and keeping yourself safe so you can do that someday.

log off. LOG OFF. doomscrolling is a form of self-harm. deliberately seeking out endless articles and tiktoks and whatever about news and information that will upset you is not activism, babe! it's harm! you aren't helping anyone by being hurt. there's a difference between being informed and hurting yourself. find the line. hold yourself to it.

stop using chat gpt. it's terrible. forget you ever knew about it. that's not related to activism its just like, general health, and also climate change. while i'm here, switch to firefox and duckduckgo.

go outside. it turns out touching grass is actually important for our mental health. go find some.

pick up a hobby that does something with your hands, if you're able to. i cross-stitch and play piano (badly). pick up drawing. cooking. embroidery. underwater basket weaving. it's important to find something that shows you what YOU can do with YOUR two hands. you can do so much.

find your people. online, in person. find your people. when i got this ask, i - not a parent - threw it to my people and they helped me find some resources. we're doing this together.

this is kind of silly but i love doing it. find the marriage license announcements in your county or township or whatever and look for gay people. you'll be guessing by names, so watch out - we love trans people who have and haven't made the legal name change! - but GOD. i've looked at the marriage license announcements literally every two weeks (which is how often they're published in my county) since Obergefell v Hodges 9 years ago, which is when we got gay marriage in my state, and it's so fucking healing. in the last 9 years, i have seen hundreds of gay people make this announcement. every two weeks, there are four or five gay couples in my community out of maybe 15, 20 (i live in a pretty small county). look up why marriage rights have mattered so much to our community. these marriage license announcements are just such a small, bright spot of joy and seeing the names - real people! in my real community! - cradles my heart. find what cradles your heart.

this has gotten long enough so i'm going to set it free. i'm sure there will be people in the notes adding things. for you parents out there, leave your love in the comments. for the rest of us extremely cool and suave adults, pick something off the list and volunteer too, and look at this anon and think yes, this is why we do it. kids like us who are kids now, who will be us later. for you Youth out there, put your oxygen mask on first and then help others.

i love you.

it gets better.

[qqueenofhades]

I understand how important it is to be able to criticize the President, and am not at all of the belief he should be beyond critique, but the critiquing of Biden makes me so nervous. (That's not to say I agree with every decision he's made - I absolutely do not). But I feel like people see things he's done wrong and decide they won't vote for him because of it. I'm not sure if enough people have the ability to see that he's done things wrong but also is our only hope of staving off literal fascism.

So many people talk about how sick they are of it constantly being a lesser of two evils situation, constantly having to vote for a candidate they hate because the other side is worse (I heard it in 2020, 2022, etc), and I guess I just- I don't really get it? We're here because they didn't do that in 2016. All of this could've been avoided had the result been different then. I just feel like people don't comprehend how different of a place we'd be in if Hillary won and engage in all this cognitive dissonance to make themselves feel better about being part of the reason she didn't.

Like.... this has been a long-running topic of discussion on my blog, not least because it is so inexplicable and maddening. It also shows how terribly shallow most people's understanding of the American political process is, and how toxic the "I can only vote for a candidate if every single personal belief/position of theirs matches mine" belief is, as well as how much damage it has done to American democracy even (and indeed, especially) by people who technically don't identify as right-wing. Yell at Republicans all you like (God knows I do, because they're the worst people on earth) but they vote. Every time. Every election. Every candidate. Whereas the Democratic electorate still holds out for Mister Perfect, and it very definitely is Mister Perfect. The amount of "evil HRC!!!" Republican-poisoned Kool-Aid that so-called progressives drank in 2016, and then afterward when they insisted they could have voted for someone like Elizabeth Warren and then didn't do that in 2020, is... baffing.

Frankly, I don't care if Hillary Clinton's personal positions on XYZ issue were the most Neoliberal Corporate Centrist Shill to Ever Shill (and Online Leftists' intellectual skills being what they are, I seriously doubt that they were using any of those words correctly and/or accurately). American policy is not made by "personal dictate of the ruler," or at least it shouldn't be, because we are not an absolute monarchy. We rely on the operation of a system with input from many people. As such, if Hillary had been elected, we would have 2-3 new liberal justices on SCOTUS and have secured civil and environmental rights for the next generation. Roe would be intact, and all the other terrible rulings that SCOTUS has recently handed down wouldn't have happened. We wouldn't have had January 6th, the attempt to stage a coup, all the tawdry scandals, our national security being at risk because of Trump stealing classified documents and probably selling them to Russia and/or Saudi Arabia, etc etc. If you think that's in any way an equivalent amount of evil to what would have happened if Hillary was elected, or if she was "still evil!!!," then I honestly don't know what to tell you. She could fucking murder puppies in her spare time if she had preserved SCOTUS for us, WHICH SHE WOULD HAVE, BECAUSE SHE WARNED US EXACTLY WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN.

(Hoo. Sorry. Still steamed. 2016 war flashbacks, again.)

In short, Hillary would have been a solid continuity Democrat and she would have signed whatever legislation a Democratic House and Senate passed, not to mention been hugely inspiring as the first female president. But because it's so important to the Online Leftists' moral sense of themselves that BOTH PARTIES ARE THE SAME!!!, they can't possibly acknowledge that ever being a factor, and/or admit that they have any culpability in not voting for her in 2016. It's like when you read the British press about any of the UK's equally numerous problems, and they BEND OVER BACKWARD to avoid mentioning that Brexit might be a factor. They just can't mention it, because then that means they might have made the wrong choice in pulling for it as hard as they did, and blah blah Sovereignty.

Basically, if HRC had been elected president, everything would be so much less terrible and terrifying all the time, we would be talking about her successor in 2024 as someone else who could be the "first," we could explore handing the reins over to Kamala as a Black/Asian woman, we could promote Buttigieg as the first gay president, etc etc. But because 2016 was so catastrophically fucked up, we are in damage control mode for the immediate future and every election is just as pivotal. And yet, because people think that the only thing that matters is a presidential candidate's personal views, we're stuck having the same old arguments and desperately begging people over and over to please vote against fascism, since that somehow isn't self-evident enough on its own. Yikes on Bikes.

[monstrous-femme]

honestly? I'm tired, y'all.

I'm tired of people whose marriages aren't being threatened to act like I'm selfish for being upset that mine is. I'm tired of being told that voting puts blood on my hands when the only thing not voting does is make my opinion go uncounted.

I'm tired of the fact that those of y'all who have wanted Biden out for months have already jumped to yelling about how we can't vote for his replacement either, even though she's not even confirmed to be his replacement, even though she is at least slightly to the left of Biden on Palestine (I know slightly isn't enough! But it's also more than we had yesterday).

I'm tired of y'all ignoring the long-term impacts another Trump presidency would have on the climate, and how that affects the most vulnerable people worldwide. I'm tired of being told that the differences between the parties are surface level. I'm tired of people who seem to genuinely believe that losing more of our rights will rile us up and lead to the Glorious Revolution instead of giving us more things to have to fight than we already have

I'm just. This is exhausting.

[mariacallous]

This is a gift article

“In normal times, Americans don’t think much about democracy. Our Constitution, with its guarantees of free press, speech, and assembly, was written more than two centuries ago. Our electoral system has never failed, not during two world wars, not even during the Civil War. Citizenship requires very little of us, only that we show up to vote occasionally. Many of us are so complacent that we don’t bother. We treat democracy like clean water, something that just comes out of the tap, something we exert no effort to procure.

“But these are not normal times.”

I wrote those words in October 2020, at a time when some people feared voting, because they feared contagion. The feeling that “these are not normal times” also came from rumors about what Donald Trump’s campaign might do if he lost that year’s presidential election. Already, stories that Trump would challenge the validity of the results were in circulation. And so it came to pass.

This time, we are living in a much different world. The predictions of what might happen on November 5 and in the days that follow are not based on rumors. On the contrary, we can be absolutely certain that an attempt will be made to steal the 2024 election if Kamala Harris wins. Trump himself has repeatedly refused to acknowledge the results of the 2020 election. He has waffled on and evaded questions about whether he will accept the outcome in 2024. He has hired lawyers to prepare to challenge the results.

Trump also has a lot more help this time around from his own party. Strange things are happening in state legislatures: a West Virginia proposal to “not recognize an illegitimate presidential election” (which could be read as meaning not recognize the results if a Democrat wins); a last-minute push, ultimately unsuccessful, to change the way Nebraska allocates its electoral votes. Equally weird things are happening in state election boards. Georgia’s has passed a rule requiring that all ballots be hand-counted, as well as machine-counted, which, if not overturned, will introduce errors—machines are more accurate—and make the process take much longer. A number of county election boards have in recent elections tried refusing to certify votes, not least because many are now populated with actual election deniers, who believe that frustrating the will of the people is their proper role. Multiple people and groups are also seeking mass purges of the electoral rolls.

Anyone who is closely following these shenanigans—or the proliferation of MAGA lawsuits deliberately designed to make people question the legitimacy of the vote even before it is held—already knows that the challenges will multiply if the presidential vote is as close as polls suggest it could be. The counting process will be drawn out, and we may not know the winner for many days. If the results come down to one or two states, they could experience protests or even riots, threats to election officials, and other attempts to change the results.

This prospect can feel overwhelming: Many people are not just upset about the possibility of a lost or stolen election, but oppressed by a sensation of helplessness. This feeling—I can’t do anything; my actions don’t matter—is precisely the feeling that autocratic movements seek to instill in citizens, as Peter Pomerantsev and I explain in our recent podcast, Autocracy in America. But you can always do something. If you need advice about what that might be, here is an updated citizen’s guide to defending democracy.

Help Out on Voting Day—In Person

First and foremost: Register to vote, and make sure everyone you know has done so too, especially students who have recently changed residence. The website Vote.gov has a list of the rules in all 50 states, in multiple languages, if you or anyone you know has doubts. Deadlines have passed in some states, but not all of them.

After that, vote—in person if you can. Because the MAGA lawyers are preparing to question mail-in and absentee ballots in particular, go to a polling station if at all possible. Vote early if you can, too: Here is a list of early-voting rules for each state.

Secondly, be prepared for intimidation or complications. As my colleague Stephanie McCrummen has written, radicalized evangelical groups are organizing around the election. One group is planning a series of “Kingdom to the Capitol” rallies in swing-state capitals, as well as in Washington, D.C.; participants may well show up near voting booths on Election Day. If you or anyone you know has trouble voting, for any reason, call 866-OUR-VOTE, a hotline set up by Election Protection, a nonpartisan national coalition led by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

If you have time to do more, then join the effort. The coalition is looking for lawyers, law students, and paralegals to help out if multiple, simultaneous challenges to the election occur at the county level. Even people without legal training are needed to serve as poll monitors, and of course to staff the hotline. In the group’s words, it needs people to help voters with “confusing voting rules, outdated infrastructure, rampant misinformation, and needless obstacles to the ballot box.”

If you live in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin, you can also volunteer to help All Voting Is Local, an organization that has been on the ground in those states since before 2020 and knows the rules, the officials, the potential threats. It, too, is recruiting legal professionals, as well as poll monitors. If you don’t live in one of those states, you can still make a financial contribution.

Wherever you live, consider working at a polling station. All Voting Is Local can advise you if you live in one of its eight states, but you can also call your local board of elections. More information is available at PowerThePolls.org, which will send you to the right place. The site explains that “our democracy depends on ordinary people who make sure every election runs smoothly and everyone's vote is counted—people like you.”

Wherever you live, it’s also possible to work for one of the many get-out-the-vote campaigns. Consider driving people to the voting booth. Find your local group by calling the offices of local politicians, members of Congress, state legislators, and city councillors. The League of Women Voters and the NAACP are just two of many organizations that will be active in the days before the election, and on the day itself. Call them to ask which local groups they recommend. Or, if you are specifically interested in transporting Democrats, you can volunteer for Rideshare2Vote.

If you know someone who needs a ride, then let them know that the ride-hailing company Lyft is once again working with a number of organizations, including the NAACP, the National Council of Negro Women, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, the National Council on Aging, Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote, and the Hispanic Federation. Contact any of them for advice about your location. Also try local religious congregations, many of whom organize rides to the polls.

Smaller gestures are needed too. If you see a long voting line, or if you find yourself standing in one, report it to Pizza to the Polls and the group will send over some free pizza to cheer everyone up.

Join Something Now

Many people have long been preparing for a challenge to the election and a battle in both the courts and the media. You can help them by subscribing to the newsletters of some of the organizations sponsoring this work, donating money, and sharing their information with others. Don’t wait until the day after the vote to find groups you trust: If a crisis happens, you will not want to be scouring the internet for information.

Among the organizations to watch is the nonpartisan Protect Democracy, which has already launched successful lawsuits to secure voting rights in several states. Another is the States United Democracy Center, which collaborates with police as well as election workers to make sure that elections are safe. Three out of four election officials say that threats to them have increased; in some states, the danger will be just as bad the day after the election as it was the day before, or maybe even worse.

The Brennan Center for Justice, based at NYU, researches and promotes concrete policy proposals to improve democracy, and puts on public events to discuss them. Its lawyers and experts are preparing not only for attempts to steal the election, but also, in the case of a Trump victory, for subsequent assaults on the Constitution or the rule of law.

For voters who lean Democratic, Democracy Docket also offers a wealth of advice, suggestions, and information. The group’s lawyers have been defending elections for many years. For Republicans, Republicans for the Rule of Law is a much smaller group, but one that can help keep people informed.

Talk With People

In case of a real disaster—an inconclusive election or an outbreak of violence—you will need to find a way to talk about it, including a way to speak with friends or relatives who are angry and have different views. In 2020, I published some suggestions from More in Common, a research group that specializes in the analysis of political polarization, for how to talk with people who disagree with you about politics, as well as those who are cynical and apathetic. I am repeating here the group’s three dos and three don’ts:

•Do talk about local issues: Americans are bitterly polarized over national issues, but have much higher levels of trust in their state and local officials. •Do talk about what your state and local leaders are doing to ensure a safe election. •Do emphasize our shared values—the large majority of Americans still feel that democracy is preferable to all other forms of government—and our historical ability to deliver safe and fair elections, even in times of warfare and social strife. •Don’t, by contrast, dismiss people’s concerns about election irregularities out of hand. Trump and his allies have repeatedly raised the specter of widespread voter fraud in favor of Democrats. Despite a lack of evidence for this notion, many people may sincerely believe that this kind of electoral cheating is real. •Don’t rely on statistics to make your case, because people aren’t convinced by them; talk, instead, about what actions are being taken to protect the integrity of the vote. •Finally, don’t inadvertently undermine democracy further: Emphasize the strength of the American people, our ability to stand up to those who assault democracy. Offer people a course of action, not despair.

As a Last Resort, Protest

As in 2020, protest remains a final option. A lot of institutions, including some of those listed above, are preparing to step in if the political system fails. But if they all fail as well, remember that it’s better to protest in a group, and in a coordinated, nonviolent manner. Many of the organizations I have listed will be issuing regular statements right after the election; follow their advice to find out what they are doing. Remember that the point of a protest is to gain supporters—to win others over to your cause—and not to make a bad situation worse. Large, peaceful gatherings will move and convince people more than small, angry ones. Violence makes you enemies, not friends.

Finally, don’t give up: There is always another day. Many of your fellow citizens also want to protect not just the electoral system but the Constitution itself. Start looking for them now, volunteer to help them, and make sure that they, and we, remain a democracy where power changes hands peacefully.

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

in asoiaf, what is the order of succession for nobles and for the throne (as i’ve read they are different)?

They are indeed different. In most of Westeros, they use traditional Andal succession, known in our world as male-preference primogeniture. This puts women at the back of the line, so to speak, but does not exclude them. A lord's eldest son inherits, even if he has older daughters, followed by the remainder of his sons by age, and then his daughters, and then would move up to the previous generations with his brothers and then his sisters. "A daughter comes before an uncle," as they say. For example, with the Starks, Ned's succession is Robb-Bran-Rickon-Sansa-Arya. (Benjen is excluded for being a man of the Night's Watch; Jon is excluded by being a bastard and a man of the Night's Watch. But of course there's complications.) This succession also includes the heirs of the heirs, so for example Hoster Tully's succession is Edmure-Catelyn-Robb-Bran-Rickon-Sansa-Arya-Lysa-Robert-Brynden.

Note there are exceptions to this, even after King Jaehaerys I Targaryen codified the laws across Westeros. Sometimes these exceptions appear to be cultural. For example, somehow House Stark has never had a ruling lady in all its reported 8000 years of existence, and the time we know they should have, Cregan Stark's eldest (and late lamented) son Rickon's eldest daughter Sansa was (forcefully?) married to Cregan's eldest son from his third marriage, her half-uncle Jonnel, who became the lord instead. Another example - after Balon Greyjoy dies, a maester insists that "By rights the Seastone Chair belongs to Theon, or Asha if the prince is dead. That is the law", and Aeron Greyjoy dismisses it contemptuously as "green land law", and thinks the Iron Islands will never follow a woman.

Sometimes these exceptions appear to be just plain misogyny - like when Big and Little Walder Frey discuss the succession of the Twins, they don't count the women in the line. Mind you the Walders are children and may not know true details; but time will tell if Edwyn's daughter Walda will inherit or if her uncle Black Walder will seize the Twins. (Probably the latter.) Of course little Walda also has the problem of being a child heiress, but child heiresses have become ruling ladies before -- like Jeyne Arryn, whose inheritance was contested multiple times by her male cousins -- or like Cerelle Lannister, who inherited at the age of 3 and ruled for a year before dying suddenly and her uncle Gerold became lord. Um. It's hard out there for a girl. 😭

And in Dorne, they use a different form of succession entirely -- Rhoynar tradition, what we call absolute primogeniture. Much simpler, there the eldest child inherits regardless of sex. So Doran's heirs are Arianne-Quentyn-Trystane-{Elia}-{Rhaenys}-{Aegon}-Oberyn. Of course, Dorne has its own exceptions: per GRRM, a few houses in the mountains, least affected by the Rhoynar, may sometimes follow Andal tradition instead, which is likely the reason why Cletus Yronwood was considered the heir instead of his older sister Ynys. (Mind you, Cletus is dead now, and Anders Yronwood only has daughters left, so sucks to be a man compared to Criston Cole, doesn't it?) And Arianne was worried that Doran was going to have Quentyn inherit instead of her, but she didn't know that Doran was actually planning to make her queen of Westeros, which would take her out of the Sunspear succession (in the same way that Myriah Martell married Daeron II Targaryen and her younger brother Maron became Prince of Dorne).

Now. The Targaryen succession to the throne is a different matter. For them, they've had the competing issues of tradition, king's choice, sexist lords voting sexism, even more tradition, and politics. (Sooo much politics.) Putting the rest of this behind a cut because it was already a long post but it got longer:

From the start, as far as we know the pre-Conquest Targaryens in Westeros used traditional Andal succession. (It's unknown how succession was handled in Valyria, or if there was a difference between the dragonrider families and any others.) There is a brief mention that Aenar the Exile's grandchildren, Aegon and Elaena, ruled together, but every other Lord of Dragonstone was indeed a lord, and hardly any daughters are even referred to. By the time we get to the Conquest trio, we know that Visenya was the eldest child, and yet her younger brother Aegon was Lord of Dragonstone. And later, Aegon was the king, with his sister-wives as his queens (though unlike later queens, they sat the Iron Throne and handled day-to-day governance of the realm).

The first time we see an issue with this succession tradition was when King Aenys died and his half-brother Maegor usurped (and later killed) Aenys's eldest son Aegon. By Andal tradition, Aegon and his sister-wife Rhaena's eldest daughter Aerea should have succeeded after Maegor died (he considered her his heir until he had children of his own), but instead Aegon's younger brother Jaehaerys became king. Political issues there: Jaehaerys actually successfully contested Maegor's rule, he was a strong teen boy with a sword and a dragon where Aerea was a girl of six who'd been in hiding most of her life, her mother Rhaena had been forcefully married to Maegor and had few supporters, Aerea had been named heir by Maegor specifically to cut out Jaehaerys, etc. Though note Aerea was considered Jaehaerys's heir... until he had children of his own. And as for Rhaena (Aenys's eldest child), she never actually vied for the throne after Maegor's death, but later in her life she bitterly told Jaehaerys "you have my throne, content yourself with that."

As for Jaehaerys and his children, from the start there were problems, when Queen Alysanne expected their eldest child Daenerys to be queen one day (why Alysanne expected the throne to follow absolute primogeniture at this point is unknown), and Jae was like, sure, our second child Aemon will be king and she'll be his wife! But Daenerys died as a child, and as for Aemon, he died too, albeit as a father of a grown daughter with a child of her own on the way. And there you have Jae sexism part 2, instead of naming Rhaenys as his heir, he instead named his second living son, Baelon, as his heir. So here's the precedent where the throne deliberately denied Andal succession tradition, and instead went with king's choice.

Then 9 years after Aemon's death, Baelon also died, and Jaehaerys held the Great Council of 101 AC, for all the lords of Westeros to decide between all of Jaehaerys's potential heirs. In the end, the final choice was between Aemon's daughter Rhaenys's son Laenor (Rhaenys herself was also in competition, though her claim was dismissed early) and Baelon's son Viserys. By a large percentage, the lords chose Viserys. According to maesters,

In the eyes of many, the Great Council of 101 AC thereby established an iron precedent on matters of succession: regardless of seniority, the Iron Throne of Westeros could not pass to a woman, nor through a woman to her male descendants.

This female-exclusive tradition is known in our world as agnatic primogeniture, or Salic law. However, this "iron precedent" was not that iron even from the beginning. Viserys and his wife Aemma only had one living child, Rhaenyra, so Viserys's brother Daemon was considered his heir until a son was born. And, well, if you've seen the first episode of HOTD you know what happened, because of Daemon's fuckup Viserys deliberately dismissed him, "disregarding the precedents set by [...] the Great Council in 101", but used the precedent of king's choice to name Rhaenyra as his heir and make all the lord of Westeros vow to obey that decision. Again, you've seen what happened next -- Viserys then remarried and had sons, whose grandfather used the Andal tradition to try to make Viserys name as heirs, but he refused to bypass Rhaenyra. In the end, though, when the Green Council formed after Viserys's death,

Ser Tyland pointed out that many of the lords who had sworn to defend the succession of Princess Rhaenyra were long dead. “It has been twenty-four years,” he said. “I myself swore no such oath. I was a child at the time.” Ironrod, the master of laws, cited the Great Council of 101 and the Old King’s choice of Baelon rather than Rhaenys in 92, then discoursed at length about Aegon the Conqueror and his sisters, and the hallowed Andal tradition wherein the rights of a trueborn son always came before the rights of a mere daughter.

So the law cited to name Aegon II king was one king's choice vs another king's choice, as well as Andal tradition and the "iron precedent" of the Great Council. And thus we got the Dance of the Dragons, Rhaenyra vs Aegon II.

But what about afterwards? What does Fire & Blood say about Aegon III, how did the maesters decide he inherited, through Aegon II (as his only living male relative), as Daemon's son, or as Rhaenyra's son? Well, it doesn't actually explain this point! The moment Aegon II died, Corlys Velaryon's men were freeing Aegon the Younger from his hostage prison, and then when the late Rhaenyra's (finally) winning army showed up at the gates of King's Landing, we just have Corlys saying, "The king is dead, long live the king." No maester commentary on the precedent at all, much to the frustration of backseat lawyers and historians in the fandom, who keep arguing one way or the other, or the various fandom teams, who keep arguing which side actually won.* 😅

*The answer is nobody. Nobody won.

And note that because Aegon III had no known living male relatives at the time (his brother Viserys was missing and presumed dead), his half-sisters Baela and Rhaena were considered his heirs, again despite this supposed "iron precedent". Leading to one of my favorite quotes from F&B:

Yet it was Grand Maester Munkun who put an end to the debate when he said, “My lords, it makes no matter. They are both girls. Have we learned so little from the slaughter? We must abide by primogeniture, as the Great Council ruled in 101. The male claim comes before the female.” Yet when Ser Tyland said, “And who is this male claimant, my lord? We seem to have killed them all,” Munkun had no answer but to say he would research the issue.

Though Aegon III's council and regents really wanted Baela to have a proper son, and when she rejected their (fat old guy) intended husband and instead eloped with a legitimized bastard, they wasted no time getting her sister Rhaena married to someone suitable, though she actually chose her husband, an older knight she'd become friends with in the Vale. And then Unwin Peake killed off Aegon II's daughter Jaehaera in order to marry Aegon III to his own daughter, and Baela and Rhaena did an end run with a new wife for their brother, a very young girl he didn't touch for 10 years... Of course, all this plotting came to nothing when Viserys did show up alive, so the lords could be satisfied with no need for an icky girl queen, the very idea.

The next time we see any competing issues of precedent for the succession to the throne was after Aegon III's second son, Baelor the Blessed, died without any children. By rights, per Andal tradition, his successor should have been his sister (and ex-wife) Daena. However, because Baelor had imprisoned Daena and her sisters in the Maidenvault for 10 years, they had few supporters, complicated by the fact that Daena had also recently had a bastard and refused to name the father. And of course, the Dance was still on everyone's mind as it had ended only 40 years before. So,

The precedents of the Great Council of 101 and the Dance of the Dragons were therefore cited, and the claims of Baelor's sisters were set aside. Instead the crown passed to his uncle, the King's Hand, Prince Viserys.

And Viserys II was followed by his son Aegon IV and so on. After this point, we do not have any real questions about gender and succession for a while. (Though some wonder, when Daemon Blackfyre vied for the throne, if he ever cited his mother Daena's stolen claim, in addition to being the unstated choice of his father Aegon IV. Also Aerys I named his niece Aelora as his heir after her brother-husband Aelor died, but she also died before Aerys did.) By the time of the Great Council of 233 AC, the claim of Vaella, only child of Maekar's eldest son Daeron, was dismissed immediately, though note she was also considered "simple", and Maekar's fourth son came to the throne as Aegon V.

And then in 283 AC, Robert Baratheon took the throne from the Targaryens. While many believe he took the throne by conquest (killing King Aerys II Targaryen's heir Rhaegar, while Aerys was killed by Jaime Lannister), maesters cite the fact that Robert was the grandson of Rhaelle Targaryen, daughter of Aegon V! So where is that "iron precedent" now, with Robert as the descendant of a Targaryen woman? And Robert's brother Stannis considers his daughter Shireen to be his heir, and people in Westeros in general consider Robert's daughter Myrcella to be his heir (after her brothers Joffrey and Tommen). Not to mention the fact that (claimant king in exile) Viserys considered Dany his heir, naming her Princess of Dragonstone.

So. Theoretically by the time of the main books, this "no women allowed ever" precedent for royal succession is still out there. In practice, however, the throne currently either follows Andal tradition of sons before daughters (but yes, including daughters), or the "whoever has the larger army" tradition of old. And that will be what truly decides the question of Aegon (or Jon) vs Daenerys, whether Rhaegar's line was disinherited by Aerys II or whether any maesters pop up to say "but iron precedent!" or what. Fire and blood, as always.

[txttletale]

how do ml's reconcile with lenin going for a bigbrainhaver hierarchy which just so happened to place him at the tippy top? most of the things he's quoted for writing make a kind of sense in that longwinded academic philosopher way, but, like, russia went from having a revolution against monarchy to having a monarchy, essentially, and what folks do tends to align with their desires, yeah? wouldn't that make everything he said, idk, suspicious?

we reconcile with this because none of this is even remotely true. lenin did not 'happen to be placed at the tippy top' but was in fact elected by the soviets, who worked in a very simple electoral system by which workers and peasants would elect representatives to their local soviet, who as well as administering local services would also elect members to higher bodies. the quote unquote bigbrainhaver hierarchy system in question was as follows:

The sovereign body is in every case the Congress of Soviets. Each county sends its delegates. These are elected indirectly by the town and county Soviets which vote in proportion to population, following the ratio observed throughout, by which the voters in the town have five times the voting strength of the inhabitants of the villages, an advantage which may, as we saw, be in reality three to one. The Congress meets, as a rule, once a year, for about ten days. It is not, in the real sense of the word, the legislative body. It debates policy broadly, and passes resolutions which lay down the general principles to be followed in legislation. The atmosphere of its sittings is that of a great public demonstration. The Union Congress, for example, which has some fifteen hundred members, meets in the Moscow Opera House. The stage is occupied by the leaders and the heads of the administration, and speeches are apt to be big oratorical efforts. The real legislative body is the so-called Central Executive Committee (known as the C. I. K. and pronounced "tseek") . It meets more frequently than the Congress to which it is responsible-in the case of the Union, at least three times in the year-passes the Budget, receives the reports of the Commissars (ministers), and discusses international policy. It, in its turn, elects two standing bodies: (1) The Presidium of twenty-one members, which has the right to legislate in the intervals between the sittings of the superior assemblies, and also transacts some administrative work. (2) The Council of Peoples' Commissars. These correspond roughly to the Ministers or Secretaries of State in democratic countries and are the chiefs of the administration. Meeting as a Council, they have larger powers than any Cabinet, for they may pass emergency legislation and issue decrees which have all the force of legislation. Save in cases of urgency, however, their decrees and drafts of legislation must be ratified by the Executive Committee (C.I.K.). In another respect they differ from the European conception of a Minister. Each Commissar is in reality the chairman of a small board of colleagues, who are his advisers. These advisory boards, or collegia, meet very frequently (it may even be daily) to discuss current business, and any member of a board has the right to appeal to the whole Council of Commissars against a decision of the Commissar.

—H.N. Brailsford, How The Soviets Work (1927)

you might notice that the congresses of soviets were not directly elected -- this is because they were elected by local soviets, who were directly elected, in a process that many people have given first hand accounts of:

I have, while working in the Soviet Union, participated in an election. I, too, had a right to vote, as I was a working member of the community, and nationality and citizenship are no bar to electoral rights. The procedure was extremely simple. A general meeting of all the workers in our organisation was called by the trade union committee, candidates were discussed, and a vote was taken by show of hands. Anybody present had the right to propose a candidate, and the one who was elected was not personally a member of the Party. In considering the claims of the candidates their past activities were discussed, they themselves had to answer questions as to their qualifications, anybody could express an opinion, for or against them, and the basis of all the discussion was: What justification had the candidates to represent their comrades on the local Soviet. As far as the elections in the villages were concerned, these took place at open village meetings, all peasants of voting age, other than those who employed labour, having the right to vote and to stand for election. As in the towns, any organisation or individual could put forward candidates, anyone could ask the candidate questions, and anybody could support or oppose the candidature. It is usual for the Communist Party to put forward a candidate, trade unions and other organisations can also do so, and there is nothing to prevent the Party’s candidate from not being elected, if he has not sufficient prestige among the voters. In the towns the “ electoral district ” has hitherto consisted of a factory, or a group of small factories sufficient to form a constituency. But there was one section of the town population which has always had to vote geographically, since they did not work together in one organisation. This was the housewives. As a result, the housewives met separately in each district, had their own constituencies, and elected their own representatives to the Soviet. Here, too, vital interest has always been shown in the personality of every candidate. Why should this woman be elected ? What right had she to represent her fellow housewives on the local Soviet ? In the district next to my own at the last election the housewife who was elected was well known as an organiser of a communal dining-room in the district. This was the kind of person that the housewives wanted to represent them on the Soviet. Another candidate, a Communist, proposed by the local organisation of the Party, was turned down in her favour.

[...]

The election of delegates to the local Soviet is not the only function of voters in the Soviet Union. It is not a question here of various parties presenting candidates to the electorate, each with his own policy to offer. The Soviet electorate has to select a personality from its midst to represent it, and instruct this person in the policy which is to be followed when elected. At a Soviet election meeting, therefore, as much or more time may be spent on discussion of the instructions to the delegate as is spent on discussing the personality of the candidates. At the last election to the Soviets, in which I personally participated, we must have spent three or four times as much time on the working out of instructions as we did on the selection of our candidate. About three weeks before the election was to take place the trade union secretary in every department of our organisation was told by the committee that it was time to start to prepare our instructions to the delegate. Every worker was asked to make suggestions concerning policy which he felt should be brought to the notice of the new personnel of the Moscow Soviet. As a result, about forty proposals concerning the general government of Moscow were handed in from a group of about twenty people. We then held a meeting in our department at which we discussed the proposals, and adopted some and rejected others. We then handed our list of pro¬ posals to a commission, appointed by the trade union committee, and representing all the workers in our organisation. This Commission co-ordinated the pro¬ posals received, placed them in order according to the various departments of the Soviet, and this co-ordinated list was read at the election meeting itself, again discussed, and adopted in its final form.

—Pat Sloan, Soviet Democracy (1937)

Between the elections of 1931 and 1934, no less than 18 per cent of the city deputies and 37 per cent of village deputies were recalled, of whom only a relatively small number — 4 per cent of the total — were charged with serious abuse of power. The chief reasons for recall were inactivity — 37 per cent — and inefficiency — 21 per cent. If these figures indicate certain lacks in the quality of elected officials, they show considerable activity of the people in improving government. The electorate of the Peasants' Gazette, for example, consisted of some 1,500 employees, entitled to elect one deputy to the Moscow city soviet and two to the ward soviet. For more than a month before the election every department of the newspaper held meetings discussing both candidates and instructions. Forty-three suggested candidates and some 1,400 proposals for the work of the incoming government resulted from these meetings, which also elected committees to boil down and classify the instructions. These committees issued a special four-page newspaper for the 1,500 voters; it contained brief biographies of the forty-three candidates, an analysis of their capacities by the Communist Party organization of the Peasants' Gazette, and the "nakaz," or list of "people's instructions," classified by subject and the branch of government which they concerned. At the final election meeting of the Peasants* Gazette there was literally more than 100 per cent attendance, since some of the staff who for reasons of absence or illness had not been listed as prospective voters returned from sanatoria or from distant assignments to vote. The instructions issued by the electorate in this manner — 1,400 from the Peasants' Gazette and tens of thousands from Moscow citizens — became the first business of the incoming government.

—Anna Louise Strong, The New Soviet Constitution (1937)

does this mean that the soviet project was some utopian perfect system? no. there were flaws in the system like any other. it disenfranchised the rural peasantry (although not, i would like to add, to any extent greater or even equivalent to the extent to which the US electoral system disenfranchises the urban working class) -- the various tiers of indirect selection created a divide between the average worker and the highest tier of the executive -- and various elements of this fledgling system would calcify and bureaucratise over time in ways that obstructed worker's democracy. but saying that it was 'a monarchy' is founded in absolutely nothing except the most hysterical anticommunist propaganda and tedious orwellian liberal truisms.

even brailsford, in an account overall critical of the soviet system, had to admit:

Speaking broadly, the various organs of the system, from the Council of Commissars of the Union down to the sub-committees of a town Soviet, are handling the same problems. Whether one sits in the Kremlin at a meeting of the most august body of the whole Union, the "C.I.K.," or round a table in Vladimir with the working men who constitute its County Executive Committee, one hears exactly the same problems discussed. How, be-fore June arrives, shall we manage to reduce prices by ten percent? What growth can we show in the number of our spindles, or factories, and in the number of workers employed? When and how shall we make our final assault on the last relics of illiteracy? Or when shall we have room in our schools, even in the remotest village, for every child? Was it by good luck or good guidance that the number of typhus cases has dropped in a year by half? And, finally, how can we hasten the raising of clover seed, so that the peasants who, at last, thanks to our propaganda, are clamoring for it, may not be disappointed?

—H.N. Brailsford, How The Soviets Work (1927)

genuinely, i think you should take a moment and think about where you learned about the soviet union. have you read any serious historical work on the topic, even from non-communist or anti-communist sources? because even imperialist propagandists have to make a pretence at engaging with actual facts on the ground, something which you haven't done at all -- and yet you speak with astounding confidence. i recommend you read some serious books instead of animal farm and reflect on why you believe the things you believe and how you know the things you think you know.