#and that people arent in a constant war for basic human rights

[mooifyourecows]

my mood has plummeted the past few days because of various anxiety reasons and so ive once again uninstalled twitter on my phone and i can already feel things getting Infinitely Better™️

[propfortytwo]

heres the entire plot of homestuck explained mostly

the story takes place over 4 (technically 5 counting the end) alternate universes, and starts in the 3rd one, but it makes more sense if we start from the beginning chronologically.

a race of humanoids called trolls who are basically just humans with grey skin, orange horns, multicolored blood, and varying degrees of psychic powers exist on a planet called beforus. things are relatively uneventful, until the abdicated heiress to an empire, meenah, discovers The Game(tm) on the moon.

the game, otherwise known as sburb (or sgrub to the trolls) exists to propagate the universe; a successful session of it creates a new universe entirely. it involves a server player manipulating the real environment of a client player to bring them into a type of pocket dimension called the medium aka the session aka the incipisphere whatever, point is, you get there. the client can then, from that dimension, host the server of another client and bring them into the same session, and so on; the trolls sessions have 12 players, and human sessions have 4. each player has their own ‘land’, a small planet vaguely themed around them with a unique poorly defined quest, but that doesnt come up too much so dont worry about it immediately. each player also has a unique mythological role consisting of a class and an aspect; there are 12 of each for a total of 144 possible combinations, for instance john egbert is the heir of breath. this not only defines their abilities, but also their personality and role in the story.

each session has a few constants: a ‘planet’ in the center called skaia, which is a bright ball of just sky, with clouds that show you visions of the future; at the center of it is the battlefield, a chessboard which gets bigger and more complicated as things go on. a session will also always contain prospit, a yellow planet that orbits close to skaia, and a purple planet called derse that orbits far away from it. in a game session, prospit and derse are at war, with derse seeking to destroy skaia and the battlefield by sending an asteroid belt into it; coincidentally, this also destroys the home planet of the players, as many asteroids are teleported into reality. in the sessions weve seen so far these asteroids also are used to paradoxically send baby versions of the players and their ancestors back in time but that isnt too important right now. each player has an alternate self called a dream self, which exists on one of the two planets (but doesnt have any bearing on their morality or allegiance, just personality). dream selves, along with the session itself, always exist alongside the normal universe before the game even begins, and under certain conditions your normal self will, when asleep, awake as your dream self and vice versa. in addition, a player who dies can be revived, but only as their dream self.

back to the plot; the beforus trolls aren’t very good at the game; in fact, they fail and spend a few years not being able to do anything until they discover a way to reset both their game and the universe itself, which will retroactively swap them with their ancestors as players and do some other things as well. they should logically not even exist anymore, but due to some shenanigans that happen in the 2nd universe, they exist as ghosts in a sort of afterlife formed by dreaming players whose dream selves are dead or missing. overall, only two of these 12 trolls are actually important to the plot, meenah and aranea.

this brings us to the second universe; beforus is now called alternia, and it is a considerably more violent and horrific place, with troll society being murderous as pretty much a standard. as you can imagine literally everyone is traumatized by this. the first 12 trolls to get introduced in the comic come from this timeline, and include funny lawyer girl terezi. there’s also a considerable amount of infighting, most of which is vriskas fault. she comes up later.

the 2nd troll session is considerably more successful than the 1st, and finishes the game creating a universe, though this new universe contains a “small” defect due to negligence on the part of the players. before the trolls can enter their new universe, however, they are unexpectedly attacked by an angry teleporting chess dog with wings and a katana, who murders all their dream selves and blows up prospit and derse. the trolls go into hiding on a meteor, where they learn that this strange murderous furry came from a session inside their new universe. they elect to constantly harass the players of this session. also around the time of furrymans rampage, a girl named feferi convinces some eldritch creatures to create the aforementioned afterlife, while another girl named aradia who was briefly a robot comes back to life as a god tier and freezes furrydude in place. a god tier player is someone who has died in a particular way and as a result been revived with conditional immortality (if they die they are immediately revived UNLESS their death was either heroic, or just ie they were a piece of shit), powers based on their class and aspect, and a new outfit also based on their class and aspect. meenah in the first universe did this, as did vriska in the 2nd, though only because aradia beat the shit out of her for being awful. speaking of which she murders her childhood friend who she has abused and tormented for years because thats just how vriska is.

this brings us to the start of homestuck, the comic. there are four kids at the moment: john egbert, an overall lovable dumbass who is the first to enter, rose lalonde, a goth lesbian obsessed with wizards and psychology, dave strider, funny sunglasses memelord and horrifically abused swordsman, and jade harley, the prophetic scientist heiress of an old colonialist who was raised by a magic dog. through some difficulties they enter their session, and things IMMEDIATELY start going wrong. they just barely get everyone into the session before earth is ruined, and before that can even happen, the aforementioned murder furry is created when a bureaucrat named jack noir kills the black queen and steals her magic ring. a different jack noir was also present in the troll session, this one became a mobster named spades slick. (yes, that stupid fucking intermission was actually important). this happened because like the players, several ingame npcs also are brought to the dying planet, after it gets fucked by rocks. these include, on earth, WV aka the mayor, PM who will be important later, and two other jackasses who arent important. PM is cool because shes a mailman who fights through the fucking legions of hell to deliver a package to john and then later receives a copy of jack noirs magic ring and proceeds to chase him across the void for 3 years and finally beats the shit out of him. love her. anyway;

like the 1st universe, the kids are informed by a creepy man who talks in white text on a white background like a fucking tool that they cant succeed and will have to reset their session, though with coordination from the trolls, they have a plan to survive it. they also plan to use a very large bomb created as part of that defect i mentioned before to blow up something called the green sun, which is where jack noirs magic furry powers come from. this will also coincidentally kill spooky white man who has a cueball for a head and release an eldritch horror known as lord english into the timeline. meanwhile in the troll session, a clown troll named gamzee is driven into a rage by a video of the insane clown posse sent to him by dave and murders several of the less relevant characters because hes a piece of shit. also meanwhile a troll named eridan ALSO kills some people including someone named kanaya who is a lesbian vampire with a chainsaw who eventually marries rose. kanaya then cuts eridan in half because she Is Too Fucking Angry To Die. love her. ALSO ALSO meanwhile vriska is about to fly off and expose their hiding place to jack noir, but is killed by her childhood friend terezi. she dies for good because its considered a just death. anyway back in the kid session, things go awry and its revealed that white bread tricked them, as the bomb actually CREATES the green sun retroactively. also, because of the properties of the green sun and where the bomb was set off, the two kids who set off the bomb, dave and rose, meet up with the remaining trolls outside of the kid session. meanwhile jade fucking dies to a bomb made of shaving cream but is revived as a god tier and for unrelated reasons also fused with her magical dog. dave and rose also ascend to god tier as they died when a massive fucking sun spawned on top of them. john was already god tier due to some shenanigans by vriska earlier. basically everyone has their signature look now.

jade uses her new god tier abilities to shrink down every planet in their session including the battlefield, before bringing herself, john, and an alternate timeline dave onto a battleship and literally fucking launching it through the fourth wall into Poorly Defined Author Space which is technically on the moon of alternia. andrew hussie is here. as they leave the session before its reset, they stay alive, same with rose and dave. also meanwhile with rose and dave, one of the surviving trolls, sollux, uses his psychic powers to launch the meteor towards the newly reset session at relativistic speeds (all sessions TECHNICALLY exist in the same dimension? its weird), while jade does the same with her battleship.

thus begins the 4th timeline/universe. shit only gets stupider from here, consider taking a short break.

ok, ready?

the new universe is shown off, with the new kids; jane crocker, an average young woman who stands to inherit the betty crocker company which in this timeline is like amazon (shes an alternate version of johns grandmother); roxy lalonde, who is literally the best character in homestuck (alt. rose’s mom); jake english, a dumbass who lives on a deserted island, speaks in horribly inaccurate british slang and dual wields pistols (alt. jade’s grandfather); and dirk strider, a canonically gay nerd with pointy anime sunglasses and a sword who builds robots and canonically watches mlp so like fucking make of that what you will (alt. dave’s abusive brother). their entry into their session is different; their session is called a void session, and is inherently unwinnable because of retroactive time bullshit, and for related reasons, the meteors that would destroy earth are never sent. you may ask “well how did the kids get there then?” to which the answer is when the reset happened the destination of the kids guardians was switched to be this new session. doesn’t that mean the guardians never existed, you say? stop thinking.

anyway janes entry into the session coincedes with betty crocker revealing herself to be a hostile alien empress who slowly takes over the earth with the help of the insane clown posse and guy fieri. she’s also the alternate version of meenah, who in the alternia timeline was the empress and also kind of a horrible person. shes here because of nonsense involving lord english, who she works for but hates. in fact, theres an interesting side effect to this; dirk and roxy actually live 400 years in the future from jane and jake, from after betty crocker aka the condesce killed everyone and flooded the planet. they still enter the same session, through dirk doing some stupid shit and controlling both his dream self and his actual self at the same time and moving everyone around.

there’s a long period of absolutely nothing happening in the 4th session while the trolls and kids travel to it, and during this were introduced to two characters; calliope and caliborn. theyre brother and sister, and are part of another race called cherubs who look like green skeletons and which share a body with each other and fight for control of it. caliborn is the fucking worst and actually becomes lord english eventually, while calliope is a nice down to earth person who makes fan characters and cosplays a troll. they also technically exist in a... 5th, separate universe, on a dead earth?? which is probably the future earth from the ending? i dunno it makes no fucking sense.

anyway calliope dies due to some plotting but death means fucking nothing in this story so shes off hidden in the afterlife. the meteor group and the battleship group pass through this afterlife like physically several times during their journey through the void and meet many of the dead trolls, including dead vriska, meenah, and aranea, who come up with a plan to lure lord english, who is currently destroying reality and murdering ghosts, to a place where they can hit him with a magic ghost weapon. they find it, and john touches it out of curiosity, whereupon he gains weird powers that let him travel ANYWHERE in canon at any time, though he cant really control it. during his random zaps around he beats the shit out of caliborn which is cool and good. partway through, aranea leaves and uses a magic ring to come back to life JUST as the two groups arrive at the new session and the 4 new kids ascend to god tier, at which point everything goes wrong all at once.

through a contrived series of events, jade and jane are mind controlled by the condesce, and a long fight scene ensues where jake unleashes his true power and then dies, aranea tries to usurp the condesce but fails miserably, and basically fucking everyone but john and roxy die horribly, planets are smashed into each other, the session is falling apart due to interference from caliborn who has limited control over the narrative for some reason; its not good.

fortunately, john in theory has the ability to fix this by retconning events in a particular way. he has no idea how to though, until a dying terezi headbutts him, writes instructions on a blindfold in her own blood, and then dies, falling into a chalk outline of her own corpse she drew immediately beforehand because shes fucking metal. john also, during this time, uses his new powers to move his planet out of the session into a white void apparently outside everything. as a consequence of this, in an alternate timeline his planet explodes and roxy dies, though in THIS weird space, he and roxy are still alive.

following terezis instructions, john changes some subtle things in the past, before ultimately preventing her from killing vriska by knocking vriska out. this, surprisingly, actually has a positive effect; vriska has powerful mind control abilities that allow her to put jane and jade to sleep upon arrival and prevent the bad timeline from happening, but she also mellows out a bit and keeps everyone from losing their minds during the journey, while also forming a plan to fight the condesce that works out pretty well. the person she murdered gets revived as well, though she still treats him like shit so im not giving her points for that.

john and roxy arrive from the bad timeline with johns planet, and roxy uses the magic ring to bring the dead calliope back to life. also around this time calliope meets an alternate version of herself who killed caliborn in her timeline and is spooky and mysterious and super fucking powerful and will be able to help kill lord english, so thats cool.

some nice, genuine heart to hearts happen between the characters as they get set up for the final battle, at which point it happens, in a 20 minute flash. the condesce gets defeated, lord english's influence is cut out from the session, and the new universe is created; its actually a pretty happy ending.

and THAT is the end of homestuck.

[patriotsnet]

Why Republicans Are Wrong About Everything

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-republicans-are-wrong-about-everything/

Why Republicans Are Wrong About Everything

Why So Many Republicans Cling To Trump

Saagar Enjeti: Trump, GOP, On Wrong Side Of EVERYTHING Since Coronavirus Began

Ben Shapiro got part of it right. A toxic mix of status anxiety, persecution fears, and echoes of the Civil War helps explain why they follow Trump into the abyss.

On September 17, 1862, over 10,000 Confederate soldiers were killed, wounded, or went missing in a single day at the Battle of Antietam. Very few of them came from slave-owning families, so why did they agree to give their lives in defense of human bondage?

I was reminded of this question when I noticed that Politico Playbook had recruited conservative celebrity and author Ben Shapiro;to explain why the vast majority of House Republicans voted not to impeach President Trump on Wednesday for sending a murderous mob after them on January 6. Politico was slammed by liberals for opening its best-known section to a conservative whos been charged with being bigoted and intolerant. But Shapiros explanation of the rallying around Trump during his final days wasnt totally off base. He was on to something about how Republicans see the world.

With Trump leaving office within a week, defending his incitement of an insurrection doesnt seem to be in the long-term self-interest of Republican officeholders.;But the Civil War example helps explain why people sometimes do very self-destructive things out of spite or insecurity.

White supremacy was such a consensus view at the time that Lincoln felt compelled to defend it.

Like the rebels at Antietam, no one wants to die for nothing.

Support Nonprofit Journalism

Why Are Republicans So Mean

Let’s state right off-the-bat that conservatives indeed have much to offer. In fact, the very notion of conservatism itself keeps us grounded in tradition and prevents our society from spinning into the chaos of constant flux that would surely result if we were to impetuously pursue every new liberal idea to spring forth from our fertile minds. And conservatives admirably believe in America, established order, family, freedom, and success. This all sounds wonderful.

But when it comes to other people who happen to be different from the establishment, Republicans seem to be downright mean and nasty.

We are constantly reminded of the meanness of Republicans over and over again. One recent example is evident in the xenophobic remarks of the Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, who recently referred to Mexican and other immigrants as rapists and murderers.

Basic common sense, however, tells us that human beings are not any more or less violent based upon where on a map they happened to have been born. And the evidence in studies bears this out as well by indicating that immigrants are no more likely to be violent than members of the overall population. Makes sense.

But Republicans seem to harbor some sort of a fear of foreigners and an aversion against other kinds of people who are not part of the established in-group. Their view seems to be that these other people are not like us, they pose a threat to us , and thus automatically they should be regarded as enemies.

There Arent Real Forces Within The Gop Leading Change

There is some appetite for change within the GOP. In those 2024 polls, at least a third of Republicans either were supporting a GOP presidential candidate other than Trump or were undecided.;

In YouGov Blues polling, only about 40 percent of Republicans identified themselves as Trump Republicans. A recent survey from Fabrizio, Lee and Associates, a GOP-leaning firm that worked on Trumps presidential campaigns, found that about 40 percent of Republican voters didnt want Trump to continue to be a leader in the party. Those numbers dont necessarily mean that those voters want the GOP to change drastically. But there is a substantial number of Trump-skeptical/ready-to-move-on-from-Trump Republican voters. But that sentiment isnt really showing up in the Republican Partys actions during the last three months basically everything GOP officials in states and in Washington are doing lines up with the Trumpian approach. So what gives?;

related:Why The Recent Violence Against Asian Americans May Solidify Their Support Of Democrats Read more. »

It is hard to see Republicans changing course, even if a meaningful minority of voters in the party wants changes, without some elite institutions and powerful people in the party pushing a new vision. And its hard to see real anti-Trumpism forces emerging in the GOP right now.;

Don’t Miss: Republican Flag Pins

Reality Check : Biden Cant Be Fdr

Theres no question that Biden is swinging for the fences. Beyond the emerging bipartisan infrastructure bill, he has proposed a far-reaching series of programs that would collectively move the United States several steps closer to the kind of social democracy prevalent in most industrialized nations: free community college, big support for childcare and homebound seniors, a sharp increase in Medicaid, more people eligible for Medicare, a reinvigorated labor movement. It is why 100 days into the administration, NPR was asking a commonly heard question: Can Biden Join FDR and LBJ In The Democratic Party’s Pantheon?

But the FDR and LBJ examples show conclusively why visions of a transformational Biden agenda are so hard to turn into reality. In 1933, FDR had won a huge popular and electoral landslide, after which he had a three-to-one Democratic majority in the House and a 59-vote majority in the Senate. Similarly, LBJ in 1964 had won a massive popular and electoral vote landslide, along with a Senate with 69 Democrats and a House with 295. Last November, on the other hand, only 42,000 votes in three key states kept Trump from winning re-election. Democrats losses in the House whittled their margin down to mid-single digits. The Senate is 50-50.

Most Republicans Said That President Obama Should Be Impeached Because Of The 2012 Attack On The Us Consulate In Benghazi

Their own investigations, however, proved them wrong. Every Congressional inquiry, including those by the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee, concluded that the Obama administration did nothing wrong regarding Benghazi, that there was no stand down order given, and that neither the President nor anyone in his administration lied about it. Each and every Republican investigation has reached this same conclusion, but Republicans continue to exploit this tragedy for political gain.

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Nominating Mitt Romney For President

Despite the failure to grab the Senate, the GOP was still riding strong anti-Obamacare sentiment and voter frustration over the slow recovery from the Great Recession. Much of this was fueled by the Tea Party movement, which added a rare Republican grassroots element to the GOP.

When you think about it now, all of that made former Mitt Romney an extremely odd choice for the Republican nomination for president in 2012. He embodied the establishment GOP in almost every way. Romney had years as a hedge fund manager at Bain Capital on his resume at a time when most Americans were still blaming Wall Street for the nation’s economic woes. Worst of all, his universal health coverage plan enacted while he was governor of Massachusetts looked eerily like Obamacare. In fact, “Romneycare” was seen as one of the models the crafters of the Affordable Care Act used when they wrote the law. If the GOP wanted to put up a candidate who invigorated its anti-Obamacare and increasingly anti-establishment base, they couldn’t have missed the mark much more than they did with Mitt Romney.

Bidens Bill Is More Popular

We live in the middle of an era of tremendous polarization, yet Joe Bidens American Rescue Plan is shockingly popular. Its one of the most popular, least polarizing pieces of legislation in recent memory. According to a recent Politico/Morning Consultpoll, 76 percent of voters support Bidens plan, including a majority of Republicans.

Its worth noting that most polls show that 70 percent or so of Republicans believe Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. Therefore, a large segment of people who think Biden stole the election also supports his COVID and economic recovery plans.

Obamas Recovery Act was never this popular. A January 2009 Gallup poll found that the public favored Obamas plan 52 percent to 38 percent.

These are good numbers but nowhere near the sky-high popularity of the Biden plan. At the time of this poll, Obamas approval rating was hovering around 70 percent. Bidens plan is more popular than he is Bidens job approval is 52.8 per FiveThirtyEight. That disparity is evidence of Bidens COVID plan’s political durability and the dangerous game Republicans are playing by opposing it. People who dont like Biden but like his plan are the exact people who the Republicans need to win over to take back Congress.

Read Also: How Many States Are Controlled By Republicans

Times Republicans Were Wrong

It’s no secret that politicians tend to use exaggerated political rhetoric to get people to vote for them. In recent decades, Republicans have repeatedly made very ominous predictions about the horrors that will result from Democratic policies while painting a rosy picture of what will result from Republican policies. Now we have the luxury of looking back over the years to examine those predictions and policies. Below, you will find twenty-one examples of times Republicans were blatantly wrong.

Taking The Perspective Of Others Proved To Be Really Hard

Why both Democrats and Republicans are wrong on inflation

The divide in the United States is wide, and one indication of that is how difficult our question proved for many thoughtful citizens. A 77-year-old Republican woman from Pennsylvania was typical of the voters who struggled with this question, telling us, This is really hard for me to even try to think like a devilcrat!, I am sorry but I in all honesty cannot answer this question. I cannot even wrap my mind around any reason they would be good for this country.

Similarly, a 53-year-old Republican from Virginia said, I honestly cannot even pretend to be a Democrat and try to come up with anything positive at all, but, I guess they would vote Democrat because they are illegal immigrants and they are promised many benefits to voting for that party. Also, just to follow what others are doing. And third would be just because they hate Trump so much. The picture she paints of the typical Democratic voter being an immigrant, who goes along with their party or simply hates Trump will seem like a strange caricature to most Democratic voters. But her answer seems to lack the animus of many.;;

Democrats struggled just as much as Republicans. A 33-year-old woman from California told said, i really am going to have a hard time doing this but then offered that Republicans are morally right as in values, going to protect us from terrorest and immigrants, going to create jobs.

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Reality Check #: The Electoral College And The Senate Are Profoundly Undemocraticand Were Stuck With Them

Because the Constitution set up a state-by-state system for picking presidents, the massive Democratic majorities we now see in California and New York often mislead us about the partys national electoral prospects. In 2016, Hillary Clintons 3-million-vote plurality came entirely from California. In 2020, Bidens 7-million-vote edge came entirely from California and New York. These are largely what election experts call wasted votesDemocratic votes that dont, ultimately, help the Democrat to win. That imbalance explains why Trump won the Electoral College in 2016 and came within a handful of votes in three states from doing the same last November, despite his decisive popular-vote losses.

The response from aggrieved Democrats? Abolish the Electoral College! In practice, theyd need to get two-thirds of the House and Senate, and three-fourths of the state legislatures, to ditch the process that gives Republicans their only plausible chance these days to win the White House. Shortly after the 2016 election, Gallup found that Republican support for abolishing the electoral college had dropped to 19 percent. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, a state-by-state scheme to effectively abolish the Electoral College without changing the Constitution, hasnt seen support from a single red or purple state.

Surrendering Before The Battle

The midterm elections of 2014 gave the Republicans control of the Senate that they should have won in 2010. But even before the new members took their oaths of office, then-Senate Majority Leader-elect Mitch McConnell promised never to trigger a government shutdown. That effectively took the sharpest arrow out of the GOP’s congressional quiver, and again relieved the greatest pressure the Republicans could have exercised against Obama.

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Unified Republican Opposition To Obama’s Policies Helped Them Retake Congress In 2010 Here’s Why It May Not Work Again

When the House of Representatives passed President Bidens COVID-relief plan last weekend, every single Republican voted against it. Earlier this week, Senator John Thune, Mitch McConnells deputy, predicted that every Republican Senator would vote against the Biden plan. Thunes reasoning was typically cynical. He said the Republicans wanted to:

make the Democrats own a piece of legislation that I think is going to have long-term adverse consequences.

This was the latest example of Republicans saying the quiet part out loud. Thune is admitting they are making a bet that the Biden plan wont work, and Republicans can reap the political rewards of a sub-standard economy in 2022. This is the same bet the Republicans made in 2009 when they decided to oppose Barack Obamas efforts to address the financial crisis.

Politically, the 2009 bet paid off. The Republicans rode a wave of economic discontent to control of the House and a massive set of wins down-ballot that would impact politics for more than a decade. But just because it worked then doesnt mean it will work now. The Republicans may be making a massive miscalculation by re-fighting the last war.

Republicans Said President Obama Would Raise Taxes Sky High

It never happened. Income taxes for over 95% of Americans remained the same or lower than they were before Obama was elected. The only people whose income taxes increased were those who make more than $400,000 per year, and their taxes rose only 3%. For most Americans, taxes are still lower now than they were under Reagan.

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Blowing The Midterm Elections

The 2008 elections gave Barack Obama a clear win in the presidential election and the Democrats a filibuster-proof supermajority in Congress. They proceeded to spend that political capital almost entirely on passing Obamacare in a lengthy process that included a number of unusual compromises with their own party members, like the “Cornhusker Kickback” and controversial legislative tricks like the “deemed as passed” maneuver. All of this took place even as the Affordable Care Act failed to gain majority support in the polls.

That set the stage for a strong Republican advantage going into the 2010 midterm elections. On paper, the GOP did score a resounding victory, picking up 63 seats in the House of Representatives and a net gain of six seats in the Senate.

But Republicans blew a solid chance to retake the Senate. They put up weak candidates in several winnable races. They included Sharon Angle in Nevada, who was seen as too radical and managed to lose to then-incumbent Harry Reid despite his very weak approval ratings in his home state. Arch-abortion opponent Ken Buck won the GOP nomination in Colorado, . The biggest mistake of all was Christine O’Donnell in Delaware. O’Donnell lost after she became infamous for her revelation that she had once experimented with witchcraft.

As a result, the Democrats kept control of the Senate and the Republicans lost a chance to force Obama into what could have been a series of advantageous compromises over the next six years.

The Gop Is A Grave Threat To American Democracy

Unless and until Republicans summon the wit and the will to salvage the party, ruin will follow.

About the author: Peter Wehner is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He writes widely on political, cultural, religious, and national-security issues, and he is the author of The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.

The hope of many conservative critics of Donald Trump was that soon after his defeat, and especially in the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection, the Republican Party would snap back into its former shape. The Trump presidency would end up being no more than an ugly parenthesis. The GOP would distance itself from Trump and Trumpism, and become a normal party once again.

But that dream soon died. The Trump presidency might have been the first act in a longer and even darker political drama, in which the Republican Party is becoming more radicalized. How long this will last is an open question; whether it is happening is not.

To better grasp whats happening among 2020 Trump voters, I spoke with Sarah Longwell, a lifelong conservative and political strategist who is now the publisher of The Bulwark, a news and opinion website that is home to anti-Trump conservatives. She is also the founder of Republican Voters Against Trump, now the Republican Accountability Project.

Recommended Reading: Donald Trump People Magazine Article 1998

Prior To Going To War In Iraq Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Optimistically Predicted The Iraq War Might Last Six Days Six Weeks I Doubt Six Months

What’s more, Vice-President Dick Cheney said we would be greeted as liberators by the Iraqi people after we overthrow Saddam.

They were both horribly wrong. Instead of six weeks or six months, the Iraq war lasted eight long and bloody years costing thousands of American lives. It led to an Iraqi civil war between the Sunnis and the Shiites that took hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives. Many Iraqi militia groups were formed to fight against the U.S. forces that occupied Iraq. Whats more, Al Qaeda, which did not exist in Iraq before the war, used the turmoil in Iraq to establish a new foothold in that country.

The Iraq war was arguably the most tragic foreign policy blunder in US history.

[semi-imaginary-place]

fe3h blogging 5 because I’ve been posting on discord and I can’t remember what number I was on oct-feb???

So I'm doing another no recruit run and realizing how much planning I need Me: why do I do this to myself  Specifically its SS usuing none of the black eaglea So Byleths going to be soloing until I can recruit all the church staff... or flayn comes along... 

Lambert and the death knight have the same voice actor. Lambert=death knight. Mystery solved

Loog was only able to gain faerghus independence because the emoire was already weakened from its failed invasion of dagda

Also its part if the seiros canon that a great evil darkness came out of the north. That couldn't posaibly feed into racism

The greatest sin this game has commited was giving gilbert a redemption arc

if only the devs weren’t cowards...

Why does dorothea even have A supports with guys? Her head is filled with only girls. has she ever shown interest in a guy?? Beyond a I want to be financially secure and tolerate your presence. everyone else is bi/pan[ Except caspar Hes just an idiot 

I'm gonna post hot takes for the sexuality of each character and yall cant stop me

Edelgard: lesbian Hubert: Edelgard Ferdinand: pansexual Linhardt: grey spec pan but prefers men+ Caspar: too stupid to evaluate Bernadetta: "I want friends" Dorothea: big lesbian Petra: pansexual

Dimitri: confused and repressed Dedue: gay Felix: swords redheads Ashe: pansexual Sylvain: pansexual prefers women Mercedes: pansexual prefers women Annete: lesbian Ingrid: pansexual prefers men

Claude: Demi pansexual/romantic++ Lorenz: ~~noble obligations~~ pansexual and repressed Raphael: grey ace/aro+++ Ignatz: pansexual prefers women Lysithea: pansexual++++ Marianne: pansexual Hilda: pansexual but usually dates guys Leonie: grey ace

+Linhardt feels romantic/sexual attraction but not strongly. He feels romantic love but he doesn't get crushes. ++Claude is the type to fall in love slowly after an emotional connection has already been formed and then get a crush after they've been going steady for 10 years. +++Raphael feels romantic/sexual attraction but not strongly and usually prefers queer platonic relationships ++++more to do with the individual than gender, but girls are cute

Game crashed and I lost like 4 hours of progress TT^TT

I'm on SS (which is the only route I haven't played) and hnnnnng I miss claude its been like 3 months since I played VW. Also I need to write down a time line some time but the stuff the agarthans have been pulling feeds the world builder in me. especially hyrm

as nice as the idea of all the lords getting along and talking things out is, it wouldn’t work out in canon, Edelgard has tunnel vision. Dimitri is irrational and would rather listen to his hallucinations that evidence. And no one trust Claude enough to believe him

Hilarious really how Edelgard will call for Hubert to carry you despite her massive strength and how hubert looks like a gentle wind will blow him over

Macuil/Indech:  Shun society. Run off into the wilds. Have vaugue legends be told of you. Be a crpytid

linhardt is such an unrepentant bastard

I had a dream where I could make male units pegasus knights. And then I woke up to cruel reality

Alois is growing on me. At first I was like uuuggg another bumbling idiot. But you know what? Fuck Seteth for not giving Alois more vacation time to see his family

Cavalry units be like: crushes a watermelon with their thighs

Some of the knights were bullying Alois. Who was it. I will bring them untold pain.

Reason #??? to punch Gilbert: he saw this poor child struggling to control his strength and went this boy doesn't need to learn how to control his strength, what he needs is more strength training.  I mean absent emotionally distant and all over shitty father to annette is reason number 1. But dimitri is reason number 2.  Oh let's make this kid lift rocks and run around the moutains at night in full armor in winter. Instead of being able to pick something up without breaking it and you know be able to perform basic daily tasks.  Let's make a human shaped weapon instead of a functional person.  Gilbert single handedly ruined AM for me because he just wouldn't stop messing up everyone else's lives

Each character's recruit requirements are what they admire/respect in a person

I forgot hubert becomes unavailable in month 2. and now I'm stuck with his stupis razor

Hot take. BotW Link and part 2 Ingrid have the same haircut

I'm on my last route (SS) but i hate rhea so much...

why do you think maurice/the beast's crest was used to make aymr?

Also all the nameless backgound characters have brown hair but of the main cast, its only dorothea and claude

Annette’s handwriting: Neat and cute.  Linhardt writes in cursive because he cant be bothered to lift his pen Sylvain has nice handwriting. Ingrid's is very functional, felix's is half way to chicken scratch lots of sharp angles. Dimitri cries on the inside at the thought of picking up a pen. as a kid Dimitri has terrible handwriting and breaks a pen every 5 min. He practiced so hard. Most of what people think is his handwriting is Dedue's (neat and pretty) because dedue writes most of his letters for him

me playing azure moon: I want out. get me off this death train

Finally getting alois's support and wow he's like a human shaped puppy in the sahpe of a middle aged man.  Always falling over himself. Ridiculously happy. 100% all the time. Running and barking everywhere

Fact of the day: dorothea hates eating fish

Alright. Seteth and Flayn's descriptions of her mom are very different.  Where is the truth???  Seteth was like shes demure, quiet, pious, and honest. And Flayn's says she's like Judith

game is forcing me to flirt with Alois? Can I not please!

I keep saying it but Lorenz grows on you like a fungus. He has excellent supports

 i want to weave gold thread into claudes hair

Under rated character development: Dorothea. Every one of her lines in part 2 makes me want to cry.  "every rose has its thorns" -> "only thorns left on this rose" Her character development is that she just gets worn down by the war and I want to bundle her up in a blanket and give her a cup of warm milk.  Dorothea is so full of love. So she feels the sorrows of the war so intensely.

FE3H needs better dads. I mean even jeralt and seteth aren’t great dads. They're just not down right horrible.  Jeralt is emotionally distant with an alcohol problem that byleth had to clean up after him. But there are worse dads Alois seems decent but he needs to spend more time at home. Seteth should have given Alois more vacation time.  They aren't terrible dads. But they aren't getting medals either.  Love their kids but have flaws of their own.

ANNETTE DESERVED BETTER THAN GILBERT Burn him at the stake No wait. He’d want that

My loathing for gilbert is beyond description.  He hurts everyone around him, then doesn't listen to what they have to say, and then keeps continuing his existence as a sad sack of shit.  1. Emotionally distant, strict, and often absent father. Clearly cared about his work for than family.  2. He then straight up leaves with out a note or telling his family anything.  3 knows that annette is looking for him and avoids her.  4. Annette just wants her dad back. That's what would make her happy but he denies her that because he's a selfish bastard.  5. Then he goes on and on about his man-pain while not helping anyone. he self flagellates and blames himself a lot but he never tries to change and so he stays there, is this cycle of self pity.  "Ohhh I have sinned and can not be forgiven" .and I'm like why not do right by the people you hurt? And he's like "no no I have sinned. I cannot see them" or some other bullshit.  He also gets some bullshit redemption arc that I want to scrub clean from my memory because he doesn't deserve it.  Annette's support is all about oh i forgive you. And it puts all the emotional labor on annette and just makes me real angry. And i am going to stop thinking about that disgrace of a human now.

Seteth is controlling. Wont let flayn have friends. Boys arent qllowed to talk to her.  She can't go out. He has to know where she is 24/7. Seteth really is suffocating Flayn. Early in the game Flayn compares herself to a hot house flower, confined to a green house, doomed to die outside it. It bring up the question which is better, to live a long life in constant fear and isolation (remember flayn is very much a people person), or to live a short fulfilling life. The answer of course is that it should be flayns choice. But Seteth denies her autonomy. Flayn is not quite an adult, but even discounting the decades* that she has lived, even a teenager should have some say in the direction of their life. Time and time again Flayn expresses her will and Seteth ignores her. She is allowed little existence outside of him.  Its also hilarious how bad their cover story is.  Its true they love each other but Seteth causes Flayn a fair bit of suffering. Its played for comedy sometimes. And Flayn to some degree tolerates it because she understands that he does it for her sake, and she understands the real danger she is in. They just disagree with what is an acceptable degree of risk. Seteth tolerates no risk which at that point can't be called living. Flayn accepts the danger and believes it is worthwhile to enjoy life and help people despite it. the counselor box also reveals that seteth has been stalking her and think her talking to dudes is bad despite that having nothing to do with the danger of the agarthans.

A fun thing to think about is if Flayn was born of 2 nabeteans, she's a human halfie, or someother sothis bullshit.  I reviewed the sea nd sky paralogue recently looking for answers and there were some hints? Maybe? nothing definative. all we know for sure is that flayn’s mom died in the nemesis war.  Also I have a hypothesis that flayn was in a regenerative coma for most of the 1000 years so she's been active less than 200 years which is why Seteth treats here like a waylaid toddler.

the flayn seteth c support is great Seteth.exe crashes and then reboots right in front of our very eyes

Catherine has such big wlw energy. I didn't quite realize it until I got her supports but hooboy.  Saw a lady so pretty she forgot she almost died pfft.  And this is just with rhea.  The catherine-shamir supports themselves are gold.

Catherine: ever see a woman so beautiful you forget you almost died and decide to devote your whole life to her?

Catherine->Shamir: i get worried when you go out on missions on your own. I'm not there to protect you. I'm scared of you leaving me behind. I never want to leave you side. Between my life and your life i'd choose your life me: ! Shamir: i don't know what the future holds, but let's get married me: !!!!!!!!!!!!

Also catherine/christoph was a thing in the past. Highschool sweethearts. Before she executed him for treason

Ahahahhha this is great! And by great I mean hilarious. Dimitri dies even more offscreen in SS than in VW.  Ghost dimitri in ss made me laugh but  do we ever get an explanation for ghost dimitri or it like the cf finale? Themetically significant. Sure lets go with that

I'm really starting to see where the parts of vw and ss were smushes together

Embarr has the best night life

Recruiting sylvain into the gd feels mean. I'm taking away the only one with 2 braincells to rub together

Under all the noble bullshit, Lorenz really is a great guy

Do you think every demonic beast looks unique and its only that the devs didnt want to make more models that they dobt look different in game?

Recruiting sylvain into the gd feels mean. I'm taking away the only one with 2 braincells to rub together in the blue lions

Sylvain is warm

I wish we got to explore derdriu

PETRA DESERVES BETTER WRITERS. and give her a fluffy coat. She's gotta be cold in garreg mach

Count Varley is at the top of the hit list

Add alois onto team i'm scared of ghosts (lysithea, ashe, annette)[5:44 PM] That's it. I'm kidnapping alois from the church's clutches and taking him home. The church doesn't deserve him. And he hates his job

W h y  i s  everyone from faergus so eager to give up their personhood

Does faerghus seem really backwater to anyone else? Faergus reminds me of like 900's europe while leicester and adrestia are more like 1600's europe.  they still have that germanic warrior culture thing going. This is deep in the dark ages. I will accept the later half of the dark ages though since its post introduction of christianity. Leicester and Adrestia feel more like 1600-1700s They feel not quite french revolution, but getting there.  Yeah like the old institutions (crown and church) are still there but the cracks are showing.  Also the clothes

I thinki talked about this before. But when I say dorothea deserves the world. DOROThEA DESERVES THE WORLD. she’s been through so much

I need to go compare this with the verdant wind scene, but I was under the impression that sothis was in a regenerative coma after the war with the agarthans. But nope according to ss she was straigt up dead huh

i know I'm suppose to be fighting but I spent the last 30min exploring shambhala again

Damn it Shamir! Why'd ya have ta crit. I was trying to get dialog!January 2, 2020

gatekeeper > you < gatekeeper's identical twin brother who's on the opposite side of the war Its a sandwich

Oh wow the church really was up to some bloodborne level stuff

I turned every single one of the black eagles into a brigand (except linhardt and hubert).  Brigand gang brigand gang

The devs knew Claude and Lindhardt would just be too powerful. They had to be separated. thats why they dont have a support chain.  Sylvain and Claude has more energy but Sylvain has the conscious that Lindhardt lacks.  I mean Lindhardt singlehandedly lock picks  the holy tomb and disables rhea's magic mechs all while complaining he's sleepy.  Sylvain can be bullied into doing things and I love him for it.  Ah. I want both support chains

After Jeralts death both Claude and Edelgard both tell you that the world will continue spinning regardless of what befalls you personally but they do so in rather different ways. Edelgard phrases it like pull yourself together or the world will leave you behind. Claude phrases it like personal tragedies are such a small thing in the face of the world. You may have suffered a loss but there is so much to the world beyond that. There are still worthwhile things in the world. Both of say the world doesnt stop for you but mean different things.  And both are trying to motivate you to pull yourself together.  Whereas dimitri is like: you want vengence? You should go for vengence. I'll help you rip them apart. I'll kill for you.

Edelgard is socially awkward and blunt. She's also very practical minded so she doesn't know how to won't say something comforting when she can say something useful.  She's trying in her own way  To motivate byleth to start picking up their life.  Edelgard doesn't get people. Social interaction is a total mystery to her. She's just too stubborn to realize it.  At a couple points you can tease her and she thinks you're threatening her. She's not good at the people thing.  While she can come off a little rough because she doesn't understand how other people work. Hubert understands other people rather well and is an asshole anyways. List of characters who have threatened byleth: dimitri, hubert, sylvain, jeritza, catherine

Was sothis one of the divine dragon tribe? a lot of the other divine dragons had green hair especially the ones worshiped as gods (duma, mila, naga, tiki). But not fae or nowi.  I always got that dragon stones were like a dragon's essence sealed away so that while in human form they could stave off dragon degeneration. But what are crest stones. Were they made by the agarthans (artificial dragon stones) or are crest stones a natural part  of the nabeteans and the agarthans just harvested them. Or... ARE THERE BOTH. But the pov characters cant tell the difference.  This one group has messed with how many nations now?? SS has an interesting tidbit that's  been stuck in my head:  In the final map of SS its revealed that all high ranking church officials recieve Seiros' blood and a crest stone shard. WHERE ARE THE SHARDS COMING FROM. DAMN YOU SETETH YOU CANT JUST SAY THINGS LIKE THAT AND LEAVE ME. because if they are seiros crest stone shards that neans crest stones are not an Agarthan invention. But that condridicts VW where rhea says creststones are made of nabateab hearts. tldr: I'm confused. where are those fragments coming from??? Wait. This is all assuming a nabetean needs their heart inside them to live. Given how violently rhea reacts to losing even 1 crest stone I don't think she used the ones of her brethern. Which logically leaves only one weird possible answer. That rhea took her own heart/crest stone and has been giving out fragments. I mean she probably retrives the fragments when the priest dies.... this also means that nabeteans can survive with their heart outside their body... like a litch.... which I mean given sothis isn't too suprising? ??

VW and SS have such wacky endings. Let's go fight the cyberpunk mole people now!. Zombie invasion?  : check Weird bloodborne stuff and then we fight rhea?: check

Yeah VW was my first route and whew that was a wild ride. AM is so tame is comparison. but SS and VW lack the setup to pull out twists like that.  If this was like Nier: Automata where you get endings sequentially, it might have worked. But on their own the last 2 maps don't have anything at stake

hmmm  switching the final battles of verdant wind and silver snow? What would make a better story and why?  rhea kinda works because SS is all about rhea and saving her from herself as well as a revival of the church. But Nemesis also brings closure to Rhea's arc. She's been stuck for the last 1000 years to to fight the man who killed her most important person for good is like also really good thematically. VW is all about something new. Doing away with old structures and what better than to kill the pope? But facing the 10 elites also works for VW because that's the begining of the crest/nobility system you are literally killing.  I just like recruiting everyone and then killing the 10 elites with their own weapons wielded by their descendants.  its symbolic

Byleth is an excellent brigard. Went beigand and then wyvrn and their strength was higher than dimitri's

Claude: Rule? Nah. Gonna go be a scholar in an isolated mountain range. Books

Sylvain is a himbo wannabe

I should recruit annette and let her kill gilbert...  The one thing I'm worried about is that it'll hurt her more than it'll hurt him ... can I get crusher in crimson flower? If I were to recruit everyone and then get them all killed, what route would that be best in? Guess I'll be doing a death pact AM run some time in the future

Also koei tecmo and intsys are cowards for gender locking classes.  From a gameplay perspecrive too some characters are locked out of their ideal classes (war master for catherine and gremory for lindhardt). And then there's the in lore significance. Let hubert ride a pegasus.

Dorothea spent the entirety of their paralogue hitting on Ingrid. And then the RING at the end??? and they can’t support. Also Ingrid should have gotten an A support with Mercedes. They get along so well

Edelgard got the best designs in the game but Dorothea got the next best

Its canon. Edelgard thinks Claude grew up to be hot. Edelgard acknowledging that Claude is hot but but that she’s going to kill him anyways is just so good ....aaaaand one again I'm a coward who couldn't bring themself to kill Claude. But the completionist in me really wants to. The scene after sparing cluade between him and edelgard has kept me up too many nights.  What are the emotions here? My first guess was loss, grief. Someone else has interpreted it as aggtession though. And maybe we are both over thinking this but to me Claude's lines here say "I have failed"

Dorothea deserves a dragon

Caspar is actually real good for bernadetta. Its like talking to a sack of potatoes and doing so forces her to communicate better, firmly express herself, etc. Caspar has such great supports with all the ladies really

I really am just linhardt. I too disregard authority and despise being woken up...

I feel like we should all appreciate dorothea more. Death to the haters

ingrid equipping the duscar cavalry battalion is like  "I can exploit their labor so it’s alright"

I found felix was my solace in AM just because everyone else goes full death cult. despite how much i wanted to punch him when he told ingrid to go get a husband.  Also I should note I'm not sure felix whole heartesly believed what he said to Ingrid. I got the impression he said the thing he knew would upset her the most.  Not necessarily what he believed. That said he may actually believe it too.  Ingrid and felix remind be of squabbling siblings just saya the worst stuff to each other.  Unless felix has actively confronted the notion of faerhgus patriarchy he probably has internalized some of the beliefs. We all do. Thats why theyre so hard to dig out

Since we talk a lot about dads. Let's talk margrave edmund. tldr: complicated and interesting relationship with marianne.  What we know: he adopted marianne some time after her parents died, before she enrolles into the officers academy. Marianne says he's usuing her as marriage bait to marry up and increase the standing of house edmund.  This tracks with what others say about edmund: he's politically ambitious. And he's good at it enough to have gotten house edmund a seat at the round table.  In pretty much all her endings, he tutors mariannne until she's a political savant.  He forbid her from leaving the monestary in part 1.  Now let's go in between the lines. In part 1 marianne seems nervous of margrave edmund, but she also seems nervous of everything is part 1. In part 2, along with being more comfortable with herself she seems more familiar with him.  After the end of part 1 she likely returned to house edmund despite the attack being the perfect cover to disappear.  We don't get get much on edmund's personality buy he comes across as ruthlessly practical. The sort that goes "I can and will use everything to get what I want".  He likely adopted marianne not out of charity or compassion but so the house could have a crested heir and so he could use her as a bargining chip to other houses. But he sees enough potential in her to train her to be the next head of house. I think what started out as "ah another piece i can use" transitioned into a more friendly relationship as marianne began to assert herself and margrave edmund came to acknowledge her as more than how she could benefit him. I don't think he ever got over the "how can i use this" mentality but I'd like to think that after some years they came to get along. Ah yes I meant to do a hyrm thing and put it off for months. The Agarthans had long been infiltrating the empire and slowly increasing their influence on the government. In an attempt to stop this emperor ionius ix attempted to gain more power for himself to counter them by centralizing the government and taking power away from the nobles. House Hyrm attempted to defect to the leicester alliance with the help of house ordelia. In retaliation the Agarthans under the guise of the empire killed the members of house hrym and took control of hrym and ordelia. Also in response to ionius' move, the top ministers of the empire backed by the Agarthans began the insurrection of the seven where all political power was taken from the emperor. The Agarthans than experimented on ordelia and the royal family to implant crests while usuing hrym as a base of operations. After Emile killed that scrumbag baron bartels as well as the rest of the bartels family. Edelgard thought he could be useful as a piece not already controled by the Agarthans, and with their helped fabricated him a new identity as jeritza von hrym since hrym was a puppet for the Agarthans. Lord Arundel (Thales) then ensured jeritza a spot at garreg mach so he could act as an inside agent.

Anyone know the significance of rhea's mech's names (wilhelm, iris, etc.). past friends?  lol would it be messed up or what if its powered by his corpse 

Jeritza really is an acquired taste... wow

... I wonder sometimes if I like making things hard for myself... like I'll make rules like 4+ units have to attack an enemy before I kill them... or certain units can't be next to each other or just other abitrary rules. Anyways I'm just complaining because I did all this on the final map while under leveled last night (?) and am now just going "...why" at myself

Also, I wish we got the option of keep class headgear.  Some of it looks really cool and some of the classes (bishop??) look incomplete with out it.  Let me have my little hats!  Like mortal savant gets an oni mask which looks rad. And warlocks get flowery witch hats! Just finished crimson flowers again with warlock and then gremory dorothea and was like hmmmm.... she needs flowers in her hair

Also if you look up dimitri's dancer skirt you'll see he's wearing black short shorts

Team heretic: edelgard, hubert, petra, claude, leonie, linhardt in the closet: lorenz

So for those of you that keep up with my rambling... remember how i said the funal cf cutscene makes no sense? Did sothis self terminate? If she dud than why arent there records of other crest stones disintigrating? Or is it a sothis specific thing? Its possible sothis’s consciousness is stored in her creststone/heart but then how can you still s support her in CF? i've been trying to logic and reason this for several months and i cant get it to all fit. But on a symbolic level its like the coming of a new age, sothis' hold on the world (and her influence on byleth) disappears. Live on without dieties (literally in byleth's case). The new age of humanity and all so byleth becomes a normal human, no god powers yada yada. I think claude is the only one that knows byleth has no heartbeat?? (Maybe? I cant remember) since claude reads jeralt's diary. Thematic significance > narrative consistency. There's also that rhea goes beserk in SS and not VW, when the same stuff happens to her in both. Which doesn't add up for me. And Nemesis ...is he still sitting there in the other routes... Where did he get an army anyways? I assumed the agarthans just had a whole army frozen...But then why didn't they use it earlier? And can you imagine just a whole city of cryo pods underground. Just there.

Anyways I'm off to kill all the blue luons and solo with dimitri on maddening!  Can I get gilbert killed in AM or is he too plot important. I've been playing on casual like a coward so far

Ah ashen wolves shadow cinders looks edgy. I wonder why they have 4 kids in a dungeon. Theres that npc that talk about hiw garreg mach needs the abyss to survive. I wonder why they keep this system

I dont keep up with english VAs but it'd be funny if yuri was voiced by yuri lowenthal

anyone with a crest has less of a chance of  demonic beasting than someone with no crest in lore. In gameplay you can use any crest weapon as long as you have any crest. You just wont get the added benefits of that specific crest

Yuri is very pretty and I’m weak for beautiful long haired men.  But i kinda wish the nintendo would let us have BEEF

If only i could have 300 save files...

Yuri really just is Leon with amnesia. Down to the red eyeliner...

Who let balthus into a highschool

I have that insistent desire to punch the writers for putting dorothea and mercedes through all that

Manuela. Has. So. Much. Love!  And her line about how [as teachers] we cant lose the students to violence or cowardice

The head of felix plopped onto a generic brawler body will always be funny to me

Yeah... sylvain really treats you different when male.  There was a reason were many reasons I really wanted to punch sylvain when I first started playing. namely the misogyny

male Byleth just looks really good as a swordsmaster

From a gameplay perspective I think divine pulse should have been removed for maddening.  From a story perspective they did a pretty good job integrating time mechanics as god powers

I wonder if Jeralt reminded Rhea of Wilhelm

i love giving bad advice for the advice box

why is tea time is the hardest part of the game

Seriously. How does garreg mach even work? Fail school and you get sent to the dungeons for life. What.

Sylvain would totally be one of those dudes with too much money dolling out patronages

Let hilda be warmaster

Hmmm edelgard... fatalism....

Please mod gilbert out of the game Lorenz has got a good heart. But the words that come out of his mouth sometimes...

Oh yeah you know that rainbow flash dream sequence right at the begining of the game? Is it me or did I see skyscrapers in it

The inside of byleth's head is a smash tournament

Seteth can die and I'll kill him.  (Ok ok I don't actually hate the guy. But I don't like him either. He's the type I'd tolerate working with but want nothing to do with outside of the professional setting)

Caspar and linhardt really are THAT comedy duo. I need a whole book dedicated to their paired endings

Sylvain's dick is still the funniest joke on the internet

The weirdest part of part 2 felix's hair isn't even the aggresive side sweep. That can be explained by having stiff straight hair. Its the limp pony tail. If your hair is that stiff, any ponytail that length is going to stick straight out like as anime character. I have this hair type. I've succeded in replicating the side sweep, the ponytail doesnt work

give mercedes a gun cowards

Marianne with a cute bob. Marianne with short hair. very home of phobe of intsys not to make marianne like an actual werewolf or something

devs should have let Bernie learn how to beat her dad to death with her bare fists

I've returned home to my boy. I love Claude!

Mortal savant ignatz. I mean strength in swords and budding talent in reason. Youre going to ba a magic samurai ignatz!

I had forgotten how much gd plays like a mystery game. Also, whatever I said earlier I take it back. Lysithea has a crush on Leonie

I keep trying to imagine an adrestia that isn't tropical (because why else would they wear heavy coats), and failing...

I really love raphael. He's so good

Claude's this interesting mix of cynical and idealistic yeah. He has a number of strong ideals and believes in the potential of humanity to do good, to grow and learn, to come together and built. But he also struggles because at the same time he also believes humans will usually choose the easier path of ignorance and hate. People are cruel and don't care.[5:30 AM]He's really cynical about what people are actually going to do

Sylvain's just layer upon layer of unhealthy coping mechanism

I don’t really like the ingrid/claude ship. ingrid tends to fixate on one shallow quality in a person and then ship them shit about it. and that’s the support. and the writers don’t have her ever acknowledging the rest of the character’s personality or admitting her first impression might have been incorrect.  that especially doesn't pair well with Claude who hides so much of himself. Out of all the characters Claude can A support Ingrid's the only one I where I went "whyyyyyyy"[10:02 AM]It really felt like the typical C-B support. Of i cant stand you because of 1, 2, and 3. To hey maybe you aren't so bad

i can't help but think the empire and alliance are incredibly stupid for making lorenz a cavalier. He's terrible at it.

Hold the phone. Was jeralt a soldier in the leicester independwnce war? (On thw faerhgus side).  But thats 300 years ago. All we know is that hexs older than 100.  The almyra unvasion is another option. Its also possible that jeraly wasnt involved in any war

So I'm trying to get rhea killed on the last chapter of part 1 for GD and wow its really hard to lose the fight this way. Enemies will avoid her like the plague. I cant believe I'm struggling to lose a fight Rhea is unkillable. I have taken no actions for 15 turns are she is still not dead Starting to think its impossible to lose by rhea death in this battle Turn 31. Its only raphael and hilda left Yeah as long as you have 1 unit to keep enemy infanty out of the pink squares this map is inpossible to lose on hard mode  60 turns. All of Rhea’s spell and weapon uses are gone and she still wont die. I give up

I've been thinking of hilda dimitri hypothetical supports recently and i think they"d be halfway between her lorenz+ferdinand supports and her marianne supports.[1:48 AM]Hilda is the QUEEN of suckering people and dimitri is the biggest sucker in the game[1:51 AM]But like marianne's clumsiness, dimitri can't do basic tasks well so hilda hoisting her chores on him is sure to backfire hilariously. He also has that kicked puppy pitifulness that part 1 marianne has so hilda will end up feeling  sorry watching him struggle and help out[1:52 AM]But these 2 are both deeply compassionate so they could actually get along.  You know... i can see ferdinand and claude hating each other's guts. But there's such potential for personal growth...

Why is it that the agarthans have the most named npcs out of any factionJump

If gilbert is what it means to be an "exceptional knight". Then i dont want it. I dont want knights and i especially dont want execptional knights

I like playing on hard because i never have to worry about winning a fight only about how many style points I can rack up.

Why does fodland new year start on month 3.  Look i get that the japanese adopted the chinese calendar system of new year in early spring before adopting the gregorian calendar so "new years" events ended up split between month 1 (new years celebration) and month 3/4 (start of school). But that makes no sense for fodlan. In universe it doesnxt make sense. Why not have month 1 start in spring or have the new year in winter. Ok let's be real. The real reason its like this is that due to globalization and post ww2 american influence not to mention european colonialism, the gregorian calander is the one the world runs on. So its for us players benefit that month 1 is in winter and month 6 is summer. But in universe it doesn't make sense! Not unless you start making really convoluted excusrs[4:00 AM](Sorry southern hemisphere   No representation for you today) This only works for chinese new years because its 2 different calender systems being used at the same time. Which doesn't make sense in fodlan because why would rhea allow a new calander system in given her isolationist policy. Or if its a remnant of an old calender system, there's no way it lasted 1000 years

If jeralt hadn't been killed by kronya, he would have been consumed by the hivemind in SS and you would have been forced to kill him

The devs really went out of their way to give jeritza a unique class huh. He's a dark knight+swords. You can say it. He's just a dark knight. Yet they really went and slapped death knight on him[2:49 PM]Also as a pc his crit rate in underwelming

The s suport cgs are more stylized and its a little jarring

Is it only me than. Who get ways too many support points thant hey know what to do with.

We need a cats remake but its called rats and is dimitri in every role

I want a lysithea hilda a support[5:48 PM]Hilda's the only ine lysithea likes from the start[5:48 PM]They have mutual respect for each other[5:48 PM](Also side note. Wow lysithea is mean to ignatz. Poor baby)

Reminder that its Marianne who title drops vw

Did I miss something? Felix becoming the top advisor for all of fodlan seems like a bad idea. The only thing that comes close to showing he's competant is his ingrid support where it shows he's decent at tactics. Reason number 76 for why I'm worried for fodlan post AM. Along with ... ya know .. the Agarthans still running around.

One part of vw i didn't like was when the merchants went woohoo no regulations and free trade yay!Jump

I'll be honest. 7 year old me would have swindled dimitri out of his good halloween candy