#and while we're here fuck trump too

[newyorkstate-official]

You know the shit's fucked when not even some of the cops are complying with ICE

[jvzebel-x]

🦋

[batshit-auspol]

So a bit of background first for our international followers: Clive Palmer is one of Australia's many mining billionaires who like to meddle in our country's politics, and as such he is utterly despised by all of Australia.

Picture for context:

He is most commonly known online by the title "Fatty McFuckhead", (problematic as it may be) because he tried to sue a youtuber for $500,000 for calling him that - and he lost. So the name stuck.

Up until his most recent foray into parliament, the legally certified Fuckhead was best known for his batshit business ventures, such as attempting to build "The Titanic 2" (failed) and trying to build a dinosaur theme park (also failed, but at least nobody got eaten by a T-Rex in this one).

For a very long time Clive played the role of sugar daddy to Australia's largest conservative party, the ironically named Liberal Party, until they had a falling out in 2012 after Clive claimed there was too much money influencing politics (lol), at which point he started his own party, days after saying he totally quit and wasn't fired and he only left because he didn't want to be a distraction.

His initial run at parliament was actually kinda successful, with Palmer's group winning 4 seats, plus a member from the "Motoring Enthusiasts Party" joined them too after accidentally getting elected and not knowing what the fuck to do.

Despite this initial success however, Palmer's party (which ran on basically no platform other than "I'm rich") hit an iceberg (titanic 2 achieved) and seven elected state and federal politicians quit within the first year.

By the time the next federal election rolled around, only one Palmer party candidate was still running for re-election. The most successful of this group - Jaquie Lambie - quit to sit as an independant and is still in parliament today.

Here she is with a painting of herself strangling Clive (she sells signed copies of this)

And here the senator is posting about liking sausage:

Anyway, we're getting to the point: which is the yellow posters. By the 2016 election, just two years after forming, the party was in complete freefall. It won just 0.01% of the vote at their second election, and it was announced shortly after that Clive was quitting politics and the party was being shut down. Australia breathed a sigh of relief.

It was, of course, short lived.

Clive, in desperate need of attention, restarted the party for the 2019 election, fielding candidates in every seat and spending $60 million in advertising in an attempt to win votes.

Every single candidate lost.

It was in this campaign however that Australia really started to fall out of love with Palmer, because most of that $60 million went towards putting up the world's least compelling marketing billboards on almost every single free space in the country.

For a good six months this was basically the only thing you would see in Australia if you went outside:

Clearly Graphic design is his passion. And yes, the genius did just straight up try and copy Trump's homework while changing a few words, hoping nobody would notice.

Very quickly these all got vandalised and it seemed the ad companies didn't care enough to replace them.

We could go on posting examples, there are thousands, but the best is definitely the one Ikea put up shortly after Clive lost the election:

In 2022, Clive's party contested the election AGAIN, this time also opting to send millions on spam text messages to every person in Australia begging for people to vote for him, as well as buying almost every youtube ad for a year, at the cost of $100 million.

He won a whopping one seat.

During this election Clive ran on an anti-lockdown, anti-vax platform with the slogan "freedom, freedom, freedom". That message, however, was slightly undermined when his goons, dressed in 'Freedom!' shirts, made national news for trying to beat up a protester who turned up at a rally dressed as an annoying text message, shouting "pay your workers" at Clive.

As if that wasn't bad enough, at another rally Clive knocked himself unconscious while trying to jump up on stage, and then a few weeks later was rushed to hospital with covid, while his anti-vax ads were still in regular rotation on TV, at which point it was also leaked to the press that Palmer had been alledgedly trying to buy Hitler's car.

Utterly humiliated, the party deregistered again shortly after the election.

Can't wait until he runs again in 2025.

Anyway, on the other "Clive tweeting Miss Kobayashi's Dragon" thing, we have no idea what that means but here's a screencap:

[qqueenofhades]

I would like to... gently shake the people going 'Dick Cheney/Alberto Gonzalez/[insert neoconservative architect here] endorsing Harris is entirely and only a bad look for Harris' because that's not the point. And like, I get feeling weird about it (I've been unimpressed with Dick's backpedaling since Liz Cheney got primaried), but: Trump is proving too extreme for THE PEOPLE WHO MADE HIM POSSIBLE. This is their consequences. THAT'S the point.

Look, this is what I think about it: I fucking hate Dick Cheney and all the architects of the Bush Junior neoconservatism-early-aughts-War-on-Terror-Patriot-Act-No-Child-Left-Behinding Republican Party that laid the groundwork for the Tea Party and then for Trump. If there was any justice in the world, Dubya would be at the Hague for a war crimes tribunal and not allowed to sit in Texas painting dogs and enjoying a quiet retirement. But he was fortunate to be the president of the most powerful country in the world, and America doesn't obey international law unless it feels like it, so that's what we get. (And yes, someone asked Dubya if he was going to endorse in 2024, following Cheney, and was told, no doubt with much pious handwringing, that "President Bush retired from presidential politics many years ago." But he's still raising money for MAGA Senate candidates in Pennsylvania, evidently. Fuck you, George W. Bush. Kids these days don't say it enough.)

However, since literally the entire pre-Trump establishment Republican party is now deciding that Trump is too insane, fascist, and dangerous even for them, I'm not surprised but still annoyed that Online Leftist Logic (TM) has translated that to "Harris must secretly be an early-noughties hard-right neocon Republican and that's why they want to vote for her!!!" Most if not all of them have said that they openly disagree with her policies but are voting for her anyway because she is the only way to maintain American constitutional democracy. And yes, we're all shocked that DICK FUCKING CHENEY, architect of the Iraq War and the Patriot Act, felt that there was in fact a line of fascist government overreach that he wasn't willing to cross, but if that's the case -- if even these completely terrible warmongering corporate assholes are like "uh Trump is too bad even for us to support," then you should, I don't know, maybe listen to that. But as ever, I search for logic in vain.

Likewise: Harris has made zero policy concessions to these Republicans and she never went fishing for Cheney's endorsement specifically. She didn't suddenly declare Iraq a totally okay and normal thing in order to get Cheney and his warhawks on board, and yes, Old Dickhead probably has no small amount of personal motive to get back at Trump considering what he did to Liz. But that's the thing where apparently political motives should only ever be pure, moral, and Perfect, and taking the right action for the "wrong" reasons is still disqualifying because you weren't thinking enough pure moral thoughts while you did it, or something. I don't give a fuck why Cheney decided to vote for Harris, because I don't respect his opinion and can't foresee myself ever doing so. But because we are in an unprecedented historical moment where even DICK GODDAMN CHENEY thinks that Donald Trump is too dangerous to ever have power again, I will thank him for doing that and that alone and then tell him to hit the f'n road if he thinks he deserves a scrap of credit or Democratic policy concessions for it. He doesn't. He sucks. But he's still making a choice that we need to see made at this moment, and people who don't get that, as usual, can STFU.

Basically: Cheney's endorsement is not directed at you, and it's not intended to move voters who already fit your profile and therefore think, like I do, that Cheney can eat shit. It's directed to all the career-Republican-politician types who can see him doing that and decide that they can do the same thing. Hell, we just had 17 former staffers of Ronald Reagan announcing their Harris endorsement (in addition to the 200+ Bush, McCain, Romney alumni who already signed on and all the ex-Trump officials at the DNC) and going so far as to insist that Ol' Ronnie Raygun himself would have supported Harris. Now look. I hate Ronald Reagan more than any other twentieth-century president. The degree to which he ALSO laid the groundwork for incredible damage to America cannot be overstated. But because I am not an idiot, I can see that this does not mean Harris has suddenly turned into Reagan in her policies. So. Yeah.

The other thing to note here is that Harris has seen the advantage in cultivating a bipartisan coalition and making a cross-party case for voting her to preserve American democracy. Now, a lot of the Republicans have said that they are going to stay Republicans and they want to purge their party of Trump and MAGAism, they are trying to buy time for that transition to happen by voting for Harris, and while I have never voted for or agreed with a Republican in my whole life, I actually think that's a good thing! I don't WANT to fear the end of American democracy every four years because the Republican Party has become a screaming shitgibboning insane vehicle of American Gilead while inciting stochastic terrorism against Springfield, Ohio and everyone else who doesn't bow down to Trumpist Dear Leader and his KKK alt-right Elon Muskified supporters! I don't WANT this howling fascist conspiracy-theory-puppet-of-Vladimir-Putin black hole of violence to be just what we have to accept as the center-right (except you know, now far-far-far-far-can't-see-it-with-a-telescope-right) party in America! I would prefer it if we had a functioning democracy again where both parties were engaging in fair competitiveness and good faith and had the basic premise of making people's lives better, even if they disagreed about how to do it! I would REALLY like it if we could go back to the days of disagreeing about taxes and foreign policy and social welfare -- you know, NORMAL THINGS -- instead of Commander Vance and the Project 2025 foot soldiers trying to install a theocratic fascist dictatorship! I WOULD LIKE THAT A WHOLE LOT!

That said: I have pretty much reached my limit with asking people to vote. I have done it for 8+ years (since before Trump was elected the first time) and I'm done. Either you know the stakes of this election at this point, or you're so blindly and stupidly committed to misunderstanding them that there's nothing I or anyone else can possibly do to convince you. I still see people posting a lot of stuff from the bad-faith anti-democratic leftist cranks and arguing with them endlessly and... why? Why? Why are you giving them the oxygen and exposure that they crave, and which is giving them more attention than anyone else is giving them? Block them. Mute them. STOP ENGAGING WITH EVERYTHING THEY SAY EVEN IF YOU'RE TRYING TO REFUTE IT. It's not going to work, and at this point, it's not remotely conducive to winning this election. The Great Myth of the Undecided Voter (TM) is another one that, I hope, can finally bite the dust, and the actual undecided voters who are out there are not the ones posting dirtbag leftist bullshit about Harris on The Website Formerly Known as Twitter. This election is now completely down to a numbers game: who can make their identified voters turn out to vote. So please. Spend your time and energy on reaching those folks, who might want to or have said they will vote but need a push or extra help to make sure they do.

That being the case, if lifelong Republicans want to vote for Harris and help defeat a Trump dictatorship, they're actually being more helpful for the cause of American democracy than every single shrieking Online Leftist out there, and maybe they should think about that. I'm amused at how they still think they can make demands of the Democrats, because -- when your entire plan from the word go has been "I'm not voting for the Democrats and there's nothing you can do to make me!!!" -- why are you surprised that they don't take your thoughts and opinions into account? That's the basic simplest Democracy 101 version of how electoral politics works. If you have removed yourself from their voter pool and laugh and scoff at any suggestion that you should enter it, then they're not gonna listen to you or think that they should make policy to appease you (which is good, because most of these people are fucking nuts). That's why they're blowing a gasket disowning AOC, still one of the most left-wing members in the House, because she wants to actually win and make real changes in society and has reached a happy-ish marriage with the Democratic party, instead of virtuously losing her seat and becoming irrelevant like some other members of the Squad who got primaried out this year. And the Democrats have accepted many of AOC's views as mainstream policy! She didn't change, but she stayed in the party and worked with it, and the party as a whole is moving to where she was all along. But because any hint of compromise or working to get results, rather than just posting self-righteous screeds on the internet, is Bad, she had to go, I guess. Or something.

Anyway. That's the that on that. If you want to win this election, target and talk to the people who have already identified themselves as likely or possible voters, they just need that extra push to become definite voters. I'm over the anti-democratic hypocritical leftist cranks as much as I am the screaming shitgibboning racist-mob-inciting fascists. If it takes some Republicans gritting their teeth and getting on board the "let's save American democracy" boat with me, then fine. They're actually willing to do the smallest tiny thing to make that outcome come about, and that means, for right now, they are the enemy of my enemy and I'll accept their help. After that, I would in fact like it if we had a sane center-right party again, once Trump is in jail and we can fumigate the MAGA rot. It's up to them.

[metalheadsagainstfascism]

Fae will take 10 seconds here to address the election then Fae will be back on hiatus because a Fae has other things going on in his life.

Is Fae screaming and crying over the election? No

Why is Fae not screaming and crying over the election? Let's say Fae has spent many months being pre-sad over this election. Even if we'd "won" we'd still have lost. Even if Trump weren't president, that'd still mean 70 million people were okay with a "grab them by the pussy" racist rapist with 34 felonies saw that man and was like "Yeah I'm totally fine with that" and that's TERRIFYING for minorities. And I knew who matter won it was gonna be like that.

Will Fae be wearing the blue bracelet? No. I don't completely think people understand what I'm expecting if they say "I'm a safe person". I feel like they're meaning "You can tell me you're gay and I won't hate crime you" when I'm expecting "If I see a minority being harassed I'll be the first to step up".

What will we do now? A lot of things. There's people organizing protests. There's people organizing abortion networks. There's a midterm election in 2 years and while we can't remove Trump we can limit his power by electing people into the house and senate as well as elect people into our local offices that will make it AS DIFFICULT AS POSSIBLE for Trump to enact his policies.

Does Fae have any last words? Yeah. Trust me that I'm saying this with my full chest as I say this. I will have zero fucking sympathy for the gay people and the white women in the leopard eating faces party when the leopards start eating YOUR faces. You know that? I been having zero goddamn sympathy for the gay people and women in the leopard eating faces party. All you do is teach them to treat us like shit. I'll record it and goddamn laugh over popcorn. You know how many people got fucking pissed at me because I told them the leopards want to eat their faces too?

To the conservatives shouting "Cry and Cope". I ain't fucking crying. All these liberals that are new to this because they didn't give a shit until liberals were the ones that were being targeted may be fucking crying. But I'm used to fucking disappointment by now. We're gonna fucking sigh. Support the existing networks that protect our most vulnerable. And figure out what's next. Because goddamn crying don't do shit.

Fae out.

[postplus-protest]

A Petite Reprise -

It can't really be left to a simple shitpost. That would be too easy. The subject demands a better explanation. Now others have explained, pontificated, and discoursed the subject much better than I ever will but I still feel the need to add to the chorus. There's been a deep slow rot set up in tumblr and the past couple of days proved it.

Dear Fearless Leader decided the best course of action in dealing with a trans user's concerns and frustrations with her SFW selfies being arbitrarily content labeled was to completely nuke her account and permaban said user. To add fuel to the fire, there was a few other users nuked in the crossfire. Also trans for the record.

Which is odd considering the fact that loads of death threats, neonazi propaganda, and so on was reported then ignored but a cartoonish threat directed at no one but the powers that be requires immediate action.

Damning still is deleting evidence of his actions.

At this point I'm not surprised. Us trans folk have been saying there's something definitely wrong behind the scenes for a while and poc users have been saying it even longer than that. People have come out to share their frustrations and their Fearless Leader nightmare stories. No, I'm not surprised.

I'm disappointed.

Fearless Leader has enough cash to throw around on vanity projects that hemorrhage money with his name plastered where he can get it and still manages to fuck it up. This little venture should've been an easy sandbox with users truly easy to please yet you treat it like kitty litter. Even Donald Trump has dedicated fans but our guy here can't seem to buy support anymore. And that is truly sad, isn't it?

I pity the fact you couldn't even own up to your bullshit and decided alienating a user base dedicated but vulnerable in favor of your ego. You could've been a hero but now we're all beginning to see who you truly are.

[lucaswithnoshirt]

i really want to stay at your house ; k.dy

pairing: doyoung x reader

genres: cyberpunk au, FLUFF (because cyberpunk is depressing enough and i want these two cuties to be happy), angst

length: 6.6k

description: in which doyoung's so used to taking people apart and then back together, he can't fathom wearing weakness when you could be wearing metal instead. then you come along and teach him some things are better off flawed.

alternatively, doyoung turns people into cyborgs and is less than impressed when little old you starts undoing all his handiwork.

a/n: love love love this request! researching the cyberpunk universe was so interesting because there's so much you can do with it, so a huge thanks to the anon who requested this.

you don't need to know anything about cyberpunk to read this! it's pretty self-explanatory!

also, alternatively alternatively, watch doyoung fall like a hot sack of shit in love with you while you break all his toys

It's well past 3AM when Doyoung is summoned back down to the clinic. He slings his stethoscope around his shoulders and shoots for the door, all traces of sleep forgotten as he receives the silent alert that his clinic's security system has been breached. Cracked. Like a walnut. 

He rearranges the access protocol and draws his gun from its hoster, nudging the door a little further ajar. It opens, and his pistol finds itself staring down at Johnny’s forehead.

Johnny grins. There's blood on his cheekbones.

"Hi, Doyoungie."

Doyoung briefly wonders if it's some sort of fucked-up training exercise from Taeyong. Like, surprise! we're here and now we're going to give you a ten-hour explanation on why biometric scanners trump hardware security systems! But no. There's four mercenaries huddling in various states of disarray in his clinic. Jaehyun's got his own weapon concealed by his jacket but undoubtedly aimed his way, and is leaning against the wall with a hand to his stomach.

Mark looks like he's just watched his favourite car get t-boned, doused in gasoline, lit on fire and then tossed off a cliff while he's been forced to watch. Then there’s you, curled up atop his filing cabinets- he doesn't recognise you- with a superficial gash above your left eyebrow he's surprised isn't self-healing.

"So," Johnny starts, running a hand through his hair and leaving a streak of crimson behind. "Get this. The job, funnily enough, was not a simple in-and-out. Who would have thought?!"

"Who would have thought." Jaehyun repeats, darkly, gruffly.

The fact Johnny is still his usual irritatingly chipper self, and Jaehyun looks ready to murder him means Doyoung allows his shoulders to drop and a sigh to leave his mouth. The tiredness creeps back all at once. His adrenaline says, fuck you, this isn’t like the time Jaehyun took a machete to the kidney, and retreats, angrily, leaving him to deal with this mess himself. 

Johnny is sprawled out in the operating chair, legs spread with an expectant eyebrow raised, though it’s Mark who speaks next with nothing more than a high-pitched squeak:

"Can you take a look at my arm? I think I'm going to vomit."

Doyoung's eyes go wide. "Hey, hey! No vomiting in here! Johnny, move!"

You tuck yourself under Mark’s armpit and help him limp over to replace Johnny under the spotlight. Jaehyun grabs the latter by the collar and yanks him to the floor, while Doyoung manages to find a surgical bucket just in time for Mark to empty his guts into it, blood and all.

"I hate my life." Doyoung hears Mark warble once the vomiting has subsided, and thinks, same.

"Whaat?" Johnny slurrs, still on the floor. For all his usual bravado and macho, he’s taking too long to find his feet. "Where's that fighting spirit?"

"It died." Mark moans. "It's gone. Buried."

You shuffle away from the makeshift operating space as Doyoung slips on his exoglove, gently loosening Mark's protective grip on his clavicle to examine the damage. The exoglove refines his movements, steadies his hand as he inspects the damage to reveal a small tear at the glenohumeral joint. Nothing more and nothing less. 

"Wimp." A grin flicks up onto Johnny's face as Doyoung announces the good news. He gives Mark a shot of metoclopramide alongside the local anaesthetic, and even though it’s only an anti-sickness drug, Mark goes limp, placid, too tired to respond, and that allows Doyoung to finally begin repairing the bioware inside him.

But he’s distracted. From the corner of his eye, he watches you shuffle over to your fearless leader, squat down and begin to work tinker with Johnny’s cyberware. You pour over the biomonitor readings flickering above his arm, brow furrowed in concentration, and he can’t help but mimic the expression. Haven't you ever heard of ‘too many cooks in the kitchen’?

"I can't believe we walked into that." Jaehyun mutters from behind him, mulish. It’s accompanied by the petulant scuff of a boot against the floor. "Should've known they weren't gonna leave military-grade weaponry with just a few foot soldiers to guard it."

Even though it physically, physically pains Doyoung to do so, because it's still 3AM and he truly couldn't care less about what’s brought you to him today, he asks the forbidden question:

"What happened?"

"A dead-man’s trigger!" Johnny announces with a flourish, grinning at Doyoung over your hunched body, before jerking his chin down at you. "Good job we brought the part-timer along."

He gives you a cheery punch to the shoulder and you glances over at him, soulless. The cut above your brow still hasn't healed.

"And what, you blew a hole through a wall or something?" Doyoung asks sarcastically. A dead-man’s trigger activates as a last resort when all security systems are compromised, cages the victims in by locking doors until backup arrives, and the day Doyoung sees Taeyong's team of muscle use their brains instead of their fists is the day hell freezes over. He’d put Johnny in charge, after all.

"No. I rigged their behemoth's engine." You mumble hoarsely, so quiet Doyoung almost misses it. "Sent it through the walls when they trapped us in. Couldn't bypass the mainframe security system without activating a bloodhound program, and that’s suicide.”

“It was an explosive strategy,” Johnny chimes in.

“The behemoth hit a structural pillar on the way out. Mark ripped his implant when the ground gave way beneath us."

Doyoung mulls the situation over in his head and then confirms, again, that he does not care about your team’s little escapades. Instead, he narrows his eyes at you, still curled up on the floor, patched into Johnny’s software as you give it a once-over. Little walnut cracker.

"Exactly," Johnny breathes, like a proud papa. "The two of you were just... hanging around."

In the darkness of the clinic, Jaehyun barks out a forbidden giggle that cuts quickly into a hiss of pain.

“You’re fucking sick, dude.” Mark moans, eyes shut.

“I caught Y/N as they fell, right?! I contributed more than enough.”

“Actually,” Jaehyun has recovered from his muscle spasms. “I caught Y/N. You were too busy making sure the truck wasn’t damaged.”

“Can we please focus on the extent of your injuries?” Doyoung says, exasperated.

"Mark has extensive damage to his neural network and pain receptors because I didn't adequately calculate the building’s critical nodes." You reply flatly, obstinately. Doyoung does a quick check of Mark's neural network and yep, there it is. Quick, jerky motions and falling debris will do that to a person.

"You got us out of there with nothing but the neuroport you were born with!" Johnny counters. Doyoung's scalpel knicks Mark's epidermis as he stops, pauses, and decides he wants to shake Taeyong by the shoulders and tell him that team debriefings need to happen outside the clinic from now on. "No-one's perfect, Y/N!"

Instead of giving in to his baser instincts, Doyoung finishes the repair listlessly, checks Mark's vitals, launches an ice pack at Johnny's face once you determine he has a mild concussion, and then lets Jaehyun slink into the chair and lift his shirt up. When he catches you out of the corner of his eye, you've moved on from Johnny, drawn in by the mantis blades sitting pretty on his desk like a moth to a flame and ghosting a fingertip along the the long, scythe-like claws protuding from the synthetic metacarpals.

"Do you want them?" He asks, curious and quiet, because he thinks a raised voice will startle you if it's not Johnny. He doesn't know why he thinks that, but he knows metal packs a punch and you look like you bleed too much red to take that.

You recoil. "No."

Well, ouch.

"They're the best you'll get outside of a specialist," he retorts, tongue poking his cheek, but it doesn't matter because you're now squatting down next to Mark who’s slumped against the wall, tilting his head and connecting your personal link to the neural port in his neck.

Because it's his patient, Doyoung activates his own neural connection and tunes into your frequency, sees you going over his work with a fine-toothed comb. When you graft several damaged nerve endings to reinforced cells, he tells himself it's down to personal preference.

He takes a backdoor entrance into your systems when you're distracted and basks for a moment in the quiet glory of victory. There’s walut-cracking residue all over your systems.

"You're good," you murmur to Mark, like honey in hot water. "Thank you, buddy."

The next time you see Doyoung is at an admittedly more respectable hour. He works tirelessly until Donghyuck is patched up, denies Johnny the custom cyberlegs he's working on, offers you yet another set of cyberoptics, before exiting the clinic and disappearing into the night.

Alternatively, Doyoung spends at least three hours fixing Donghyuck’s glitching neuroport, ignores Johnny’s non-stop commentary of the former, gives you one last chance with an offer for the state-of-the-art cyberoptics he's just had delivered, before cracking.

He kicks open the clinic door (walnut cracked again. He’d been five minutes late!), stalks around the corner, through the door, and wades through the seas of dancing bodies until he reaches the back room. He ascends the two flights of stairs and nods at Yuta on the door, then he enters Taeyong's office and says, "You need to fire them."

Taeyong, to his credit, glances up and mutters a quick, "Call you back," to whoever is on the other end of his holophone, then beckons him further into the room. If Doyoung didn't know any better he'd say their years-long professional relationship had flourished into something genuine. But he does know better, knows that the price of Taeyong having a medic and ripperdoc on standby means Doyoung will be listened to.

"I kept quiet when you brought in Donghyuck because at least if he gets caught out, he's got some physical offensive capability, physically and mentally." Doyoung snaps, "But this is where I draw the line. They are clearly not interested in getting cybernatic augmentations or enhancements and I'm not sticking around to watch that liability ruin everything we've built."

Taeyong stays silent, watching Doyoung watch him with nothing more than his usual quiet, unreadable expression. It only serves to rile him up further.

"Well?!" He demands, impatient. "Are you operating a business or a shelter?"

"Y/N got into your clinic." He finally says. "What do you call that?"

"Luck."

"I call it an investment."

"It is not-" Doyoung has to slam his palms together and bring the tips of his fingers to his lips. "An investment. It’s an accident waiting to happen. A walking catasrophe. An expendable. You cannot compare the security protocols on my place of work to actual safehouses and containment areas. Sooner or later that kid wont be able to keep up!"

Taeyong rises, swallowed up by the sharp charcoal edges of his suit. His hair is the same gunmetal gray colour of the pistol strapped in its holster, sitting patiently at his hip.

"I'm aware of the risks,” Taeyong replies eventually, cool, stone-line, “and I cannot be so stupid as to let talent slip through my fingers when it comes looking for work."

That makes it even worse, because Doyoung understands the inherently predatory nature of gang recruitment, even if Taeyong’s philosophy operates differently. He knows this world is a fight-to-survive, kill-or-be-killed environment, where places of safety are few and far between.

What he doesn't understand, however, is the sheer imbalance between your evidently high IQ and your apparently nonexistent common sense to be parading around, following Johnny like some infantile lackey, like, hi! i have no cyber enhancements and can be taken out by a common cold! hire me!

He tries again. "Talent means nothing if it can't withstand pressure." Pressure in this world usually comes in the form of broken bones and bullet sprays. "What happens if she meets a junkie looking for a quick fix? Or someone with a sandvestan? What happens when someone catches wind of the fact you've now got two new kids sniffing around on the net and one is easy pickings?"

"I’m going to ignore your infantalisation of your co-workers because you’re obviously upset, but I am not going to disregard what’s good for my business just because you're worried. Though if it helps, both Jaehyun and Yuta shared your concerns but have come round to the idea. You will too."

"You're putting everyone in danger because you want a techie who has no cyberware!" Doyoung snaps, stepping closer. "And I am not worried. In fact, I couldn't care less, I just don't want to be caught up in your mess when it all hits the fan."

"Anything else?" Taeyong bites out, blithe and snappish. The end of his tether has been reached. His business-like facade split at the eyebrows, irritation seeping through the cracks. “Anything else the lowly doctor thinks I care about?”

"No," Doyoung sneers, "but my price has just gone up. Ten percent increase for any patch-ups."

"Ah, Doyoungie!" Taeyong's face splits into a cajoling smile as he watches the younger man turn on his heel and stride away. "Don't be like that! Be reasonable, let's make this work. I totally understand what you're saying!"

Doyoung does not stop. He kicks open the door and marches out, leaving Yuta to slink in with a shit-eating grin on his face. "Ten percent, huh?"

"Fuck off," Taeyong’s face falls again, and he pouts.

Doyoung think's it's a real fucking shame that no-one uses his calendar, even though it's one of the most accessible things about him, because if they did use it then he may, one day, experience that sweet, sweet luxury they call free time.

He marches up to his door and finds the- fuck- the fucking system hacked again. Because he's having a bad week (Jaehyun flat-out refused to pay the extra ten percent, and that set a precedent), he allows himself to kick and stomp and swear while he fixes his security protocols and gets himself inside, surprised to find you perched at his desk once he does so.

It's only when he sees your guilty expression that he remembers it's not him that should be feeling caught out.

"Get out!" He barks, striding forward. "And stop messing with my security systems!"

"But," you skitter away like a pingpong ball and Doyoung carves his territory back, rearranging the datashards you've been examining. "You weren't around. I didn't want to wait outside."

I have a calendar! He wants to scream, but you're looking so dejected and genuinely clueless that all he can come up with is, "This place is for emergency repairs or appointments only. Seeing as you have nothing to repair-" He jerks a thumb to the door, "get out."

Your frown deepens. "You just have some stuff I've been asked t-"

Someone thuds against the door, trying the handle. He flicks the feed up instantly on his monitors to show a client doing a perfect imitation of Doyoung only a few minutes prior, albeit with a lot more passion.

"Open this fucking door, Kim Doyoung!" Comes the static scream that the two of you can hear through the metal walls. "Fix my fucking arm!"

You hesitate, gnawing on your bottom lip, and fix Doyoung with a doe-like stare.

He takes one look at it, sighs, and points towards the depths of the room where the back door is. You're gone by the time Wooseok and his crew come tumbling in.

"You fucking changed the locks?" Wooseok accuses, slamming himself into the chair. "I told you we were coming!"

"I had a bug in the system," Doyoung's replies, noncommital.

"How about that?" One of Wooseok's cronies watches him slip on the exoglove and flick on the lights. "Lee can't keep the rats out, huh?"

"Nothing I can't handle." Doyoung replies, icy. "What do you want?"

Wooseok gets comfortable in the chair, pulls his shirt sleeve all the way up to his shoulder and- holy shit. What's left of his right arm is a mangled, twisted mess of wires and metal. "What I want, is the person who did this to me dead. If you can't do that, then fix this."

Doyoung stares. "I installed this for you last month."

The taller man snarls, enraged. "And charged me pretty fuckly highly, if I remember correctly."

"This is near military-grade, Wooseok. What the hell did you stumble into that could do this?"

Doyoung is going to find whatever ballistic or crude little instrument did this and reforge, replan. This was supposed to be his finest work. "IED? Power surge?"

"Not what," Crony #2 mutters sullenly, "Who."

Doyoung barks out a laugh of disbelief and then turns to Wooseok for the real explanation, except his client isn't smiling. All the blood promptly drains from Doyoung's face.

"Was it a- like a cyberpsycho?" He tries, then tries again, "Military? Exoskeleton?"

"We didn't see." Wooseok grinds out. "One minute I'm doing a perimeter check down at the docks for some cargo, the next minute I’ve lost my arm, my visuals, and all my fucking comms!"

"Must have been a sniper or something." Crony #1 decides.

“Had to have been.” Crony #2 murmurs in assent. "We had all exits covered and any cyberware activity woulda come up on our radar. The fuckers that did this scrambled us then took off with the payload. Fuck."

A quick scan of the cyberlimb's RAM confirms it. A single ballistic round had hit the shoulder joint and sliced through the upper arm power conduits, and if that wasn't bad enough, the riccochet had shattered most of the outside casing on its way out. There’s no sensory response when Doyoung pokes at the twisted digits. 

"Just give it to me straight, doc," Wooseok watches him, shifts his weight from one side to the other. "How much is this gonna cost me?"

Doyoung decides "an arm and a leg" would be a joke in poor taste, so settles on offering up a cheaper replacement he’s got laying around somewhere.

"And you're sure it was no implants?" He presses. "No gun modification traces or anything nearby on the net?"

"Nope." Crony #1 pops the p. "Just some serious firepower from some fucker hoping to strike lucky, I guess. They better hope we never find ‘em, though."

Doyoung installs state-of-the-art, cybernetic technology for a living. There is no such thing as striking lucky.

"I guess." He says, and gets to work.

"Please stop this," Doyoung asks, politely, weakly, when he next sees you. Because it's the fifth time this month he’s had to install another firewall on the clinic's security program, and because strapped on your back is a tsunami-tech sniper rifle which, a quick digital analysis reveals, takes ballistic rounds. Serious firepower.

You point your finger to the culprit: a banged-up Jaehyun who’s already stabbing a round of hemozal into his upper arm.

Jaehyun shrugs, unrepentant. "Doesn't this increase business?"

You nod sagely. "Circle of life."

"I like Junmyeon," he protests, because he truly does, "and Junmyeon liked his legs. Quite a lot, actually."

"He shouldn't have gotten in the way then." Jaehyun states, matter-of-fact.

You inch towards the chair with round, wide eyes, even if another forensic scan of the weapon reveals you’ve fired and hit no less than eight targets tonight.

Doyoung looks at Jaehyun.

Jaehyun looks at you.

Doyoung sighs, defeated. You hop up and show him the shrapnel poking out of your calf and he gets to work. It's only when he’s halfway through and you're rolling up the jeans on your right leg that he sees a flash of metal where your left fingertips should be.

He moves, quick, and snaps his hand around your wrist. You yank and tug but can’t pull away, watching him watch you as his other hand gently rolls up the sleeve to reveal-

Metal. Rusted and prosthetic, at least 10 years old which means even if it wasn't well and truly useless back then, it certainly is now. A hollow laugh leaves Doyoung’s chest at the irony, the sheer irony, while you finally snatch your arm back and cradle the cold metal to your chest. Your chest rises, lips parted in a silent snarl, and you’re glaring at him.

"Seriously?" He moves to take your hand in his again, but you won't let him. “You got this when you were, what, ten? Eleven? That’s the age people usually start getting enhancements, not stop."

“Don’t care.” You wiggle your leg for emphasis. "Get on with it!"

So he does. Setting his hand just above your knee and splaying his fingertips across the skin. Soft, warm, skin. Real. He glances up and finds you already watching him, lips still parted just enough for your breath to escape.

"You want anaesthetic?" He murmurs, not sure why he does, because Jaehyun's already tuned out in favour of his own little world, tucked away in the corner as he nurses his wounds in the corner.

"No." You murmur. Both your hands- one metal, one flesh -curl into fists as he begins to remove the shrapnel. He wants to cradle them against his own. He doesn’t know why.

Then a piece of shrapnel nicks your skin and the spell is broken.

"Hi," You slide into the booth one rainy morning as Doyoung is hunched over the cyberware laid out in front of him. The club is empty during the day except for a few mercenaries who never like to stray too far from Taeyong’s territory. The man in question is squabbling with Jungwoo at the bar, while Jaehyun nurses a coffee and watches over Donghyuck, who's splayed out in a booth with VR goggles covering most of his face. Yuta's nowhere to be seen, but then again, he usually never is. "What are you working on?"

You've bonded quick and fast with the team, like neuron synapses after injury. They normally forge new connections rapidly, growing stronger with every impulse, so he knows if it weren't for Donghyuck's affinity- and addicition -to surfing the cybernet, you wouldn't even be with him right now. He doesn't know why that annoys him.

"Upgrades." He peels back part of the tactile sensor with his tweezers, feels your thigh press against his own as you peer over his arm, and decides to just stay still. If your lonely neuron has decided to bond to his, so be it. Who is he to fight against neurobiology?

“You're awfully interested for someone who has nothing better to do.”

"I wanted to be a ripperdoc once," You shrug.

Doyoung sets down his tools and turns to look at you.

"What?" You ask, a touch defensively, when you catch him staring, and he can't help but laugh at the indignant expression on your face. You soften slightly at the sound.

"Nothing," he settles on, even though you've stolen his tweezers and have reached the dual processor deep within the cyberlimb's core, severing it neatly from the cooling system. "I just don't know many who would trust a ripperdoc to install cyberware if they don't have any themselves. It would be like letting someone tattoo you without seeing their portfolio."

You're quiet, too quiet. He thinks it’s just concentration at first, that he’s lost you to your (his) work. Both you and Donghyuck share the affinity for netrunning, able to bend and slither your way through firewalls and into places you shouldn't rather than Jaehyun, Yuta and Johnny’s “punch first, think later” philosophy, but only you have shown interest in the more mechanical, tangible side of cyber augmentation.

"I guess." You mumble, finally, into the table. 

It doesn't make logical sense. Doyoung hasn't done anything wrong, hasn’t said anything false, yet you've ceased tinkering and your face is turned away, hidden, and even though you're right next to him he feels like your mind is even further away than Donghyuck’s. The synaptic connection has been severed and even though it’s a stupid fucking metaphor, Doyoung reaches for it again.

He stands, drops his hand to your head and lets his fingers intertwined with your hair as he ruffles it up. "Let me get us some coffee, walnut. Okay?"

"Walnut?" You wiggle out of his grip, staring up at him in disbelief. "I'm not a walnut!"

He shuffles out the booth, points to the cyberlimb, and grins, wide and infectious. "Keep up the good work!"

Your slow and budding friendship is tested on a Saturday night downtown when he pokes the bear.

(Not friendship. Synapses don’t cling to each other with the hope that it works out. You don’t hack a security program in halves, asking permission before you eviscerate. You don’t hesitate before you pull the trigger, or go for the non-lethal shot. Synapses cling and don’t let go. It’s a methodology and a mantra. He’s only returning the favour.)

"I just think," he puffs, veering to the left just as a slug embeds itself in the far wall, where his head had just been, "that having some offensive arsenal would be of great help right now."

"Shut up!" You yelp, hand tangled in his as you jerk him along. Behind the two of you, Johnny covers your six, stopping occasionally to return fire and muttering, "Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck," as he does so.

Yuta is several paces ahead of you and cracking skulls like eggshells once you join him at the door.

"Won't open," he explains simply as you examine the bullet-ridden control panel by his side, before lifting up his gun and emptying a few rounds into Johnny's pursuers.

The two of you drop to your knees while Doyoung grips a panel on the wall and yanks it away.

"I'm just saying-"

"Don't care, Doyoung." You snap, moving into grab at the wires.

"-you're quite literally putting yourself at a disadvantage just letting it just sit there like that. Were you too broke to purchase anything other than the basic shell?"

"Not the time!" You worm your way past the thick cabling and link yourself to the port. Yuta never does anything by halves so it's no surprise to find the code scrambled, programs just begging to be put out of their misery. You gather them up and start coaxing.

"Well can you at least let me put some sythentic strengthening coating on it?  So it matches the human one?"

Johnny, ever the brightest spark, reaches the door and just starts punching. It bends but doesn't break. "Stop talking and get this thing open, metalheads!"

"I didn't fucking sign up for this!" Doyoung snaps back, equally as frustrated, before deciding enough is enough and joining you within the door's systems. "Just- Y/N, let me fix the arm, make it better-"

You yank the code he's reformulating from his grasp and slot it into place against your own. "It doesn't need to be fixed!"

The program sings with delight and the door slides open. Yuta's large fist clamps around your jackets and he hauls the two of you through. "I'm not broken, so I’d appreciate it if you stop trying to fix me."

Mark waits outside with wheels smoking and the gas hot. Yuta launches the two of you into the back seats, leaps in after, and Johnny's not in the passenger seat for even a second before the warehouse is nothing but dust behind you.

"Can't argue with that, dude," Yuta pants from beside him.

Yeah, your finger says as it pokes him in the side. Doyoung wants to bite back, truly, but the adrenaline has left him now, so all he can do is rest his head against your own as the two of you wait for the comedown.

“Sorry.” He mumbles into your hair. It’s silent, but it’s there nonetheless.

You tell him on a cool summer Wednesday night, when he wakes to find your silhouette curled up in on itself, tracing the metallic lining of your left arm. He still hasn't gotten used to you being in his bed, never will, because he's Kim Doyoung and he doesn't deserve nice things, but it had been a late night at the clinic and you’re nothing but quiet, persistent and persuasive.

"Y/N?" He shifts upright, reaches out to draw you closer. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," you say into the darkness, then, "I used to have a brother."

He pauses to imagine it: someone with the same slant of your jaw, same shade of hair, same laugh. It's not hard. He thinks about you far more often than he'll ever admit, even if Johnny and Donghyuck have been trying their hardest to wheedle it out of him.

"He was three years older than me but it never felt that way. I followed him everywhere. Mom used to call me his little shadow." You laugh hollowly. "He used to take me with him to the clinics when he'd saved enough money, sneak me out of school because he knew I was obsessed with technology and how it worked. He'd explain to me what he was getting and where, how it was gonna get us out of this shithole.

"And it got better, for a bit, except he kept borrowing to afford the surgeries, kept saying he needed more to keep up with everyone else. You know how it is."

He does. If you haven't got the highest specs on the market you might as well quit while you're ahead. It's what keeps him in business.

"He kept going," Your voice is clogging up now, thick with emotion on the precipice of eruption. "I told him to stop. I didn't care how awful our life was at the bottom, all I cared about was that we were together. No-one told me you had to look out for the signs. I thought the aggressiveness was just him being a teenager."

You turn to face him, a bitter, twisted smile on your lips. You gesture to the useless metal appendage attached to you, sitting limply at your side.

"I came home from school one day and it wasn’t him that answered the door. One of the neighbours called the psycho squad, I think. He kept me in the apartment for so long it’s all a bbit fuzzy. They went through him to get me, in the end, blew a few holes in him once he opened the door. Didn't stop him from blowing one into me first."

You gesture helplessly to your prosthetic arm. "I didn't get a choice; I woke up in hospital and they'd already attached it. Once I was released I went straight down to the ripperdoc to get it covered or upgraded or something-" You reach out with it, twisting it around, testing it out like it's the first time all over again. "But all I could think about was my brother, how that technology rotted him from the inside out. I'd never even stepped into another clinic till I met you."

Doyoung remembers it like yesterday, the way you'd curled up in the corner, let guilt gnaw away at you until you'd physically checked Mark was okay. He reaches out, ghosts against your shoulder, then lets his arm fall.

You stare out into the night sky.

"I don't think I'm made to love metal." You admit, quietly, finally, into the dark expanse of his room, Night City humming with life below.

Softly, so softly, he comes to cage you in from behind, tucking you against his chest. His fingers come to rest against your cheek, taking your right hand in his hands and cradling it to his own face. He feels your heart beat against his chest as his own settles into an identical rhythm.

"Feel me, Y/N" implores, ghosting a kiss onto the skin of your palm. "I am anything but."

So you peel back Doyoung's layers, piece by piece.

He's warm in the mornings, arms open wide to tuck you against him before he hands you a coffee. He wraps you up in his hoodies on days when the heating dies out and watches with Jaehyun at the bar, fondness in his eyes, as you and Mark and Donghyuck squabble over the songs on the jukebox.

If he finds you waiting for him in the afternoon, twirling around in his desk chair, he moans and whines with playful chagrin, walking you back to the door and begging you to fix it, so he can make it better, so he can fix it.

When he gets called out in the early hours of the morning to find Donghyuck curled up and snoring on your shoulder, once he melds metal back to flesh and stops the screaming, the two of you steal away to his apartment. He makes you a warm drink and runs you a shower, washes away the blood and sweat and draws circles into your shoulder under the covers. The touch lets the livewire codes buzzing around in your head die down, grounds you to him like an anchor, lulls you to sleep even when you close your eyes and still find yourself deep in the net, surrounded by nothing but 1's and 0's.

You can’t do much in return except watch. Doyoung’s hands never shake when he works, his eyes never widen as he swings into the clinic and takes in the scene in front of him. He’s steady, always.

Yet when you watch Jaehyun barrel out of the van and pound on the clinic's doors, watch Doyoung's sleepy head emerge and then startle as he's dragged forwards, you realise you've never seen him truly scared.

Donghyuck's body writhes in the back of the van. Your knees pin his arms down as you cradle his head between your legs. His eyes are closed, seared shut in pain. He cries out occasionally, legs kicking out until Doyoung composes himself and can steady them. He turns to you, hopeless, wide-eyed and panicked.

"We were out on a job," you whimper, tears glistening like jewels in your eyes. "I- He was netrunning to grab us some data. A bloodhound virus got wind of him, it's keeping him in the net. I don't know what to do."

"Hyuck?" Doyoung leans over and gives him several sharp taps to the face. "Hyuck, can you hear me?"

He moans moans, then falls silent again.

There's several variables that bounce between the two of you in quick succession. First, the location. If Donghyuck stopped moving the bloodhound would lock onto his location and then you'd have every mercenary within a five-mile radius knocking at your door to collect the bounty. Second, there's the sheer terrifying fact that if Donghyuck can't fight this thing, he's going to lose complete and utter access to his body. And-more urgently, his mind.

You stare down at your friend, unable to get him to a properly-resourced location, unable to bring him home, and make a decision. "I'm going in."

"Nope." Doyoung reaches out and snatches at your wrist, stopping you from preventing the link. "You can't. If that thing catches you-"

Bullets spray into the back of the van. You yelp and duck, immediately crushed by the weight of Doyoung pinning you down.

In the driver’s seat, Jaehyun swerves a sharp left.

"Gun!" Johnny snaps, leaping over the front seats in one fluid motion. He snatches up your discarded rifle, kicks open the back doors, and takes aim. Doyoung watches it power up with a sickening hum until a shot is released. It goes straight through the chassis of your attacker's vehicle, riccochets, catches the engine- and explodes.

Heat licks at your face, Johnny yanks the doors back shut and retreats to the front, leaving Doyoung free to allow you back up, nudge you out the way and hold out his own wrist to acccess his neuroport. "I'll do it. It has to be me-"

"No," this time it's you stopping him. "Work on his cyber enhancements. Disconnect them from his neural network so it can't get to them through there, it'll reduce the strain on his cerebral cortex. I'll try and pull him out."

"Y/N," Doyoung slows, turning to cradle you to him, even though you wriggle, even though there's no time, "Hyuck isn’t your brother. He's still in there. I promise we'll get him out."

"It's not- It’s not-" You splutter, beside yourself, but Doyoung has already let you go and you have nowhere to sink your anger into.

Before Doyoung can stop you, you tilt Donghyuck's head and connect your personal link to his neural port. The bloodhound is greeted with fire and fury and even though your body goes limp while you ascend to cyberspace, it's only minutes later that Donghyuck splutters to life, eyes flying open and panicked yelps tearing from his mouth as he's torn away from the net and into the world of the living.

"Jesus!" Johnny cries out, "Jesus, fuck, don't do that again, kid!"

"Welcome back," Jaehyun grunts, turning the truck into a drift and then straightening back up. "Let's go the fuck home."

You emerge milliseconds after Donghyuck, severing the connection, blinking slowly as you come back to yourself. Once you do, you find yourself cradled to Doyoung's chest.

"Dont ever do that again," he murmurs against your temple. He presses a kiss there, then another. "Please please pleasepleaseplease."

"Get a room," Donghyuck warbles pathetically from the floor.

"Idiot." You send a half-hearted kick to his calf. "I can't believe you did that to us. Drinks are on you for the rest of the year."

The panic is passing. Adrenaline ebbing, retreating, until all you're left with is the hum of the engine, the sound of your own breaths.

Trumping all that is Doyoung, the feeling of his skin on yours and his presence all around, holding you tight, keeping you safe.

It's well past 3AM when Doyoung wakes, roused by your absence. His arm reaches out to find you next to him but falls onto the empty sheets instead. It’s so easy to notice you when you’re gone now that he can’t quite remember what he did before you. 

He slings the covers off and settles onto the balls of his feet. He moves quickly, because there's no point sleeping if you're not with him, and because the window is wide open.

It had not been like that a few hours earlier.

He checks the access protocol on his way out and lowers himself onto the fire escape. Clambering up, he ascends to the rooftop of his apartment building just as the advertisement billboard across the way lights up neon. It bathes you in a cerulean glow.

You turn to smile at him. "Hey."

"Hey." He joins you on the edge, letting his feet swing over and knock against yours. The advertisement dies down so he can join you in tilting his head back and mapping out the stars. The moon shines the brightest.

"I always wonder what life is like up there." You say softly. "If anyone ever regrets it."

Doyoung knocks his head into yours, gentle, affectionate. "C’mon, walnut, I doubt it. Aren't they all rich fuckers anyway?"

You sigh. "Probably. It's so beautiful though. Ever thought about going?"

"It is." He agrees. You turn, he's not looking at the moon. You chase his lips as he laughs and tries to move away. He gives in quickly.

When he next speaks, it's a sentiment you both agree on. Finally, like settled metal, done right so there's no chance of erosion, he says, "I have everything I need right here."

[thearcanespeakeasy]

The tiktok ban is going to affect Europeans too and we have to stop to think that we're are better. We're not. "But the we have laws that protect us" they don't care about the laws shithead.

The Usa was always seen as the land of the free, our ethics thermometer. We were raised by Hollywood propaganda too. Then in the last 10 years since Trump was elected we started questioning this idea. Good we started but we're not free. Since Trump was elected our EU countries has started to go so far right that is scary.

Elon Musk already started to meddle with our continent, by targeting the uk and be in contact with the Italian prime Minister (which is an EU country).

Mark Zuckerberg released a statement where he pointed his finger and called the laws that protect us "censorship". He is already changing the narrative and HE ABSOLUTELY HAS THE POWER TO DO IT. HE FUCKING OWNS FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM AND WHATSAPP. All apps that we in Europe use.

6 major CEOs that rule the internet are going to be present at Trump's inauguration. All 6 of them are signaling that they ARE the USA government.

This precedent will be an example for our governments and they'll start this shit here too.

The three major countries by economic, influence and army are all dictatorship. The USA, Russia and China. And China is the best of them all WHICH IS CONCERNING. What is going to happen to our stupid Union when the all thing we can do is shitting on Russia and China while badmouthing on the internet Americans and our neighbors.

The elected president started by threatening Canada and Denmark both Nato states. And we laughed.

But let's laugh at them and say "finally we're free from Americans".

[five-milfs-and-a-twink]

Hey-

So I know I don't talk about politics too much here but this has been on my mind all day and I want to share my thoughts with an audience that I know is at least listening a little. Sometimes talking about this just feels like screaming into the void but here we go.

For those of you who don't know, I'm an American. We just elected the worst possible man to be our president. As younger, queer, biracial woman, I'm scared. Not only for myself but for my trans friends and anyone with family or friends that are immigrants.

Censorship is likely to run rampant bc wtf happened with the tiktok ban? He's best buddies with billionaires and does not give a fuck about the American people. His priority right now is renaming the Gulf of Mexico and trying to ban the existence of trans people, but people are still struggling to get by, which will only get worse with his tax cuts. The tax cuts that will only help the rich gain more wealth while everyone else continues to struggle.

Not to mention that the millions of immigrants he wants to deport are the backbone of the American labor force. It's exploitation for sure, but we're gonna feel the effects when he kicks them out.

The separation of church and state has gone out the fucking window.

I don't know how we got to this point. If you're scared like me, then know you're not alone. But we have to keep fighting. We can make these next four years hell for him if we play our cards right. Keep using your voice, because this does not get to end today.

I want to pursue a career in the government/law eventually, not because I think I can fix everything, but because I want to do something.

Also pretty cool thing is I don't think he really has control over tumblr. He's got Meta, X, tiktok... but we're safe here for now.

To end on a lighter note, here's a song Patti LuPone was involved in that just bashes Trump from 2020.

I know this was just word vomit, but I hope it resonated with some of you. Please feel free to reach out for support.

Stay safe, and don't give up <3

[lastoneout]

how do you make a whole post about people suffering from the tariffs and the need for compassion and never once consider the canadians who will suffer from the us initiating a trade war

That post was intentionally, very specifically directed at leftist Americans in blue states who are making jokes about people in red states suffering, with a side of me complaining about a small part of the Canadian government's plan about how to address this extremely complicated situation that I, in the post, admit to not fully understanding. I will apologize for that at least, that wasn't really what I meant to be talking about but I kinda had to critique the targeting red states part to explain my point about how the GOP thinks and why OTHER AMERICANS SPECIFICALLY should reconsider the way they talk about this. I didn't mean to say Canada was wrong to act, I was trying to address how certain Americans are responding to those actions, and that kind requires talking about Canada.

(I will also admit that I am am slightly salty at every single other country at the moment given most of them, including, as far as my research could turn up, Canada, won't let disabled people immigrate there unless we can work which like. We can't. Or we have a spouse or family member who has a job that will cover all of our expenses which....yeah most of us don't have access to jobs like that. My fiancé can provide for myself and him atm but he loses his job if he leaves America. We're queer and disabled and stuck here because the majority of the world doesn't think disabled people are worth saving. So yeah, kinda feels a bit like being complete abandoned by everyone and it does color my perspective a bit even if I do happen to agree that Canada should protect it's people from the harm Trump's bullshit is about to rain down on them.)

But yeah, obviously the entire world is going to suffer because of the shit Trump is pulling and I'm pissed about that too. The Canadian and Mexican governments cannot just sit by and do nothing while their people suffer, and I don't fault them having to take drastic measures even if I do disagree with the way one government is going about it. At the end of the day all of this suffering is Trump and Musk's fault and they should be the ones shouldering the majority of the blame. But I'm also allowed to make posts about one thing that is specifically directed at a singular group of people, especially a group of people I'm part of. I'm allowed to critique my own political allies when they fuck up. And as far as I've seen most of us have been not only very sympathetic, but borderline too eager to shoulder the blame themselves for the rest of the world suffering. I haven't seen any leftist ignore that the people of Canada and Mexico are going to suffer due to the actions of our government. I've even seen some of them legit reaching suicidal levels of self-hatered, saying they don't want to suffer but it's what we all(Americans) deserve for letting this happen, as if it was the people's fault and not a small group of money and power-hungry bastards who don't give a shit about anyone but themselves. I did not detect a lack of sympathy for the populations of other countries amongst Americans discussing this topic so I did not think that needed to be addressed in my post critiquing said Americans for their lack of sympathy for their countrymen.

So yeah. I am sorry to the Canadians and Mexicans who are going to suffer. I'm really, really fucking sorry. This is embarrassing and scary and painful for all of us, I wish I could stop it. I'm one disabled person who is bedridden recovering from surgery cycling through the stages of grief so fast it's making me nauseous. Your government IS right to try to protect you, I would give anything for mine to do the same, not just for Americans but for everyone trapped on this earth with us.

But again, I am allowed to make posts that are about one thing or talking to one specific group of people. I wasn't trying to address the people in other countries at all, this was talking to American progressives and liberals and leftists, and very specifically ones living in blue states, addressing how they talk about other Americans and how poorly it reflects upon them.

I apologize for not being able to cover every single aspect of a massive, extremely complicated situation in my one post, and sorry for being so bitchy about the Canadian government, I didn't mean to imply that other people aren't gonna suffer too. I figured that went without saying since I've seen so many Americans talking about it already. We should do both. Sympathy for everyone who's going to suffer.

I'm going to go lay down and continue to worry about my American friends and Canadian friends, and everyone now. Bye.

[kristallioness]

If you support Putin and / or Trump - feel free to unfollow me right now. I have some very unpleasant things to say and you're not gonna like hearing this ugly, bitter truth. For others who are like-minded - feel free to reblog this callout post.

Do you know what I've been feeling lately? I feel anger, maybe even fury or rage.

I'm angry that 49.8% of the American population are either completely ignorant, self-centered, arrogant or just plain stupid enough people who simply don't care or didn't pay enough attention during history (or any other kind of) class at school to be able to understand what chaos they're unleashing into the whole world by supporting a narcissistic, oligarchic idiot of a tyrant who's only interested in showing off and admiring himself, making deals that benefit himself, his business(es) and "associates" while everybody else suffers as a consequence since they're too busy having to deal with and clean up after his messes or analyzing the nonsense he's spitting out constantly.

Because Trump can't stand losing and will fight back at every accusation made against him by telling you that black is white. I have no respect or sympathy for any of you who blindly follow and support his ideas 100% like a herd of sheep. (I didn't wanna say 'dumb sheep' cause I would've felt bad for insulting the sheep as a species. Just wanted to bring in the metaphor about their behaviour as a herd.)

Also, I don't take kindly to threats - he's not my president, I don't have to obey his every command. I wish the majority of Europe and the rest of the world would stop groveling at his feet in order not to be in his crosshairs. He's a bully and should be treated as such.

Yesterday (as I was pouring my anger out into this writing) and today (after watching our local news), I feel helpless.

I feel helpless watching how our biggest ally - the United States of America, a supposed powerhouse among the biggest countries in the world - is claiming that it's NOT realistic for Ukraine to take back ALL of its territory and that they DON'T belong in NATO if they want "peace". WHAT.. THE.. FUCK!? What kind of peace are you talking about here? The one where Trump's lackeys (i.e. his appointed ministers) are declaring Ukraine's surrender and are basically giving in to Putin's demands even before any peace / truce negotiations have started?

The only reason it's so unrealistic is because YOU haven't done EVERYTHING in YOUR power to actually help them WIN! (Western Europe deserves some evil looks, too…) Why would you cut off their aid or deliberately hold back on giving them the weapons they desperately need (I'm looking at the Democrats and former President Joe Biden here as well) that would help them force the Russians out of their land?

I know why - because you don't WANT them to win. OR because you're too afraid of what Russia will do when they start to lose, or what'll happen if Russia eventually collapses. You Americans (and Western Europe, for that matter) have developed an irrational fear of a nuclear war due to the Cold War era in the 20th century. Well, what's the alternative - we let Russia take Ukraine, then the rest of Eastern Europe piece by piece, until they eventually reach Berlin and Paris, maybe even London and Madrid…? Then what? We subdue ourselves, learn to speak Russian and Europe becomes the rosy Russian Empire? Guess what - my nation and my people have already lived through this alternative and we're NOT going back to that hellhole.

By forcing Ukraine behind the negotiation table in a weak position without any security guarantees, do you even realize the can of worms that you're opening? This is a bloody (literally BLOODY) green light to Russia and all the other dictatorships in the world that they CAN conquer foreign land by force if they're stronger than their opponents (e.g. how China sees Taiwan).

And now, America ITSELF has declared an interest in taking other lands by force if they don't comply with your demands: (Sarcasm begins.)

Mexico "lost" its gulf (I'll fucking correct anyone who dares call it the Gulf of "America");

Canada should become a new state that's bigger in size than the existing 50 states put together, but go off I guess;

Panama should give away their canal;

Greenland is so rich in minerals that America basically has the "rights" to their land since Denmark "doesn't really own them" and it's for "security" reasons;

Palestine is in such a bad state that the most "sensible" thing to do, of course, is to deport all of its citizens and rebuild it into a fancy American riviera so that they could never go back to their homes…

So, logically speaking, the deal with Putin will be that he gets the whole of Europe and can do "whatever the fuck he wants with them", and America will attack the countries in the Northern and Southern continents to expand their states? (Sarcasm ends.)

I am witnessing how the world order is being changed as we speak and I don't intend to sit in silence. I will continue to donate to organizations and charities that provide Ukrainians the help they need to keep on fighting our battle (the more Russians they kill and the more Russia is crippled, the better for all of us here). Please find my post here with some options for doing that.

As for America - I hope all of you Trump supporters get to witness and actually realize that your own country is burning in hell because of his decisions (and that your opponents put up a damn good fight to keep the entire country from falling into pieces). I remember the last 4 years of his reign far too well, but this time I can't stay this quiet when it concerns the destiny of multiple nations in the entire world, including mine and - to put it nicely - our more sensible and trustworthy allies. Ukraine's blood will be just as much on America's hands as it is on Russia's already if you betray them. The eyes of the entire world are watching you this time, and history will judge you.

TLDR:

As I said in the beginning - haters are welcome to leave any time.

Trump is a tyrant who's about to stab Ukraine in the back and should rot in jail.

Putin is a dictator, war criminal and the sole person responsible for inciting this war of aggression towards a peaceful neighbour ONLY in order to gain power over their land (and his ambitions don't stop there, the rest of Europe is next).

Russia MUST lose this war and pay reparations to Ukraine.

Ukraine is NOT weak (they've been much more fearless and powerful than the US and Western Europe combined together, given the little support they've gotten), they did NOT provoke Russia in any way, they are 100% the victim in this conflict and WE need to do everything we can to help them WIN.

Слава Україні! 🇺🇦 🫂 🇪🇪 (For those who don't believe me - here's a pretty decent article for you to read.)

[crazymuffin1]

more or less the full tiktok situation

okay so im not tinfoil hatting because its pretty obvious when you think about it

2020 trump wants tiktok banned im pretty sure the people who overlooked the whole spiel thought that there wasnt anything wrong with it and it and continued on as normal

then for some curious reason the stupidest most tech incompetent people of the congress are part of the hearing with classics such as asking the ceo 10 different ways of "are you chinese" making the viewer think that the next question is going to be whether or not the CEO has ever eaten chinese food. there are of course the other classics (and these are all real questions) "does tiktok read your brainwaves when you put on headphones" "does it record your eyes dilating to figure out what videos to boost via the algorithm" "does tiktok access your home wi-fi network" "are you chinese" "if you turn on airplane mode while in a plane, can tiktok talk to the plane"

im not making this up. these are real actual questions. its not word for word but im not changing the meaning of the questions it really was that bad

then of course beause they took the dumbest people in the congress they made a rule that basically boils down to "apps from countries we dont like have to be owned by america" (so we can censor it) (this is while also being racist towards china and yknow being all 'china censorship bad!')

now there hasnt been an official announcement of tiktok having been bought, BUT!

while it was down for americans, these messages appeared

message 1 ID: Sorry, Tiktok isn't available right now A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can't use TikTok for now. We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned! End ID oh yeah the same trump that got it banned in the first place, right? about 15 hours later the app is up again

Message 2 ID: Welcome Back! Thanks for your patience and support. As a result of President Trump's efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.! You can continue to create, share, and discover all the things you love on TikTok End ID.

heres the part where you gotta put the clues together! the tiktok page of the tiktok CEO no longer has "CEO of tiktok" on his profile

facebook/instagram is all of a sudden having popups of "link to tiktok" and an official tiktok page too. if youre on tiktok you get an add facebook friends promo (this hasnt happened to everyone yet, rolling out feature)

convicted felon donald trump is holding his inauguration indoors, probably because last time he got all pissy that the crowd size was small, but you cant take aerials indoors and indoors have limited seats anyway(maybe as a last fuck you, tiktok will once again reserve a bunch of seats that are left empty? oh please do that!). also its easier to check for weapons and not have snipers when indoors, which is important when first lady elon musk is going to be there, and his fellow oligarch mark zuckerberg is also going to be there. theyre reaaal scared of the snipers since their egos are so big they become an easy target!

but we all know the drill by now. "saving" tiktok is just a failed way to make the younger generation like him. even if he set it up and everyone on tiktok knows. its also a way to make people overlook whatever this weeks war crime is going to be. probably the mass deportation. forgot to add this thing but facebook recently removed fact checkers so tiktok is probably going to have even more (worse) misinformation

TL;DR facebook is going to announce they bought tiktok any day now and give the glory to trump even though he is the reason it was banned in the first place

also as a bonus on the last day, a lot of influencers and stuff like that were having the "since we're all getting banned anyway" moment so a lot of them said stuff like "i never used the products i promoted" "i hated collabing with this creator" "i was never xyz" people who did masked thirst traps (male presenting) were women all along. and then 15 hours later theyre unbanned and have to be like... yep...so that just happened.

anyway tiktok was one of the last few places people got news that werent completely filtered through the right wing lens of whoever owned the newspaper. even if there was a lot of misinfo. think of the ceo shooter and think of how the media portrayed it vs the people. "rich man is murdered in cold blood by some vile monster. he was very beloved" vs "this guy is a vile human being who is responsible for millions of deaths, and he was finally killed"

[qqueenofhades]

Leaving aside possible reversals, disasters, doom & gloom, can we take a moment to savor the Trump meltdown over Harris/Walz and the momentum that makes a possible blue tsunami seem an entirely plausible outcome? I'd love to give you the space to ramble about it if you'd like, as my current fandom at least for the moment has shifted back to US politics (but not, for the first time in a while, to doom scrolling politics!).

Aha, I feel as I have probably already said most of my current thoughts, but here are a few things that really make me desire a heaping helping of butt-whooping blue wave in November:

The state that has had the most volunteer sign-ups since Harris took over the ticket? Fucking Florida, with over 18,000. The Villages, formerly a hotbed of Trump support (and y'know, probably still is), also had a major pro-Kamala event, and she is allegedly up 15 points in Miami-Dade (after Biden won the county by 7% and lost the state only by 3%). Now, we all know that Obama won Florida twice, but it has become such a symbol of retrograde Trumpian/DeSantisian politics that winning there would be literally seismic. I'm not going so far as saying that it's in PLAY play, but let's just hold onto that happy, happy idea.

Likewise the poll I mentioned the other day, where Trump is struggling to break 50% in Ohio, once a swing state and now also reliably red. The fact that this is Vance's home state and he's dragging the ticket down every single time he opens his mouth, thus offering the smallest sliver of hope that Ohio (which DID legalize abortion and weed by major margins last year) could also go blue? Incredible. Amazing. Showstopping.

Harris is also tied with Trump (46%-46%) in North Carolina and there is a lot of chatter about how the terrible GOP governor candidate could give a boost to Democratic turnout statewide.

The Mormons have apparently announced their intention to abandon (or at least support much less than they usually do) the Republican presidential ticket in 2024. Remember when Obama won Indiana in 2008? In my wildest dreams, I imagine Utah going blue in 2024. It won't but shh.

Basically, where we were braced for another agonizing nail-biting grind-it-out three-day election determined by a few thousand votes in key states (because etc etc the Electoral College sucks) we are now looking at the very real possibility that Harris wins at least one state, and possibly more, that Biden didn't, and which have been seen as out of reach for Democrats since Trump came on the scene. I don't think I need to counsel anyone against complacency, because we're all too damn scared for that, but yeah. Polls, even the good-looking ones that we like, don't vote. They are still skewed and subjective and do not represent the actual reality, whatever that may end up being. The Republicans and the media will be trying their absolute goddamnfuckingest to ratfuck us again in the 80-something days that remain, but:

WE CAN DO THIS, WE WILL DO THIS, WE MUST DO THIS.

WHAT IS THIS.... JOY SCROLLING? FOR AMERICAN POLITICS? IN THE YEAR 2024 WITH DONALD TRUMP ON THE TICKET FOR THE FUCKING THIRD TIME?

UNPOSSIBLE.

[mywingsareonwheels]

It is absolutely true that at a time when fascism is terrifyingly on the rise (throughout Europe, and with a hopefully outgoing Tory party here in the UK that crossed the line some while back (plus the growth of Reform who are bewilderingly even worse), and the terrifying possibility of Trump retaking the US in the autumn), everybody else on the political spectrum needs to work together to keep them out.

Even when it means holding your nose and voting for a shithead (my enormous sympathy and respect for those who hate Biden but are still going to vote for him because you live in a state where your vote matters and the greater evil in this case is beyond words; ditto those in Labour target seats in the UK who are going to vote for them on Thursday despite Starmer (and possibly also their prospective MP) being awful); ditto the equivalents of this in so many other countries.

Or even actively working with people whose views are pretty dreadful but who still aren't actually fascists and so really are hugely hugely preferable.

Historically, the willingness or otherwise of non-fascists of all stripes to work together has been entirely crucial to whether or not fascists get power. Over, and over, and over again.

It is however also true that the left (even the only-just-left-of-centre) are somehow expected to make far more compromises and hold our noses far more in working with the centre and centre-right, while they're not put under any pressure to do the same in working with us. We're supposed to suck it up; they're not. And this is stupid and unfair, and fuck the centrist media for continually letting them off the hook.

Both these things are true, and too many countries in the world right now give those of us who want to make the world better far too few good choices when it comes to election time. :(

(Quick reminder though to fellow UK people that here we are allowed to join or donate to a party that isn't the one we're voting for. Building up better parties for the future is also essential. And the GPEW and the Scottish Greens both have targets seats in this election that might want some money thrown their way...)

[cecebeanie]

Today I realized the extent of the bubble I'm in, and how dangerous that is. I'm not American, so my perception of American electors is already faulty, but I hadn't really seen many trump voters around. Nor here, or on TikTok, or on Instagram. I had only seen either Harris voters or people who weren't going to vote. So, in my head, while those people existed there weren't many, and there were so many more people who were going to vote for Harris, but there was no way trump was going to win. I was so convinced of it.

And that's a huge problem, not only for this election, but for each and every one of them, in every country. When Giorgia Meloni was elected in Italy I didn't really expect it, because everyone was talking about how the Left suck but how it was the only party they could vote for, or everyone talked about how they weren't going to vote at all. When we're in a bubble, we think that everyone else is going to vote like we hope, so it's easier to choose not to vote ourselves.

Fascism is on a dangerous rise all around the world, and that's so fucking scary. Because for every fascist that gets elected, there is a following of fascist voters, and that's horrifying.

In Italy, we joke all the time about how the left isn't united, how there are so many parties that are all separated for small things, and that's why they can't win. And it SUCKS SO BAD to have to gote for the lesser evil, it's horrible, it's not fair. But this is the proof that when people don't do that, the Big Evil ends up winning, because on the other hand, right wing voters are united.

I can't help but remember how fascism rose in Italy, the reasons why Mussolini got hold of the country. It was helped by fear, and general discontent, and the need of what was perceived as a strong figure that could help people out. Much like what people feel worldwide nowadays.

At the same time, fascism was defeated by the partisans, by the strong, stubborn people who saw fascism and fought back, for their own values, and their own life, for their own freedom.

They were brave, but we can be so brave too. It's important not to be divided, to unite in our communities and fight back in any way we can, because that's the only way fascism can be defeated.

History is sadly easy to forget, and it comes back around easily. But fascism has been defeated historically, we can do that again.

[goulashh]

A drawing that I made on the 3rd anniversary of the full-scale war in Ukraine. This was inspired by the song "Snooze" by wotaku.

The translation on the drawing: "It's not that simple", "we don't know the truth", "setting free" (those words were said by the russian government and its people about the war). The third picture has a large red text: "FUCK YOU" (or "Go to hell")

Warning: I'll vent here

I need to say something that I really wanted for a while: I really wish it was all just a nightmare, that I would wake up, and there's no war, and I'm safe at home. But the reality is different.

I remember when I was little, I saw the news about Euromaidan and the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Even after asking my dad for an explanation, I still didn't get it. But when I realized – I decided to ignore it. "I'm not into politics" – I thought if I'm not gonna involve myself in here, it would not affect me in any way. But it's not. It did affect me and many other people.

I remember waking up at (almost) 5AM by a message from my classmate about how we are probably not going to school today. Because of russia invading Ukraine. At first, I thought that it was just a misunderstanding, that it would end quickly. But later I wanted to scream, I couldn't understand why it had to be that way, WHY THE FUCK WE CAN'T LIVE PEACEFULLY???

Of course, I don't want to sound like I feel so bad, the worst of all in this world. My town is not under occupation, my home is not destroyed, I fled abroad with my family to safety. And I can't fully imagine all the horrors that happen at the front...

From time to time, I had the thought that if I hadn't closed my eyes earlier, if I didn't try to ignore it, maybe something would have changed? But at the same time, I know that it's no use thinking about "what if..."

And I'm also so done that despite what russia's doing, some people are still distributed songs, games, comics, etc. And when you tell them WHY you shouldn't do that, they say: "it's just a song/comic/game/drawing 🙄😒", "AnD thErE aRe gOod peOplE in rUsSia too" – OH MY FUCKING GOD AAAAAAAA 😭😭😭 YOU LITERALLY GIVE THEM MONEY SO THAT THEY CAN KILL US.

And what also pisses me off is when people say: "We're little people, we can't do anything 🥺" NO. YOU CAN. YOUR ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES, AND THEY MATTER. YOUR "little" ACTION CAN TURN INTO A "BIG" ONE.

And last, but not least... HOW THE FUCK IT IS OUR FAULT THAT RUSSIA ATTACKED US??? (Yeah, I'm looking at YOU Trump. You piece of shit) ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?! AAAAAAAAAAAA

... But despite that, I still don't want to lose hope. I want to move forward and return to my home, Ukraine. Where it's free and safe. I don't want to give up.

Fuck you, putin. I hope you die.

Thank you for reading this, I hope it was not too overdramatic. If you don't agree with me – please, just unfollow me. I'm not here to force you to change your mind. I've shared my point of view, but the decision what to do is up to you.