#and putting whipped cream on it is certainly a way to make it unfit for consumption

[waspsinyouryard]

Thoughts and opinions

It is abundantly clear to me now that the Devil is real and spreads his profane word through Tumblr advertisements.

[clawsanddiamonds]

IC PORTION; BASICS —

CHARACTER NAME/ALIAS: Selina Kyle / Catwoman

FACECLAIM: Morena Baccarin

AFFILIATIONS: Most notably, herself.

AGE (physical age as well, if different): 37

SPECIES (human, metahuman, alien, etc): Human

IS YOUR CHARACTER’S IDENTITY SECRET OR PUBLIC? Secret

IF SECRET, OR YOUR CHARACTER IS A CIVILIAN, DO THEY HAVE A CIVILIAN OCCUPATION? Hell no, unless you count thievery as an occupation. Her pockets are deep, certainly enough to sustain a temporary stay in Sokovia.

DOES YOUR CHARACTER LIVE IN THE MOUSEHOLE? IF SO, WHAT ARE THEIR DUTIES? No

DESCRIBE SIX TRAITS (3 positive, 3 negative) YOUR CHARACTER HAS AND HOW THESE AFFECT THEM: +Bonus: LOVED BY CATS. + Adaptable and independent: She will do what it takes to survive. Selina’s survival instincts are almost unparalleled - whatever it takes to make it, she will do it. She has worked so hard to create herself from the ground (under, even) up, and refuses to let anything stand in her way. She makes her own rules and only follows those, and even then sometimes changes things up. + Charismatic: Social engineering is the name of the Catwoman game, and it is something Selina excels at. Despite the manipulation piece, there is no denying that Selina Kyle has charm and will be the center of attention if that’s what she desires. She excels at manipulating social scenarios to exactly what she desires them to be, and to be successful at that she certainly has to be charming with dazzling smiles and easy-flowing conversation. + Intelligent: Strength and intelligence go hand-in-hand in the world Selina has found herself in, and she was blessed to not be lousy of either. Selina’s intelligence is often as quick as her whip, and she’s quick on her feet (ha) and outside of the box as well. Her heists and plans are usually overly organized and well thought out with a large deal of thought and planning behind them, always with many contingencies in case things go awry. Selina is able to process things very quickly and react in kind, an absolute necessity in her line of work. - Selfish / narcissistic: At the end of the day, Selina’s one and only priority is herself. While, at times, she certainly can show compassion and concern for others, her biggest concern is her own wellbeing and her comfort. Selina’s need to be self-serving and independent is number one, and overrides most other desires and needs in her life. - Distrusting / doesn’t play well with others: Letting people in is something that Selina avoids at all costs, considering her history and the things that she has been through. Her initial instinct is to distrust (and usually dislike), and it is hard to sway away from the initial impression. After all, her survival has depended on this many times over. Feeling attached or contained is anxiety-driving for her, and therefore, she avoids it. Those that she does let in and trust are few and far between, and those relationships are often complicated: Selina is not above sabotaging these relationships out of fear, and to prove that she needs no one. - Calculating: Selina is always ten steps ahead, which can certainly be seen positively in many lights but her intentions are usually poor. When pushed, Selina can be manipulative, cruel and devious. Her cunning is always razor sharp and her plans and heists will use strategies crafted precisely to the weaknesses available to her. After all, anything you can do, she can do better.

POWERS AND/OR ABILITIES: peak human condition, extreme agility, near perfect balance and reflexes, acrobatics, hand-to-hand combat, martial arts, boxing, disguise, stealth, thievery, proficient with most weaponry she can get her paws on.

WEAKNESSES: Physically, she’s absolutely human so there are absolutely downfalls to that. Personality wise, she’s absolutely unable to back down from a challenge and struggles with a conflicting internal moral compass quite a bit and has a pathological need for freedom.

IC PORTION; DETAILS —

WHAT BROUGHT YOUR CHARACTER TO SOKOVIA? In short? The masquerade hosted by the UN had certainly caught her attention, and Selina found herself an alias and managed to snag an invitation. Unfortunately, things got a little dicey before she managed to snag any real items of interest, even if she did make off with more than a few wallets and some jewelry. However, consider her interest piqued enough for her to make a temporary stay in Sokovia after the disaster that was the masquerade. After all, there’s definitely more she can do here.

DID THEY SIGN THE ACCORDS? WHY OR WHY NOT? No.

PROVIDE 3-5 HEADCANONS RELATED TO YOUR CHARACTER: Selina quietly donates funds under various aliases to group homes and charities dedicated to young children that grew up in similar situations as she did, trying to save other girls from the horrors she had to face so young. Selina was severely claustrophobic as a child and teen, and still feels a sense of panic when enclosed in tight spaces. She has an extreme fear of being trapped, doesn’t like to feel blocked in, though has been able to hone in one her ability to keep the panic down as she’s gotten older. Selina thoroughly enjoys dancing, in just about any facet. It’s a way to let loose, almost like fighting without the bruises and the blood. Dislikes background noises, such as music for the sake of just having it on or the TV on in the background. Selina much prefers the quiet. Selina associates Catwoman almost as a separate entity, a separate part of herself that she has become reliant on. She feels as though she is a different person when she puts on the suit - stronger, angrier, less concerned about the consequences of her actions. Catwoman has become a part of her, personally as well as professionally. Selina has a slight sense of disgust for the vigilantes that include children in their antics and take them on as sidekicks. She works alongside them at times and has a desperate urge to protect the children, especially after seeing most of them injured or tortured and some of them die.

CHARACTER BIO — tw: everything. e v e r y t h i n g. drugs, alcohol, pedophilia mentions, teenage prostitutes, murder, suicide ...everything.                                                                                                                                          

In life, there are really two choices: you adapt, or you die. Selina prided herself on avoiding the latter, which meant she excelled at the former. A tragic backstory goes hand-in-hand with most Gothamites, and Selina was no exception: her mother died by her own hand when Selina was just a child, leaving her and her sister in the care of a father unfit and unwilling for the job, leaving the girls to fend for themselves. Social workers made quick work of plucking Selinga and Magdalene from the Kyle household, depositing them instead into Sprang Hill, a group home of sorts. Selina found that Sprang Hill was not much better than being out on her own, and found herself fighting to keep her and her sister safe. Her behavior was considered less than appropriate and ideal, and so Selina was sent away from Sprang Hill at the age of eleven, separating her from her sister. Sea Gate was worse than Sprang Hill, worse than Selina could have imagined, and so the fight for survival continued. The director of Sea Gate was cruel and believed in harsh discipline, and seemed to have a mission to break Selina and make her compliant, though he was largely unsuccessful. She was about thirteen when she learned of the director’s crimes, primarily embezzling money from the program, and was bold enough to brag about her findings. This resulted in Selina finding herself back on the streets, but not before the man in question tried to have her killed: Selina was drugged, thrown into a bag and tossed into the ocean to prevent her from going to the authorities. (Silly man, didn’t he know that cats have nine lives?) Selina survived, and returned to Sea Gate to demand that all records of her be destroyed and that she be let go, scott free. Back on the street, Selina joined the Alleytown Gang, which was a community of sorts consisting of pickpockets and thieves run by a woman who went by Mama Fortuna. Selina was already a skilled pickpocket and thief, fierce to her very core, but this was where she was able to further hone in on her thieving skills. However, her time with the group did not last long, as Selina found herself suffocating under Fortuna’s thumb. Survival instinct kicked in again, and Selina was forced to take extraordinary measures: at the age of fifteen, she resorted to prostitution to earn money to keep herself afloat. It was here that she met Sylvia, a mother hen of sorts to help guide Selina through the new world she found herself in. Sylvia did her best to protect Selina, and found herself beaten nearly to death when she took on customers too rough for the green-Selina to handle. However, Sylvia’s protections didn’t last long as Selina dug a hole for herself with a pimp named Stan, who Selina began to see personally outside of work as well. She thought she was in love at seventeen with a man at least twice her age that abused her heavily. She was left in an alley after a particularly bad confrontation with him, and the detective questioning her in the hospital got nothing but lip and attitude back despite trying to help her. Selina was left with a phone number of a man that the detective said would at least teach her how to defend herself: Ted Grant. Initially, Selina put the number aside and went right back to work on the streets and right back to Stan. She was given more “kinky” clients with a slinky cat costume to go with it, playing the part of a dominatrix for her customers. It was then that Selina decided to call the number she’d been given and train with Grant, deciding she needed to put her safety first in even trickier situations. Selina took to training like a cat to cream; she was able to learn an eclectic mix of fighting skills to have in her back pocket for when things went awry. After a client gave Selina a whip to use in her dominatrix role, Selina went to Ted and demanded he teach her how to use it as a weapon rather than a toy used for sex work. Selina took another young prostitute under her wing, a teenager named Holly that Selina saw quite a bit of herself in: too young for this, but out of options and Selina did what she could to protect her, much as Sylvia had once done for her. While she was training with Ted, Selina met and began working with Stark, a criminal mastermind that helped her hone in further on her thievery skills. Stark took Selina on as something like a partner in his crime industry, and Selina kept this a secret and continued to work as a prostitute as a cover. It was around this time that Selina witnessed Batman in action for the first time and saw him escape from the police. She felt inspired by him: anonymous, unstoppable, feared and used this inspiration when she donned the catsuit she’d been given to use as a dominatrix as her own costume to conceal her identity, reclaiming the suit for herself. Donning her catsuit as something akin to a suit of armor, Selina quit being a prostitute, beating her pimp (Stan) within an inch of his life and leaving him in the same alley that he’d left her for dead in. Luck would have it that as she unmasked herself, she would run into her sister for the first time since they’d been separated all those years ago. Overwhelmed and filled with a sense of dread and terror, Selina ran and this caused her sister to pursue her. Stan took note of this, and once recovered enough to enact his revenge, would kidnap Magdalene and use her as a tool to trap and contain Selina. The situation quickly escalated, with Batman saving Magdalene though Stan did not survive the encounter. Selina realized that wearing the catsuit made her feel different - empowered, enraged, and severely out of control. She swore she would never wear it again, not after the near-death of her sister and Stan’s demise. However, as fate would have it, Selina found herself slipping into the catsuit again after Holly was beaten nearly to death by a police officer who had hired the teen as a client. She nearly killed the officer, stopped by another intervention from Batman himself. Selina’s legacy as a career thief as Catwoman started there, primarily on the East End of Gotham where she targeted crime bosses with fewer morals than she had herself and deep pockets. She set her sights high and decided to go for gold and quickly climbed to the top, opting to plan a job against the one and only Carmine Falcone. She was half successful, clawing and permanently scarring Falcone’s face with the metal claws she used with her catsuit during the operation, though ended up needing a rescue from the one and only Batman himself yet again. The relationship between the Cat and the Bat remained conflicting as such: sometimes on the same side of the coin, while others on the opposite, with occasional team ups when they weren’t on opposing sides. A team up with Stark, her once-mentor, led to Selina betraying him and making off with the loot intended for both of them (valuable diamonds which would sustain her and her lifestyle for quite some time); this was a power move that surely proved that Selina was able to take care of herself, was controlled by no one and proved that she was an incredible thief in her own right. Selina Kyle was transformed. Street-kid turned criminal turned prostitute turned socialite with the money Catwoman procured from her heists. She was finally reaching the heights she never thought she could, what she felt she always deserved, and was licking up each and every second of it. Catwoman began to work internationally, organizing detailed and major heists globally rather than confining herself to Gotham. Catwoman continued to tip the scales into vigilantism at times when she was not off scoring, working with her own brand of personal justice on cases that she deemed worthy of her attention and action. However, despite it all, she always had her eyes on the prize and her priority was always set on one thing and one one thing only: herself.

EXTRAS —

Myers Briggs: ISTP Hogwarts house: Slytherin, Ravenclaw a close second Zodiac: Pisces Sin: Greed, Pride

[theliterateape]

An Impeached Trump is a More Powerful Trump

By David Himmel

This piece was originally written and performed by the author for BUGHOUSE #16 on January 7, 2019 at Haymarket Pub & Brewery. You can listen to the show here.

In a recent New York Times piece titled “The People vs. Donald J. Trump,” opinion columnist David Leonhardt writes “The unrelenting chaos that Trump creates can sometimes obscure the big picture. But the big picture is simple: The United States has never had a president as demonstrably unfit for the office as Trump. And it’s becoming clear that 2019 is likely to be dominated by a single question: What are we going to do about it?”

Leonhardt goes on to make the case that impeachment of our 45th president is a must if the nation, and potentially the world, are to survive. But Leonhardt, thinks the big picture is smaller than it actually is.

Donald Trump is a problem. He’s a stain on American diplomacy and the office of the president. The guy has always been a wanker, a creep, a con man, a dumb daddy’s boy and a racist crook. Nothing in the last decade changed that. Nothing. And he should not be President of the United States. But impeachment will be a divisive waste of time.

Certainly, the House of Representatives could impeach him. But to get him out of office it’s going to require the Senate to pull the proverbial trigger. And that’s not going to happen. The Senate is still held my a majority of Republicans. Chances are that they’ll squash the impeachment idea immediately. And that’d be the end of that.

Now, they could recognize their mistake in allowing Trump to take over their party and admit he’s a dangerous fool and initiate impeachment proceedings, but even that won’t remove the guy from power — it will only draw things out over the next two years. It will be a distraction, and we don’t need any more distractions during this presidency. We, and by we, I mean the Legislative Branch and the few remaining humans in the Executive Branch, we need to get to work.

Let’s look at what the Trump Presidency will look like if impeachment proceedings commence.

Barron and Tiffany’s dad — remember Barron and Tiffany? — will be pissed. Like really pissed. We’ve seen Trump pissed, and a pissed off Trump makes a lot more trouble for everyone. He goes from stupid and spazzy to super stupid and spazzy. The tweets get more insulting and accusatory; the lies get more outrageous; the vengeance on his enemies gets more intense. Everything becomes even more careless than it is on his best days, which is pretty bad. He’ll alienate those few remaining humans keeping the Presidency and a big chunk of American democracy afloat. Essentially, if the House impeaches Donald Trump, it’ll be handing him a huge cannon which he’ll use to blow a hole in the ship while trying to fire at Pelosi and Schummer and maybe even you and me.

In this time, he’ll either align himself closer with Putin and Kim Jong Un or piss them off so bad that North Korea starts dropping the bombs and Russia invades everything from our government to our underwear drawers. It will be total chaos. This kind of chaos may prevent Trump from incarcerating more immigrant kids, but it could also mean their certain death via nuclear war.

No matter what happens from now until the day Donald Trump dies, he will blame others for his failures and pick fights that don’t need to be picked. If he’s facing removal from office, instead of just differences of opinion over border security and budgets, he’ll erupt like a toddler who’s candy was yanked from his hand and a flaming steak knife was plunged into his rectum. That’s the kind of fit we’ll see. If you’ve ever seen a toddler lose their shit when they don’t have a flaming steak knife plunged into their rectum, you know how bad that could get.

Really, really bad.

Furthermore, we’re not just facing Trump’s wrath or the democratic trouble it will incite. We have to be mindful of the die-hard Trump supporters. They, like our Commander in Chief, are petulant rubes who will follow Trump’s antagonistic, ill-informed, distraction bravado and behavior, which ignites equal amounts of clapping back from the Strident Left. This muddies the waters and is, well, exactly the kind of distraction Trump and his ilk need in order to maintain their teeny grasp on power. Or at least their grasp on the keys to the Oval Office. They’ll blame all of Trump’s failures on the “attack” on the President.

Impeachment proceedings will give Trump and Co. the scapegoat they need to fail without feeling like failures. Trump will become a martyr. That will only embolden the MAGA Masses. And that’s a terrible thing for the future of the country. Presidents come and go but The People are long lasting. What we’re experiencing today by the far right conservative Republican Party was put in motion in 1964 with Barry Goldwater’s campaign, kicked into gear during Reagan’s Eighties and dolloped with whipped cream and a cherry thanks to W’s administration.

 When you get dick cancer, you need to kill the cancer itself, not haphazardly slice your dong off. Impeaching Trump would just be cutting off our diseased dick. And I guarantee you that the cancer would come for our balls, bones, and brains.

Now, let’s look at what can happen if the House chooses to run the clock out.

Trump will continue being an ineffective bonehead, stirring up shit, making a mess of things, but a mess we can clean up. With the House and the Senate charged with governing and keeping Trump in line in a diplomatic way, all accusations of an attack will be without the right amount of fuel to set any real fires. They’ll sounds just as ridiculous as when anyone talks about Hillary’s emails today.

More importantly, with the Democrats focused on actually governing and legislating, they’ll have more time to adapt to the changes occurring in the party. Differences can be reconciled or at least understood. This allows the party to become united. A united party is the only way Trump and the Far Right can be beat fair and square in 2020.

A statement needs to be made for history to recognize down the line: Donald Trump and the Far Right were defeated by American democracy at its best. Without impeachment proceedings and with Trump still showing his ass at every opportunity, the GOP remaining in Congress will be able to quietly distance themselves from Trump and move more toward the center. So, too, will the Strident Left. The parties will recognize that working together can save the country and their individual political careers. Everyone wins.

The Founding Fathers wrote Article 1, sections 2 and 3, and clauses 5 and 6 of the U.S. Constitution for a reason. They foresaw that some people would make it to the highest office who would ultimately be unfit for that office. Nixon was one. Trump certainly is unfit. But the difference is that Nixon was a measured criminal. Trump is a lunatic. He cannot be dealt with in the same way as Nixon. Trump’s weaponry is not power from within, like Nixon. Trump’s power comes from the feedback he gets by throwing vitriol at his enemies. We can’t allow him to do that.

Impeaching Donald Trump is exactly the thing that will make him more dangerous. Do not impeach Trump —vote him out.