#and making scapegoats and executing those who would not fall in line

[admirableadmiranda]

Probably in order to showcase that even the Lan sect rules were not as mighty as the Jin’s strength. We are the strong sect that came through the war in the best shape. We are the ones with a sect leader who knows what he’s doing. We know better than your silly rules.

Jin Guangshen really lucked out on having three other great sect leaders who were all young men, Nie Mingjue as the oldest of them is probably twenty-four at most compared to Jin Guangshan’s fifties and he uses it. The pressure in the scene is most on does the sect that holds itself apart with rules stand against the Jin sect and risk alienation, or fall into line with the “right” way of things. Which Wei Wuxian proceeds to smash by saying that he is the sort of person that will stand even alone against these actions and help those being pressured by the Jin.

That is why they target the Lan sect. To prove that no one is better than they are. Break your rules or break the peace. Which option is the better one? Can you really actually choose a side, Lan Xichen.

Random Thought #23: was Lan Xichen, a sect leader of a great sect, really gonna let himself and his clan be publicly disrespected at another sect’s banquet in which they were guests? And by a nobody in that sect who didn’t participate in the war effort while the Lan did??? Like, I really want to know how that whole thing would’ve went down had Wei Wuxian not stormed in to ask after Wen Ning.

[ithinkhesgaybutwesavedmufasa]

pero rescuing reader from the witch trial and in the aftermath she finally reveals the truth to him + "I think it'd be easier if you were indeed a witch" - fleetwood xoxo

*How about the scene where he rescues her from the witch trials and she tells him everything for the Tovar AU? --anon

*Isn’t there a part where they accuse her of being a witch and Pero is gone?? for the pero outlander au what about the scene where she says she’s from the future? love your writing! --anon

*Pero saving her please --anon

Another one that was asked for a few times... Pairing: Tovar x Reader (Outlander AU) Warning: language, public nudity, witch trials, fear, hurt/comfort [Completed Prompt Masterlist] [Tovar Promptfest Info/list]

How had everything gone so badly so fast? Pero and William had left and within three days time you had managed to wind up in prison. You didn’t know anyone in this stupid time and it was so rare that anyone was nice to you that when the shop keeper invited you over for afternoon tea, you accepted. Tovar had warned you, he had warned you to stay away from her, that she was nothing but trouble and the townspeople all despised her--you didn’t listen. 

The townspeople didn’t just despise her, they thought she was a witch. They sought out her herbs and medicines and when they didn’t work or something unrelated went wrong, she was an easy scapegoat. It didn’t help matters that she was incredibly beautiful. With flaming red curls to her waist and pointed features, every woman for ten miles was certain she was trying to seduce their husbands. And husbands caught in bouts of their own lust would blame her for casting a spell on them. 

It was all so ridiculous that when you had been arrested, clapped in irons and accused, you had laughed in their faces. That certainly didn’t help your case. 

“...of witchcraft and crimes against god the almighty. Of animal sacrifice and salacious behavior-...”

“Oh, give me a fucking break,” you rolled your eyes and twisted your wrists in your bindings as they read your charges. All of them were of course untrue. 

“You bite your tongue, harlot,” the judge said as he looked at you with fire in his eyes.

“What does it even matter?” you tossed your arms as far as you could. “You’ve already decided I’m guilty.”

“Witches aren’t allowed to speak while on trial.”

“Well which is it?” you snapped. “Am I a harlot or a witch? And I’ll speak if I god damn please.”

“Your husband should strike that foul mouth of yours--”

“My husband,” you sneered, wishing anything that the man in question was here right now. “Is a hired killer and a guest of the Emperor’s so, you better pray that he doesn’t find out what you’ve done.”

“Is that a threat?” the old man asked with a raised eyebrow.

“It’s a promise.”

--

Unsurprisingly, they had found you guilty on all charges. And after forcing you to watch the public execution of the shopkeeper, they threw you back into the jail cell, which was nothing more than a rocky cavern with iron bars hammered into the entrance. You had spent the night in the dark, cold, and absolutely terrified. You missed Tovar, and couldn’t help but wonder if he would miss you once you were gone.

“Wait--wait!” you screamed as one of the guards grabbed you and threw you down onto the wooden platform in the village square. People yelled, called you names, and threw things. Your heart hammered so fast against your ribs that you were sure they would break. 

“Whore!”

“Witch!”

When the guard tried to hold you still, you fought him so hard that it tore your bodice. You frantically held your arms to your chest and kept the material covering what you could. Your head snapped up as the crowd started to part and the thunder of horse hooves and someone shouting your name made the chaos quiet down. 

Tovar hopped down from the saddle as William brought up the rear on his own horse and drew back his bow, aiming at the center of the chest of the man that had his hands on you.

“I’d let go of her if I were you,” William said as his eyes followed the line down the arrow. 

“Pero,” you whimpered and jerked your arms free. You ran to him the second you were let go and almost stumbled in your need to reach him as fast as you could. 

“Hermosa,” he breathed as you collided with his chest and he put his arms around you. He dug his dagger out of his belt and you held out your hands for him to cut threw the rope around your wrists. “Are you alright?”

“Get me out of here,” was all you could say as he threw his cloak over your shoulders and helped you up onto his horse. 

“Soldiers, are you aware you are helping a witch??” one of the guards called out.

Pero pulled himself up onto the horse behind you, wrapping a strong arm around your waist as he turned to the guard and sneered. Without a word, he leaned over and spat at the man’s feet before kicking his heels to make the animal jerk forward. 

William followed suit and the three of you rode as fast as you could away from that horrible village. 

--

You rode in silence for hours. The sun started to set in the west as you leaned back against the man who still held onto you tightly. His silence was almost palpable but you knew he wasn’t angry with you, this was...something else. 

William pulled up to the two of you after scouting ahead and looked at Pero with a nod. “I’ll meet you both at the ravine. Take your time.” 

Pero nodded and clicked his tongue, pulling on the reigns on the horse, moving the both of you closer to the creek bed that was babbling quietly. He waited for the horse to be on flat ground before he slid from the saddle and tied it off to graze in the grass. He held his arms up for you to help you down and you leaned into his touch.

“Thank you,” you whispered as he helped you sit on a fallen tree by the water. You rubbed your arms and watched as he ripped a piece of cloth from his pouch and put it in the water. He knelt in front of you and gingerly took your hands in his, cleaning off the dirt, scrapes, and events of the last few days. You winced when he got to your wrists where the shackles had dug into your tender skin and he cursed quietly under his breath.

“Not you, corazón,” he mumbled and shook his head. 

“I know,” you nodded quietly and your eyes burned as you swallowed a sudden wave of oncoming tears. “I’m sorry--”

“I told you to lay low.” He grit his teeth. 

“I said I was sorry.”

“You didn’t listen to me,” he said gruffly, not looking up from your hands.

“I know.”

“You never do.”

“I..I know.” Your voice trembled so violently you were worried your teeth would start chattering. “Pero--”

“What would have happened if I didn’t come back sooner than planned?” He asked flatly. When you didn’t respond he gripped your hands tightly and looked up at you. “Hermosa, I’m going to ask you something and I need you to tell me the truth.”

“What?” you said.

“Are you a witch?” he raised an eyebrow and you fought the urge not to bark out a bitter laugh.

“How can you ask me that?”

“I feel like I have a right to know,” he continued his stern look that matched his tone. “I know you have secrets from me and I’ve never pushed you to tell me them--but I will ask you not to lie to me. As your husband, I’m owed at least that.”

You couldn’t blame him. From the day you fell out of nowhere onto the battlefield, to the day he saved you from the enemy, to the day he made you his bride to save you again--Pero Tovar had taken a lot on faith. He took only what you wanted to tell him, knowing you couldn’t give him the whole story but trusting that you would never keep things from him that could get the both of you killed. Maybe now was the time. 

You took your hands from his and stood up, pacing up and down the side of the river as you tried to keep what was left of your tattered bodice in place. He sat down in your previous spot on the log, looking at you with those soft brown eyes that you were so fond of. And that’s when you decided to tell him the truth. 

Everything. You told him everything. About the future. About you. About how you had picked up a glittering stone in the middle of the desert on a dig site and then wound up flat on your back in the middle of a battle in a time that was not your own. You told him about war, about technologies, about the rise and fall of empires--at least those you could remember. You talked for hours. And he listened. 

You talked until your throat hurt and you couldn’t stand to talk anymore. Finally you turned to him and crossed your arms under your breasts and hoped with everything you had left in you that he didn’t think you were lying. That he didn’t think you were a crazy person. And more importantly, you hoped that this didn’t make him abandon you.

“Well?” you finally said as you walked over and sat down heavily next to him.

“Well, what?” he huffed and your heart sunk to your stomach.

“Say something, please.”

“I think,” he started, finally lifting his head to look you in the eyes. His lip twitched slightly, making his mustache move as he gave you a small grin. “I think it would be easier if you were a witch, hermosa…”

You gaped at him for a moment before you let out a laugh. The tightness in your chest eased as he pulled you against his chest. You gripped his shirt tightly and inhaled his scent that you had been unknowingly craving for the last few days. As long as he believed you, maybe everything would be okay?

--

[castielmacleod]

Season 4 destiel set us up for pure greatness and then dive bombed straight into the earth immediately after. Why. We could’ve had hot borderline enemies to lovers. We could’ve had the not meant to be together but persist despite all the challenges trope. Damn you supernatural

YEAH honestly honestly. Pure greatness. We could have had it all and the set up is sooooo compelling, and I’m one of the people who started watching after Nov 5 too based on the concept alone so I knew a basic amount about Cas and Dean going in. And watching them interact in season 4 was so HYPE and I was like omg this is actually going to be completely mad. This is going to be nuts. Dean’s literally going to fall in love with the angel who pulled him out of hell. I’m going to love this. And I expected to see their relationship like… develop positively, and for them to be inseperable, and for the show to actually show them even just being friends. But instead I had to watch it all dissolve between the Winchesters treating Cas like a tool, and Dean belittling Cas so often and being so unsupportive (which is so often played for LAUGHS), and the writers turning Cas into the scapegoat when things go wrong which in turn makes Dean even angrier with Cas… it’s exhausting and sad and you KNOW it’s only there to no homo them but it’s there and persistent nonetheless and it’s hard for me to unsee and unhear some of that shit. “Nobody cares that you’re broken, Cas.” “You can’t stay.” Literally the entirety of the dabb era. Etc.

And don’t get me wrong there are a handful of episodes where Cas and Dean’s relationship gets close to resembling what (I personally think) it should be, and they’re working together and getting along and Dean acts like he cares about him and I can almost swear that he truly loves Cas back, particularly the widower arc and the purgatory arc and the mixtape and the “it’s not an it, sam, it’s Cas” and all, those are the few canon things that truly get me. But these lines and episodes are so far and few between that they are literally just drops in an ocean of intolerably angry writing—and angry writing is all I can think to call it cause this show is like allergic to showing people happy together or caring about each other, especially when it comes to the side characters. And it’s hard because like… I’ll still say I think it’s completely ooc for Dean to treat Cas (and others) badly, because he’s supposed to care about family above all and he’s supposed to want to keep his family safe no matter what. But so often that only seems to apply to sam and we just never get to see Dean and Cas just even being friends. And it’s just frustrating!

So I’m stuck absolutely loving the raw concept of Deancas but loving exactly zero of the execution (at least outside of s4), which in turn led me to fanon which most of the time is so charming and nice and what their relationship should have been. And I wish I was better at pretending or believing like the rest of you guys because I think D.estiel really COULD have actually been something like the greatest love story of all time but the show just did not give us that. And most of my fanbases I get annoyed by widely accepted fanon stuff but in this case people really are well and truly out there fixing what could have been such an interesting and wonderful relationship. I guess I just wish some hellers would more readily admit that their actual in-show relationship is a complete mess 99% of the time.

[a-stitch-in-time-and-space]

Cardassians aren’t Nazis (and also not quite the USSR, but I see where you’re coming from)

TW: for much discussions of Nazism, fascism, persecution, no details

So tottering around as a lover of DS9 and (disclaimer) as a major fan of the Cardassians as a not-yer-generic-villain type villain that then become less of a villain, because you can’t assign villainy to a whole species + also being German and hearing/watching/reading a lot of analyses that compare them to Nazis is inspiring me to write this (gasps for breath at the end of that sentence).

@tinsnip , @handsome-anne

1. Who were the Nazis that the Cardassians are specifically being compared to (versus neo-nazis/alt-rights, etc. that they’re not being compared to)

Short version: Post WWI the Versailles Treaty fucked over Germany in a way that left it wide open to the sort of megalomaniacal little bastard on a powertrip that fed on people’s fear and pushed them into a far-right disaster. The Nazi party itself didn’t have a ton of members, but it basically eroded any kind of democracy the country had and decided it would scapegoat Jews, Romani, communists, queer people, and other “intelligent elite”/political dissident and then spread those ideals across the world like a demented wannabe roman Caesar state. This didn’t last too long in the grand scale of world history, but left a body count of 6 million+ dead, mainly Jewish.

2. Germany and its relationship to this history

So Germany tries pretty hard to teach people this history in schools, through memorials, in film, etc. It’s not perfect by any means, there’re still discussions on how to make reparations, as well as neo-nazis and other far-right people around still, sadly just like in the rest of the world. 

But it’s not covering up these atrocities, because there’s a belief that the way to make sure it doesn’t happen again is to be honest. Sadly, not everyone around the world gets as detailed a history surrounding its origins, happenings, and aftermaths, nor does every country engage with its own past like that.

3. Let’s get fictional (Cardassians, first impressions)

The Cardassians are a species that we mainly meet first through their subjugation of the Bajoran people, and then on DS9 following the immediate aftermath of the occupation on Bajor and everything that follows on from there. Throughout the story we discover various bits about what they had done - labour camps, mass executions, forced prostitution, and in that one Voyager episode I’m not a fan of because it didn’t have the range, experimentation.

On the surface, pretty comparable to the nazis, I get it. Hell, often that’s definitely “the source” of where the writers are getting their ideas.

4. So they’re... Nazis?

The problem comes when using one fascist regime as a go-to for these atrocities. It ignores the reality of fascism beyond this particular point in history and also it’s just not that simple. 

When looking at Nazi Germany we also have to look at the source of its making, the climate around it (countries like the UK having a nazi party, Italy and Spain having fascist dictators, hell, the list of dictators that were/are not German is disgustingly long, the worldwide anti-semitism making surrounding countries apathetic or even sympathetic to the Nazis, etcetc.) and the aftermaths of WWII.

The Cardassians are not Nazis. (As an aside the Federation are not the brave allies, but that’s another post for another day.) I’ve seen them compared to the USSR - both by official writers and fandom - which I won’t comment on seeing as I am not from anywhere that was affected by that (I’m not East German, but I do have East German friends), but at least this points out that one cannot compare Cardassians to a specific atrocity that happened at a specific time with specific connotations surrounding it. 

Is the Obsidian Order the Gestapo or another secret police? Which secret police? Is Garak “the good Nazi” trope - but then how does that align with Cardassians living under a repressive regime for centuries, not a few years, and therefore take into account an indoctrination and climate of fear created over several generations? No child “born” into the nazi regime became an adult while it was still lasting, unlike the Cardassians (and many other real life dictatorships and fascist states - as well as "democratic” states that have similar kinds of surveillance, oppression, mass-imprisonment and disappearances, and camps).

Is every Cardassian soldier a “nazi”? How does one compare that to polish and french prisoners (see Pierre Seel for a particular harrowing account, all the trigger warnings apply) who were forced to fight for the Germans and put on the front lines? 

Eugenics, labour camps, and every other atrocity has been practised by numerous regimes, both in history and now, can we shrug off every country that’s participated in them for the sake of making the metaphor “easier”?

How does the aftermath of the Cardassian Union - when they’re attacked by the Klingons and themselves occupied by the Dominion and then have their main planet bombed to the point of millions dead - align with Nazi Germany?

5. It doesn’t.

It doesn’t. It doesn’t neatly align with any other fascist or military dictator-led regime either. This is not saying that there aren’t aspects obviously borrowed from history (and can easily apply to now). This is saying that in trying to bend the Cardassians into Nazis specifically, people are ignoring every other aspect about them and in my opinion doing a disservice to those who suffered under the actual regime. This is a fictional world, with fictional people that is based on an oppressive society template. It is also a fictional world in which the people themselves are oppressed (especially if you align with what’s written in Andy Robinson’s book) - I’ll be getting back to that point in a bit.

 I would argue that making it “about Nazis” is too easy. This isn’t about “us” this is about “them” those evil bastards from wwii. It strips the Cardassian story of any current-day relevance. One can look no further than one’s own society to see people struggling against acknowledging histories, being treated as second-class citizens, etc. No need to go back in time to do so.

It also strips the Cardassians of any three-dimensionality. If they’re just villains then why are we rooting for their uprising to succeed at the end of season 7? Why do we want their society to flourish, their people to no longer have a broken court system, and their secret police to stop training and recruiting children if they’re Nazis, the convenient shorthand for über-evil?

Cardassia isn’t about a past society, it’s about our society. If we empathise with the Cardassians and don’t cast them as villains, then it’s a discussion about our own oppression and privilege. And it’s a damned good scifi allegory (even if I sometimes don’t think the writers and showrunners quite understand it themselves - death of the author and all that).  

6. To conclude

I didn’t mention Bajor as much in this, because I was very focused on Cardassians, but I would argue that while there is value in casting them as “space Jews” (as I’ve seen here and there) because I understand the value of representation and I am not taking that away from anyone (I hope), similarly if one reads this take as the only valid one  it ignores the reality of religious oppression on a wider scale and also that the Bajorans’ oppression at the hands of the Cardassians didn’t happen for the same reasons as the Jewish genocide at the hands of the Nazis - I would also argue that in making Cardassians = Nazis / Bajor = Jews, we similarly ignore that the Nazis were and are not alone in perpetuating anti-semitism, which kinda again leans into the “Good Federation (the Allies) Versus Evil Cardassians (Nazis) - because none of the Good Allied Countries have ever/are currently involved in persecution or dehumanisation *stares into the void*

And lastly - bringing back a point I made earlier about Cardassians themselves being oppressed by their own government - something that is often forgotten when people talk “Nazi tropes in genre fiction” is that the first country the Nazis occupied was Germany. I’m mentioning this, because it’s interesting in the metaphor, but it’s also conspicuously is absent in the simplification of how these reads are applied. It’s easy to cast the Cardassians as a whole as Bad People, but it makes for worse story-telling and has uncomfortable undertones of how the world reads Germany’s people as being at fault as a whole as well, without taking into account the specific events that we were globally complicit in - and once again the metaphor falls apart, because allegory doesn’t work so easily, and it shouldn’t.

TL; DR In general I am uncomfortable by “Nazi’s used as tropes” in any fictional world. One shouldn’t sacrifice analysis nor simplify history for the sake of making it easier to make a quick point about “bad guys” and forcing allegories into one shape makes them lose their power.  

Also watch German films on Nazism and European ones on WWII if you’re looking for some better takes (also Cabaret, one of the best movies ever made).

[legobiwan]

Whumptober #5

“on the run”

Notes: Yes, I’m a day behind, I’m hoping to post a second story tonight but let’s see where life goes. This story...I started out with an idea, and then that idea went in a very different direction as I started writing. RotS AU.

General Whumptober tag

Whumptober 2020 #1

Whumptober 2020 #2

Whumptober 2020 #3

Whumptober 2020 #4

~~~~~~

If you were here, Qui-gon…

Right. If you were here you’d probably shackle me up - wrists tightly enclosed in Force-dampening binders, restraining collar around my neck. Your harsh words would be an invisible whip against my true skin, your touch too soft for a monster such as I, pleading almost, far too kind than what I deserve for my crimes.

You would do all this, Qui-gon, your eyes dark with disappointment, letting no other man or soldier or droid handle me except yourself. Your failure of a Padawan trussed up like a common criminal (common? Perhaps not.), signed, sealed, and delivered personally back to Coruscant for my trial and probable execution.

And you would be right to do so, Qui-gon. So, so right. Force, part of me wishes you could swoop down right now, take me in your arms, the last friendly touch I would ever know before you placed my body on the electroguillotine’s platform to the cheers of the Senate, to the stony facades of the Jedi Council. One last bit of kindness, your hand on my cheek, before the killing blade would deliver me from my sins, before this would all just be over.

After all, it’s not every day a member of the Jedi High Council assassinates the Chancellor of the Republic on live holofeed.

Their faces Qui-gon, the way the Force shifted like two ancient, tectonic masses, colliding as Palaptine - or should I say Sidious - fell from his lofty perch, body plunging, down, down, down until it hit the subterranean floor of the Senate chamber with a sickening, exhilarating thud.

The similarities to my subterfuge as Rako Hardeen were not unmarked, believe me, Qui-gon. Palpatine, however, unlike myself, continues to be dead, two neat holes placed through the side of his treacherous head.

I feel, perhaps, that I have forsaken myself.

But you weren’t there, Master, you didn’t watch through thin slits of wavering consciousness, of azure and crimson rainbows, of the sneaking tar of decay that oozed forth from the man who would lead - would conquer - the Republic and the Jedi. You weren’t there as your Padawan - your friend and brother, the boy you so cared for (more than myself, I can now admit). As Anakin brought the two blades together at Dooku’s neck, executioner of a death sentence signed in familiar large, looping letters - “Sheev Palpatine, Chancellor of the Republic.”

It was him, Qui-gon. The Sith Lord was right there, the entire time, one hand on Anakin’s shoulder, leading him to perdition.

And I did nothing to stop it.

Nothing, until now.

Perhaps if I had been the one to perish on Naboo…perhaps none of this would have ever happened. But that is another world lost to another time, and the ‘here and now,’ as you would say, consists of a cold storage closet in the rear of a Rodian smuggler’s ship.

Three days I’ve been cramped in this space, my passage paid with the frozen Twi’lek guard lying at my feet, legs bent at unnatural, backward angles, the trickle of blood dripping from their nose now an ugly, improvised tattoo.

It’s cold, Qui-gon. A blessing, in some ways, as my departed friend here is unlikely to suffer the worst effects of putrefaction, but I feel even if I were to be on the sunny beaches of Scarif, I would still shiver at my own conscience.

I am tired, Qui-gon.

~~~

You visited me in my dreams last night, Qui-gon.

Neither the avenging angel of death nor the soft shepherd of comfort, you stood, distant, enigmatic as a Loth-Sphinx, as distant and maddening as you had been in life.

I suppose this should have come as no surprise.

Why? You asked me.

Why what, Qui-gon? Why did I kill Palpatine, why did I run, why did I make a fool’s promise to you all those years ago?

As to the last question, I believe - well, perhaps not believe, but fervently hope - you know the answer already.

To answer the others - what choice did I have? To witness what I had, to know Anakin was in thrall to this…this thing, that I would never convince him of Palpatine’s true intentions, that I had lost any trust, any esteem he may have still had for me with my own betrayals -

It was all happening too fast, Qui-gon. The situation on Mandalore, the battle on Coruscant, Dooku’s death. I briefly confided in Bail Organa, the Senator from Alderaan, hinted at my actions in regards to the Mandalore situation, on the way to Coruscant. He told me in no uncertain terms that the Senate would be forced to bring down charges of insurrection, even possibly treason, once they learned of my manipulations of the GAR.

What was one more charge, on top of the others, I thought.

It…it’s better this way, Qui-gon. The Jedi, while still under suspicion, have an obvious and convenient scapegoat, a Council member gone rogue, the underground actor fanning the flames of rumors of a coup. Anakin, while unstable, is at least now out of his orbit. Whether he stays in the Order or leaves, I cannot say, but I hope for his sake - and his unborn child’s - he leaves.

Don’t you see, Qui-gon? The only one who must suffer here is me and I will do so gladly.

Ah, but why not turn myself in, you ask. The deed is done, why run from my actions?

The Twi’lek’s crimson lividity has given way to a more pale ochre, abdomen swollen and nauseated. While the cold has stalled this inevitable process, I must confess to being a bit wary of my companion’s stability.

One more night, and we shall reach Mandalore.

I remain here, discomfited bunkmate to the dead, while Cody and his men span the galaxy, hunting for the wayward Jedi - the turncoat, the traitor, the aruetii…

But you see, Qui-gon, as the galaxy turns its eye on me, it distances its gaze from the Order, from the Council’s machinations.

If I had not acted, someone else would have - with far more dire consequences, I fear.

We spoke of it, you know. Taking over the government, stripping Palpatine of his power (and how laughable a notion that is, to strip a Sith Lord of their edged fury. Impossible to achieve without bloodshed.) It’s not that we wanted to usurp the government - even within the Council itself, there was strong dissent to even considering this notion.

Mace would have gladly fallen on his lightsaber to see justice served. As would Kit. And Plo. And possibly Master Yoda.

But their souls were clean.

Mine, on the other hand…

It’s late Qui-gon, and I fear tomorrow will be an unpleasant day.

~~~

You once said, Qui-gon, that upon finding a confluence of paths, there is no correct direction, that, in the end, there was only a decision, and the consequences thereof.

I find myself in such a place.

It seems the news of my actions reached Mandalore before I did, the civil war now at an uneasy pause, Maul neutered (and what does that say about me, that I could not achieve this victory when Ahsoka could? Perhaps I am too close, too near that fault line to act as she could.)

But they do not know, Qui-gon, what I do. Ahsoka may look on in muted fury, Rex dipping his head as he comms Cody, his only words a soft we have him, Bo-Katan radiant with indignation - why could you have not done this before?

Before we both lost her, before Satine’s legacy was burnt to the ground, before it came to this.

They wrap me in cords and shackles and the best Jedi restraints Mandalore has to offer, dumping me in the same containment cell as him, who takes one look at my sorry state, who knows what sins are written on my soul.

Maul throws back his head, and cackles, the sound of a hundred broken mirrors.

They only have one, he says.

He doesn’t need to explain further.

The Mandalorian sarcophagus. We both saw it, that first time on Mandalore, Satine’s cheeks turning pink, then red, as she explained the true purpose of the monstrous devices.

We would never use them now, she said. There’s no need.

We can only hope, you answered.

And now, it is a question of who is the greater monster - the being born of blood and violence, or the one who accepted it into his heart.

He would have been his new apprentice, Maul drawls, with a sick smile.

I know, I answer. I do know, don’t I? Knew this entire time and yet could do nothing to stop it - until now.

Will you accept your fate, Kenobi? Be hauled back to Coruscant in chains, your allies grinning as your head falls from the blade?

I should. Damnit, I should, Qui-gon! I am a Jedi, I do not fear death, for there is only the Force.

And yet…

~~~

We are leaving, Qui-gon, Maul and I. To what end, I cannot say. Do not fear for me, Master of mine. I am long corrupted, past redemption in this life and can only hope to use my darkness for an ultimate good.

There is much to be done.

May I feel your soft hand on my cheek one more time, Qui-gon, if only in my dreams.

Please forgive me.

I am sorry.

Yours in this life and the next,

Obi-wan Kenobi.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

i always think the reactions to different whumpers are fascinating, and honestly it highlights something very interesting. Bram? Calon Nie? those two feel very divorced from the “real world,” mostly due to them being fantasy creatures by nature and just being so... outlandishly inhuman. they’re villains you love to hate. they’re fun. even Karen falls into that category, because she’s not someone you’re likely to find in real life. but Oliver Branch? Corrine? whoever that bitch was that argued with Chris was (forgot her name whoops lol)? a child predator and an abusive mother and a privileged girl? they’re hated with real, burning hatred because they feel like someone you could encounter. they’re real monsters from real life. it’s a really interesting divide

This is something I've talked a little bit about before when it comes to Owen. Abraham is fantastical, and a little exaggerated, and doesn't really strike you as someone you would see in life... Whereas in the end, Owen is just an abusive boyfriend, and a Nice Guy™, and you see and interact with men like that all of the time.

Corinne Michaelson is emotionally abusive to her son even outside of her decision to adopt him. Patrick Michaelson is immensely neglectful and only barely aware his oldest son exists. They essentially pit Ryan and Danny against each other as a scapegoat and golden child situation. These are people that you see all the time.

Oliver Branch is a child predator.

Callie is an immensely privileged person who, when she has that privilege pushed back against, reacts with a defensive need to cling on to what she understands and knows and was taught, and isn't really capable of looking outside of that narrow worldview. Everyone knows people like that. is she evil? No, she's a college kid who has literally never looked outside of her bubble before. But that does mean that she hurts Chris, and badly, and doesn't particularly care about that or even begin to understand it.

Karen is a cold executive, which is fairly normal, but also her personality and methods are written in ways that make her fantastical and less realistic, so she kind of rides the line between an Abraham and an Owen situation in my mind.

I tried to balance that with equally realistic depictions of people who have a positive influence on my character's lives as well... Natalie yoder, in the end, is also a very wealthy woman... Choosing to use that wealth to help instead of hurt. Jake is just a college kid with a nasty childhood who decides to try and make things better, even if he can't make them right.

Eshiram and the others in that class who walked out with Chris, and stood up for him, were in a position where it might have been better for them personally to simply let Chris take the fall, and take the blame, and stare down at their desks and remain silent. Instead, they backed him up.

Grandma Ruth and Jaden are the people who stare out their windows and talk about what everyone else on the street is doing and a tweenager who seriously would rather be doing anything else... But that nosiness comes in handy when they witness violence perpetuated against their neighbor and choose to step outside and help.

All of the neighbors if you think about it, would have been safer choosing to ignore what happened and leave Chris alone for 3 days and pretend they didn't know anything about it.

Instead, they come together to take care of him and fix up the house and make it clear that even if they can't rebuild everything that's wrong, they can rebuild this one small thing, and make this one small difference, and hope that snowballs into something bigger.

So, I try to write people who could realistically exist in a universe in which all of these things are happening. It's not that much different than our own, just some of the context changes.

[dalekofchaos]

The Fireflies’ vaccine wouldn’t have worked or why Joel did the right thing

In the last part of The Last of Us, Joel kills all the fireflies and saves Ellie but by doing so he may have doomed humanity by ending the possibility of a cure being made, making the ending bittersweet and morally ambiguous. The thing is, Joel didn't really do anything wrong, and saving Ellie was the right choice, here are my reasons:

The doctors would remove Ellie's brain to try to create a vaccine, but that's not how vaccines works, a vaccine is a tamed version of a pathogen that "teaches" your body to defend against it, to do a vaccine you need to use the pathogen in small quantities or a modified version of it, Ellie is immune to it, you don't create vaccines from the immune system, that's called a serum, and it works differently, a serum is used when someone comes in contact with a disease and it contains a series of antibodies that fight the infection, but it doesn't make anyone immune. So what they were trying to do was pointless;

Even if the doctors know what they were doing, it was a wild shot a with no guarantee that it would work;

Even if a vaccine was successfully made they wouldn't save the world, the world was destroyed 20 years ago, society collapsed and was rebuilt again on a new way, and everyone already new how to deal with it, also the greatest threat were not even the cordyceps fungus anymore, it was the infected (that the vaccine couldn't do nothing about) and the crooked humans that walked the earth. Besides that, the fireflies had no way to distribute the vaccine worldwide, not even in a national level.

If you listen to the tapes in the Colorado segment, it pretty much confirms that Ellie is not unique and they wouldn’t be able to make a vaccine anyway. The doctor has practically lost his mind and Ellie is just his white whale. Ellie was not the first subject and she most likely wouldn’t have been the last. 

The doctor pretty much went against the common ethical code of all medical practitioners just for a CHANCE at a vaccine/cure.  

And wouldn't it take a lot of time to study her? A day to do all the tests is outright impossible. Just look at the corona vaccine. With all the tech the world has the biotechnologists are going to take more than a year to make a vac.

Vaccines for Fungal infections are nearly impossible and are a logistical nightmare.Even in today’s world,they can only be treated with antibiotics and anti-fungal medicine. They didn’t even bother with thoroughly researching Ellie’s blood and trying to extract the fungal specimen without killing her. The tests were blood samples and samples from the area where she was bit and then only cutting her brain open as THE LAST POSSIBLE USE for her, then when their step 1 was "lol just kill this incredibly rare specimen" I was shocked.

BTW, PS4 version actually removed a piece of paper that's available in all the other forms of the game. What is this piece of paper? Just the one that describes how they've tried this process dozens of times before and how they've NEVER gotten any useful info.

The Fireflies are terrorists. The Fireflies are terrorists, and not even competent ones. Here we go. We first hear of the Fireflies in credits, where they are taking credit for attacking the Federal Disaster Response Agency. Not a good start.The next time we start to see hints of them is through graffiti in the quarantine zone. What does this graffiti say? Fireflies will take it all back. That sounds great! Burn it all down. ...oh. That’s, uh, a little less great. Fucking die, pig. Um… Uh, that’s uh, not a great look here guys.And that goes on and on. The graffiti does not exactly inspire. All it does is get angry.Next time we see them, it’s when they literally bomb a checkpoint and supply truck, then begin firing wildly all over the place. This is straight terrorism. They don’t care if there is collateral damage, in fact, Joel gets injured in this scene.Then we meet Marlene, the so-called Queen Firefly. Injured and on the run, the military is slowly wiping them out. This leads to a line of dialogue that is absolutely hilarious. Marlene starts to preach about “We’ve been quiet. Been planning on leaving the city, but they need a scapegoat. They’ve been trying to rile us up. We’re trying to defend ourselves”Those are big words from someone who just bombed a checkpoint.This clearly shows us that Marlene cannot be trusted as a narrator. She has an agenda and is lying to Joel and possibly herself. And that despite how effective guerrilla tactics usually are, her group is still managing to get absolutely devastated. They are failing so badly that they have to recruit smugglers just to try to get Ellie out of the city.So begins the trek showing dead Fireflies at every turn. Downtown subway station? Dead Fireflies. The Capitol building? Dead Fireflies. Pittsburgh? Oh, let’s talk about Pittsburgh.Pittsburgh is a monument to Firefly failure. Pittsburgh was originally another Quarantine zone held together by FEDRA. So what happened here? Well, times got hard, and the Fireflies instigated a civil war or insurrection. This fighting lasted for months, with Fireflies lynching soldiers that they caught alone, burning soldiers alive after dousing them in gasoline, and FEDRA retaliating by executing Fireflies. FEDRA finally gave up and retreated from Pittsburgh, putting the Fireflies in control- and then it all fell apart. The people of Pittsburgh discover that the Fireflies had planned to move right into the space FEDRA had previously occupied. And so, after this was discovered, the Fireflies were driven out just like FEDRA had been. Only much faster, and with less fight. And now Pittsburgh is nothing but anarchy. People gunned down in the streets for nothing. Rooms full of bodies, clothes and shoes. Almost looks like after images of Dachau. Bravo, Fireflies. Excellent revolution.Next up, we meet Tommy, Joel’s brother, and disenfranchised Firefly. He worked for them for years, going all the way to Colorado for them. Somewhere along the way, he lost faith in them and left their cause. He doesn’t specify exactly why, but it seems he might have lost faith in their methods.Then we come to the University. This is where we really discover how incompetent the Fireflies actually are. One of the first notes you see at University is about a guy who is angry he got yelled at for falling asleep on guard duty. Real professionals. This same note indicates that while they’re still getting some supplies, it’s not enough for what’s needed, with gasoline being particularly short. The next note comes from a recording, telling us that they’re losing more guards, with the doctor clearly concerned about how much equipment and data will be lost if they have to move. The doctor even calls the Fireflies incompetent in this note. And then we have this genius.. That’s right. Bitten by his own lab monkey. Because he just had to set it free, rather than putting it down humanely. Brilliant work sir. Brilliant. He kills himself before turning though, but not before informing us that they hadn’t accomplished anything for over five years. And even that small breakthrough was ultimately a failure. And now the entire lab is compromised, and abandoned.And then there’s a long break from Fireflies until Salt Lake. Ellie, having just gone underwater, isn’t breathing. Joel attempts to perform CPR on her when our hero Firefly shows up, and knocks Joel unconscious. Ah, violence. The first solution. Willing to forgive it, since it strongly mirrors the scene with Sarah, only the Firefly is in the soldier’s shoes this time. But still. Military was gentler.And now for the hospital. The final failure of the Fireflies. This is where so many people are convinced that Joel screws the world by preventing a vaccine. But somehow, I just don’t think so. This is one last desperate bid by the Fireflies for control. How do they intend to do this? Comprehensive bloodwork? No. Vigorous testing with laboratory animals, like, oh, maybe monkeys? No, someone let all their monkeys go. Crack open her head and hope for the best? Hell yeah! Does the fact that they’ve lost their biologist concern them? Nah, it’ll be fine! Does the fact that this is the only time they’ve seen immunity to this degree even give them pause? Pfft, crack her open! Does the fact that there has never been a successful vaccine against fungus give them pause? PASS THAT SCALPEL! No need to think this over, let’s blow our whole load on this once in a lifetime lucky strike as fast as possible. No, I’ve never heard the story about the goose who laid the golden eggs, tell it to me after I finish butchering surgery. Even if we make this vaccine, how will we deploy it? You're thinking too hard, hand me the saw!This is just bad science. Done by bad scientists. Cheered on by fools. Fools who wanted to murder Joel after he made that long trip.And for people who insist on government and democracy, it’s funny how they didn’t risk telling Ellie their “plan” and just sedated her and rushed her to the table.

Even by SOME MIRACLE they managed to make a vaccine, the world ain't gonna automatically return to what it was. It's a dog eat dog world and that is the new normal. Infected, cannibals, more psychos like David and raiders are still there and it ain't going away soon or maybe ever. On top of that, mass production and distribution of a vaccine is an absolute logistical nightmare in a post apocalyptic world- they simply don't have enough resources for that. And who's to say The Fireflies wouldn't use it to as a bargaining tool to put everyone, willing or not, under their new rule? And even given all that, they debated killing Joel after he delivered Ellie. He did the job and the payment he received was getting knocked out and being marched outside of the safe zone AT GUNPOINT WITHOUT HIS WEAPONS AND SUPPLIES! The Fireflies broke their deal and fucked Joel over. Joel had ever right to kill them and save Ellie.

So I believe what Joel did in the end was the right thing, the fireflies was an extremist group that was willing to do anything not to save the world, but to prove their point, even kill an innocent girl under a delusional precept. 

[silenthillmutual]

I beg your pardon! It’s me who is going mad.

So, I know I did a Twitter thread about the ways Daniil is manipulated in Classic, and I thought I’d put it on here too.

I’m going to stop short of calling it gaslighting here though, because too many people are using that term who don’t really understand what it means. Gaslighting is specifically a form of abuse where the intention is to make the victim feel they are going insane. Not all manipulation or abuse is gaslighting - which doesn’t make it less bad, just...not gaslighting.

That being said: in Classic, there are quite a few times where Daniil can say that he thinks he’s losing his mind, and there are times when the game seems constructed to make you feel this way. Particularly I had in mind the ending of the game, and not just the part where you find out you’re a toy and always have been (that falls more under cosmic horror). What bugs me about the end and how that fits into things, is the fact that the Sand Pest and its outcomes have been chasing you - the clouds, the angels, the muggers, the firestarters, the rats, literally chasing you through houses and through town, only for all of it to completely vanish without a trace on the exact day you’re meant to give a solution to it all. I made a point on Twitter about how people attempting to gaslight you will submit you to a large amount of damage - physical, verbal, emotional, take your pick - and then remove the abuse and any signs of it just before they’re caught. it’s how they show to others that it’s you who’s the problem, not them. 

Regardless of whether you think the intention is to make Daniil feel he’s losing is sanity or not, the question would be who is manipulating Daniil, and why? There are a couple answers.

The first answer is the Town. The first playthrough as the Bachelor of the game is probably the closest fitting to psychological horror as the game gets. Like Silent Hill, the Town is full of horrors that seem tailor-made to torture Daniil specifically: most of these people are uneducated (the Town doesn’t even have a school), their cultural beliefs (mostly appropriated from the steppe culture) actively prevent him from doing his job as a doctor, his word and name are constantly weaponized by people with ulterior motives, and men run around on the first two days beating women to death or burning them alive and intervening actively costs you reputation - which you need to do anything. He arrives with the hope of finding evidence to keep his lab opening and, as we later learn, keep himself from execution, only to find that both the man who would serve as this evidence and the colleague who informed you of his existence have been murdered just before your arrival. You have a lot of things riding on your success, and everything about where you are is actively working against you. The government wants you to find a cure single-handedly, but the Town has other plans for you. 

And those plans are: errand boy, and scapegoat. People throughout the Town will inform you that they are scared of you when you’ve barely interacted with them, let alone in ways that should inspire fear. It doesn’t matter how good your reputation as Daniil is (and through the course of the game, there’s very little you’re made to do that lowers your reputation, and it never gets bad enough for you to be attacked on the street or refused sale from shops), what matters is the fact that everyone in Town, from the nameless NPCs to the rulers, are putting every bad thing they’ve done down as being your fault. 

But the Town has another way it’s manipulating Daniil, by almost making him a member of it. I don’t think I got a screenshot, but I’m sure that somewhere along the line Daniil comments that he’s starting to talk like one of the townsfolk. You can see this happens to Andrey, too, later in the game; he talks in what Daniil calls “Griefisms”. 

You have been sent here to fight an adversary that inherently cannot be beaten - in foolish hopes that a miracle would happen and your outstanding mind would stumble upon a once-in-a-million chance. And just so that you wouldn’t give up, they kept insisting that the adversary must be destroyed. Do you see how insidious the Powers That Be are?     > But why? Their motives are becoming less and less comprehensible to me by the day.

The second answer is the Powers That Be.

Three people enter the Town that the Powers That Be want to get rid of: the Bachelor, the Inquisitor, and the Commander. It wants them all to fix or solve or demolish something in the town, and doesn’t really care what happens to any of them. Pathologic 2 spells it out clearer for you that Aglaya, Block, and Daniil will all be executed upon return to the Capital if their answers are not what the Powers That Be want to hear. And for the time that you are in the Town as Daniil Dankovsky, the Powers That Be - like the town itself - actively work against you. The trains that are meant to bring food and medication never, to my knowledge, arrive, and most days bring about a new letter from the Powers spelling out for you how disappointed in you and your progress they are. Some of the ways they attempt to manipulate Daniil through these letters are subtle, but most of them are unsubtle suggestions that what he’s been able to accomplish is not good enough, that he was meant to work alone.

Even one of your first letters from them is suspicious; early on in the game, they write to let you know that they are in no way responsible for the outbreak, which is an incredibly suspicious thing to say. What is the point of sending such a letter? Would the player have really thought that they were if they hadn’t suggested as much through denial? After all, what called you to Town was a letter from Isidor Burakh. But yet, the Powers That Be are the ones who leave you stranded in the Town with limited resources, no help, and constantly shifting goalposts. Aglaya makes this clear to you when she arrives: you were never supposed to be successful. 

The letters from the Powers That Be do not serve any purpose other than to upset Daniil, and most if not all of them contain lies: that a train will be arriving, that they don’t mind if you have help in carrying out your plans, that Thanatica still exists, referencing conversations you’ve never had, signing drafts of letters you didn’t consult on with your name. One of the reasons i had put this down as gaslighting is because people who gaslight like to keep you off balance and emotionally fragile so that you’re easier to manipulate. You’ll do whatever they want to make the feeling stop, because you just can’t handle the stress anymore, and in the process you come across to others as unreasonable, unhinged, crazy, dangerous, so that no one will trust you. And that’s exactly how Daniil starts to come across to the townspeople: deranged, strung out, dangerous, untrustworthy.

You can contrast all that to a different letter they send you where they claim to be proud to call you one of your own. Combine the two, and you get honeymooning. They want to remind you of the good (or at least, not-as-bad) times you’ve had with them. This behavior serves two, sometimes three purposes: to keep you off balance from the violent back-and-forth, dizzying nature of what they’re doing to you, and so that you’ll defend them to people who can see what’s going on and want to get you out of it. You’ll even convince yourself that you’re not really being mistreated. If you were being abused, would they be so nice to you? 

You are the last friend our family has. I hope our attachment to you doesn’t look obtrusive.      > It requires too much from me. I’m not comfortable with it.     > No, not at all. 

The third answer is the Kains. Specifically, Georgiy and Maria repeatedly manipulate Daniil, though I’ve no doubt in the text above Victor stating their attachment to Daniil is also a manipulation, and one possibly planned by either or perhaps both of them. The text above probably looks normal, but think about the purpose it serves: to reinforce that Daniil is friendly with the Kains. Your only two options are to say that it doesn’t bother you, or to express that you feel your boundaries are being violated by their attention. But I even thinking about picking that option... Well, it feels mean. 

Throughout the game, people will comment on Maria’s attachment to you and what they feel is your predestination to be romantically paired with her. All this, despite the fact that you don’t really interact with her that much. I’ve seen this be explained as forced heterosexuality, but I think it also is a way of the Kains manipulating Daniil into doing what they want. Daniil gets upset whenever people cry; when children cry, he tries to calm them and fix whatever’s upset them - there’s an entire sidequest after the army arrives in which Daniil kills a group of soldiers, spurred into action by upset children. Whenever he encounters Maria crying, he reacts with discomfort, and she uses these tears and upset to manipulate Daniil into thinking Aglaya has lied to him, effectively distancing him from one of the only people in the game with a rational mind to show him support and tell him the truth. I don’t think the two are in any way unconnected. Something abusers, manipulators, gaslighters love to do is isolate you so that you only have one source of information to go to. If they cut you off from other people, they can continue to feed off of you. You’ll never have a chance to question if what you’re being told about yourself or others is correct, you’ll just be a constant supply of drama for them. 

DANIIL: Was there any particularly notable backstory? I’m deadly tired of all these people. They’re inhuman. They tell the future, believe in walking zombies, and die in all manners of painfully abnormal ways. 

AGLAYA: Your line of thinking is obviously fallacious - and I was implying something rather mundane. I promise you no one can really tell the future around here and neither are deaths inspired by third parties uncommon. Mysterious phenomenons do occur here sometimes... but hardly more often than anywhere else.

You can see, first, the effect all this has had on Daniil, how dispiriting the past several days have been to him. But you can also see here exactly why a family that prides itself on multi-generational reincarnation and manipulation through “fortune-telling” wants to keep its blunt instrument in the dark. 

That is, ultimately, why they are manipulating Daniil. Georgiy knows full well when he tells Daniil at the beginning that everyone, even himself, will lie to Daniil, that being that honest upfront is more likely to lead Daniil to trusting him. They want to sway him to their cause; this is why you are told that your success here depends on the wellbeing of the people Maria considers useful: herself, her father and uncle - who she gets out of the way later on to come into her power, the architects of the Polyhedron - which she will use to ascend to power, and the theatre director who has pledged himself to be her loyal servant. Eva’s on the list, too, but her inclusion was deliberately set up to make you depend on the Kains later in the game, considering that it’s Maria who convinced her to commit suicide:

DANIIL: Why did Eva die then? AGLAYA: I have a distinct suspicion she was made to die. DANIIL: By whom?  AGLAYA: One of the Kains. I’d even go so far as to claim that they may have performed human sacrifice.

It’s a two-for-one deal: try in vain to make a Focus of the Cathedral, and remove from Daniil the last piece of influence who was not totally in love with Maria. Maria “cries” and is “upset” at you for thinking Eva’s death is her fault, but no one directly tells you Maria is responsible - all Aglaya does is tell you the Kains are at fault. The rest is just you remembering how nasty Maria was about Eva at the beginning of the game. I wouldn’t even say that Maria was removing a rival for Daniil’s affection. She really does only view Daniil as an object: if you speak to her on day 12, she assumes that you’re leaving, and doesn’t even ask you to stay (for kicks, contrast this with either ending of Pathologic 2 when you speak to Daniil as Artemy, where he’s supposed to be your rival. what was all that about Maria being in love with you...?); he’s not even present in his own ending cutscene. Even Mark Immortell says you’re leaving -

And actually, that’s a really fascinating conversation you can have with him on day 12. It’s where the game outright admits exactly what Aglaya told you: it’s all fake. Maria cannot really see the future, you’ve just been manipulated the entire game to achieve someone else’s goals, and unless you’ve gone around and saved Artemy’s or Clara’s bound, it’s too late for you to turn back and make a different decision. If you’ve picked Daniil’s ending, you just destroyed an entire town on the basis of outright lies. 

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

The 2020 election will be the COVID-19 election. Voters will almost certainly be asked to condemn or endorse President Trump’s handling of the pandemic — and quite possibly while the virus is in the midst of a fall relapse.

Any year would have been a bad year for a pandemic. But a presidential election year makes it even worse. As elected officials at all levels of government scramble for resources and weigh complex decisions on how to respond, the electoral implications introduce a thorny calculus: How will it all play in November?

Here is the crudest of calculations: If Democrats can successfully associate the substantial harm wreaked by COVID-19 with Trump, they win in November. But if Trump and the Republicans can deflect enough blame elsewhere and Trump gets credit for making things less bad than they could have been, Trump will win.

Democrats have done the obvious so far: Pin all the blame on Trump by highlighting how he initially downplayed the virus and blasting his subsequent stumbles. They’ve also tried to position themselves as the party of good governance. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, for instance, announced the formation of a new select committee that will oversee how the Trump administration manages the $2 trillion economic stimulus package, with a focus on waste, fraud and abuse.

It’s also possible that some traditional Democratic constituencies will be simply hit harder by the virus, too, which could make the fallout of the virus more personal and a stronger point to campaign on. For instance, in blue states and cities like New York City, the virus has hit especially hard, including in poorer and less white neighborhoods. And as the harm becomes clearer, we will almost certainly see echoes of Hurricane Katrina, with its disparate racial and class impacts, but on a much larger scale. These inequalities might reverberate with Democrats’ long-standing criticisms that Trump is a racist — and could yield record turnout along with a persuasive fundraising message.

And don’t underestimate the power of negative partisanship. In 2016, many Republicans held their noses and voted for Trump because they wanted to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House. That same logic could apply in 2020. If Democrats hit Trump hard enough, unified disdain for Trump might matter more than anything former Vice President Joe Biden promises, bringing Democratic voters together after another fractious primary. Though negative partisanship has been building up now for several election cycles, it thrives on frustration and anger, and 2020 will likely offer plenty.

For Trump and Republicans, much of their 2020 strategy seems to be focused on putting the blame elsewhere — Democrats, the “mainstream media,” China and even some of America’s governors.

Let’s start with one of Trump’s favorite punching bags: the media. In what may be a preview of a Republican electoral strategy to come, Sen. Marco Rubio recently tweeted that “Some in our media can’t contain their glee & delight in reporting that the U.S. has more #CoronaVirus cases than #China.” This argument probably sounds familiar, as many conservative pundits have pushed it since the beginning of the outbreak in the U.S. It’s still possible that the ultimate death toll undershoots the current worst-case scenarios. If so, Republicans could eventually point to the high predictions as fearmongering. But many experts still think the situation could grow much worse, so it’s also a very risky strategy at this point. (Ironically, if the death toll is lower than predicted, it may be because the higher projections themselves scared politicians and citizens into following social-distancing guidelines.)

As for pinning the blame on Democrats, Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have argued that impeachment was a major distraction during a critical time in February. (Never mind that he was reportedly first briefed on the spread of a deadly virus in China in November or that, after his acquittal in the Senate on Feb. 5, Trump spent much of February downplaying the threat of a pandemic.)

Trump and his allies have also found a scapegoat in China, arguing the Chinese government engaged in a massive cover-up that allowed the virus to spread, which blindsided the Trump administration. The U.S. intelligence community has found evidence that China underreported its outbreak, so this could resonate with voters, especially considering both Democrats and Republicans agree that the Chinese government bears some responsibility for the spread of the pandemic. And if Republicans do pursue this strategy, it builds on a persistent theme of Trump-era Republican campaigns: Blame the outsider. After all, in 2018 Republican campaign strategists ran an aggressive anti-immigration campaign because they believed it was an issue that would help them win. So expect a possible replay of this in 2020, with China replacing the “migrant caravan.”

Trump has also pointed his finger at Democratic governors for failing to stockpile their own supplies. The political gambit appears to boil down to this: Trump thinks he could benefit electorally if he pushes governors — particularly Democratic governors — to say what a great job he’s doing.

Consider Trump’s tussle with Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who complained her state wasn’t getting the medical supplies she needed from the federal government. Trump responded, “I don’t know if she knows what’s going on, but all she does is sit there and blame the federal government … We don’t like to see complaints.” Michigan, after all, is likely to be a key swing state in 2020. This could certainly backfire, but this is the kind of high-stakes political gamesmanship that a pandemic in a presidential election year engenders.

Then finally, we come to the most dangerous hot potato of all: the administration of the election itself. In order to ensure a safe and fair election, jurisdictions across the country will have to rapidly transition to voting by mail and/or expand early voting.

But Trump and Republicans have already indicated they will be loath to support such measures, as they argue it would hurt Republicans at the ballot box. Democrats, meanwhile, have said that expanding vote-by-mail efforts is the only way to mitigate risks from in-person voting. Political scientists haven’t found any clear partisan advantage to voting by mail (if anything, it seems to encourage participation among more habitual voters). But Wisconsin’s beleaguered primary — which saw partisan fighting over whether to delay the election — could be a harbinger of the difficulties to come.

And if that is the case, November will be a mess in states that don’t get their act together soon — especially in battleground states with divided governments, like Wisconsin.1 (Other likely swing states have divided governments, including Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and New Hampshire.) It’s unclear where this fight is headed, but it is likely to be a high-stakes battle that echoes long-standing partisan grievances over how best to ensure access to voting. And given the logistical difficulties of implementing electoral changes, delays could actually be an effective tactic.

If it’s relatively clear how ugly the tone of the 2020 COVID-19 blame campaign will be, it’s much harder to say how all this will impact the actual outcome of the 2020 election. Trump’s approval rating has remained remarkably flat over the last three years despite the ups and downs of his presidency, largely because of how polarized American politics has become. In other words, very few events move the needle on public opinion anymore. Even the coronavirus crisis has given Trump only a relatively small boost, compared to those of other world leaders and most governors.

Ultimately, the blame games might offset. In our highly polarized era, most voters made up their mind long ago — hence Trump’s consistent approval numbers. But in an escalating arms race of blame, one-sided disarmament would be folly. So brace yourself.

In another world, or at another time in our history, a common threat like a pandemic might have brought Americans together. However, in this hyper-partisan presidential election year with so much blame to go around and so much pre-existing animosity to draw on, that might not be the case.

Instead, the months to come will test not only our health care system and our economy, but also our democracy and our ability to cooperate across party lines to win a novel kind of war against a novel kind of virus. If the road feels bumpy now, the path ahead looks like nothing but an obstacle course. Buckle up.

[woeismyhoe]

‘Actions speaks louder than words’

Personally, I think that Azula is the physical embodiment of this phrase. The reason is because Azula’s actions would actually always contradict what she would say before doing anything, and most often what fans would assume she’d be doing.

One of the examples is the infamous bedroom confrontation scene between Zuko and Azula, just right after Zuko realizes that Azula had made him into a scapegoat. Majority of the fandom believes that this has always been Azula’s intention from the start (I disagree) and believe that Azula had set him up this way so that he would be removed from the line of succession once again and be disgraced, thus making Azula be the official heir to the crown.

However, Azula never does anything to actually sabotage Zuko’s standing with their father. In fact, she even actively warns him of his own acts that would actually sabotage his own position and helps him whenever he seems to be in doubt.

Another example is actually their confrontation in The Southern Raiders. Azula actually says:

“You mean it’s not obvious yet? I am about to celebrate becoming an only child!”

No doubt that this was one of the few instances that Azula had actually thought of killing Zuko. She even announced this with an I admit, slight maniacal expression. Although this may have been the first proof of Azula ‘losing it’, I can also argue that Azula was simply lost in her rage the moment she saw Zuko, the one who betrayed her and turned her only friends against her.

What’s interesting about this is that Azula doesn’t use any fatal attacks that could’ve actually killed Zuko. No lightning, no fancy slicing firebending attacks, nothing too lethal for a firebender honestly. Her attacks were literally on par with Zuko’s. So while I do agree to some extent that Azula wanted to kill Zuko here, I think that deep down she didn’t believe in this but her rage just got the best of her. Besides, we must never forget this frame.

An animation mistake? Perhaps, but do take note that this was well in the end of Book 3 where the animation had massively improved from Book 1. For someone who was smiling about announcing that she’d be celebrating being an only child, you would actually expect her to look more enthusiastic at the sight of her brother’s fall. It should also be noted that it’s canon that Azula actually loved Zuko so is it so hard to believe that she would look a little regretful even for just a moment at the sight of her own brother falling to his apparent death?

The most interesting contradiction however, is the fact that Azula did not execute Earth King Kuei or The Council of Five, despite that being the most effective and efficient way for the Earth Kingdom to surrender. It is known in history that rulers were usually executed when they were overthrown so that usurpers wouldn’t be threatened by any of those with legitimate claim. So this was actually a surprising move by Azula, who many people including the character herself, believe that she’s a monster, because not executing those people was actually unheard of, especially judging by the ruthlessness of the Fire Nation Royal family.

One can argue that it was a kids show hence they did not let Azula kill any of the leaders, but I can also argue that they could’ve actually just done it off screen or did it in a similar fashion like how Long Feng had killed Jet.

You would think that one of the most dangerous villains of Avatar (despite being only 14), would actually permanently get rid of anyone who stood in her way. You’d think that the girl who was grinning during her brother’s scarring session, who smiled at the Avatar’s death would’ve actually just had no value for life. Instead, we see a girl whose abuse is far too deep and behind closed doors that we don’t notice it until it’s too late, who all along just yearned for her mother and father’s love, who would rather imprison her enemies than actually kill them.

Azula → a contradiction to the nature of evil villains.

[a-marriedgames-universe-blog]

Why We Need Gaming News

Evidently not a day goes by with out studying of the grotesque horrors related to modern day life. As with films and TV in days passed by it will seem the standard Video Game has emerged as the nice terror influencing the youth of right this moment's fashionable British society.

20 years ago in the event you were to say the words online game to anyone it could conjure up pictures of fats moustache sporting Italian named plumbers making their way by means of a two-tone facet scrolling magical land to an infuriatingly repetitive 8-bit noticias gamessoundtrack. However if you utter the identical two phrases in 2009 you might be likely to be greeted with a gasps and sighs of disgust as the image of a hooded teen in a darkened room with a yr's supply of vitality drinks and crisps piled up beside them.

It appears very a lot that Video Games have change into the enemy of the 21st Century however given the contradictory nature of online game critics it is difficult to take this view severely, however that has not stopped passionate advocates of contemporary day video games doing their upmost in protest of this Our Blog new medium of violence. None maybe have finished extra for the trigger than Florida based mostly attorney Jack Thompson. Thompson has made it his mission over the past decade to rid the world of violent video video games and guarantee those who do slip by way of the new don't fall in to the palms of minors.

Mr. Thompson has a specific bee in his bonnet regarding one Edinburgh based mostly publisher Rockstar Games. Since the launch of Grand Theft Auto and the Creation of Rockstar video games in 1997 the world of video game critics rejoiced at this new 'scapegoat', the mix of on display violence and hands on recreation play led to issues that video video games could be conditioning youngsters in relation to extreme violence. The video games questionable graphics and soundtrack result in many claims being dismissed, because it was not believed a title with such graphics may have a serious influence on a minors mind.

This changed with the release of the PlayStation 2 in 2000 and Grand Theft Auto three the next yr, this for the primary time bought truly 3D gaming to users. It was with the release of GTA 3 that Jack Thompson's ears pricked up with nice consideration Married Games and it wasn't long earlier than he was at it again. In 2003 Dustin Lynch made an madness plea after being accused of homicide claiming he was 'obsessed' with the sport and been influenced by the sport's depiction of graphic violence.

The plea was retracted and his mother acknowledged that it had nothing to do with Video Games. As video video games have improved each graphically and by way of recreation play they have taken https://marriedgames.com.br/ on new roles in society and in recent times have seen a return to the family orientated leisure hub of yesteryear however can online game developers really declare complete innocence?

The Call of Responsibility sequence is without doubt one of the hottest and successful franchises in video game historical past and has even been adopted by the US army as a manner of coaching the US armies troopers in strategic fight so does this not implement the argument that video video games can indeed 'prepare' gamers Wikipedia Here in violent conditions? Well not precisely sure the advancements made in video games has made the level of realism unquestionably detailed however can it actually be argued that at the moment's youth are uneducated enough to battle to distinguish between actual life and quite a few coloured pixels on a tv display screen?

The contradictory nature I referred to earlier performs into this subject. Weight problems in recent times has change into a real hot subject within the USA and certainly Britain and what was being blamed? Sure, that is proper the time being spent in front of the small screen playing video games, so personally I discover it very troublesome to imagine these overweight avid gamers who apparently spend nothing wanting 'all' their time in front of the tv inflicting mayhem and dysfunction on the streets of this nation.

The online game ranking system ensures titles intended for adults usually are not offered to minors nevertheless it does not make sure that they will not be performed by such minors in some unspecified time in the future. An analogous ranking system is in place in the USA nonetheless it is not nearly as tight as that within the UK and mature titles have been bought to underage US kids.

Grand Theft Auto although a favourite for the prosecution just isn't the only franchise to be blamed, the Virginia Tech bloodbath in 2007 which saw the worst shootings of its form in fashionable history, Jack Thompson was fast to put the blame firmly at Social Profile the door of this exciting entertainment type after he acknowledged, killer Seung-Hui Cho was a fan of first person shooter counterstrike nevertheless it was later revealed by Cho's roommates that they had never even seen him taking part in the sport.

By no means the less the declare had great resonance here within the UK resulting in many retailers refusing to stock sure titles one in all which is another of Rockstar's titles 'Canis Canem Edit' originally generally known as bully which underwent a name change for the UK market due to strain on the publisher, despite the sport utterly advocating bullying. The bloodbath also contributed to the banning of the sequal to controversial Manhunt in the UK market.

As with mobile phones and their apparent hyperlinks to cancer much analysis has been executed in to the link between violence and video games, and it is not just violence that has been researched, oh no, it's also video video games obvious glamorization of intercourse, medicine and maybe even rock and roll'. And what is the conclusion? Nicely unsurprisingly research confirmed no significant hyperlink between video games and violent crimes, sexual assault or drug consumption. Nevertheless alcohol however might be immediately linked with the above however has this led to a world damning of alcohol? No. So what of our buddy Mr.

Thompson? What did he make of this analysis? Effectively, not much because it occurs nonetheless in a sign that video games are 'preventing again' in a very non violent approach after all he has since been barred by the state of Florida from filing any new circumstances as a result of improper conduct and abusing the system.

So nice news video games are off the hook, nicely if only it had been that straightforward. Critics will proceed to search for a simple excuse in justifying a teen's behaviour and when the white coat clad forensics transfer in they may nicely proceed to march previous the sawed off shot gun and the newest edition of shooting for beginners and march straight for the games room and the latest online game with an 18 certificates. However I ask these critics to contemplate this, the gangs or the games which got here first? In the meantime we await the most recent medium that may warp and destroy the minds of the children of the world abandoning logic, cause in favour of blaming the glamorous and evolving world of contemporary leisure.

Free online video games have got to be some of the extensive and helpful forms of leisure available on the Web. Web sites all around the world are providing free video games online with a whole bunch of mystery games on easy to use and family friendly web sites. Most web sites nowadays that offer some kind of entertainment or free online games will offer you a publication and give you a approach to keep updated on the most recent news, games, and leisure they've to supply to you.

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In the event you consistently end up searching for free online video games and might by no means find that one web site that provides you every part you want and need, search now more. Lately everybody has access to the Internet. Web sites are constantly being created, designed, and maintained. Remember there needs to be somebody to do that, however nonetheless there are hundreds of thousands of individuals on the earth and plenty of them enjoy being on-line.

The leisure by no means stops in the case of the online world. If you're tired of searching for the unique and weird sport, just cease. You're positive to seek out it when all you need to do is go online to your favorite search engine and easily sort in exactly what you need. There are such a lot of games as we speak that it would be inconceivable to not discover the mystery video games that you want to play essentially the most.

[1to800]

In the same world

Genre: Angst [some fluff]

Pairings: Donghyuck x Reader - One Sided Jaemin x Reader [Fem! reader]

Words: 6.5K

A/N: This isn’t historically accurate at all - the clothing and living quarters are all from every ancient time period you can conjure up and there has never been a Prince Na in Bakjae, or in any of the korean dynasties so please don’t take this as a history lesson ㅠㅠ

Based on this prompt from @nctangst and her follower! Amazing blog with amazing angst content~ check them out ^^

Lee Donghyuck was not the average peasant. He was much worse than that because he was a traitor as well- one who was stripped of all his wealth and prestige because his family had betrayed the royals. That was the claim of the officials who so adamantly prosecuted him using the as scapegoat, for their own crimes.

There was a time in your life where you had no fear, no strategy; a time when you believed that if you, the crown princess, said it, then it had to be true. You had foolishly bounded up to the wolves exposing everything important to you having neither a sword to threaten them with or a shield to block the incoming burst of fiery arrows. “I’d trust him with my life! He’s not a traitor, they’re innocent!” You proclaimed. So the men turned to the king and had him make a choice. Was the crown princess going to be executed as the grand master of treason? Or was it just going to be one, insignificant, small noble family? The Lees came forward and admitted to the lies. All of the lies. Donghyuck’s mother shakes her head signaling for you to stay quiet, his father yells over your plees saying it was him all along. It was solely his idea, his greed, his ambitions. If the king had any mercy, Nobleman Lee begs him to please spare his only son.

The king had mercy, but the king had no power. The most laughable, miserable, and helpless situations happen because the person at the top doesn’t have power, and this situation was no exception. All three of the Lees, and their whole household, including the innocent servants, children, and slaves - were sentenced to death.

Putting your own life on the line, you grabbed his hand that night of the massacre and ran for it. Ran further and faster than you ever ran before, tripping over your damned dress and tightening your grip whenever he tried to let go. Your breath exploded in loud bursts out of your mouth, sweat pouring down your pristine face, the forest trees yanked expensive golden pins out of your hair, but you never once looked back. Tears slipped down your face as you heard the cries of his parents being slain in the distance, felt the sobs elivate and then depress his shoulders as he fumbled for footing in the forest - but even then, even with him yelling “Princess! Princess please stop! This isn’t right!” - you kept going.  There was no way you were losing him too. It was your last desperate attempt to pay the Lees back for giving you the breath in your lungs and the tingling in your fingers and the veins through which your blood boiled. It was really treason this time.

When you see him leaned against a tree deep in the forest behind the Jaseondang*, you know it was well worth it. He’s 18 now, leading a completely different life as the adopted son of a small village doctor. The tragedy happened 4 moons ago, but as long as you were still in your royal robes and he was in his tattered garments, the guilt may never die down. His family had done everything for you, given their souls so you could keep your head attached to your neck. But just because you were breathing, doesn’t mean you were living. You thought about him every day, reunited with him and his colorful silk hanboks in every dream. You reminded yourself that back then, he had given you everything, and all you had given him in return was his new name paired with an abominable status.

“From this day you’ll live as Haechan.”

“What about my surname, princess?”

You hesitated. Lee would be too dangerous, even to be uttered around him. You knew the smartest and most cunning men of the empire were out to find him, if his face paired with his surname triggered even a slight memory of his presence within the noble households he’d be sliced down without hesitation. “No surname.”

It was humiliating for him to hear those words; you knew as soon as you saw his eyes fall to your feet and the corners of his mouth fold into a deep frown, but he couldn’t - wasn’t allowed to question it.

You smoothed your cold, shaky fingers against his beautifully tanned face. Even when he was a nobleman’s son he had a complexion of a farmer, and to you it was the most beautiful color in the world. Others laughed and asked him if the Lees had picked him up under a bridge. One icy glare and a simple flick of your wrist had them dragged out of you palace and unable to return to your favor. Even as tiny children, you had loved him from the tips of his dark hair to the bottom of his colorful shoes. All the amber droplets and copper trinkets he gifted you could never compare to him. They’d hide themselves in shame at the sight of him, just like you hid your bright red face. 

“Don’t be too sad. Hae means my sun. Chan means I will sing praise to you. You are my person. No matter what our ranks are, I’m always under your sky.”

“Haechan!” You hunker down right beside him as he startles awake from his mid day nap. “Did you wait long?” You ask, handing him a bundle of palace food, staring at the way his eyes light up at the gift. He hugs it close, like it’s treasure, and you have to mentally chide yourself for tearing up. The things he used to eat with you at your table so confidently because he belonged, was now something akin to a foreign treat. He was not supposed to live this life. This was not his destiny.

“Thank you,” he leans over to give you a soft, lingering kiss on your cheek, causing you to immediately grin and plant your forehead onto your knees, wrapping your whole head with your arms in an attempt to hide your giddy smile.

“How did you get out today?” Haechan chuckled, setting the pink bundle aside and pulling at your arms, somewhat forcing you to look up if you didn’t want to look like a turtle without a shell. - “don’t hide your beautiful face, princess” he adds, just so he can see the pretty roses blossom on your cheeks and fill his heart with warmth. Without waiting for a proper answer, he pulls you in. Although you topple into his embrace, very ungracefully, he shifts so that you’re comfortable and doesn’t mention the fact that a princess should move better than you. He never mentions it. That was one of the reasons you felt like you could actually breath around him and not suffocate like when you were under the limitless expectations and calculating gazes of your home. His eyes only held softness, endearing fondness, maybe slight amusement at most. It made him the breathtaking glow in your stark world.

“The palace is busy with preparations for the Spirits festival. Gotta put up all the charms so that the cursed spirits don’t wander in and... and bother...” The king. Everything in the palace was centered around the king.

“Your father,” Haechan finishes, his arms unconsciously tightening around you.

There’s a silence after that, but it’s not uncomfortable. Ever since that day you’ve never gone in to see your father. It was neglecting your duties, and he could have had any of his other children come to greet him in the morning, but he insisted it was you. You were always the favorite crown princess, the one he had out of love. Even if you took the life of his beloved first queen, you were the bundle he held in his arms, the little girl he spoon fed making sure every grain of rice was perfect and sweet, the blessing that received the grandest birthday parties with every possible gift imaginable. Even as his borders were at war, one word that you were sick had him riding back so he could sit next to your bed and pray. You loved the king, you had looked up to him, respected him, only wished the best for him; so when he betrayed you, it hurt that much more. As much as you loved him, as much as you respected him, as much as you wished he was well, in one moment you wished he hurt, ached, suffered to that extent.

“You must forgive him, princess.”

“I could never betray you like that,” You answer with vigor in your voice, flames igniting within the dark irises of your eyes.

You feel him shake his head, feel his chin slowly rest on your shoulder as you lean into his chest again, relaxing. “It was not the king’s fault. If he had chosen me and my family over your life, I wouldn’t have forgiven him, not even after death. He did what he had to. He lov-”

“Stop.” Your voice is so used to giving commands that it hardens and Haechan immediately closes his mouth. Your eyebrows come together as you realize this and sigh, releasing some tension that had been building up within you. “I mean... please stop, Donghyuck.” You rarely used his name, but you wanted him to know that you weren’t worlds apart from him. You were right here, where you belonged. His eyes widen in surprise, and he looks around “please be quiet, princess!”

“It’s just you and me here! If you want me to be quiet in my own land, you have to make me.”

Haechan lets a loud drawn out sigh escape his lips, shaking his head as if he were thinking ‘here-we-go-again’ but you don’t mind. And when you turn to place light kisses on his jaw, he looks down to change your destination like he doesn’t mind either.

You’re enjoying the warmth encircling you, about to nap while leaned against his chest when you feel him open his mouth and inhale, as if he were about to shoot the loaded stone that he loaded onto the slingshot a long while ago. 

“What if you never saw your father again?” Haechan asks, solemnly. The small content smile dancing on your lips slowly fades. You’ve never thought about the possibility before so you tilt your head to the side.

“Do you mean to kill him?”

Haechan stiffens. You quickly laugh, but he doesn’t take the joke lightly and promptly flicks your forehead. Only he could do such a thing. You glare because it stings and pout because he won’t kiss it better, instead preoccupied with looking up to the sky that’s obscured by heavy branches shedding their colorful leaves.

“I mean... what if we never had to see him, or the palace walls between us ever again? What if we could just... take off?”

You close your eyes and imagine it. A world where status didn’t matter. Where the title of “wanted criminal” didn’t hang above Haechan’s head, debilitating him forever. Where people didn’t use you for your influence in every way they wished just to throw you out. Where you didn’t have to keep your neck stiff for some and bow for others just to survive in the depraved cage of living, breathing, plotting monsters. “Will we be together forever?” You ask, hesitant, but not ever wanting to stop imagining it. The possibility of it alone fills your heart with unimaginable bliss, a happiness so tangible you almost taste it like western molasses on your tongue.

“Yes,” Haechan whispers softly, lips skimming your fingers that he’s delicately holding in his calloused hands. You miss when they were soft, when they only knew the curve of a brush and the spine of books, not the dirt that rooted herbs or wood that started fires for medicine. “I promise.”

It’s getting late and you’re sure that your father is moments away from sending out a whole battalion to find you, and they will no doubt find you if that were to happen. “I have to go back.” Back to strict rules, unrelenting gazes, and empty spaces where Donghyuck used to be. You can still draw the courtyard where he’d close his eyes and count, his little black bokgeon* fluttering in the wind. You always hid in the same place so you could admire his back, and hear his voice practically screaming the numbers so they were well audible over the chirp of birds or the howling of the wind. In retrospect, Donghyuck was the most intelligent child in the land, so he probably figured out you always hid right within reach, but he’d never capture you. Perhaps he was teasing, perhaps he just loved letting you win - the triumphant grin splitting your face and bunching your cheeks in the most beautiful expression he’d ever seen.

Those characteristics never seemed to fade, even now. Haechan still only worked around your happiness. He could have demanded you go with him or simply get up, turn around, and leave - he knew you would drop everything to follow immediately if that were the case. Yet, he didn’t capture you. He let you stand in your comfortable, extravagant hanbok and weigh your options. And you? You were still a fool. You’ve never struggled in your life for anything that was given to you; leaving with Haechan meant he had to farm, provide, work. And then cook, clean, take care of a child, all while watching you live in a home that was about as big as your recreational tea room - hoping you didn’t regret it. “I’ll think about it.” You were still selfish. Wanting to watch his back, making sure he was always by your side, yet refusing to put yourself out in the open. But you two were still hopelessly in love, and it seemed like that fact would never change no matter how hard time or circumstance or fate wanted to destroy it.

“I knew the princess was clumsy, but I didn’t know you could fall out of the sky.”

Na Jaemin smirks as you blink up at him with wide saucer-like eyes. You scrunch your face into a plea and start rubbing your hands together, begging despite the awkward situation (in which you hop over the tall wall and land right into his surprised and strong arms) “please!!! Tell everyone I was with you the whole time! Please!”

Jaemin, prince of Bakjae, smirks, “and what do I get out of it, Crown Princess?”

“Anything!” You answer, a little too quickly.

“Anything?” he smiles “okay!” he answers too quickly too be comforting as well. “Then I ask for your hand in marriage.”

It turns out, that even without you swearing to listen to his wish, it was already decided to happen anyway.

“Father!” You screech and his servant hisses at the disrespect. You were not supposed to raise your voice at him, the one appointed by the heavens, but so help your soul and let lightning strike you because you were not marrying Na Jaemin. “You could sell any of my sisters to the kingdom of Bakjae, why is it me? Is it because you are cross with me for neglecting my duties or because you don’t want to see me?” You know you’re being unfair with him when he sadly steps down from his throne.

“Leave us.”

With one word they all back out. You want to laugh at the irony. He had gotten more powerful in the past few years, but when you really needed him to be, he was nothing. A puppet on tightly coiled strings that slapped you across the face.

“Father, I can’t! Have you no shame? How will you face the punishment of heaven!” You scream, stomping your feet in a tantrum - one unlike any of the ones you threw as a child. Tears well in your eyes but you bite your tongue to draw blood instead. “What will the Lees think from the afterlife? You can’t kill them twice. You can’t break your promise twice!”

You were supposed to be Donghyuck’s. From the very start you belonged to Lee Donghyuck. It was what your father, when he was just a prince and not even next in line for the throne, had promised his friend Lee before the two of you were even conceived.

“That’s enough.”

Even when questioned. Even when attacked by your vicious words and nasty snarl, the ruler of the nation refused to raise his voice. The man who could claim that heaven bent for him, could not win over you, and you understood that better than anybody else. But you also knew that living the life the Lees have given you shrouded by unhappiness and power hungry animals is not an acceptable choice. You couldn’t waste their sacrifice like that. The ‘what if’ solidifies into a decision in your mind, rooting itself into you like it’s always been there. And maybe it has been.

“I’m sorry, father.” He looks genuinely startled by your suddenly calm demeanor and starts “daughter I-”

“I get it,” you cut him off, once again pushing the limit but knowing he won’t do anything about it. He can’t if it’s you. He set no boundaries for you as a king, but the place you were in did; the walls of the palace closed in on both of you and set the unfortunate circumstances with so much force you couldn’t win if you were in here. They called it ‘tradition’ - things have ‘always been like this’ since the beginning of dynasties, but you called it a prison with prisoners waiting for poison to be sent down to them. An open cage was still a cage until you flew out of it. The notion of freedom gave you so much tranquility that your shaking halted and your chin lifted on its own so you could stare definitely at the dragon on the king’s bright red robes. “I will wed Na Jaemin. But please let it be after the spirit’s night. I want to see that you are okay and the demons will pass through this world without harming my family.”

“Of course!” The king nods, enthusiastically.

You turn to leave straight away, but not before turning around, “There was never a morning when I didn’t wish to see you father. Lee Donghyuck would want me to forgive you. For him, I do. I will see you tomorrow.”

Your father, the highest of the nation, brings his hand up to his bearded chin and covers his choked voice, “thank you, Crown Princess.”

“Your welcome, your Highness,” you let the door roll closed and wipe the single droplet free-falling down your cheek, “and I’m sorry, father” you whisper.

Your servants beg and plead and reason with you. They ask that you please, for the love of the King and everything high in the sky, to P L E A S E stay with Na Jaemin the whole entire night while you’re out in the capital city for the festival. Of course, like the great princess you are, you nod and smile and even wink at your wary personal guards who were also supposed to stick to you at all times of the outing.

“Are you that much of a troublemaker, princess?” Jaemin asks, pulling you close to his body and out of the way of a passing cart.

“Where did you hear that?” You snort, narrowing your eyes and yanking your arm out of his strong hold. If he was offended, he doesn’t show it, instead splaying that cute and good-for-nothing smile on his handsome face.

“When we were young you were always causing trouble with that one nobleman’s son and I was always getting you out with my innocent smile.”

“I can’t believe you’d call your own smile innocent like that, I bet your nickname is the humble prince,” you roll your eyes, but a smile tugs at your lips. He has character, and instead of being utterly offended by your straightforward words he laughs like you told an amazing joke.

You lead the way through the crowd, at home in your own city. In the meantime, Jaemin studies your face and marvels at how mature you were now, yet how you remained almost exactly the same from his memories. All his fantasies about meeting you again finally came true and he almost couldn’t believe you looked exactly like every single one of his loving daydreams. Your face scrunches like your concentrating on something, maybe a past memory, and Jaemin wants to somehow get your attention and make conversation. Get to know you more.

“How is that nobleman doing now, anyway?”

You swallow and then shrug, “he’s dead.” The words taste absolutely acrid in your mouth, and you can’t believe you have to fake indifference at the one thing that still stabbed your heart every hour of every day and sent pulsing waves of pain to every part of your body.

“That’s...” you watch Jaemin’s face as it contorts in a mix of emotions, and it surprises you. “that’s a shame,” he whispers, patting your shoulder in genuine condolence. You purse your lips, “yeah well... treason gets you killed in this country.” The words drop like stones and you hold yourself back from hysterical laughter because of the incongruity that is your life.

“Let’s forget about it,” you say, skimming the crowded streets for a familiar figure, even a wisp of his hair to signal your time to lose all the annoying tails following you.

“Let’s. Come. I’ll buy you some treats?” Jaemin states as he half drags half ushers you through the street. It wasn’t really an invitation nor was it a request. You suppose you should go along with it though, if anything to thwart suspicion.

“This is what you meant by treats?” you ask, dumbfounded and slightly sad that you didn’t actually get anything sweet to put in your mouth. Instead, your hands are filled with expensive hair ornaments and decorations to hang on your already opulent hanboks. As if reading your mind, Jaemin pops a round ball of hardened sugar into your mouth and laughs making your mind unwillingly flash to the charms your mother would put into a pocket and shake for your amusement. It was such a pretty and carefree laugh, and the way he looked at you proved the uncomfortable inkling you’ve had since you were young. That maybe, just maybe, the prince of Bakjae actually did love you. Maybe he wanted this marriage, purposed it even, despite knowing how stubborn you were about staying single until death. In another world, in another life, if you had decided to stay within your class and within the small little universe you knew called royalty, maybe you would have loved him back and been a happy queen.

Your face must have softened around their hard edges because Jaemin’s breath hitches and he brings his perfectly smooth hand up to gently grasp your chin between his thumb and forefinger. He tilts your head so your face shines under the full moon and panic strikes you instantly.

Haechan watches the scene unfold from a corner, his leg propped up and arm hanging lazily. His fist clenches out of instinct, eyes burning from under the satgat* that’s used to mask his identity. Serene and literally shining amongst a sea of languidly moving people, you’re framed against the prince of another land. He can’t deny that the picture looks so right - like it was meant to be. He can’t give you that anymore. Expensive gifts and exquisite snacks and the best of the world was not his to present to you, but you deserved that and so much more.

“Please don’t kiss me,” you almost cry out, and some passing girls giggle at your silly request.

“Humm? Who said I wanted to kiss you?” Jaemin asks, picking a pin from your hand and smoothing it into your silky hair.

You let out a sigh before your whole face flushes like that of the flames lightening the red lanterns. “Forget that.”

Jaemin puts his arm around your shoulder and turns you around, walking on like nothing happened, “I could never forget anything about you, princess.”

You wanted to give yourself bonus points for being an absolute genius. Losing Jaemin was a hard feat, but alas, you did it. That was the power of love, you believed. First, Jaemin bought you masks. It was convenient that the two of you were on a ‘date’ during the spirit festival because masks were a huge part of the night. They were supposed to scare away the evil spirits, but usually scared old people and bystanding children more. Running with a mask gave you a sense of conformity with the crowd and the confidence not to get caught. So you make a seemingly harmless suggestion:

“Let’s play hide and seek! Just like the old times.”

“Okay,” Jaemin agreed readily, confident in his abilities as a renowned hunter. He plays along as if he were used to it, but in reality, the two of you had never played hide and seek before. He knows you’re thinking of that noble, but he could care less. The noble was dead, and he was the one here now by your side. He could wear whatever mask you wanted him to, as long as you kept him close.

You lose him in a heartbeat, knowing he would stay amongst the people and not venture back around the palace and through thick woods. Moonlight doesn’t help as much as you’d like, but you hum in delight at the thought of being in Haechan’s warm arms. A branch snaps from afar, but you try to think nothing of it, carefully observing your falling footsteps while willfully ignoring the shivers that run up your spine, drying the thin sheet of sweat that seeped through your icy skin. You try to hum a happy song, grasping for the lyrics, but they get mumbled as goosebumps pop up on your flesh, the sound of thin, wispy, almost laughter-like wind scraping up leaves jumble your thoughts. You tell yourself it’s just the wind, but the uncanny shifting of air around you makes every hair on your body stand up and stick out like it’s drawn by another being.

ehheHEhheHHEHEehhe

Your blood hardens and your neck strains from your body tensing up suddenly. You don’t want to die, “Haechan-ah!” You take off from your spot, legs bolting into action, hand scattering trinkets and coming up to clutch your long skirt so you don’t fall, breath harshly squeezing through your windpipes. You feel like a bumbling idiot- lost in the forest with nothing to protect you. The pops of fireworks that are meant to ward off evil are faint and far behind you; you curse under your breath because it’s likely all evil has converged on the quiet and peaceful shadow world behind the palace. The only place without humans to shoo them away.

“HAECHAN-AH PLEASE!” You sob, the tears and snot and fear, sheer- raw - bitter terror racking your body; it makes you heave for breath greedily, but it’s never enough. “Please I’m scared!”

A flash of white juts out from a thick clump of branches and clutches your shoulder, sharp prickles lead to dripping blood and you whimper.

In an instant, there’s the harsh snap of a bow, the strangled crying of an unholy creature, and then the fizzling sound of dark smoke. You turn and look down behind you to find a scatter of leaves and an arrow with the bright yellow and red talisman stuck to it. You don’t need to turn around to know who took the shot. Instead of moving you collapse onto the cold ground, but Haechan’s there in an instant, holding a white cloth to your shoulder in concern. His face is equally as messed up, if not worse.

“It was a virgin ghost,” Haechan whispers, “it’s gone now, my princess. It’s gone and will never return.”

“W-what happened to your face?” You ask him, finally coming to your senses after noticing the small cuts and wounds all over his soft cheeks.

“Nothing,” Haechan grimances from pain when your finger brushes one of the deeper gashes, “just some branches that were in the way. I found you, so now I’m okay.”

“I did this to you. I’m so incompetent and clumsy and always so so so stupid. I never did my duty right as a princess how could I ever be a good wife? How will I make food for you or mend your clothing or teach our children when I could barely get by my lessons wi-”

Haechan leans down and shuts you up by molding his lips over your own. You whimper and practically melt at the sudden warmth that seemed to blanket you like soft down. “I can do all of that and more for you. Just teach our children to be as loving and caring and passionate as you, and I’ll do all the rest. So marry me.”

“Hyuck-” You were so flustered you accidently let his real name slip out

“Run away with me,” he insists, eyes shining intensely under his long, tousled, filthy hair. You see hundreds of emotions flow past his face, twitching each muscle into an expression of the turmoil within. Most of all though, you see that in his eyes, the dominant feeling is his fear; the fear of rejection, the fear that you’d say no and pick the easy life of pampering, wealth, and a full stomach.

“I love you,” you whisper, grasping the bristly rough shirt which hurts your hands that have only ever been laid upon silk, “I’ll be with you forever.”

Haechan’s eyes crinkle into a smile, this time letting his whole face show his relief, unveiling his euphoric state. He’s leaning down to close the distance between you, and your eyes are half-lidded, closing, when something makes him tense in your arms, and your brought to attention by the sudden shift in the atmosphere.

The blade flashes like a falling star under the crisp light of the autumn moon, and you’ve never heard the voice sound so frigid before.

“I guess the dead really can come back on a full moon,” Jaemin spits, venom laced in every word, especially dead.

“Prince Jaemin!” you gasp in shock as drops of Haechan’s blood splatter onto your blue hanbok. He squeezes his eyes shut in pain, but refuses to open his mouth to utter a sound. Or perhaps he can’t because the blade sits so close and so precise that even gulping would cut open another slit.

Jaemin’s eyes turn round with surprise when you make to reach for the killing edge of his sword, and he quickly retracts the weapon from Haechan’s neck allowing the crouched male to quickly stand and draw his own.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Jaemin asks, and his bodyguards pull their bowstrings taunt, aiming right for his head.

“Please, let him go!” You get on your knees, something that you’ve not only never done before, but was also absolutely unacceptable as the favorite crown princess. Nobody denied you what you wanted, so you didn’t know the meaning of desperation until this very second. You finally understood that it was a mix of helplessness, a suffocating rag shoved down your throat, and a sense of smallness all rolled into one punch to your gut.

Jaemin knows you’ll never learn to move on and love him, he’ll never have you if he kills Donghyuck. Jaemin shifts his gaze from your beautifully messy face to look at Donghyuck who looks so utterly broken at the fact that you, you who were fit to sit on the throne and adorned with all the shining stars in the night sky, had to be rolling in the dirt for him. Jaemin realizes there’s only one thing he can possibly do.

“I won’t kill him, princess.”

You sigh, about the hug his feet and literally kiss them in gratitude.

“But then I’ll have to kill these two guards. Because they know you committed treason by letting a sinner live. One who should have died four cycles ago. Then I’ll have to search the whole city for anybody who’s seen his face and kill them all, so you can run off with him. I’ll clean up the capital, and you’ll still live as a criminal’s wife. No money for medicine if you’re sick, no doctors or nurses to help deliver your children, no warm feather blankets on cold days and no food to fill their hungry little stomachs. When you slowly realize you can’t live like that and come to despise the person who used your young heart to whisk you away when you were naive, in a spur of the moment, when you can’t stand the person who made you suffer because of their own selfishness, I’ll be the King of Bakjae and you can come to me. Only then, when you want me to, I’ll kill him.”

Haechan drops to his knees like Jaemin’s made the sky crumble on his shoulders and the clouds stack upon his head. Jaemin ignores him, instead turning to his guards. “Kneel.”

They do so immediately, their king’s wishes were their commands. You feel your heart rip apart because the two people who were simply doing their jobs were about to be murdered for your own transgressions. If you could, you desperately wanted to take their place and be punished instead.

“Wait.” Haechan’s voice is weak, void of any emotion. Jaemin stops mid swing with almost freakishly scary control.

“You’re right,” Haechan lets out a small, defeated laugh. “I was stupid. I was filled with selfish desire-”

“Wha-”

“Princess. You can’t live like that. The more I thought about it, the scarier reality became. You really won’t ever get used to this life. It’s hell. I survived four years because I had no other choice, but you will miss the palace. Even with all it’s terrible rules, it was still a roof over your beautiful head.”

Donghyuck looks up at Jaemin who nods, a mutual understanding seemed to pass and something close to respect shone in the young prince’s eyes. He stands up straighter, with dignity, and tightens his grip on his sword so that when Haechan throws himself into the blade, it holds steady.

“NO! LEE DONGHYUCK!” 

The scream rips out of your vocal cords and rubs your throat like harsh sand. Jaemin quickly lets go of the hilt. “No... no no no, please.” Haechan’s lithe body crumples and you barely catch him in time. His eyes are closed, but he lets a few words slip past his mouth, clumped with blood and despair and tears, “I love you, my princess.”

“I love you. I love you Lee Donghyuck, my Haechan. I love you. In the next life,” you break your rush of words to let out one loud sob, allowing him to rest on your lap despite the sticky liquid gushing over your chima* “let’s be born in the same world. Let’s both start out in little homes right next to each other in a peaceful farming village. Let’s both fight and bicker and kiss and have children without walls surrounding one or the other.”

Haechan tilts his head weakly in a nod, “promise.”

Jaemin says it’s a terrible idea, and he’s absolutely right, but you will not stand for anything else. Jaemin at least had the courtesy to suggest burying him right there, and stacking rocks to make a grave, but you won’t have it. “Give the his adoptive father enough money for a nobleman’s funeral.”

“People will suspect who he is and you’ll be suspect to a crime, princess. This is what he wanted to avoid.”

You glare at Jaemin for questioning you and grit your teeth, “I demand he has a proper funeral or I’m biting my tongue and swallowing poison, do you understand me, Prince of Bakjae?”

That’s how you and your new husband ended up ending the grand wedding ceremony earlier than expected. It flustered the kings, but you were no regular princess, and it was expected you’d screw one thing up so you took the glares and whispering from the present nobility as a grain of salt. It started raining, and the people called it a blessing. The new wedding was approved by the gods and finally, finally after the long drought the heavens had opened their gate of life. You knew it wasn’t so though. You knew that because you couldn’t cry on such a joyous occasion, because you couldn’t let tears stream down your pretty made up face that was the focus of everybody, the heavens were doing it for you. They were letting the tears fall on your behalf. They were letting him know that he was not going away on a happy day - that all the tears in the whole land were going to fall for him.

“Has he left yet?”

“His crate is circling the city, it will pass the palace gates soon.”

“Let’s go.”

Your servant who had raised you as a baby steps in front of you out of genuine concert for your standing in the palace, but you don’t even make to glance at her. You will not look at any obstacles in the way.

“What good will this do, princess? Your father is being kind by letting your treason slip past the cracks, please don’t make more drama.”

You want to slap her. To pull her hair out and throw her outside and make her stand in the harsh rain asking her to withstand it alone. Asking her if she could manage to do that. How could people be so cruel? So unfeeling? The fact that Donghyuck was making his trip to the afterlife itself was immobilizing and agonizing enough, but you couldn’t imagine him doing it alone. “I do not regret what I did, but I will regret it my whole life if I don’t send him off. He needs me there.”

“PRINCESS! PRINCESS!”

Right on cue another younger servant runs in and the others shush her for making a scene, but you immediately ask her what happened.

“His cart... Haechan’s cart has stopped in front of the palace and won’t budge! It’s stuck!”

You rush past them, out into the blinding rain, and straight past Jaemin who doesn’t have to ask to know where you were headed while still in your wedding attire. Only one thing. No. Only one person could move you, the princess of a whole entire nation, like that. The gates open per your request and sure enough the cart is still. None of the wheels broken, all mighty men at the handles trying to shove or pull it along. They halt their action and back away, commoners whispering and hiding their faces in the dirt at your presence.

Your hand comes up to touch the tightly sealed box, “I know you wanted to see me one more time, right?” There’s no response, and you know you shouldn’t have expected one but the silence and the pouring of rain burden your heart with crippling misery. “It’s okay. I’ll be okay, so go.” You take off your elaborate outer robe and Jaemin watches from inside the threshold of the gate, shocked at your behavior. It was extreme, even for you - but a part of him thinks he understands. That was the person you were, the person who was willing to give up one of the most powerful and comfortable positions in the land for love. Perhaps that was why he, and that person Lee Donghyuck, had fallen so completely for you. The purity of your love, the great expanse that was your heart, the ocean’s mystery that was in your eyes and the slice of mischievousness hidden in the corners of your lips made you the king’s, Haechans, and his favorite princess.

You drape the heavy silk cloth on the nicely finished wood and pat it one more time so it stays in place, “don’t get cold, and don’t get lonely. We’ll be together again. Remember?” You watch him roll on, the lingering remains of his warmth in your fingertips and his promise to be born in the same world ringing in your mind like the bells and trinkets he gave you as happy noble children.

*Vocab

Jaseondang -  [the court for the royal princes and princesses]

bokgeon - [headwear for young male nobles]

Bakjae - [one of the three kingdoms of Korea before they were unified as Koryo and taken over by the Lees’ Josen]

Satgat - [A conically shaped hat worn by commoners - mostly farmers or monks]

Chima - [skirt part of a female Hanbok - hanboks are traditional clothing]

[kindabraveandlittlestupid]

So the midterm elections are almost over save a few races where things are still to close to call. The emotions this morning are a mixed bag, to say the least, and now we get to read the tea leaves to figure out what this means and what will likely happen next. I will try and break this post up into a couple different subjects so it's easier to digest with your eye holes.

Rise of the Matriarchy 

The first and major take away is the fact that woman just took a big bite out of male power structure in this country. And while I advocated in the past of electing the most qualified/best responsible options for office regardless of gender and orientation, most of the competitions this year were superior female candidates to their lesser male candidates and they (women) crushed it. This is good. This is progress. And the sooner we can balance out Congress and the Senate with 49% Men and 51% Women or something close to that, the less likely you will have Conservative Men dictating/controlling women’s issues/rights behind closed doors.

I hope this trend continues into 2020 with another wave of pink and woman stepping up to fill the role of governing and taking away from those men who have been taking advantage of their position for so long. Keep up the good work ladies, I will vote for your best female candidates here in California when they make it onto the ballet.

UPDATE: Woman took over 110 political positions of power across the US.

Reverse Trump Effect

Historically the Republicans dominate the Midterms mostly because of the fact Democrats don’t show up as much as we should. Yesterday, however, the very presence of Trump has energized the Democratic voters in a big way and we showed up in record numbers. Was it a blue tsunami like we hoped? Not really but Democrats are usually on the defense in Midterm elections in regards to Senate Seats and while we lost some there, the big turn out changed Congress which opens some options to slowing the role of the Bigot in Chief. 

Give Trump some credit he got us liberals to the polls and we took the power back from. Thanks, Dumbass! 

Red State Blues

A few strong Progressive Candidates ran in the south such as Beto O'Rourke (Senate), Andrew Gillum (Governor), and Stacey Abrams (Governor). The results weren’t unexpected simply because in 2010 the GOP made a huge effort to gerrymander the hell out of various states and have been working on a long-term strategy of suppressing votes for years. 

In the case of Beto O’Rourke, he was operating in a deeply red state and most Texans would vote for the fire burning down their house because the color of it was red, they proved that by once again voting for the insanely unpopular Ted Cruz. Beto losing wasn't desired but I was kind of expecting it.

Andrew Gillum happened to be running in a state where felons couldn't vote and the courts in the state favor charging Black Men for crimes far more than White Men for the same crimes which despite Andrew Gillum’s loss is a policy that will no longer be there in 4 years. In 2022, Andrew Gillum could/should run again and capitalize on the vote liberated by this racially motivated voter suppression and you know what... he would win.

Stacey Abrams is the last woman standing but she operates from a position of weakness as the tally is against her AND the person assigned to oversee the election is the man she is running against (how fucking insane is that). Just to make it even more insane, there were 70,000 registrations held up by the state which 70% are African American! Want to know by how much Brian Kemp leads? 63,000 votes! Let's say this again the man holding up 70,000 registrations which are mostly black against his black opponent gives him a lead of 63,000 votes to help him get elected into office. Why there isn't rioting in Georgia I don’t know but this is pretty much textbook suppression. I am happy Stacey Abrams is refusing to concede until a Runoff is completed.

Open Investigations

On the bright side with Congress now being in the hands of Democrats new investigations into Trump can begin. In the coming weeks, we will see them looking his taxes and his dealings to line his pocket with money. Can anyone say Mar-a-Lago? This provides Progressives some much-needed wiggle room to dig into the Trumps accounts and FINALLY pull his skeletons from the closet. Don’t hold your breath for impeachment but this will provide lots of ammunition to fucking destroy this 2020 election bid and that's a win for me.

Conservative Courts

Where we might suffer in all this is the Senate remaining in the GOP’s small hands. This will allow them to continue to stack the courts with hyper-conservative judges. It’s a disappointing revelation as a partisan branch/party is basically assigning partisan judges to a branch that is supposed to be NON-PARTISAN. There is no easy or quick way to pluck these Heritage Foundation ticks from the courts and effects of their Judicial Nominees can last for literally decades.

A Scapegoat Named Sessions

The kind of empty win of Jeff Sessions being forced to resign. On one hand, the racist elf with extremist Christian values is out but Trump NEVER disappoints to find an even more conservative candidate to fill the last guy's shoes.

Call this a prediction but I suspect the coming weeks Trump will say the reason why Democrats took Congress is because of the Mueller Investigation was hanging over his head. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is to fall on his sword (whether he wants too or not) and take the blame for the Conservatives losing ground and LASTLY, I would expect Trump to try and cut Mueller out considering his investigation is technically under the executive branch. Honestly, I think he will try and do it because his voters have already signaled to him (Trump) they will stick with him after mass shootings, parent/child separation, and telling our various allies to fuck off. Him shutting down an investigation into his collusion would not motivate them to abandon their dear dictator and Trump knows that.

The Wrap Up

We should feel good to some degree. Yeah, we have 1/6th of the power of the three branches of Government but progress is a pendulum and anyone who knows their history understands this. People need to be reminded why Republicans suck so much and this four year period hopefully will remind the voters (oh yeah that's why we don't vote for these people because they’re horrible human beings). We are today better off then we were in two days ago and we now have some oversite. To top it all off, women took some power from those shitty male candidates. We need to keep up the momentum and close this chapter on Donald Trump as another moment of history were America made a mistake and we need to move beyond it. Keep your heads up and keep your passion burning... this fight is not over and dare I say, so long as Trumpublicans exist it may last for a while.

Regards, Michael California

[gwynne-fics]

Silver Lining

chapter forty-two

Eun-Sang couldn’t sleep. She envied Young-Do. The exhaustion of his tournament coupled with their quickie and dangerous love making interlude let him relax enough to immediately fall asleep. Her stomach twisted too much for her to join him. She ended up climbing out of bed to pace the hallway and eventually go downstairs into Young-Do’s study.

She ended up in his massive executive chair staring at the few pictures he had on his desk. A few were him with Myung-Soo or doing judo. There was one of his father and it just hurt her to look at it. She saw nothing of Young-Do in the harsh lines of his face.

For all of her father’s sins and debts, he never tried to pass the responsibility to her. Eun-Sang cleaned up his mess. She was not blamed for it. This man…tried to use Young-Do as a scapegoat for his illegal slush fund and didn’t even tell him he was running the risk of funding a new property with nothing in the bank.

Tomorrow was the usual day Young-Do went to the prison. She wanted him to stop. She wished she was the kind of wife that would insist on it. But she knew from Hyo-Shin’s failure and perceived betrayal, Young-Do wouldn’t respond well to those kinds of tactics. So she put it out of her mind and continued looking at the other pictures.

He had a picture of them from their wedding. It was the one on display at Jo Myung-Soo’s gala, where they stared at each other after their first kiss. Eun-Sang had a wedding picture of them on her desk at work but it wasn’t…raw…like this one. It was more traditional, with her seated on the bridal bench and Young-Do standing behind her with his hand on her shoulder. Neither of them smiled in it.

Before she could speculate what this arrangement of pictures might mean she caught the name of her company on one of his binders.

Eun-Sang stood and reached over to open it.

And had to sit down again.

It was a proposal for ethical use of her software.

She slowly flipped through it and wondered if the ability to read her husband’s mind would help her understand him better. The only thing he’d ever said about her software was that he understood its value and had no intention of taking it away from her. She didn’t know what this proposal meant.

Eun-Sang read through it three times before taking the binder and sticking it in her bedroom to consider tomorrow. Young-Do was a good businessman and an excellent president. His company, a service industry, could benefit from an efficiency software like hers. She respected his ethics because he had them when so many chaebol didn’t.

When she climbed back into bed, Young-Do rolled over and put his arm over her waist. It was nice and warm and she liked that he sought her out in the middle of the night in his sleep. In the dim light of their bedroom, she stared at his soft face before gently smoothing her fingers over his eyebrows.

She didn’t know if she wanted their children to get his eyebrows. They were just so massive and dominated his face.

The thought struck her cold and made her heart race. She couldn’t really sleep after that even though she felt him wake up early and get ready for work. Eun-Sang pretended to be dozing when he sat on her side of the bed and softly tucked her hair behind her ear before he bent down and kissed her cheek.

“Have a good day at work.” He was gone before she could decide if she wanted to say goodbye. She sat up and went through her morning routine as she tried to think through her morning schedule and the binder she stole last night. She was putting on her necklace when she caught sight of herself in the mirror. Her blouse was a pale pink and her pantsuit navy with pink stripes. She stared and laughed before she picked up her phone.

Okay, you can design around it. I just double checked it against what I picked out to wear today. You win.

I love winning, Rachel said. Did he like the surprise?

Yes. I feel much better about everything now, she lied. She wouldn’t get away with it if Rachel was looking at her. She couldn’t lie detect as easily via text. Rachel didn’t catch her so Eun-Sang picked up the binder and went into work. Her morning was light so she read through it again until Chan-Young knocked on her door.

“Bo-Na is stopping by with the girls for lunch. She brought enough for you and I am supposed to invite your husband on behalf of Eun-Hee, Sung-Hee, and Jae-Hee, who misses her climbing tower.”

“That is so sweet,” Eun-Sang said with a smile. “I’ll invite him but today might be a no go for him. He left before six to make it out to the prison.” Chan-Young winced but didn’t ask for more questions. Eun-Sang sent Young-Do a text which he responded to quickly.

I am stuck in traffic and have an inspection at a property outside of Seoul. I will be late tonight as well. I’m sorry. I will try to make it up to them.

They will understand, I promise. Good luck with the inspection.

Thank you.

It was almost a relief and Chan-Young caught it. “What’s wrong or do you want to keep that separate from work?”

Eun-Sang pressed her lips together and pushed the binder over to him. Chan-Young opened it up and tilted his head as he read through it. “You want more operational control than this but I think it is a good proposal. Did he submit this to you?”

“No.” She looked down at her desk and started playing with her necklace. “I stole it off of his desk.”

Chan-Young sighed. “Put it back and hope he didn’t notice. There is proprietary information in this. It doesn’t matter if his company broke the rules first because it is clear he has something about our software that he shouldn’t, especially with this level of detail, but Eun-Sang, they are bigger than us. Crushing us is a possibility with what I heard about his father.”

“Young-Do wouldn’t do that. He’s not seriously going to submit this to us.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.” And then, out of nowhere a wave of nausea hit her. She swallowed it quickly and tried to focus on the situation at hand. Chan-Young didn’t seem to notice. “I think I can make it better so we can do a joint project. And…and if it goes well, Bo-Na can use some of her money to help us like she wants. Will you be my sounding board?”

Chan-Young smiled. “Of course.”

[eyesanddragons]

The matchmaking system is just elven eugenics AND THATS NOT EVEN TALKING ABOUT THE PEOPLE WHO ARE JUST FLAT OUT B A N N E D FROM EXISTANCE AND FORCED TO HIDE WHO THEY ARE BECAUSE OF AN ACCIDENT YEARS AGO AND THUS CANNOT BE MATCHED IN FEAR OF BEING EXILED-

The matchmaking system sucks and really the only thing its good for is just making sure you don't accidentally fall in love with a distance relative (elves are practically immortal so its a possibility) oh and also the heteronormativity thing is because there is a line in the books that goes like this:

"Progress, Prosperity, Permanence, and Proliferation, the goals of every match."

And with the proliferation part its like, hmmmm, yeah....

It definitely seems to what the series is hinting at, with the guilt, a lot of talk is made about their genuine inability to cope with guilt, to the point some have been driven mad by it. The guilt breaks their minds, but as a consequences of ignoring the problems they all stack up. You kinda have to confront your mistakes even if they hurt, and I really do like that part of the series, thematically I think KOLTC really does well in this department, a lot of the worldbuilding really enforces what it's trying to say, I just think the execution is Not Great.

Also your pretty right about the human thing, they make a big deal about being smarter and prettier than them and more "civilized" and how their so much better because they "cannot do anything wrong" but really elves just, ignore all the stuff they did wrong. Or just find ways to justify it "It's not wrong to use a teenager girl as a scapegoat because then our society could fall into chaos" or "It's fine to produce propaganda and lie about the actual circumstances of the war because we need to protect the people from this horrid truth" The Council for all intents and purpose, Suck, but they don't think that, they've twisted their minds so hard they can't face the pain they've caused. It's really haunting honestly I wish it would get addressed, I feel like after book 3 this series went on a power creep spiral and forgot about it.

also...

"#And Im starting to see you have a favorite type of character lol#The under appreciated angsty ones" ASDASDFGEACSCZ- I can't even argue against that, my favorite KOLTC character is indeed an under appreciated dude who acts all cheerful but is really angsty and dealing with a lot of self worth and sacrifice issues. Oh and is also in the love triangle, he and Winter should meet I think they'd have a very interesting convo

Winter: My parents tried to kill me.

Koltc mr man: Oh yeah same, except it was just my mom who tried to kill me, she was working for the terrorist group that was killing hundreds of people.

Winter: Oh really? Wow...mine tried to kill me so they could move up our hierachy.

Mr man: You have one of those too? They suck don't they?

Winter: Mmm, yeah they sure do.

They would never be so forward with their feelings but I think it's funny, so accurate characterization can jump out of the window for a moment.

Apparently there is indeed frosty magic dudes in koltc so I Can In fact do that to Winter, however the temptation to make him not an ice man for symbolic purposes is real.

The neurodivergent urge to make content for a bad YA book series you read as a kid and now hate

[flyingsassysaddles]

The Execution

It was ironic, Munkhbat decided, staring at his executioner and the crowds that cheered for his death, that he was going to be executed for the one murder he didn’t commit. The Emperor was speaking to the mob outside of the execution ring, his short hair brushed to silk-like perfection, his soft clothes shifting over the sand crusty with blood, hands gesturing with a passion that was completely fabricated. Munkhbat decided to listen to the lies Emperor Kiku was telling the audience, just for old times sake.

“This Mongol comes into our home, our palace, our lives, and kills the firstborn of the Empire!” the newly crowned emperor roared, and the crowd howled back, feet stomping and becoming even more bloodthirsty. “This murderer takes a man loved so dearly by his empire, and for what?! For money?!”

The Mongol could have rolled his eyes at the hypocrisy. Like the second born prince of the empire was one to talk about cheap motives.

“Today, we kill this murderer! Today, we kill the man that had plagued our people with death and destruction! Today, we kill the man who took our EMPEROR!” The mob screamed back like a wild animal, screaming for his blood, screaming for the blood of a man that killed 21 people.

At least, as far anyone would ever know, Munkhbat snickered. He covered his tracks well, so well that the assassin was almost certain that he would never get caught.

“Almost being the keyword”, he remarked dryly, and out loud, making his guards whip over to him and press their spears harder in his already bloody back, as if a simple word was enough for the fighter to teleport out of this execution arena and never be found again. The truth was that Munkhbat always knew, in the deepest, darkest, most hidden corners of his mind, that he would get caught. Really, the entire underground knew the Palace Guards would grab them eventually, they all knew they were on borrowed time when they signed their contract with the devil and let themselves be pulled down into the most terrifying pit of humanity. So Munkhbat knew, but he didn’t know he would be snatched for something he actually didn’t do. He gave a final glare to the beautifully dressed man before his guards shoved him onto the stage.

“Jeesh, I’m going, I’m going!” Munkhbat rolled his eyes and strutted onto the stage. Grinning, he met Emperor Kiku’s eyes and decided this was the best time for a conversation, given that it was going to be its last and all.

“Tell me ‘Emperor,’ how does it feel to have a brother’s blood on your hands? Heavy, isn't it? I'm curious, is it still the same even if you are not related by full blood?” The Mongol tilted his head to the side in mock thought, grinning even wider when Kiku stuttered and stared at him in confusion.

“I did not kill Yao.”

“Oh save it for the choir,” Munkhbat snapped, looking at the mob that was growing more and more impatient. “If not you, who else? Certainly not me. I hated Yao, sure, but I would never kill him. I could never even try! The man is, oops, WAS,” Munkhbat corrected, “Guarded like he was worth his weight in gold. He had troops everywhere he went, poison testers, heck, he even had booby traps load all over the palace! Some say that might have been a bit paranoid, but Yao was a smart man. He knew there were people in high places that wanted him gone. And so he made sure he was always protected, never unguarded, never unsafe. I couldn't have killed him if I tried. Though I am flattered by your faith in my skill.”

“What is the point of all this?” the Emperor hissed, face going white.

“The point in all this is that, with so many guards around, he sure was killed pretty personally huh? Poison and then strangulation? You have to be really close to pull off something like that. You'd have to sneak past his guards and get him alone then get him to EAT something and it's just a mess! Of course, it would be a lot easier if it was someone he trusted.”

“Stop it. I command you to stop talking!” The Emperor grabbed his collar and gave him an excellent view of the royal majesty’s fury filled brown eyes.

“You can't stop rumors, Kiku.” Said man dropped him at the sound of his name and backed away, eyes wide. “You can kill the guards who might have witnessed it. You can praise all truth seekers until they are clay in your manipulating hands. You can even use me as a scapegoat. But here's the thing. You can never stop the rats from chattering, no matter WHAT you do,” Munkhbat chuckled maniacally, pointing to the new murderer in front of him. “Once you murder one, you won't stop. It's like drugs, once you do it once, you can do it twice, thrice, even 42 times! So let me pass on a bit of advice.” He leaned in close to the frozen man, who had become a white sheet. “Don't use rope. It makes to much of a mark.” The Mongol then strutted over to his execution block, smiling at the black hooded executioner and getting ready to die.

“My brother was unfit to be Emperor!” cried the second in line, the spare, the son of a lowly concubine.

“And you are?”

“SILENCE!” the man screamed, jolting their conversation from the stage and to the general audience, who were now jumping at their feet, excited that FINALLY there was going to be blood. Money was passed around and bets were made about how many chops it would take to get through the assassin’s neck, if his head would roll down, etc.

One stood in the crowd, completely silent and not moving, eyes wide and hands making no effort to try and lob bets. Munkhbat’s eyes managed to stray onto the monk, where they locked and grew soft for a fraction of a second, before going back to being diamonds.

It was rather ironic, he decided once more, that the one time he was to be executed, there was somebody who would actually miss him. He never expected that at his execution, a crying someone who would actually scream out when he was about to die. Most of his dreams of his execution followed many others in the underground of humanity, involving angry declarations and vows of coming back with a vengeance. He'd been thinking of what he would say ever since he first signed his first contract with the devil, though he failed to read the fine print stating he could never go back after his first murder. He looked back at the monk as the executioner put his head down on the block, never letting his eyes stray as the executioner got ready to swing. He took a deep breath, let it out, and waited for the ax to fall.

“WAIT!” someone in the audience cried, and the ax stopped centimeters away from his neck to stare at the man who had cried out. The audience turned their eyes towards the monk, desperation and fear jolting out of him as he ran to get closer to Munkhbat.

“This man is innocent! I can testify! He was with me on the night of the murder!” The mob gasped, whipping their heads to a stuttering Emperor, who looked as if he had just seen a ghost.

“What do you mean, innocent?” The Emperor finally regain his composure, glaring down at the protester, and the crowd soon followed. “This man has been accused of twenty one murders and convicted of seven!” Munkhbat chuckled to himself at that one. He still didn’t know how he pulled that off.

“Sure he is a criminal, but he is also a human being! Should he not get a trial? Should he not be executed for a murder we know he has done?!” The monk grew louder, commanding the attention of the bloodthirsty being of people, and muttering could be heard from the thousands of heads it boasted. “He has not even been found guilty of a crime! Should not, we, the people of the Empire, decide who killed our Emperor?” Now the heads were nodding, turning its thousand eyes towards the Emperor, waiting for an answer.

“SILENCE!” Emperor Kiku ordered, and the world obeyed, the thousand-headed creature shutting its mouth and the trees stopping their whispers. The wind slowed as if the air itself was waiting for an answer. “This man has been found guilty by the High Court for treason, murder, torture, and a list of things not fit for public ears. ALL people deserve a trial,” the Emperor shouted, before turning to point at the assassin behind him, “But this one DOES NOT!”

The man went on to speak of his crimes, his murders, his targets, and had their family members stand onto the stage to testify. It was not fair, nor was it justice, but to the writhing being of anger and judgment below them, it didn’t matter. One of the victims they pulled onto the stage as time crept by and Munkhbat’s neck started to cramp, was a six-year-old girl, handheld by a shivering mother, seething at the assassin with hate as she told her story. Munkhbat remembered that one. The victim’s wife had been pregnant. Oh, and that one! That was the son of the lord who drank his arsenic. This one was the second cousin of a drug lord, those ones were the younger sisters of the concubine, and on and on. The parade of victims marched forward, and the Emperor grinned at his position above the monk. It wasn’t justice, it wasn't’ a trial, but it didn’t matter. He had lost the court of public opinion.   

“Does anybody think this man should get a TRIAL after all that he had done?!” the Emperor roared, pointing at the guilty man on the stage, and the crowd roared back, teeth clashing in anger, ready for justice. Emperor Yao was a beloved figure if a bit heavy with the beating stick. Should not the murderer face justice? And even if he didn’t do it, he still deserved to die. So chop off his head, the judges decided, and let the gods sort it out!

The executioner raised his ax once more before another cry from the monk stopped him dead in his tracks once more.

“WAIT!”

“WHAT IS IT NOW?!” The emperor was getting twitchy, so close to killing Munkhbat that he could reach out and taste it, but this monk kept getting in the way. He had brought out the victims, he had gotten the verdict of the crowd, what more could this monk do?!

“I am a holy man. Let me go onto the stage and bless him before he dies and his spirit never finds its way,” the Tibetan monk said calmly, and the beast of the crowd slammed its maw shut and looked toward their new Emperor. Surely a great man such as he wouldn't let any man, no matter their crimes, wander in this realm for all of eternity?

A couple of seconds passed before Emperor Kiku gave a wordless nod, and the monk stepped up to the stage. Walking up to the man he had taken care of for the past 3 years, the monk kneeled down and reached into his robes for a blessing rope with trembling hands.

“D-do you accept your crimes?” he stuttered, bringing out his blessing rope and waiting for an answer.

“Most of them. A lot of them deserved it. But some didn’t. And I regret that.”  The assassin smiled at the man who had been his caretaker for years, the one who had taken him in, his only friend in the darkest of nights, and the sole visitor of his prisons. “Don’t you worry Tshering. This was a long time coming. And I’ll be fine.”

“You’re about to die and you’re telling me you’ll be fine?!” Tshering hissed, angry at himself or the or the assassin Munkhbat had no idea.

“Well, yes, I suppose so. Oh, and Tshering-”

“And that is enough time for the blessing!” Emperor Kiku ordered impatiently, skin crawling with the internal scream to get this over with. “Guards, lead the holy man away.”

The guards extended their long claws in the monk’s direction, snatching the back collar of his robe and dragging him off the stage, wood scraping his loose sandal like sandpaper and the curling sense of blood already embedded in the air sighing through the monk’s lungs. Tshering looked at the man he knew for so long, the one with the scarce smile that bloomed in his cheeks, the one that taught him where to put his feet when he was punching underhand, the one that silently helped clean his temple at the end of the day, the one who came to his doorstep a lost man and came out a laughing friend, and so, so many more. He stared at this man, the one he loved, and something in him broke as the condemned man shot one last rare smile, and looked down on the floor bracing for death. A part of him shattered as he saw the ax go up, and then he couldn't hold the jagged pieces any longer.

Tshering wished he could say that he protested with dignity, stopping the execution in its tracks and saving Munkhbat once and for all. But it didn’t happen like that. Instead, he screamed out, lunging for the man he loved, managing to slip away for a few, scared seconds before the guards sunk their teeth back in a pulled him from the stage.

“MUNKHBAT!” He tried to reach out to him, arms stretching, pushing away the guards and trying to run back into his arms just one more time. Don’t let him die, don’t let him die, DON’T LET HIM DIE, he screamed in his head, struggling to escape and pounding on the bars of flesh that stood in the way.

“Put him down! The monk is clearly mad!” The Emperor’s words were obeyed, and Tshering was shoved down to the floor, boots slashing into his head as he screamed once more. The mass of humans shuffled and looked away from the fiasco, and Tshering kept screaming, kept begging for them to let his lost friend go, kept begging for the condemned to fight, to live.

“IGNORE THE MAD MONK!” Emperor Kiku, that terrible, terrible man, ordered, and the ax rose for the final time. Tshering felt fear trickle down his face as he watched the ax fall, fall, fall in slow motion.

The air was filled with a sickening crunch, and blood of an innocent man dripped onto the crusty sand, along with the heart of a broken man, wailing slashing the air and filling the whispering trees.

And around the stage, bets were paid.