#but also like… a lot of the people saying that are not American and have very valid hatred for this country

[justinspoliticalcorner]

David Smith at The Guardian:

Losing an election for the highest office is a crushing blow that no candidate forgets. But when the American electorate delivers its verdict next week, the personal stakes for Donald Trump will be uniquely high. His fate will hover between the presidency and the threat of prison.

If he claims victory, Trump will be the first convicted criminal to win the White House and gain access to the nuclear codes. If he falls short, the 78-year-old faces more humiliating courtroom trials and potentially even time behind bars. It would be the end of a charmed life in which he has somehow always managed to outrun the law and duck accountability. For Trump, Tuesday is judgment day. “He branded himself as the guy who gets away with it,” said Gwenda Blair, a Trump biographer, adding that, should he lose, “he is facing a lot of moments of reckoning. He could go to jail. He could end up considerably less wealthy than he is. No matter what happens, and no matter whether he wins or loses, there will be a reckoning over his health. Death, ill health, dementia – those are things even he can’t escape.” The property developer and reality TV star has spent his career pushing ethical and legal boundaries to the limit, facing countless investigations, court battles and hefty fines. Worthy of a novel, his has been a life of scandal on a gargantuan scale.

In the 1970s Trump and his father were sued by the justice department for racial discrimination after refusing to rent apartments to Black people in predominantly white buildings. His property and casino businesses, including the Taj Mahal and Trump Plaza, filed for bankruptcy several times in the 1990s and early 2000s. Trump University, a business offering property training courses, faced multiple lawsuits for fraud, misleading marketing and false claims about the quality of its programmes. In 2016 Trump settled for $25m without admitting wrongdoing.

The Donald J Trump Foundation, a charitable organisation, was investigated and sued for allegedly using charitable funds for personal and business expenses. Trump eventually agreed to dissolve the foundation with remaining funds going to charity. Trump and his company were ordered to pay more than $350m in a New York civil fraud trial for artificially inflating his net worth to secure favourable loan terms. He is also known to have paid little to no federal income taxes in specific years which, although technically legal, was seen by some as bordering on unethical.

[...] He became the first president to be impeached twice, first for withholding military aid to pressure Ukraine’s government to investigate his political opponents, then for instigating a coup on 6 January 2021 following his defeat. He also became the subject of not one but four criminal cases, any one of which would have been enough to scuttle the chances of any other White House hopeful. In May Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records relating to a hush-money payment to the adult film performer Stormy Daniels, making him the first former president to be convicted of felony crimes. Sentencing is scheduled for 26 November (the judge delayed it from 18 September after the Republican nominee asked that it wait until after the election). What was billed as the trial of the century has already begun to fade from public consciousness and played a relatively modest role in the election campaign. Jonathan Alter, a presidential biographer who was in court for every day of the trial, recalled: “I’ve covered some big stories over the years but there was nothing like the drama of watching the jury foreperson say, ‘Guilty, guilty, guilty’ 34 times and Donald Trump looking like he was punched in the gut.” Alter, who describes the experience in his new book, American Reckoning, reflects on how Trump has been able to act with impunity for so long. “It’s a combination of luck, galvanised defiance and the credulousness of a large chunk of the American people,” he said. “Demagoguery works. Playing on people’s fears works. It doesn’t work all the time but we can look throughout human history to political figures and how demagoguery and scapegoating ‘the other’ works.”

Alter, who covered the trial for Washington Monthly magazine, added: “We’ve had plenty of demagogues, scoundrels and conmen in politics below the level of president. Trump has been lucky to escape accountability but the United States has been lucky that we haven’t had something like this before. The founders were very worried about it. They felt we would face something like this for sure.” The US’s system of checks and balances has been racing to keep up. Trump was charged by the special counsel Jack Smith with conspiring to overturn the results of his election loss to Joe Biden in the run-up to the January 6 riot at the US Capitol. The former president and 18 others were also charged by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, with taking part in a scheme to overturn his narrow loss in Georgia. Trump was charged again by Smith with illegally retaining classified documents that included nuclear secrets, taken with him from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after he left office in January 2021, and then obstructing government demands to give them back.

With a such a caseload, it was widely assumed that Trump would spend this election shuttling between rallies one day and trials the next. But the courtroom campaign never really happened since, true to past form, he found ways to throw sand in the gears of the legal system and put off his moment of reckoning.

Or he simply got lucky. In Georgia, it emerged that Willis had a romantic relationship with the special prosecutor Nathan Wade, prompting demands that she be removed. Smith’s federal election case was thrown off track for months by a supreme court ruling that presidents have immunity for official actions taken in office. The classified documents case was thrown out by Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, although Smith is appealing and the charges could be reinstated. Such delays have made it easier to forget just how much of an outlier Trump is. Past presidential brushes with the law consisted of Ulysses S Grant being fined for speeding his horse-drawn carriage in Washington and Harry Truman receiving a ticket for driving his car too slowly on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in 1953. Richard Nixon resigned before he could be impeached over the Watergate scandal and was subsequently pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford. Meanwhile the standard for presidential aspirants has been high. Joe Biden’s first run for the White House fell apart amid allegations that he had plagiarised a speech by Britain’s Labour leader Neil Kinnock. During the 2000 campaign, a last-minute revelation that Republican candidate George W Bush had a drunk driving conviction that he concealed for 24 years generated huge headlines and was seen as a possible gamechanger. Hillary Clinton still blames her 2016 defeat on an FBI investigation into her email server that produced no charges.

For Donald Trump, his run for the “Presidency” is all about avoiding any possible jail time for his indictments and felonies. If he loses, then Trump could be facing more trials and potentially jail time and/or massive fines.

Send Trump to prison, not the White House!

#TrumpForPrison #HarrisWalz2024

[applesauce42069]

you're so lucky to not live in america

when i was a young child, in my mind, america consisted of Florida, which is where Disney is, and California, which is where Far Away Disney is and also where they make all the movies. Also new york, Arizona (my dad likes Arizona) and.. the rest? I just knew it was the place where THINGS HAPPENED. I watched a LOT of USAmerican TV and movies, like MOSTLY, and i imagined it as this big shiny place. i never wondered why i didn't live there, though. anyways the first president i remember is Obama and i became politically aware during the 2016 election (I was 13) and the Trump election and I remember how crushed my dad was and nothing politically was real to me until that moment. thats when i switched from being an unaware child to a rapidly learning teen. I am not an American citizen, but i was brought into politics by an American political event.

In Canada we have more than two major parties but really only two ever win the Prime Ministry, the Liberals and Conservatives. I don't know if Canadian politics followed American trends before Trump but like. The wave of Trumpism hit Canada too. Not everyone, that's for sure, but the people who were already right wing got more right wing. Now we have the conservative party adopting anti-trans policies because thats what the Republicans are doing and we have the same fucking social media. CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company) - AND- CNN were the main news channels watched around me growing up.

And like. I remember seeing a confederate flag in rural Ontario not an hour out of the liberal voting city of Toronto. I have someone very dear in my life who is Filipino, and she told me she would love to move to the country with her daughter and husband but people are just racist there! I had a friend who grew up in Alberta and he taught be the word Kike. He'd learned it at school, when he was called it for being a Jew.

I don't know what to say. I'm glad I'm not a USAmerican and that i don't live there. I truly truly am. But i need you all to understand its NOT JUST YOU. Your country has so much goddamn fucking influence that if you go down, many will go down with you.

VOTE FOR KAMALA FUCKING HARRIS OKAY

[angel-shaw]

OK! TMA child AU! Cuz some people showed interest!!

Ok so the basic idea is that a bunch of the TMA crew are kids under Elias and Gertrudes care.

In order of adoption we have

-Michael Shelly. Gertrude adopted him at a very young age and he has no memory of his birth parents or how exactly Gertrude found him

-Gerry, Gerry is an slightly older teen who still technically lives with his mom but he spends most of his time at the manor (the manor is basically just a big house idk). Gertrude knew Mary but lowkey hated that bitch so she stole her kid.

-Jon. Again Gertrude knew Jon’s grandma so when she couldn’t, or didn’t want to, take care of Jon she took him in. He still visits her.

-Martin, Gertrude was very close to Martins mom so she already knew Martin, when his mom got hospitalized she agreed to look after him. He vists as oftan as he can, even some of the other kids do.(his moms not a total bitch in this btw…yet)

-Sasha, she lived on the streets and tried to mug Elias. She did fail but only cuz Elias is who he is. He thought she was adorable and was tired of the other kids he needed to care for so he brought her home and legally adopted her.

-Tim + Michal(distortion). Tim and Michal were found together. They both were found by Gerry after excapeing their situation. At first they were very hesitant but recognized Sasha from her time on the street so they agreed to stay there. They are very close to each other and don’t trust easily (well Tim doesn’t, Michal has no sense of danger)

-Jane, Martin found her under a bridge wejile playing with bugs one day, she looked cold so he brought her back to the house. Gertrude helped clean her up, she had extremely matted hair and a lot of bugs attached to her. She wouldn’t let go of Martin until hours later.

-Melony, idk when she showed up or how or what her family situation is, she is here tho and I love her.

-Georgie is friends with Jon but doesn’t live with them, she has parents and house. She does come over often tho because Elias is rich.

-Basira also doesn’t live there, but no one except Daisy knows where she lives. She’s really only over if Daisy is.

-Daisys dad is a cop who works by the manor, she goes with him to work and wonders as she likes. She ends up at the house a lot because there’s always something interesting going on.

Then there’s Michael Crew who’s dateing Gerry. (I saw a tictok and I love them together now, leave me alone)

-Not Sasha is also here btw, the kids say her name in a very heavy American accent and that’s how they differ the names between Sasha and her, I will just say it’s not Sasha cuz idk how to show it’s different 💀. I don’t have a very solid idea for how she got picked up but I think she would be trying to impersonate Sasha in someway, maybe online or something and somehow just ended up moving in

Elias is dateing/married to Peter. He’s around sometimes

There is everyone who is included this far!

I do have a separate house that is run by The Angler fish (in a human form obviously) and he cares for kids as well, like the med students, Nicola, N!Sasha (kinda), Jane(eventually she walks between the two places to just hang out so he cares for her when she’s with them), and one suprise kid! :D (Guess who!)

I haven’t actually written anything but I have a lot of story and head canons:) but I don’t wanna make this to long so if y’all like this I’ll post more!!

Tag list for those who responded to my original post so y’all can see this!!! :D

@frontflip-somersault-express @jubjubbird @thehistoryone @aboxisonmyhead @nonbinarytoast @moonvalley94 @pigeons-with-jello @riddle-on-the-milk-carton

I hope I got y’all’s tags right!!! Please leave comments and suggestions!!! I love reading and hearing input!!! Plus if you wanna ask questions about the AU that will help give me something the jump off on!

[blackgreenandblue]

I added a comment a few shared posts ago about my WIP involving unschooled wizards.

It also involves this type of psychiatric horror. I’ve been having a lot of recurring nightmares with an unnervingly consistent and ever-continuing narrative about being stuck in a psychiatric “rehabilitation” prison in the year 6474 C.E. run by theocratic fascists worshipping a twisted and warped version of the ancient Welsh Mari Lwyd, and the place is called the Ossuary of Incongruities.

I have experience with real psych wards from back in my early adolescence, and they truly are horrible places. I still periodically remember things my mind has long fought to repress, like how the staff would periodically barge in on teenagers in the latter’s own rooms - sometimes in the middle of the night - trying to see if they could catch us doing the they considered “inappropriate.” Pretty creepy stuff. Also just a ton of brainwashing and gaslighting in general along with things like physical abuse. (I literally at one point uttered the phrase “I can’t breathe!” as a grown man was sitting on my chest. This was toward the end of July 2008, so way before it became a BLM-associated saying. At least, as far as I’m aware. (Also, I’m white, for whatever that’s worth.)

In addition to fiction, I fully plan on exposing the truth of what happened to me in a memoir about growing up neurodivergent in the American Deep South. I’m hoping to avoid being sued for being specific, for as Anne Lamott once said, “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

The worst thing is that there is so much potential for exploring the horror of psych wards from the angle of medical abuse, ableism, forced treatment/drugging, loss of autonomy, power imbalance, demonization, dehumanization, etc, and YET the horror genre keeps defaulting to "insane asylums and psych wards are scary because there are mentally ill people in there"

[do-you-ship-it-polls]

I am the first anon who posted about misandry. Thank you for your answer, I understand better why you posted this banner.

I just want to make a distinction between what I'd call feminist misandry and TERF misandry.

My friends are the farthest you can imagine from TERF (a lot of them are even trans). They are misandric because a lot have suffered from cis-men. For them, misandry is a protective instinct: if you meet a group of cis-men, be careful.

They hate cis-men as an oppressive group. They don't take a essentialistic view of masculinity, but a sociological one. Men are a group of power, that can abuse it, and they will protect each other. And of course, they don't include trans women in it. (A lot of the feel waaaaay safer with trans women than cis men).

That has nothing to do with TERFs, who use misandry to say "trans women are oppressors" or "trans women are essentially men"

Anyway, I understand the desire to piss off terfs and radfems. But I'd be sad if the word "misandry" was appropriated by them.

Sorry to bring that discourse, and thank you for the clarification!

genuinely don't understand why people are so deadset on identifying themselves as bigots who think 50% of humanity is out to get them. like, being against the patriarchy means you're a feminist or anti-sexist or ideally just a normal person but idk how many people agree. irrational hatred of men is not the same as wanting to knock the patriarchy down, all it does is just: be irrational hatred against men. when there's discussions like this, it also verges on "trans men aren't real men" territory because for some people, they are the exception. until they go on T and dress in a masculine way, then they're too cis man-like to participate in queer spaces (dunno how common it is, but it does happen!)

english isn't my first language, nor have I grown up in an american culture, so I wonder if it's my use of the word misandry that sets people off? like, is that a loaded word? because the definition of misandry is simply "hatred against men". it doesn't mean you feel uncomfortable with men or are scared of them, it means you hate men. I never thought that I would get so much shit for saying that it's weird to have such a deep, blind hatred for half of humanity. I don't think the word can be appropriated my radfems/terfs because there's nothing to be taken out of context, it means the same thing for anyone who uses the word.

why not just call yourself a feminist, an anti-sexist person, an anti-patriarchy person, etc etc. why do you label yourself as a person who hates all men for being born men and no matter what they do, they can never become a good person because they were born as men? I'm genuinely so baffled. not that anyone is planning on changing their mind about this, atleast not me.

thanks to the comments and asks that confirm to me that I'm not crazy for thinking this lol. also, I'm just some guy behind the screen. you can unfollow, block me, ask me to remove your submissions from the queue, whatever.

Just a fun side note, you know who started this discourse in the first place? All of this about transandrophobia and misandry?

little chihiro over on my queer blog... (I really liked the headcanon so if the person who submitted them sees this, i'm not saying it's your fault at all) just funny that it's this little cute character.

I should probably stop answering asks about his now.

[every-sanji]

[notthewriteryourelookingfor]

1 - I am not American, I am watching this from Australia so my words are being said as someone who can & will see & experience the global effects of Trumps presidency.

2 - yes, protesting right now is hard everywhere, in Australia we had threats of snipers on October 7 this year if we marched for Palestine.

Project 2025 will make it so much worse and plans to target pro-Palestine people specifically,

3 - you have 2 choices for president right now.

Kamala: who will continue to support the genocide I Gaza while she promises to try to fix things in the USA

Or

Trump: who will ALSO continue to support the genocide, maybe even ramp it up, while also dismantling workers rights, environmental regulations, destroy the economy further, and so on. He's literally bffs with Netanyahu.

This is not a decision about "who lines up with my ideals?" It's "who will be easier to fight against?"

Almost all the problems you are facing right now are cuz of Trump's first presidency: Roe v Wade being overturned (+ everything else the Supreme Court has done), food recalls due to eroding of food & health regulations, & everything the Republicans are blocking in the senate. Do you really want more?

Don't get me wrong, I hate the Democrats, they don't do anything. They're fuckin useless.

I'm not pretending to care, I care about everyone.

The problem is this:

You have to make a choice, if you do not make the choice, the worst outcome will be chosen for you.

Unfortunately you do need to prevent the Orange Cheeto from burning your house to the ground so you can continue to help others.

Here's an article of what will happen if Trump wins

Yes, it feels like blackmail, it probably is.

If you care about the people you talk about, vote for the person who isn't frothing at the mouth to hurt them even more.

I wish Kamala didn't support Israel.

I wish the majority of politicians didn't support Israel.

But saying "you don't care about these people if you care about those" is fuckin stupid.

Saying "you don't care about Palestine/Congo/Sudan if you care about immigrants/women/minorities/global health/workers rights" is unhelpful.

I know people want to vote for 3rd parties & in a lot of other countries that could work.

But there are several hundred 3rd party parties in the USA & they would need like 90% of the adult population of the USA to vote for them to win.

So let's look at it from the POV of the global south:

Who would you rather have in control of the USA, the main supporter of your colonisers & oppressors:

A woman who at most won't really make any changes but also won't make things like climate change worse so things like rising sea levels & famine worse, & won't start a nuclear war over a fuckin twitter dispute.

Or

A man who is frothing at the mouth to start a nuclear war, is BFFs with the leader of your colonisers/oppressors, has explicitly stated that he wants to wipe you off the face off the world, make everything related to climate change worse, cause another global depression, & has said that he wants to be US Hitler.

Neither is a good option

Both are bad options

But saying "protecting yourself so you can continue to help others is bad" is not only harmful to everyone (including the people you're claiming to support) but it also comes off really disingenuous & makes it seem like you're just lifting up the global south to drown out the voices you don't want to hear.

Not saying that's what you're doing but that's what it seems.

Sorry to post politics on main, but some of you pro-palestine people are missing the point when it comes to the US election.

At this point, there is really no alternative to voting for Kamala. RFK is not getting elected. Trump would be infinitely worse for the Israel-Palestine conflict (as well as other conflicts! and our well-being in general).

Stop virtue signaling and actually do something (vote) so that America can have a better leader than Trump. That’s all. We’re not voting for our next Messiah, we’re not voting between two perfect angels, it’s a US presidential election.

And those of you saying that Kamala is “committing genocide” really need to get things into perspective. The Vice President does not have the power to furnish weapons to Israel. Israel’s prime minister is acting in direct defiance of the Biden/Harris administration’s wishes and Harris has been the most vocal in asking for a ceasefire.

The Palestine conflict is not an excuse to not vote. Not voting makes it likely that Trump will win, history will go on whether you play a part or not. I want my reproductive rights back. Please.

[weedle-testaburger]

i always find it deeply irritating when people are criticising something i agree sucks and raise something i also think sucks as an example of 'how to do it right'. like i think you missed what i hated about it

[gunkbaby]

I do wonder how much of the mischaracterisation rampant in a lot of manga/manhua fandoms is related to a western perspective

[kittykatninja321]

On both a watsonian and doylist level Dick Grayson is white passing

[6ebe]

the funniest thing I’ve learned in the last month or so is that not a single ice hockey player is attractive. like. genuinely. 36.7k fan fictions on ao3 abt ugly men fucking.

[mejomonster]

Im watching Only Friends and We Are like back to back and. Wildly different college friend groups

Imagine ur in Peems friend group (ur like Toey or someone) and u go to the Yolo bar, and run into Boston and Top and Ray and u watch that fucking speech Ray gives absolutely roasting the fuck out of his friend's relationships and u make a mental note 'do not Ever bring my lover to this bar'

Dhdhhf

Like I love both shows. And I think theyre both somewhat true to life just like, very different viewpoints as theyre true to life. And depicting very different people (with some overlap). And of course, We Are is going for low stakes comfort slice of life genre, while Only Friends is going for dense analysis of friends in the hookup scene.

[gwensy]

sorry for reblogging fugly trends from 2012 it's for my enrichment

[anakinsadwalker]

idk if this helps, but along with protein you generally are probably okay with most nutrients as long as you just try to eat a bit of everything. americans generally don’t get enough fiber but please don’t worry yourself sick over it, that’s what supplements are for if nutrition is really hard for you at the moment. just focus on eating at all if you tend to get anxious about it. any food in your body is better than no fuel at all in the tank and your body and brain literally not being able to function! even if it’s candy! sugar is carbs and that’s the thing you need the most of! just eat, once (or if) you have the luxury of being able to consider things beyond just eating then do that. but generally most people will be fine, i promise

(also, 1g per pound is wayyyy too much. if you really care about protein the dieticians in this article say it’s more like half your body weight in pounds. which is a lot easier! but again you will be fine just make sure you’re putting gas in the tank somehow and the rest will follow)

(also also, in the US only a registered dietician is qualified to talk about nutrition especially for different situations and body types, please don’t cause yourself harm by trusting anyone else with this kind of info—“nutritionists” don’t have a degree in food at all typically)

make sure you're eating 0.8-1g of protein for every pound of body weight and try to get 15g of fiber and don't say any food is "bad" but don't eat bread or white rice but also white rice is fine if you eat protein first and try to walk for 30 minutes after each meal to aid insulin production and keep no food rules and and and

[svtskneecaps]

literally it's 3am where i live and i'm on mobile but FUCK IT i haven't posted any actual writing in like a YEAR on this blog whose description include the words "I WRITE" and i can't tell if i'm even going anywhere with this so fuck it under the cut is the prospective absolute mess of the first chapter of the flipo family time loop fic. (for clarity, flipo family as in slime, mariana, and juanaflippa) this covers loop 0, aka the relevant parts of canon. words: 1630

parts of it i popped off with and other parts i hate; up to you to identify them. also the italics and other formatting got erased when i copy pasted and i'm re-adding all of it by hand so if i missed a spot, no i didn't. if i missed an accent on a letter in spanish that was a typo, if i missed a ¡ or ¿ that may have been on purpose.

oh and for obvious reasons, content warning for mentions and mild descriptions of child death and child murder. no blood, and most of it is a three word mention; i'd say the brief paragraph beginning "Tilín didn't scream" is most of the reason this warning exists.

Charlie Slimecicle stepped off the train.

He’d been hoping for a bright, sunny day to start their vacation, but was sorely disappointed. The portal had apparently taken them pretty far, since they’d gone from noon to night time. Talk about jetlag. They hadn’t even been on a plane.

“What happened to the other guys?” he wondered aloud as he stepped onto the platform.

“Yeah no clue,” Phil said, scanning the empty station. “Thought they’d meet us here.”

“Guys!” one of the Spanish speakers--Vegetta, he’d said, when they’d all met up at the first station--called, from a lectern at the wall. “There is a book!”

They crowded around as he read the instructions aloud--something about pressure plates, Slime wasn’t paying that close of attention. He was a little more preoccupied with making sure it only felt like his brain was dripping out of his ears. That would be kind of embarrassing.

Which was not to say that he wasn’t enjoying the constant onslaught of people talking over each other using words he may or may not understand. In fact, it was the opposite; he was frankly thriving in the absolute chaos that kicked back up around him as a timer appeared in the wrist communicators they’d been provided along with their tickets.

“Como se dice ‘we are going to die now’?” He giggled, chasing Phil and Fit to one end of the station.

“¡Vamos a morir!” shouted Spiderman, echoed seconds later by the black bear in the collared shirt.

Giddy over the high of attempting to use his high school foreign language for the first time maybe ever, Slime absolutely didn’t contribute much to solving the puzzle, and before long the sound of the timer ticking down was accompanied by a loud buzzing alarm.

“It’s been an honor!” he shrieked at the top of his lungs. “It’s been an honor!”

The bear ran past them again, shouting, “I’m going to die!” in English this time.

“Adiós amigos!” Slime yelled.

The countdown ended.

And then his communicator buzzed, and there was a video playing on the screen, showing a cartoonish yellow duck in front of a blurry beach stock photo. He skimmed it absently--some generic welcoming message and another side quest for them--distracted by Maximus audibly losing his shit laughing across the station.

“Come on, I’m trying to take a vacation, I gotta work now?” Fit complained. “This is ridiculous.”

Slime wanted to jump on that bit, but the message cut off with coordinates marred by static and the noise of the emergency weather alert system and he lost his train of thought completely.

“I got the English book!” Spreen called, holding it with two fingers like it had personally offended him.

“English leader,” Vegetta said, seeming to find that amusing.

“English leader.” Spreen laughed and flicked the book away. Slime stepped back but somehow it still nailed him in the chest.

“Guess I’m reading then,” he said cheerfully.

“In Spanish?” Maximus said.

“Um.”

Vegetta called something, backing across the plaza with the book open in his hands. Phil backed up to the wall.

“Here,” Phil instructed, “we’ll read it here.”

“Okay okay.” He flicked it open. “So we have to get water wheel planks--”

Their peace lasted a grand total of thirty seconds as voices suddenly began shouting, overlapping in chaotic chorus.

“What is that?” Fit demanded.

“Is that coming from the other side?” Phil stared up at the top of the wall.

“This is the thinnest thick wall I’ve ever seen,” Slime said, giddy laughter bubbling out of him again. “Is this thing made out of pencil shavings? If I sneeze on it, is there gonna be a hole?”

“Nevermind, we’ll read it over here.” Phil dragged them away again, but the Spanish speakers were dispersing into the trees.

“Forget the book,” Fit said, “follow them!”

(In the end it was explosives that took the wall down, which in hindsight was a precursor to how a not insignificant portion of time on the island was spent. The first day, however, it was just funny, much like everything else.)

(That was to say, the first first day.)

The communicator had indicated that today there was something special planned, so he made an extra effort to wake up.

“Morning Jaiden!” he called to his upstairs neighbor.

“Hi Charlie!” He could hear her farming through the wall. “Glad you woke up on time!”

“Well you know, you know, El Backflipo couldn’t miss it,” he joked, sifting through his backpack. “Got any spare food? I’ll trade you uno backflipo.”

“I have so much toast, come here and get some, free of charge.”

With a quick backflip and some toast to start the day, he popped open the map.

“There’s a lot of people down the wall,” he noted, their green dots so clustered they formed one. “Wanna check it out?”

“Yeah sure.” Jaiden tossed some seeds into a chest. “Do you know what this event’s gonna be?”

“I have no idea,” he admitted cheerfully.

She laughed. “Yeah, me neither. I guess there’s an egg involved, but that’s all I know.”

He dug around in his backpack for a paraglider, nodding along. “Yeah, yeah, un huevo, I get you.” Shuffling the landmine from Vegetta to one side, he yanked out his glider and threw himself out her window. “Let’s go!”

(nothing like getting struck by lightning to wake a guy up in the morning)

Slime fiddled with the communicator as he waited for the line of people to get through the ticket machine; he already had his own, a nice B for Backflipo. The new live translations still boggled his mind. He had to fight the urge to chant weird shit under his breath, just to see what the bubbles would say.

He paid a little extra attention when Mariana walked up to the machine. That guy seemed cool. They’d done that pequeño dormir together on day one, and he had a good sense of humor. Egg parenting would probably be funny.

He was thrilled to see the B for Backflipo on the ticket Mariana stepped away with, even if Mariana was decidedly less so. This was gonna be good.

(it was, and it wasn’t)

So, Mariana wasn’t exactly the coparent of dreams. Then again, Slime was pretty sure Mariana could say the same about him. In fact he was pretty sure Mariana had said the same, but in Spanish, when he wasn’t checking the translation.

It was great. They thought they’d killed a child immediately and then decided to fake their own child’s death to get away with it, and then confessed their sins to a bilingual angel and built a farm and then he buried himself beneath an improvised cross and went into a coma until his sins were forgiven, or something, except his sins weren’t forgiven in time to save his own child’s life.

And then Juanaflippa was dead. Dead at Mariana’s hand.

His bitch wife killed their daughter.

(Everything went faster, after that.)

Slime wanted to kill him.

Slime wanted to kill him for killing their fucking daughter, but of course, Mariana couldn’t even be bothered to be around to take care of her alive, never mind to pay for his crimes when she died by his hand!

(in a better world, his rage started and ended there. in a better world, the anger fizzled out with the lack of a target.

this was not that world)

There couldn’t be an Egg Event with no eggs.

If he killed them all, it would bring her back.

(in a worse world, he succeeded. in a worse world, the Egg Event ended there.

this was not that world)

They held a trial.

If he won, it would bring her back.

(in another world, he didn’t convince them. in another world, they left his daughter in Hell.

this was not that world)

Tilín was still before she hit the ground.

Tilín didn’t scream. Maybe they didn’t have time. It happened so fast. He was sure it happened fast. Almost too fast. But everything went so fast, now, even though Flippa was back. Yet, time slowed down for this, like a rubberneck driving past a highway accident, watching him desperately trying to shock their heart back into motion.

“YOU KILL MY BEST FRIENDS,” Flippa wrote. He begged her to understand. She wrote, “i can’t believe it.”

She wrote, “I HATE YOU.”

(in a better world, the error would have been caught in April instead of July.

this was not that world)

His daughter fell to his bitch wife’s sword. The same way. The next day.

They’d only just gotten her back. And Mariana killed her again.

He only left eggxile for the funeral. She wouldn’t stay dead, but he had to be there.

Time went even faster after that. He was Gegg, or maybe Gegg was him, or maybe Gegg was Gegg, or maybe. . . ?

He went back to eggxile.

He wasn’t leaving without them. Tilín. Juanaflippa. He would do whatever was necessary. He would pray to any higher power. Lil J still owed him a goddamn favor, but the guy wouldn’t pick up his calls. Maybe if he put more shit in the shrine; angels liked shiny shit, didn’t they? He went back to the mine, where the gasses swirled in his head. He built the shrine. He mined. He built the shrine.

He went back to the mine.

He went back to the mine.

He went back to the mine.

“This is where I sit, this is where my bitch wife sits, and this is where my daughter sits, if I had one!”

He’d said that before. No he hadn’t. Yes he had.

No, he just needed to clear his head.

Charlie Slimecicle went back to the mine.

Charlie Slimecicle stepped off the train.

[cakemoney]

i don't want to put my uninformed foot in my mouth or get involved with the Discourse but i've been seeing the two extremes of reactions to the korean low birth rates issue (on tumblr and twitter both) and i'm just kind of like. look. i feel like "low birth rates (in many countries but especially japan and korea as part of this conversation) are more broadly the result of capitalism/a culture of overwhelming overwork that makes social relationships and having families incredibly inaccessible to young people" and "low birth rates are very much a part of the current conversation about misogyny and social expectations for women in korea especially in the context of reproduction as 'unpaid labor' for women" are statements that can both be true