#black butler conspiracy

[leniisreallycool]

What if the reason all Grim Reapers have bad eyesight is because ending their lives was shortsighted

[local-redhead-bookworm]

Also I somehow forgot to include Little Lord Fauntleroy, which is literally “boy raised in poverty finds out he’s actually the heir of a wealthy earl and is educated as a British noble” and was published 11 years before Black Butler season one takes place. The Secret Garden is just a kids’ gothic novel about two sickly neglected kids healing through the power of gardening. A Little Princess is a riches-to-rags-to-riches story about a young heiress. They’ve all had anime adaptations. There’s a connection here, I’m sure of it

[violet-yimlat]

I hate to pull this card but

Pulls out a deck of cards from various sources and draws the tarot card, The Tower.

Oops. Wrong card.

Draws the Cards Against Humanity card reading “A hummingbird drinking nectar out of my urethra”.

I do hate to pull that card too but it wasn’t what I was looking for- ah! Here it is!

Draws a card reading “If this post can get 5000 notes within the next week I will continue writing my terrible, stupid book”.

Btw part two is in the reblogs of this post.

Preview under the cut.

Prologue

You might have heard the urban legend. It goes like this; someone is walking along a street. They’re always pretty much alone, perhaps with the exception of maybe a pet dog, a conveniently non-verbal companion, when they hear sounds of a pretty intense struggle in an alley. So they go to check it out, but nobody is ever there.

Although sometimes, there’s a little pool of blood or a few feathers.

Mostly this is dismissed as a hallucination, or birds fighting, but the amount of blood and the size of the feathers makes it hard to believe.

And the voices. Most people report hearing arguing. But wherever in the world the story takes place, nobody can understand the language spoken by the fighters. The reports are fairly consistent. The language is described as “mellifluous” and “ethereal”, and there are always multiple people speaking it. Or at least shouting in it, but it is generally agreed upon that they are angry.

But there is always another voice, speaking a different, but still incomprehensible, language. He, for in the stories it’s always a he, sounds defiant and cocky, speaking in a harsher, less musical tongue, unless, of course, you count black metal. Some especially astute listeners have picked up words and sentences used by the lone, defiant individual and the angry group, coming to the conclusion that they seem to be speaking different dialects of the same language.

And another thing; birds don’t generally use weapons. One witness said that they heard what sounded like a fencing match or duel before they turned the corner.

There are so many witnesses that they should probably make a discord server.

Now we come to the theories. We have the rational explanation as mentioned previously; birds.

We have the “Time travelling fight club” theory.

We have the “That one alien spaceship where they keep having to get out because that one alien speaking another dialect keeps picking fights and they always threaten to maroon him on Earth but they never do” theory.

There’s the “Mothman vs other Mothman” theory and the “Crazy global cult who’s leader travels from place to place to perform blood sacrifices” theory, and let’s not forget the “Magical mutant cock-fighting ring gone wrong” theory, but one theory stands above all the rest.

The most well known, and probably the most ridiculous, theory is the “Demon repeatedly getting jumped by angels” theory.

But it’s all just a conspiracy theory. An urban legend. A joke.

Until the day Amelia Butler found the devil bleeding out in an alley.

[mariacallous]

The Elon Musk–backed America PAC has spent thousands of dollars advertising on the Elon Musk–owned social media platform X to support former president Donald Trump’s campaign. According to X’s political ad disclosure data, between July 8 and October 1 the America PAC ran 59 ads, costing more than $166,000 and yielding, per X’s metrics, 32,058,424 impressions. All of the ads targeted swing states: Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, and Wisconsin.

Musk first endorsed Trump immediately following the attempted assassination against the former president in July in Butler, Pennsylvania. Since then, Musk has said he is “all in” on his support for Trump, and appeared at a second rally in Butler earlier this month. “This election is the most important election of our lifetime,” said Musk at the time. “This is no ordinary election.” It was one part of Musk’s—and the America PAC’s—efforts to turn out voters for Trump in swing states.

The America PAC has been a driving force behind voter mobilization for the Trump campaign, developing an app to help canvassers target likely voters. (The effectiveness of this strategy remains to be seen, with canvassers reportedly faking voter contacts at scale.) The PAC has offered $47 to any swing state voters who would agree to sign a petition supporting the First and Second Amendments. Musk has also said he will give out $1 million a day to voters who sign the petition, in a move election law expert Rick Hasen described as “clearly illegal.”

Federal Election Commission filings released last week revealed that Musk has funneled $75 million into the PAC since July, dwarfing other Silicon Valley donors who back the former president. Musk has also donated to the Building America’s Future PAC, which has run anti–Kamala Harris ads aiming to dissuade Black and Muslim voters, particularly in swing states.

Musk has also used his ownership of X to further promote Trump. In August, Musk sat down with Trump for an interview hosted on X Spaces. He has also promoted and reshared conspiracy theories pedaled by the Trump campaign, including by alleging that the Democratic Party would allow undocumented immigrants to vote in order to win the election.

In one ad that ran between September 27 and October 1, the post read, “Georgia is filling up with illegal immigrants: In just 3 years, Kamala released more illegal immigrants into our country than almost 3x the population of Atlanta. End Kamala's Border Chaos and request your ballot for President Trump today.” The ad links to the website votesafe.org, which is paid for by the America PAC and where voters can look up their voter registration status and request ballots.

All of the PAC’s ads are linked to the @theamericapac X account, which links to the PAC’s website. Before his appearance at Trump’s October rally in Butler, Musk had appropriated the @america handle for the America PAC.

The America PAC has also invested heavily in ads on Meta’s platforms, Facebook and Instagram, running more than 250 ads in October alone.

A representative from X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Matt Gertz at MMFA:

Donald Trump is reportedly revamping his address to the Republican National Convention this week to focus on themes of unity in response to the attempt on his life during a Saturday rally. But before Trump speaks on Thursday night, the convention will hear from Tucker Carlson, a demagogue whose rhetoric is indistinguishable from that of terroristic mass shooters and a longtime apologist for political violence undertaken by the right. On Saturday, a gunman opened fire on a Trump rally in Pennsylvania, injuring the former president and killing an attendee before reportedly being killed by the U.S. Secret Service. The motivation of the shooter, whose actions have been rightfully condemned by virtually every figure in U.S. public life, remain unclear. The rally was scheduled to be Trump’s last public appearance before the Republican National Convention, which begins Monday. 

Trump and his team are telling reporters that he is rewriting his convention address as part of a post-shooting effort and wants to “bring the country together” and “unite a tinder-box America.” Historically, Trump’s calls for unity have revolved around his opponents giving him everything he wants and refraining from criticizing him, and early signs suggest this time is no different. But if Trump is actually interested in cooling the national temperature, he’ll start by dropping Carlson — currently scheduled to speak Thursday before the nominee — from the agenda. Many, many aspects of Carlson’s commentary — before and during his tenure as a star Fox News host and since leaving that network in 2023 — should render him too radioactive to appear at a major political party’s convention. He regularly promotes unhinged conspiracy theories; his brand of blood-and-soil nationalism is anathema to America’s traditional ideals; he has offered a wide range of bigoted rhetoric; he waged a brutally effective campaign against vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic; he propagandizes for Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian Russian system; he knowingly deceived his viewers about Trump’s 2020 election lies; and much more.  

But what stands out in the current fraught moment is Carlson’s constant and casual deployment of violent rhetoric and courting of political violence.  [...] Those horror shows are the tip of the iceberg. Carlson presents his audience as under siege from a left that threatens them with death, and suggests that the audience’s violent response is inevitable and justifiable. When a jury convicted a man for murdering an armed protester at a Black Lives Matters rally in Texas, Carlson successfully petitioned the state’s Republican governor for the killer’s pardon. None of this seems terribly out of character for a convention aimed at nominating Trump, given the former president’s own long record of sanctioning political violence. But if there's really a “new” Trump — and evidence already suggests that of course there is not — a good way to help prove it would be to pull Carlson from the schedule.

A Republican convention that is supposedly focusing on unity in the wake of Saturday’s assassination attempt in Butler, PA is featuring one of the most divisive people in media: Tucker Carlson.

[thatgirlonstage]

Funniest and most irreverent thing I could do with this concept I think: Ciel kills Elizabeth II

Hmm I want to hurt myself I think. Black Butler AU where Ciel dies but the contract is still intact and he’s reincarnated and Sebastian has to go find his new self because they’re still bound together

And then it happens again. And again and again and again and again and again and—

[lizardsfromspace]

Another weirdly specific actor is Teresa Barnwell, the Hillary Clinton impersonator who was everywhere in the 90s. She played Hillary Clinton on Rosanne, on Step By Step, on The Nanny, on The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer (a UPN sitcom about Abraham Lincoln's black butler, known for its slavery jokes and for the 'joke' that you say the P in his name), and on Sliders, in a episode where women rule the Earth & Hillary's president, what??? which is how I learned of her existence.

I remember in 2016 she released this really bad attempted viral video that I can't find anymore (though you can find all her other clips, carefully labeled on a Youtube channel that has a different name but is obviously hers), but it makes sense, because no one's career has been more tied to a President besides Vaughn Meader. If Hillary won, it'd be Barnwell O'Clock again, and man, she's had two possible comeback bids disappear. I can't even imagine the weird emotions there

Oddly enough there are conspiracy theories about her, bc the concept of celebrity impersonators is just a bit too complicated for QAnon types, even though she looks less like Hillary Clinton than that Humphrey Bogart guy looks like Humphrey Bogart

[archive-of-fear]

Name: Stefan Butler

Source: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

Category: Victim

Alignment: The Web, The Spiral

Description: Stefan is a programmer attempting to adapt a choose your own adventure book into video game. Overtime, it becomes clear to him that he’s not entirely in control of his actions. He starts making decisions he can’t explain, and begins to see the recurring symbol of a “branching pathway” all over. He becomes paranoid and convinced that he’s being controlled by something outside of his reality: You.

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is an interactive movie in which you, the viewer, are prompted to make several choices that determine the course of the story. You’re given a huge amount of control over Stefan’s life; what he eats, where he goes, what music he listens to on the bus, if he takes his medication or flushes it down the toliet, if he destroys his computer or leaves it be, whether he does to therapy or does LSD with his coworker, if it’s him or Colin that jumps off the balcony, if he kills his father, and if so how he deals with the body, and of course, how well the game turns out. Even the foundations of Stefan’s reality change depending on what you chose. Is he being experimented by the government or is there some supernatural force behind the story that causes anyone who tries to adapt it to go mad? Is there some great conspiracy behind everything or is Stefan just losing his mind under the stress? That’s all decided by you, the viewer. And after a while, Stefan becomes aware of this. In some routes, you are even able to speak with him for a brief amount of time. You are entirely in control of his fate, and you are the one ultimately causing him harm.

There is no “main ending” in which both the game turns out well and Stefan is either alive, sane or out of prison. The best outcome for him is to take an early ending: accept the Tuckersoft offer, take your medication, destroy the computer, putting down the ashtray instead of hitting his father with it – all of those lead to the game getting release to poor reviews, but at least Stefan is alive and out of prison. But those all end the game too early, and you are always given the prompt to try again. By playing the movie’s game, you’re ultimately robbing Stefan of his free will and dooming him to whatever fate your decisions lead him to. Regardless of what he wants, you are the one in control. But hey, if you choose wrong, you’re always welcome to try again.

[devotedlystrangewizard]

i currently have black butler & dunmeshi next to each other on a shelf and its a little funny because one of them is a story of a guy who lost his sibling whose sibling eventually returns but in a decidedly Wrong way and the other one is a found family comedy with a lot of food pics and both descriptions apply to both manga. this isnt some conspiracy theory or anything i just saw them on my shelf and thought "wow they have some funny similarities"

[actingwithoutthinking2]

I know everyone knows this but yana toboso the mangaka of black butler also drew the characters of twisted wonderland.

Many characters look somewhat similar like jade and Sebastian but most people concentrate on those two

Ciel phantomhive and riddle rosehearts

...

just look at them and tell me they don't look similar. My friend has a conspiracy theory of these two being cousins

[trashmenace]

Butler 1: The Hydra Conspiracy by Philip Kirk

Butler 1 The Hydra Conspiracy by Philip Kirk (Len Levinson) Leisure, 1979

One of the worst novels I've ever read by one of my favorite authors. Not even any camp value, just a dull grind to a word count.

Butler is a CIA agent who gets fired for his objections to the agency's interventions in South American. He's recruited, via plot convolutions, to join a secret international conspiracy The Bancroft Institute to oppose a secret international conspiracy Cobra. This takes the first half of the book.

The second half has Butler being hired as head of security for a billionaire, getting involved in a military coup, and defusing a nuclear bomb. Butler occupies a weird place on the spectrum between le Carré and The Man From B.O.N.E.R. - the plot is too sparse and bad to be serious espionage, not enough sex to be a farce, and not funny enough to be parody.

Speaking of sex, three scenes, the first two fade to black shortly after beginning. Not enough for a spank book or sex farce, but present and creepy enough to overwhelm the other elements. To say it doesn't age is well is an understatement, as Butler's main seduction move is to hope she doesn't press charges.

The writing, especially the first half, felt like the author was blocked, kept typing through it, and didn't go back to revise. Butler wanders around not doing anything, conversations go in circles with speakers repeating things back to each other for pages, just completely aimless.

The series ran twelve books, with Levinson doing the first six. The later ones are strangely more collectible, probably smaller print runs, but I'm guessing it's more for the covers than the content.

Available from Amazon

[anarchistettin]

he family of civil rights leader Malcolm X marked the anniversary of his 1965 assassination on Tuesday by announcing plans to sue the FBI, New York Police Department, and CIA for $100 million, claiming they concealed evidence related to his murder.

For more than half a century, the circumstances surrounding the notorious assassination have been shrouded in mystery, fueling long-held conspiracy theories about possible government involvement. Two men who were convicted of murdering Malcolm X in 1966 were exonerated in 2021 after serving decades in prison—and the New York District Attorney admitted that the FBI and NYPD at the time withheld evidence.

“For years, our family has fought for the truth to come to light concerning his murder,” Ilyasah Shabazz, a daughter of Malcolm X, said at a news conference at the site of her father’s assassination, which is now a memorial.

The civil rights leader was 39 when he was assassinated in 1965 at an auditorium in New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood. Three gunmen shot at least 21 times, as Malcolm X’s four children and pregnant wife ducked for safety.

At the news conference on Tuesday, civil rights lawyer Ben Crump said: “It’s not just about the triggermen. It’s about those who conspired with the triggermen to do this dastardly deed.” He claims that government agencies had factual and exculpatory evidence that they concealed from the family of Malcolm X and the men wrongly convicted of his assassination. Crump alleged that high-ranking U.S. officials conspired to kill the civil rights leader, repeatedly referencing J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director who died in 1972.

Ilyasah Shabazz (C), daughter of African-American activist Malcolm X, speaks alongside civil rights attorney Ben Crump (L) and co-counsel Ray Hamlin (C, R) during a press conference in New York on February 21, 2023 at the Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center, formerly known as the Audubon Ballroom, where Malcolm X was shot dead at 39 on Feb. 21, 1965.

Timothy A. Clary–AFP via Getty Images

What we know about Malcolm X’s assassination

Malcolm X was a controversial figure for many Americans—both white and Black. Unflinching when it came to calling out the realities of anti-Black racism, and famously referring to white people as “blue-eyed devils,” he spoke about the need for Black empowerment. He argued for the creation of a Black separatist society, and was a highly visible figure within the Nation of Islam.

In March 1964, Malcolm X announced that he was leaving the Nation of Islam over disagreements with Elijah Muhammad, the group’s leader. He was assassinated a year later as he was preparing to give a speech about the mission of his new group, the Organization of Afro-American Unity, at the Audubon Ballroom in New York City on Feb. 21, 1965.

When Malcolm X took the stage to begin his address, an apparent dispute broke out among the audience and a man ran onto the stage, approached Malcolm X and shot him. Two other people then ran up to the stage and also fired. The civil rights leader was shot a total of 21 times.

What we know about the men convicted of his murder

In the more than half a century since his death, what actually happened that day has remained the subject of controversy and conspiracy theories. One man who was shot by a bodyguard and captured, Thomas Hagan (a.k.a Talmadge Hayer and Mujahid Abdul Halim), confessed to the killing and was imprisoned for 44 years. But since his 1966 trial, he has maintained that the other two Nation of Islam members convicted in the murder were innocent: Norman Butler (a.k.a Muhammad Abdul Aziz) and Thomas Johnson (a.k.a Khalil Islam). Hayer did not name any other culprits at the time of the trial.

There was no evidence linking Butler or Johnson to the crime. Butler had an alibi for the time of the murder: He was at home resting after injuring his leg, and a doctor who had treated him took the stand during the trial. Nonetheless, all three men were found guilty in 1966 and sentenced to life in prison.

In 1977, Hayer named four men who were members of the Nation of Islam’s Newark chapter who he said had begun planning Malcolm X’s murder in May 1964. He said that he was approached by two of the four men, who told him that Malcolm X should be killed. They later met with the other two men and discussed how they would commit the assassination, he said.

“I had a bit of love and admiration for [Nation of Islam leader] the Honorable Elijah Muhammed, and I just felt that like this is something that I have to stand up for,” Hayer later said, according to Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, a 2011 biography of Malcolm X written by historian Manning Marable.

But for decades, the new information about the other four alleged conspirators went nowhere. The District Attorney’s office did not reopen the investigation until a 2020 Netflix documentary series Who Killed Malcolm X? and efforts by the Innocence Project renewed public interest in the case and prompted Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. to review the convictions.

Evidence unearthed by Abdur-Rahman Muhammad, a Malcolm X historian and scholar, and investigative journalist Les Payne made a compelling case that the actual killers were members of a Newark mosque, rather than Malcolm X’s former Harlem mosque associates Butler and Johnson. In November, a judge dismissed the convictions of Butler and Johnson after Vance acknowledged that “it was clear these men did not receive a fair trial.” New York City was ordered to pay $26 million to the pair to compensate them for their wrongful murder convictions.

What we know about theories about allegations of CIA and FBI involvement

In addition to the unfair trial, some historians have argued that various agencies including the FBI, NYPD, and CIA were actively involved in the assassination attempt. Experts have said that these agencies viewed Malcolm X as a dangerous Black radical figure who needed to be brought down. Others have suggested that they did not need to plot to murder him since he was already a target.

Nonetheless, Malcolm X was under near-constant surveillance by federal and local authorities—as were many civil rights activists. The FBI first opened a file on Malcolm X in March 1953, and closely monitored him over the next decade using surveillance and informants. On June 6, 1964, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sent a telegram, which later became public, to the FBI office in New York City that said “do something about Malcolm X.”

“Both the NYPD and FBI failed to disclose to prosecutors that they had undercover officers on the scene,” historian Zaheer Ali, the lead researcher for Marable’s biography Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, wrote for TIME in November 2021. “They decided instead to protect their assets; there seemed to be a desire to wrap up the investigation quickly. What paths of inquiry were avoided or cut short as a result? If these two men were unjustly convicted, then who else was unjustly allowed to roam free?”

Crump, the lawyer representing Malcolm X’s family, said on Tuesday that their lawsuit will allege that government agencies were involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Malcolm X. The New York District Attorney’s office has already acknowledged law enforcement’s failings in the case, saying in 2021 that the FBI and NYPD did not honor their obligation to disclose exculpatory evidence to prosecutors and the accused, including “information that implicated other suspects; that identified witnesses who failed to identify defendant Islam; and that revealed witnesses to be FBI informants.” The office also said at the time that FBI records suggested “that information was deliberately withheld.”

According to Crump, these comments from the New York District Attorney’s office—combined with the city’s $26 million settlement—are what opened the door for Malcolm X’s family to build a case against authorities. “If the government compensated the two gentlemen that were wrongfully convicted for the assassination of Malcolm X with tens of millions of dollars, then what is to be the compensation for the daughters who suffered the most from the assassination of Malcolm X?” Crump asked.

[npdclaraoswald]

Here's some of my fave Black authored books for Black History Month!

Contemporary

Full Disclosure by Camryn Garrett: A girl who recently was forced to switch schools due to serophobic bullying starts spending time with her crush but begins receiving anonymous messages threatening to out her status if she doesn't stop

Generational

Dream Country by Shannon Gibney: traces a family's history, from them as modern day immigrants from Liberia to the US, to their ancestors as American slaves fleeing to Liberia, to the Liberian natives dealing with colonialism

High Fantasy

The Broken Earth trilogy by NK Jemisin: we follow three POVs in three time periods of a world where people called orogenes with the magical ability to shape the Earth are discriminated against. A young girl is sent away from her family to an academy to contain them, a young woman is forced to spend time with and have a child with a powerful orogene, and a woman tracking down her husband who killed their son and kidnapped their daughter when he found out the were orogenes

Queen of the Conquered by Kacen Callender: The only survivor of a slaughtered noble family, the only native noble family on a colonized island, tries to integrate herself with the other nobles and the ruler in the hopes of taking back the island from within the system

Urban Fantasy

The City We Became by NK Jemisin: in a world where cities come alive in human avatars, five people in New York City suddenly become avatars of the five boroughs as the city awakens and faces attack from another world

The Wrath & Athenaeum trilogy by Na'amen Gobert Tilahun a young boy finds out he is descended from gods and is brought into an organization to learn to wield his abilities. Meanwhile, a witch/librarian apprentice in a parallel world is brought into the deadly court intrigue of her rulers. The two of them end up having to work together to fight against a force threatening to destroy both of their worlds

Legendborn by Tracy Deon: after witnessing magic on her college campus, a young girl becomes convinced that magic was involved in her mother's death. In order to investigate, she joins the school's secret society of descendants of King Arthur and his knights

A Song Below Water by Bethany C Morrow: a siren and her best friend, a girl unsure of her ancestry but believes herself to be a mermaid, deal with the political turmoil of discrimination against sirens set against the backdrop of the Black Lives Matter movement, exacerbated when a young, black siren's death falls into the national spotlight

Pet by Akwaeke Emezi: in a utopian world where all problems are supposed to be solved and all monsters gone, a young girl watches a creature emerge from one of her mother's painting, saying that it is there to hunt a monster

Historical Fantasy

Dread Nation and Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland: after zombies rise during the Civil War, Black and Indigenous people are forcibly conscripted to fight them. A young woman trained both to fight and be a lady in waiting for rich white women begins investigating a string of missing people and discovers a conspiracy

The Deep by Rivers Solomon: mermaids descended from pregnant women thrown from slave ships keep their history in one living person. The next one chosen for this task is terrified of the burden of history and flees from the community

Sci-fi

Kindred by Octavia Butler: a woman begins being dragged back in time to every moment one of her ancestor's life is in danger so she can save him. But said ancestor grows up to be a slave owner and she is forced to keep protecting him, or she won't be born

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson: scientists have figured out how to travel to alternate universes, but you can only survive in ones where their version of you is dead, so poor, at risk people, likely to have died are recruited to collect the resources from other worlds. One such young woman, who is confirmed to be dead in nearly 400 worlds begins investigating her newest counterpart's death and discovers a conspiracy

Horror/Thriller

Ring Shout by P Djèlí Clark: A group of monster hunters fight the otherworldly monsters that hide within the KKK

When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole: gentrification narratively framed as horror, with a woman's neighbors disappearing overnight and being replaced by threatening people who are robbing the community of its culture and history

Lakewood by Megan Giddings: a young woman accepts an offer to be a subject in medical testing in exchange for enough money to get the family out of her grandmother's medical debt. But the testing requires moving to a remote location and a tight NDA, and as time goes on, more and more questionable things begin to happen

Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé: two kids, a popular girl at the top of the school and a scholarship boy who has few friends, become the victims of an anonymous bully spreading their secrets around the school. Realizing they are being targeted as the only two black kids in school, they team up to try to figure out who is behind the anonymous messages

Superhero

Tales of the Astonishing Black Spark by Charlie J Eskew: a satirical novel following a man who gains electric powers and tries to join the legion of superheroes, but faces the racism prevalent in the genre, from media reaction to him to the way the other heroes treat him

Spider-Punk 1-5 by Cody Ziglar: solo comic series following Spider-Punk after the events of Spider-Verse, in which he killed the facistic President Osborn, dealing with the ways the system is still broken and teaming up with Ms Marvel, Captain Anarchy, and Riotheart

Romance

Brown Sisters trilogy by Talia Hibbert: following the love lives of three sisters. Get a Life, Chloe Brown follows Chloe enlisting her hot, bad boy landlord to help her finish her bucket list of things normal and cool people do but she's never done. In Take a Hint, Dani Brown, after a video of Dani's security guard coworker rescuing her from a broken elevator goes viral, he asks her to fake date so they can use the social media hype to promote his charity. In Act Your Age, Eve Brown, Eve, who has never held a job down for more than a year, impulsively takes a job as a cook at a bed and breakfast and slowly starts falling for the owner

Short Story Collection

The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans

Poetry

Homie by Danez Smith

Nonfiction

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

Don't Touch My Hair (American Edition called Twisted: The Tangled History of Black Hair Culture) by Emma Dabiri

The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games by Ebony Elizabeth Thomas

Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement by Angela Davis

Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fatphobia by Sabrina Strings

They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South by Stephanie E Jones Rogers

[mariacallous]

In Butler, Pennsylvania, a billboard read “In Musk We Trust.” A Tesla Cybertruck parked on the side of the road sported a TRUMP 2024 flag.

With a month left in the presidential campaign, former president Donald Trump returned to Butler for a rally less than three months after the assassination attempt on Trump’s life that resulted in the death of one rally attendee. This time, Trump was joined by X owner Elon Musk and vice presidential candidate JD Vance.

“Welcome Back to Butler, Mr. President,” read a message in Trump’s walk-on video.

When Trump started speaking, the same chart about illegal immigration he was referring to in the moments before the attempted assassination appeared on screen. “And as I was saying,” Trump said. He’d timed this moment so that it took place at precisely 6:11 pm, which was when he was shot in the ear on July 13. He also held a “moment of silence” honoring those who were injured or killed during the assassination attempt in July. Opera singer Christopher Macchio sang Ave Maria, and people in the crowd removed their hats, wiped their eyes, and some even took a knee as Trump looked on solemnly.

“Over the past eight years, those who want to stop us from achieving this future have slandered me, impeached me, indicted me, tried to throw me off the ballot, and who knows? Maybe even try to kill me,” said Trump, floating the conspiracy theory that the attempted assassination was orchestrated by his political opponents. “12 weeks ago we all took a bullet for America.”

Trump later invited Musk on stage. The X owner walked on wearing a black blazer over a shirt saying “Occupy Mars” and a black MAGA hat. “As you can see, I’m not just MAGA,” said Musk. “I’m dark MAGA.” Dark MAGA is a memecoin, a type of cryptocurrency inspired by online trends. The valuation of Dark MAGA soared right around the time that Musk spoke.

Musk repeatedly implored audience members and viewers to register to vote. “This election is the most important election of our lifetime,” said Musk. “This is no ordinary election.”

He wrapped up his brief speech with an ominous message: “Get everyone you know, and everyone you don't know, drag them to register to vote,” he said. “If they don’t, this will be the last election. That’s my prediction.”

Musk’s appearance at Saturday’s rally marked a major benchmark in his political evolution. Following the assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Musk posted on X that he had decided to “fully endorse” the former president, and shortly after announced the creation of a political action committee (PAC) to support Trump’s campaign. Musk initially said he would donate $45 million per month to the PAC, though he has since changed his tune. Musk also hosted Trump for a glitchy live conversation on X Spaces in August.

Musk was previously an Obama, Clinton and Biden voter who donated to politicians on both sides of the aisle but touted himself as someone who generally tried to stay out of politics. At a 2015 Vanity Fair event, Musk said he hoped Trump wouldn’t clinch the Republican nomination for president because “that wouldn’t be good” and “would be a bit embarrassing.” He also told CNBC that he didn’t believe Trump had the “sort of character that reflects well on the United States” while voicing support for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s policy platform. In 2017, Musk donated large sums to Republicans, signaling a possible right-ward shift in his political outlook. And in 2020, he bamboozled many of his fans with a cryptic Twitter post: “Take the Red Pill.”

Musk is one of several right-wing tech billionaires who have thrown their support behind Trump. Billionaire Palantir founder Peter Thiel, is a longtime Trump supporter, and also helped fund Vance’s 2022 bid for his Ohio Senate seat. Before entering politics, Thiel was one of several Silicon Valley funders who backed Vance’s Ohio-based venture fund, Narya Capital. Vance and Thiel are also investors in the right-wing video sharing platform, Rumble.

When Musk, who has described himself as a “free speech absolutist,” took over Twitter in 2022, he almost immediately fired the vast majority of the company’s trust and safety employees, the people who keep hate speech and mis- and disinformation off the platform. The following year, Musk slashed what remained of Twitter’s election integrity team, posting, “Oh you mean the “Election Integrity” Team that was undermining election integrity? Yeah, they’re gone.”

Hate speech on X increased under Musk and last year European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova said that of all the companies under EU scrutiny, X was “the platform with the largest ratio of mis- or disinformation posts.” Musk also reinstated the accounts of people who had been banned from the platform including conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes.

After Musk finished speaking, and Trump thanked him, rally attendees chanted his name.

Moments later, Musk signed back onto X.

He immediately began sharing election conspiracies about election ballots sent to vacant addresses, before writing, “Make sure everyone you know & everyone you meet has registered to vote,” he wrote. “The fate of our civilization is at stake.”

[transatlantic-reads]

I just think that when a famous 3rd wave feminist inevitably goes down the rabbithole of various conspiracy theories and straight into far right, white supremacist ideology, we should all stop acting so damn surprised (like, this is the exact same shit that happened with Joanne, why are we still so blindsided by what has clearly become a pattern?)

these are the people who constantly reference Gender Trouble, but refuse to gender Judith Butler correctly; who celebrate Ms Magazine and Gloria Steinem, while conveniently forgetting all about Dorothy Pitman Hughes; who insist that sex workers are inherently oppressed, that sex work is inherently demeaning, regardless of what actual sex workers have to say; who are so quick to treat racism like a hypothetical intellectual debate; who like so much to claim that anybody with a penis is inherently a wannabe rapist, a predator by nature, by birth; who say that womanhood is inextricably linked to victimhood, that heterosexual sex is (nearly) always akin to rape;

they're carceral feminists, gender essentialists, (trans-exclusionary) radical feminists, they are anti porn, anti sex work, anti sex worker.

their entire philosophy is predicated on what women deserve - yet the equality they want isn't for everybody, it is for the ever-shrinking category of what they consider a 'woman' (read: not trans, not black, not a sex worker, not muslim, etc.)

is it really so surprising then, when one of them decides to yet again move the line on what constitutes a righteous cause, on what constitutes a real 'man', an acceptable 'woman'?

[skylerskyhigh]

TCF FIC IDEA

Alas, music has inspired me again.

Imagine a modern urban fantasy AU.

Different races, magic, and other fantastical elements still exist. But with the added bonus of a modern setting.

Kim Rok Soo woke up one day in the body of Cale Henituse, a well known trash of a billionaire family that comes from old money. He didn't think it is so bad. He has a dangerous assassin butler, Ron Molan, but overall it is a much better life than his own.

Then he gets dragged into some kind of conspiracy between the underworld crime organisation, with "Cale Henituse" as the supposed mastermind "White Star".

Kidnapping, experimentation, black magic, cover up after cover up. And Cale is in the middle of it all.

If he wants to clear his name and get his slacker life, he needs to find the real White Star and shine a light to the hidden darkness of the world. Thankfully, he's rich and he has connections to powerful people. All he has to do is make them his allies and get connections.

Hong and On, Choi Han, Raon, Lock, Alberu Crossman, Rosalyn, and many more. Powerful and skillful people who are ready to fight by his side and stop Arm and White Star.

With money, influence, and some ancient powers by his side, Cale can start unraveling the mysteries around White Star and Arm's dirty dealings and put a stop to them, forever.

It also helps that Cale Henituse, the real one, shows up at his doorstep in Kim Rok Soo's body, claiming to have knowledge of the future. That he has also been working in the background to build up his powers and reputation to help Cale/Rok Soo stop White Star. And he was the one who had strike a deal with the GoD to fix the world.

Cale could feel his slacker life falling through his fingers.