#but i remember the fear I had for minorities in the us when trump was elected

[maverickcalf]

people who say vote third party or don't vote... when you aren't even from the USA. yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Fuck you.

[goingontomorrow]

Transgender Trump's America

I am a transgender American. I lived through Trump’s first term, starting in high school and lasting until I was halfway through college. I don’t claim to have great insight or even the perfect words to say, but I need to talk about the impacts of what has happened—and what may happen again.

During Trump’s first presidency, the military ban on transgender troops was enacted. Yesterday, it was reinstated. As a trans American, this decision has had the most profound impact on me. It was dehumanizing and traumatizing to witness how little people seemed to care. While I have reservations about the U.S. military-industrial complex, the fact that we were so openly discriminated against and barred from serving felt like a stark reminder that we aren’t even considered “good enough” to die for our country. I also remember pride flags being banned from U.S. embassies and Trump’s former vice president openly supporting conversion therapy. Bathroom bans were also a reality, though they were eventually protested and overturned for a time.

However, it’s important to point out how much worse things have gotten in this country over the past four years. More states have banned hormone therapy for minors than have banned conversion therapy. Bathroom bans now feel like a recurring issue. Things deteriorated so much that I felt I had to flee a red state as if my survival depended on it.

This brings me to why I started writing this. When I left, I felt like I had no other choice, but it didn’t seem entirely mandatory at the time. I could still go about my life, and as an adult, I could access hormones in that state. But after leaving, I realized I couldn’t breathe. My safety and sanity had been eroded so slowly that I hadn’t fully noticed. It was like rocks were being added to my chest one by one, and once they were removed, I couldn’t understand how I had ever lived with them there.

Now, with Trump back in office, I feel that same pressure returning—but this time, I refuse to ignore it. There’s a cost to this awareness, though. Instead of the pressure building unnoticed, I’ll feel every moment of it. It’s up to me to stay informed: to know what rights are being stripped away, what changes are happening, and how I am impacted. I cannot afford to become complacent.

There will never be an America without trans people, but we will always be used as collateral by those who want to make a point. My fear is that there won’t be enough people willing to fight against that. For now, I’m focusing on what I can do. I’ll start saving so that I can flee the country if it becomes necessary.

[maybeimamuppet]

this will probably be a very long and dramatic post but i feel the need to speak right now. i’m not gonna try to claim i don’t make my blog political, but i rarely speak to things personally.

i was 15 years old when trump was elected for the first time. i was a sophomore in high school coming off of my first queer relationship and coming to terms with who i was as a person.

i remember being so furious that i was too young to vote. i felt so betrayed by everyone who could and did vote for him. he may not have said it directly, but he may as well have.

people like me were a problem. we need to be solved, and we need to be eliminated.

how could i look some of those people in the eye again, knowing i was just a child and yet they were not only okay with supporting people who wanted me dead, but they wanted it too?

i went to a pretty purple school. we had around 2000 kids, give or take a few hundred. i spent a lot of time in the office, since it was quieter there and i could spend some peaceful time with a smaller group of friends.

the day after trump was elected i remember seeing streams and streams of kids coming in. the nurse’s office was right across the hall. i watched through the huge bulletproof windows as kids of color and visibly queer kids were led in bruised, many of them bleeding, to be patched up before they had to speak to the principal for daring to defend themselves. most of the instigators of these incidents were of one demographic.

and all of them said the same thing.

“trump is president. this is how things are now.”

i remember the terror. i remember feeling that as long as i was in this country i could never truly be me and know i was safe. i remember the distrust i felt, not knowing who felt what. who disagreed with my mere existence. who felt i was an issue for simply daring to have feelings outside the norm, as if i wanted this. i remember the hurt.

i am a cishet passing, white woman, and i felt, however briefly, genuine fear for my life.

and i am incredibly lucky.

i have the “right” skin color. i was raised in the “right” faith. unless i told you, or you really analyzed the way i dress and act, there’s no way to tell i’m queer.

try as i might to understand them, i am so blessed to feel a mere fraction of the terror some of my loved ones are experiencing in this moment.

i remember the hurt and the fear. it is back.

but i remember the strength, too. i remember seeing the way minorities banded together and stood strong in the face of such paralyzing terror and heartache. i was able to hide behind those stronger than me, and some of that safety i had felt before and craved so deeply was back.

i remember when it was finally over. the relief and the joy, although the alternative wasn’t great, a weight had been lifted. i had hope again.

we will be there again. we will be there soon.

we will make it through.

check on your people. even the ones who are less visible in their minority status. check on the women you know. queer folks, trans folks. check on the sick and disabled and mentally ill people you know. effectively, if you know anyone who is of a different race, faith, sex, or sexuality than what they try to insist is the norm, check on them.

we are not okay.

but we will be.

they may have won the election, but they will not win over us.

i know so many feel like they’re completely isolated and alone in their fear and sadness right now, but i promise you you aren’t. there are millions of people across the country and across the world feeling the exact heartache you feel in this moment. and we will make it through if we find those people and keep them with us.

hug your friends. check in. keep each other afloat.

and be gentle with yourselves.

i’m going to go cry and then go to bed because it’s now 6:30 in the morning here.

and then tomorrow i’ll wake up and face this with all of you.

keep hope, my friends.

lots of love,

ezzy

[ceekbee]

(An editorial I wrote on the Trump election for Policy Magazine)

Orwell Redux: 1984 has Arrived, Just a Little Late

It took 40 years, but 1984 has finally arrived, with red MAGA hats replacing Orwell’s drab, totalitarian grey. But make no mistake, Donald Trump’s massive win was a Triumph of Orwellian slogans over democratic engagement. It was driven by an apparent longing for manipulative simplicity in the face of complex global realities.

Having grown up in the 1980s, I thought I knew something about Orwell’s 1984 vision of a future of mass surveillance and strongman control. But Big Tech promised to liberate us from this nightmare future. What was clear on election night, however, is that Big Tech money and technology toxified democratic engagement and drove the agenda of a faux-populist grifter.

Are you old enough to remember that night in January, 1984, when a small-time California computer company called Apple went all-in with a Super Bowl ad directed by Ridley Scott? The ad brilliantly played on our 1984 fears with a crowd of shorn cyberslaves mesmerized by Big Brother brainwashing them on a jumbotron. The defining moment comes when a female athlete appears in vivid colour and hurls a sledgehammer at the screen, shutting down the propaganda feed amid a shower of sparks.

And then the punch line, “You’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.”

We were sold. I know I was. The dystopian future could be beaten. Silicon Valley promised a future of connectivity, individual autonomy and freedom. All we had to do was buy the gadgets.

And then more gadgets. And then more.

In the 80s, 90s and for good parts of the 2000s I was one of the many believers in the premise that if people had the power to do their own research, create networks of increasingly large groups who only knew each other through their digital IP address it would inevitably lead to spreading creativity and democracy. How could it not make people smarter and more engaged?

The Silicon Valley pioneers presented themselves as idealistic mavericks willing to move fast and break the stodgy political, economic structures holding us back. But that wasn’t the real story of the Big Tech revolution. It was born as a project of the US military. And from the beginning, the digital revolution was driven by a culture of toxic alpha-male libertarianism. By the time it exploded onto the world stage in the mid 1980s, author Max Fisher writes in The Chaos Machine that it was deeply rooted, in “the unashamed capitalism of the Reagan ’80s.” These “mavericks” believed that they had the right to arbitrarily rewire democracy and society.

What could possibly go wrong?

The 1984 Mac ad promised individual autonomy in the face of looming mass conformity and state surveillance. What we failed to grasp is the cost that came from allowing a few tech giants to rewire everything from democracy to our personal relationships. We paid little attention as our every online move was tracked by ever more-powerful machine-driven AI. Few noticed when our online “experiences” were siloed into increasingly isolated chambers of information. And only the tech giants knew that the secret sauce of the digital revolution was that disinformation and rage was the most powerful driver to keep our eyes locked on our screens.

I write this as a recovering digital utopian. Our global economies have been rewired to the benefit of libertarian capitalists and our addiction to gadgets has led to measurable breakdowns in social trust and rising online hate.

My Facebook feed has become a swamp of ugly and vicious memes generated by AI and Bot farms attacking the prime minister, climate action and “woke” individuals who dare express concern for environment or minority rights. As an elected official who has dealt with relentless harassment, I just recently received my first AI-generated death threat. It is such a far cry from those idealistic, Google “Don’t be evil” days when we believed internet interactions would inevitably build community, not tear them down. For a few years, it worked.

We looked to defy an Orwellian future defined by lies. But what we learned is that in a 140 (or even 280)-character world, slogans move quicker than truth. And what has driven the right-wing power of Trump, Bolsanaro and other propaganda actors is the exploitation of the immediacy and seduction of the internet to weaponize thought in the form of slogans that tap into a proud, defiant, terrified vulnerability.

How does democracy compete with that?

The connection between Trump and Silicon Valley goes deeper than how the Steve Bannons of the world broke the political code on rage algorithms. Huge amounts of money were used to ensure Trump’s election because right-wing tech billionaires understood the irresistible connection between the rise of AI, profits and undemocratic government power. Ben Tarnoff, writing in the New York Review of Books, states that Silicon Valley venture capitalists see Trump as key to the “linkages between the public and private sectors…in which tech companies would partner with the state to strengthen its coercive capacities at home and abroad.”

It took four decades, but 1984 finally arrived. It isn’t the grey world of military strongmen but an ugly marriage of toxic AI, billionaire capitalists and grifter politicians. What is perhaps the most dystopian factor of all, is just how cynical and mean it is.

I know that there are other lessons from the 80s to show us a better way. They are the pre-millennial memories that can help unwire our lives into a more sustainable future.

Policy Contributing Writer Charlie Angus is the MP for Timmins-James Bay and frontman for the band Grievous Angels. His new book Dangerous Memory Coming of Age in the Decade of Greed is published by House of Anansi Press

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

On a highway near you ...

* * * *

THE GOP AND JANUARY 6

TCINLA :: [Thats Another Fine Mess]

JUN 19, 2024

I think we can all agree that Marjorie Traitor Goon belongs in locked padded cell in a secure mental facility. With her public performances over the past several days, it’s clear that her padded cell should be in the prison ward of the facility.

For those trying to avoid the news, Greene spoke this weekend at the Turning Points Action political conference as the introduction to Trump’s appearance. What she said needs to be seen as truly alarming.

Greene began her speech by saying, “Anyone that wants to continue shame us for January 6th can go to hell.” The raucous crowd responded with loud applause.

She continued on, bragging about her role on Jan. 6, based on her belief that Trump had won her home state of Georgia, despite no evidence to that effect.

She ended the speech by saying she was the one who organized the attempt to overturn the peaceful transfer of power - again to loud applause. As usual, she overstating her role; at most, she was a relatively minor character in the plot, though she was indeed involved in the planning. But the fact that she could make this claim to praise and applause is what is terrifying.

Note her initial line there: A civil war started on Election Day 2020 when Democrats stole the presidency from Trump.

The fact is, Greene is merely the most obvious of the GOP traitors, due to her essential stupidity. Just remember, however, that many of the Nazis were stupid people who were considered “clowns” prior to 1933. The entire Republican Party is now completely under the thrall of Trump. With his appearance last week at the scene of his greatest act of treason, where he was applauded by Republican office holders who were among those hiding in the Capitol on January 6, 2021, in fear for their lives from the murderous mob of insurrectionists Trump summoned and launched at the seat of the government he had taken an oath to defend “against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” where his arrival was met by applause, it should be clear to anyone that the two political parties in the United States are The Party of Government and the Party of Insurrectionary Treason.

As David Kurtz put it at TPM, “A lot about the last four years can be encapsulated by the notion that one side in American politics is fighting a cold civil war, and the other side is totally bewildered by it. That’s not what war fighters mean when they refer to an asymmetric battlefield, but the asymmetry is stark as hell.”

Unfortunately, too many Democrats seem to either be unable to see this or, if they do see it, they choose to deny the truth before their eyes.

In fact, there are too many Democrats who will attack anyone who points out the utter and complete evil of MAGA now, and the fact that the Democratic Party needs to have a stronger response, by claiming the speaker is “no better than” whatever MAGA traitor was mentioned.

For anyone who has studied the political history of the 1930s, there are two groups of people in Germany who were responsible for the Nazi takeover: the enablers - the German industrialists who gave money to the Nazis, the politicians who believed they could “manage” Hitler - and the fools who said people like Billy Wilder were “cranks” for their warnings about the true nature of the Nazis, who they claimed were nothing more than “clowns.”

Our new political normal is one in which far right populism is - and will be for the foreseeable future, regardless of the November election - a consistent competitor for power. In past times a political realignment usually involved a change of view about the role of government, or the ends of foreign policy. What we are seeing those from the Republican Party is a revolutionary recreation of government as a tool for minority rule and a rejection of the rule of law.

There’s a name for this problem: Motivated ignorance. The term refers to a person willfully blinding themself to facts and choosing not to know something. For many people, knowing the truth is simply too psychologically painful, too costly, too threatening to their core identity.

In greater numbers, people can be incentivized to adopt motivated ignorance and actively decide to remain in a state of disbelief. When presented with a strong argument against a position they hold, or being presented with compelling evidence disproving their personal narrative, that information will be rejected. Doing so fends off the psychological distress of the realization that they’ve been lying to themselves and to others. Motivated ignorance is a widespread phenomenon; most people, to one degree or another, employ it, and it is found equally among the Democrats who refuse the admit the nature of the threat, and the true believers who refuse to even listen to anyone attempting to discredit their cult leader.

In the case of MAGA true believers, the lies they believe as Trump supporters, or say they believe, are all obviously untrue and obviously destructive. But as can be seen in the 2025 Project book, the Trump true believers who will be in a position - should he win - to make and carry out policy, those policy decisions are being made on the belief that the lies are the truth. Over the past eight years, each succeeding conspiracy theory has been ratcheted up, being more preposterous and more malicious in order to keep the believers ready to act on their beliefs, no matter how deranged.

Unfortunately, the fact that these are all demonstrable lies allows the motivated ignorant in the Democratic Party to discount them, to denigrate those who say “when someone tells you what they want to do, believe them” as “cranks,” the term used by the disbelievers Billy Wilder knew.

Anti-anti-Trump is not confined to conservatives unwilling to become Never-Trumpers and possibly lose their social position by so doing.

It happened to Wilder’s friends in Berlin with their belief that the Nazis were “clowns” no matter the information received that the “clowns” were actually a direct personal threat to their continued well-being. A Wilder said, “When I returned twelve years later, all of my friends who told me the Nazis were clowns, were dead. Killed by the clowns.”

Things aren’t that dire here (yet), but the willingness of some Democrats to take a the statement of exasperation made by a strongly anti-Trump person, and then claim that statement is equally dangerous to whatever threat made by a ranking Trumper about what they intend to do when they take power, is to not only shut one’s eyes to what is happening in favor of a belief that we still live in a civilized society where one argues “properly,” but to actively oppose anyone presenting evidence to the contrary.

The question is, how complicit are people who live in a hall of mirrors inside a bubble, that nothing consequential has changed or threatened to change and have convinced themselves they represent the “proper response” and want to police the word and actions of those who threaten their belief those people are the real “threat” with their “incivility”?

The truth is that the Republican Party is no longer a conservative party, or even a radical party. The statements of intent over what will happen when the MAGA movement takes power are revolutionary in their desire to overturn everything. Just in the past 30 days there hasn’t been a MAGA Republican who hasn’t either made a direct threat against democracy, or tried to cover up such a statement by a fellow MAGA Republican when questioned in the media. They are now all complicit. The ones who say nothing but vote in favor of MAGA positions and policies are no different from the Marjorie Traitor Goons shouting it from the rooftops.

However, as Jonathan Last pointed out, “The Trumpist revolution’s weakness is that it has no ideas. It has goals, but these are motivated by nothing more than will-to-power. There is no logic—not even a faulty logic—behind them.”

While we - on the side that would like to preserve liberal democracy - are becoming exhausted, the people who want to destroy the Constitution are energized. The system has allowed and will allow without radical changes, for the MAGA “revolutionaries” to make their charge of the capitol a many times as they want to. And they only have to win once.

As the Old Gunnery Sergeant said to the Marines at Guadalcanal, “Off your dead asses and onto your dying feet. There’s work to be done!”

[TCinLA]

[universe-of-peoples]

I was sixteen years old when Trump was first elected in 2016. Not too long after he became president, I had the worst nightmare I had ever had. To this day, it’s still the worst one I’ve ever had.

CW/TW: contemporary US politics, Donald Trump, Holocaust references, gun violence

I dreamt that the Trump administration was rounding up all the LGBT people in the country and taking us who-knows-where. At first, they had us in hotels while they were deciding what to do with us. We were allowed to have cell phones, but we weren’t allowed to have chargers; kind of a way to make it seem like they were treating us well (“of course they’re still allowed to have their cell phones! We aren’t that heartless”) while still taking away that freedom. I remember trying to smuggle my charger around with me in secret. My phone was at fifteen percent, and I had my charger, but I couldn’t find an outlet anywhere in the hotel room (another way that they were keeping us from charging our phones in case we did have secret chargers).

They were enforcing traditional and assigned-at-birth gender roles, and at one point, they were pairing those of us who were old enough into heterosexual pairings as a way of playing “house,” I guess. I remember I was paired with a friend of mine who I don’t even think is LGBT in real life. I guess he was in the dream. But the heterosexual pairing enforcement didn’t last long, and when we were leaving the hotel to go to our next location, the people who were guarding/herding us were dicking around with their guns and shot my friend. I thought it was intentional, or at the very least, a sign that they saw us as nonhuman. As not mattering. They blamed it on him, said that he was rebelling and they had acted accordingly and unfortunately had to shoot him. He had not been doing anything like that. But now he was dead.

They took us to churches and made us pray, with civilians looking on to witness how the American government was “fixing the LGBT people by making them pray and repent.” I felt like a zoo animal being ogled at by those people.

They trucked us around on school busses from one location to the next, and it was becoming really clear that they had no idea what to do with us. The fear and tension was growing with every minute, because it felt like at any minute they could decide they didn’t want to deal with us anymore. And by didn’t want to deal with us anymore, I don’t mean let us go.

Finally they did decide that they didn’t want to deal with us anymore, but they also decided that the families of the minors that had been rounded up could buy their child’s freedom if they had enough money. Again, if they had enough money. They also didn’t say what they were going to do with the adults. Since I was sixteen and still a minor when I had this dream, I was herded onto a school bus with all the kids and taken away. We hadn’t been told which of us were getting freed. It was a long, tense drive into the middle of nowhere, to a church parking lot where the families that had had enough money were waiting. My family was there, thankfully. But the kids that didn’t see their families were terrified. What was going to happen to them? No one knew. When they opened the doors of the bus, all the kids stampeded out and ran in a panic, desperate to escape. In the frenzy, the people guarding us opened fire. I couldn’t see my family in the frenzy; I just ran and ran.

A neighbor of mine found me (I guess he had also been a kid on the bus) and told me that he had found my family, and that I should come quick. My grandma had been shot in the frenzy. I followed him to where they were hiding and was able to say goodbye.

When I woke up from this nightmare, words cannot describe how I felt. My mental state was absolutely fucked. The images from that nightmare stayed with me for days, I couldn’t get any of it out of my head. On top of all that, I kept having this thought; if that’s how terrified I felt in just one night of comparatively-not-that-bad horrors, how must the victims of the real Holocaust have felt (because clearly that was the inspiration for the dream)? I cannot even begin to imagine how they felt.

I’ve been thinking of this nightmare again in recent days given what’s currently going on with Trump’s second presidency. How he’s acting VERY much like Hitler did when he first came in to power. How he’s rounding up and deporting immigrants. How he’s very strongly opposed to trans people. The thought of a LGBT-targeted Holocaust-like-situation no longer feels all that impossible, even if it is (HOPEFULLY) improbable. It’s becoming harder and harder to sleep at night knowing that no matter what specifically he ends up doing, the US is now a lot more dangerous for me, my friends, and my family.

I don’t really know why I decided to share this. I guess I just wanted to get it out of my head and onto “paper.” If you’re in the US, LGBT, and scared right now (or even if you’re neither of those things but still scared), know that you’re not alone. The only thought that has been bringing me comfort over this has been: worst case-scenario, if I go down, I will go down fighting.

Thanks for reading. Sorry for the depressing story.

[notafunkiller]

My 9th grade civics, economy and history classes are side eyeing all those people who voted for trump. History is to be learned from so it’s not repeated again. Just had to explain how tariffs work to my uncle. Didn’t want to listen to me because I’m a woman. His son had to say I’m right. His son who is an accountant had to say I was right before he made the realization that his vote to fix the economy just broke it and made the rich richer. My rights other women’s and minorities and healthcare etc were expandable because trump lies spread fear mongering propaganda and manipulation and his favorite people the poorly educated fell right into his trap and the voted with right wing extremism,hate. Without ever asking questions to trump and what he planned to do. Oh well suffer as a woman I’m done and looking for options to move elsewhere. America was never for women, lgbtqia+ or minorities. That has been abundantly clear. Also I’m calling out fellow white women who hear the anger of black women because 50% of white women voted against women. Minorities. Lgbtaqia+. They are not speaking about the ones that helped and tried to stop this. They are speaking to the women who we all know as pick me’s. Let them go off on them and us too. Fuck America. Fuck the patriarchy. And those ‘Christian’s’ have a rude awakening for them come judgement day. They are their god is a vengeful god. He said so. He is a jealous god. And they have made an idol and worshipped him. Calling him a prophet and the chosen one. Oh and god most certainly would support abortion do they not remember him killing the first born sons of those who would not worship him and only him?

The most important thing about faith is that you should not try to force anyone to believe. You should not force anyone to have the same religion! The "funny" part is they don't respect and follow christianity because in the bible there are 100 different things they do and are not allowed. They just use that as an excuse to force other people and de ide for others. They become gods like this. And I think even in religions, birth = the moment they becoming for real children because they exist by themselves. Also, wasn't the whole pount in christisnity thst you must spread love? Where is that love when you put people's lives in danger.

They don't respect their own religion.

It's all an excuse.

And it's painful to hear women voted for him...

[lookingfornoonat2pm]

Your comment to nostalgicamerica was spot on. I might add to that by saying that he is an antogonist and a child who loves to stir the pot. He has claimed he is neither Republican or Democrat. I can shoot holes in that all day. He is a Trump supporter. He just doesn't admit it. He represents the hatred in America against anyone who seems "woke". He represents the "fuck your feelings" that MAGAs aspire to. I wonder how long he will like the Dictatorship we will live under if Trump gets back in the Oval office. That isn't the way America was or should be as his many posts identify with. I'm old and can remember duck and cover drills and the fear of Nuclear War. We had bomb shelters in our town of 2800.

I appreciate the ask. And it's important for people like @nostalgicamerica to realize that living under the constant threat of nuclear holocaust was part of the mood that underwrote the sunny, ultra-positive aesthetic of mid-century America. People tried to be so absurdly optimistic because the daily reality of proxy wars, police killings, and ratcheting-up of tensions with the worker republics was a horrible thing to experience every day. I am lucky to have had parents who didn't live in denial and explained this reality to me.

To even attempt understand why so few of the images from mid-century America include black people is already to violate the dictates of contemporary American fascism.

As far as MAGA dictatorship goes, I think it won't be as bad as you think--it will be even worse.

Because it is the nice, kind, law-abiding, middle-of-the-road liberals who will turn me in to the cops when or if my sexuality becomes illegal. The people who want us to ignore the genocide in Palestine so that we will line up behind Biden are the exact people who will turn their backs on me and members of other minorities in order to save their skin. The MAGA types already actively want me dead.

I do not fear a generation of terror as much as I fear a culture that becomes spiritually dead and morally empty because its counter-culture and resistance movements adopt the values of the dominant classes.

[dine-on-nervine]

Always good when Steph gets back on her blog

When did you last drink coffee? I finished my carafe (like one swallow) this morning, which I intended to do two days ago when I drank the rest, and should have done yesterday before work, but in both cases forgot.

When did you last cry? And why, if you feel like sharing. It probably involved some meaningful music in the car.

What was the last beach you visited and when? I can answer in advance: In a few days I will be visiting my parents on the Oregon coast, so will stop at one of the beaches (presuming Moolack or Agate) that are nearby this coming Thursday.

What book do you plan to read next? I was at the bookstore today and found they had a ton of Johnny Hart's B.C. paperbacks, some of which I'd never heard of and others I'd seen in the title listings but hadn't seen in person. But to answer the question specifically, "The Return Of B.C. Rides Again."

What fictional character/s remind you of yourself? Charlie Brown.

What's in your fridge right now? List as many things as you can think of. Food. Just got my cabin fridge put together under a shelf last night so today, now that it's cold, there are no longer (as many) sodas and seltzers in my regular fridge, and the icepacks are out of the freezer.

If you could have any artist, living or dead, paint your portrait, who would it be? These two are fairly obscure but meaningful: My mother's friend Berghoff and my grandmother's friend Bishop. Berghoff did a charcoal portrait of me when I was 4 so it'd be great if I could have one as an adult (he passed on several years ago), Bishop primarily did still lifes of flowers [and one of Zulus dancing!] but I would love to see what she'd have done with her friend's grandson.

Do you smell anything in particular right now? Happily, no. I say that because the house has been a bit humid and mucky today, but I opened the windows when I got home from being out -- and then there's that corner of the kitchen where the previous tenant apparently had a dog, and wherever it pissed has just recently become volatile.

Do you make enough money to live comfortably? [can be in combination with a spouse] I have been doing that for years. Moved two months ago from someone's upstairs room to an apartment, and thus require a roomie since my rent essentially doubled.

What is one thing you like about your appearance? Don’t say nothing! I have amazing eyes.

What would you like to tell your father? Let me ponder that since I will be seeing him in 4 days. Nothing comes to mind and I am unsure just how much he will remember or care of whatever we do discuss.

What would you like to tell your mother? This I have: "So if you asked me whether you need this SIM card you were sent, then admitted it was for Dad's phone which you said he never uses, but then gave me crap for not texting him, why the fuck didn't we put that new SIM in his phone so he could get a text?"

Whose was the last wedding you went to? Geez, I'm going to say it was Greg & Kimberly's back in the 2000s.

What is your greatest fear? Trump somehow getting into office. To those who favor him and get testy on those who see him as a problem: Name one world or national issue he has said he will address. He hasn't. It's ALL been talk about revenge. Nothing about domestic policy, nothing about international issues, it's all personal shit he painted himself into the corner with and now has to face.

What is a chronic health issue you deal with, even if it’s minor? Coxafloppin.

What was your college major? If applicable. I hold a Bachelor's in computer science. Do you want fries with that?

What new place have you been to recently? I have been to some new stuff locally but names are not springing to mind. I guess you could say that Ronald General Store.

What are you a geek about? Computers.

What is something you have no patience for? Blind-faith right-wingers.

What celebrity would you want to go out for a meal/drinks with? No idea.

Are you happy with your weight? I want to lose 20 pounds.

When did you last hold a baby, if ever? Whose? It's been several years. <<

How many cats do you have? Pistaschio Underfoot's 16th birthday is tomorrow.

How many dogs do you have? None.

How many other pets do you have? None.

How old were you when you got your driver’s license? 18. Didn't get a car until 30 though.

What year did you graduate high school? Frankie Goes To Hollywood put out their second album that year.

What is the first number of your zip code? 9. Just like the person I reblogged this from. Steph: You're in California you readily admit, and the entire Western seaboard is 9. That digit is no secret.

How many of your grandparents are still alive? Zero.

What is your favorite number? I don't have one.

How many kids do you want? Zero.

How many apartments have you lived in? Four or five.

What age do people say you look? I hear 45.

Do you feel like your family accepts you for who you are? Not really.

Do you feel like your friends accept you for who you are? Yes.

Who is the best doctor you’ve ever had? I dunno.

Have you ever been flipped off by a random stranger? That happened just the other day. He was quite the nutter.

Do you have a lot of people blocked on Facebook? I have blocked a number of people. Mostly because they're idiots.

Do you consider yourself spiritual? Not really. I just follow the Golden Rule and it sorts itself out.

Do you consider yourself religious? I believe in God. Does that make me religious? << Yes, it does. I am not, I gave that up for health reasons.

Are you afraid of spiders? Size matters.

Are you afraid of snakes? Variety matters.

Does everyone in your family know your sexual orientation? They should by now but I'm sure some still get it wrong.

What is one thing you find offensive? People who speak from a place of absolute ignorance and will not have anything to do with facts when offered.

Do you often post about politics on social media? Regularly. If you're not angry, you're not paying attention!

Would you ever want to go back to school? Absolutely not. Done with that shit.

What are three things you are naturally good at? Eating beaver, figuring out computer issues, and packing boxes.

What are three things you are NOT naturally good at? Social graces, charm, and knowing when to keep my mouth shut when someone is criminally wrong about political issues.

Is your dream to get married and have kids? No.

Where do you hang your towel to dry after showering? On the towel bar.

If you were the opposite sex, how would you style your hair? Probably not far from what I already do, it's easy and quick.

Last person you hugged? Tanya.

How is the weather right now? Overcast at times, but since it's 9:55pm it's getting dark. There was about a minute where the sky wanted to rain but didn't do it.

Are you missing someone? I don't think so.

What is the wallpaper on your cell phone? The lock screen is a 1930s ad for Nervine, the wallpaper on the icons screen is a 1970s shelf paper of a mushroom pattern.

What do you have handy at your bedside? Tissue, hand lotion, and stuffed sharks.

What is your dad's middle name? Michael.

What is your mom's middle name? Rae.

First thing you'll save in a fire? I'm sitting in front of it right now.

[nullset2]

The Attention Economy

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.”

This past decade (and even since the advent of Web 2.0 you could argue) has seen a plethora of horrendous macroeconomic insanity, all related in one way or another to telecommunications. It's no coincidence that the Crash of 2008 occurred at the same time with the release of the first iPhones.

What I think this is indicative of, is that we're living in a New World Order (no, no that one) where our socioeconomic means are intrinsically tied to social media and the Internet. We have effectively become cyborgs, symbiotic with the metal boxes in our pockets, one altogether.

The legacy establishment, such as big box Government, the stock market and the banking system, are aware of it but still haven't adapted to this Brave New World because they're a bunch of decrepit octogenarian old farts that couldn't save a document as PDF to save their lives. Socioeconomic phenomena such as the Trump presidency, the GameStop (meme stock) sways, cryptocurrency and the Coronavirus lockdowns can all be attributed to Information technology.

Sometimes this puts people in very dark spots because they become prey to strange games of complexes, fears and scapegoating (that's why conspiracy theory, such as the Pizzagate 'War against the paedophile elites' abounds in 4chan of all places by the way: if Bill Gates was found to be a paedophile, he'd effectively be the perfect scapegoat), other times things go "We did it Reddit" and John Cena shows up to care for a dying child and everyone gets puppies and hugs and we all laugh and the screen fades to black and we're in a Satmon cartoon.

And again, what else would you expect when everyone has a black box, ultrafast, always-on, always online pornoedipal supercomputer Schizophrenia machine in their pockets where the Ghost in the Machine algorithms dictate and sway people's opinions? One doesn't need to decide what to think, what to like, what to do or what to believe anymore, because it's all fed to one through hyper-saccharine brainrot 5 second videos on TikTonk.

Other phenomena such as the advent of remote-first work, digital nomadism, crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, open-sourcing and live-streaming are also indicators of the fact that a Sea Change is not coming, but rather it’s already happened long, long ago, and the economy hasn’t caught up to it yet (we're still living in the dead, rotten husk of it). Turns out that if you become a streamer and the planets align and you catch enough people's teary-eyed, dehydrated (remember to go drink some water right now) eyes, that's effectively a replacement for a full time job nowadays.

That apparently, the economy is now based on how many people you can get to notice you (and the ad revenue underneath it).

The thing is that effectively this forces us to reconsider what our standards for living should actually be. Gone are the days of the 9 to 5 where you had to commute to an office to make a living because you can effectively work remotely --but alas, some Gen X asshole with an inflamed prostate will call you lazy if you dare challenge his Commercial Real Estate investments and propose to work remote-first.

Maybe this also forces us to reconsider what the damn economy actually is, if four years ago a minority of people were branded as "essential workers" and made to work the shit jobs while everyone else stayed indoors to collect stimmy checks (thanks for the inflation btw). Notice how all of that happened and the world not only didn't end, but shot some stock tickers into the stratosphere. Maybe it's all pies in the sky. Maybe the Fed prints 1 Trillion dollars every 100 days to finance stupid bomb runs that we're not even supposed to care about, and money is basically a collective hallucination.

No Gold Standard, just vibes.

But lo, here come the radical assholes, happy to brandish their cries of "this is all because of CAPITALISM", and well, yes, it is because of capitalism but maybe learn a skill and do some cool shit first and get yourself a clean shirt and clean your room bucko and remove those nasty tattoos and hair dye from yourself first before you dare rework the whole status quo, dummy. Cue r/antiwork, a community that I don't support but that I think has some validity to their claims, that effectively a vast amount of work is not actually necessary and is just work for the sake of work, completely performative, a mechanism to keep the hamster wheels of an economy that's based upon rampant, cold consumerism running.

Maybe it's all so fake and stupid and it makes me feel bad. The Jobs are fake, the Money is fake, and the Economy is fake.

But fuck you if your alternative comes from a fucking College professor that's basically repackaging Maoist China.

To conclude, I insist that we are kind of the in-between at the moment and something's got to give. This cannot go on much longer, and a deep, new zeitgeist rethinking of what work, life and the economy are will happen very, very soon. but in the interim, retain your zen, and remember to bring something for the potluck. There's quarter-donuts and dairy free milk in the break room so you can use the new Nespresso. Happy Friday!

[embossross]

From His Mind to Yours

Chapter 4 >> Chapter 5 >> masterlist

✣ Pairing: Hanma x AFAB fem!Reader

✣ Warning: 18+, minors DNI; unhealthy relationships & dark content

✣ Chapter CW: Hanma is serving unhinged this chapter be warned; Murder; Russian Roulette; PTV sex; Slapping, biting and overall violent sexual dynamic (reader to Hanma and it is situationally very appropriate) (I didn’t intend to make Hanma Switchy, but he is now very Switchy); Bad Therapeutic practice (both unethical and inaccurate); prescription of mood stabilizers; gambling; unsafe sex

✣ Story CWs: patient/doctor relationships; smut (oral, ptv, pta, etc.), degradation, stalking, torture (not of y/n), murder, discussions of trauma and abuse, drug use, and more

✣ Synopsis: Forced into therapy, Hanma expects to waste his time and yours, but you’re not about to let the chance of a high-profile and higher paying patient slip through your grasp. The fact that you’re both attracted to each other doesn’t hurt either.

✣ Word Count: ~9k

A man lies dead on the floor. He did not die peacefully.

The autopsy will probably credit blunt force trauma to the head, but it might have been a heart attack. The human heart can only withstand so much stress.

The room is dark, curtains drawn tight to block out the sun and prying eyes. There are signs of a struggle: defensive wounds on the deceased, furniture upturned, curtains ripped, TV broken on the ground. A stampede of destruction. A staging.

When the news breaks the story, they’ll float the theory of a burglary. The deceased, Tanigawa Ichigo, was a conscientious citizen with no connections to shady business. A likeable guy in the building, always sorted his recyclables, no different than you or me, except for a couple unwise habits. Neighbors will remember that they cautioned him to bolt his door as crime had been on the rise in the neighborhood; friends will lament that he was always too loud about his future inheritance, that any burglar would be tempted. The news writes itself.

Hanma flicks his cigarette. A trickle of ash rains down. It lands on the upper life of one Tanigawa Iwao, not-so-loving brother of the dearly departed.

The man’s nose twitches, face screwed up in concentration and restraint, but it’s no use. He sneezes away the ash. A little glob of snot lands on Hanma’s shoe. The same shoe that presses into the living Tanigawa’s chest.

They stand and lie respectively in the living room of the deceased’s two-bedroom apartment. Apart from the staged chaos, the room is homey with well-worn magazines on the table, a fraying couch, and mugs of half-drank coffee on the countertops. The living room opens into a small kitchen, where dishes from the night’s dinner sit stacked and unwashed in the sink. If the curtains weren’t closed, the windows would open out to a view of a quiet suburb, the kind with trees planted by the sidewalk and more bicycle traffic than cars.

“Try not to throw your DNA around, Tanigawa. This is a crime scene,” Hanma sighs.

Distantly, Hanma pities Tanigawa Ichigo. As Hanma slammed the man’s head into the wall over and over until the crack of bone and spill of detritus, Ichigo never once considered that his fate was not the result of mere bad fortune, a robbery gone wrong, but rather a deliberate murder. He never fathomed that his younger brother might put a hit out on him. That Toman might come to collect.

Tanigawa Iwao also never once considered that he would be brought to the crime scene to witness the hulking corpse that was once his brother, but Hanma does not feel bad for him. No, watching Tanigawa shiver and cry at the outcome of his own greed is rather funny.

Babbling out a few useless apologies, Tanigawa wipes Hanma’s shoe with his sleeves. Hanma grounds down harder with his foot. It kneads into the space between ribs. He is half-compelled to test Tanigawa’s self-control, dig until the pain trumps fear and the fool can’t resist begging for mercy. Not necessary at this point. He already has Tanigawa’s submission. A bit of fun.

Fun…Hanma remembers it fondly. For the past week, he has lived like a monk, peaceful, obedient, bored. Between you and Kisaki, he is a puppet merrily dancing along to whatever tune his masters demand sung. How much longer until he cuts the strings and becomes a real boy?

He can’t afford to piss off Kisaki, not when the prospect of Mikey is dangled before him. But you are afforded no such protections. This week, he pushed your session back to Saturday since all his focus was needed for his current assignments, but as the day draws near, his body thrums with excitement.

“What do you want?” Tanigawa weeps at Hanma’s feet, the same question he’s been panting for the last half hour.

Hanma squeezes the man’s shoulder reassuringly, and says, “No need for tears! You’re going to get everything you ever wanted. It’s only fair that you give us a little something in return.”

“Anything,” Tanigawa says.

A less intelligent man might interject that he already paid Toman handsomely for their services, but Tanigawa is a sly one. He sees the trap, how he sits in Hanma’s silken pockets. He is probably replaying in his mind the condemning footage Hanma showed him earlier. Footage that showed how involved Tanigawa was in his brother’s murder. Tanigawa is a bad brother but a good son. He can’t break his father’s heart.

“You have access to flight logs in and out of Tokyo-Narita. You’re going to look up a few names for me and share any flights they’ve taken in the last year,” Hanma says. “Not too bad, eh?”

“That’s not going to be…”

“Easy? Well, neither’s getting away with murder, but we do it all the time,” Hanma says.

Here then is the reason why Hanma is slumming it, doling out a hit on a nobody. Tanigawa is a senior IT executive at Tokyo-Narita. A useful pawn if deployed right.

Currently, Tanigawa is useless, breathing heavily and eyes rapidly shifting back and forth. He has been cresting the edge of an anxiety attack for half an hour now, and Hanma is fascinated. He wonders what will finally push the man over. Not that Hanma enjoys when his associates (read: victims) descend into a messy anxiety attack. Impossible to get anything out of them. But, it certainly is interesting.

Hanma’s never personally experienced an anxiety attack.

Loud beeping sounds from the burner in his pocket. Hanma answers when he sees it’s Hakkai calling.

“It’s loud in here. Might be hard to hear you,” Hakkai shouts over a throbbing roar of noise. “How’d things go on your end?”

Hanma tells him about Tanigawa. “I just gave him the list. Anyone who’s so much as breathed air in the same room as the Haitanis, hell anyone who’s heard of the Haitanis. We’ll know where they’ve been flying.”

“Assuming they flew out of Tokyo-Narita.”

“Assuming they didn’t take a fucking boat,” Hanma concedes.

Tanigawa peers up at Hanma with big, beseeching eyes, like he might parse some useful clues from this conversation. Irritated, Hanma kicks him in the ribs – a love tap though you wouldn’t know it by the way the idiot moans – and moves to the bathroom.

The mirror reflects the struggle of the last hour. His suit jacket is crumpled, a few scratches on his wrists from where Tanigawa-the-dead fought back, a bloody lip, and hair tangled in clumps. Tanigawa was a big guy and managed to head butt him before Hanma regained the upper hand. Hanma wets his gloved fingers and runs them through his hair, carefully styling the errant curls back into place. The building’s security cameras are all disabled, and he’s already wiped the scene of DNA evidence, but there’s no need to alarm the neighbors when he leaves.

“I found one of their accounts,” Hakkai tells him. “Only got a couple hundred million yen in there though, so definitely not all of it. Koko’s digging into where they could be laundering money. They have so many rich-boy contacts though, it might take a while.”

“I still say we grab the little one,” Hanma sighs. So much roundabout espionage when the simplest solution lay before them.

“Not even you could get them to talk,” Hakkai says, which is among the rudest comments ever directed his way. Hanma sees himself bristle in the bathroom mirror. “Honestly, we should have just brought them into Toman in the early days. Wouldn’t need all this running around now.”

“Kisaki doesn’t like them,” Hanma says.

A decade out from their delinquent days, the Haitanis remain a wildcard in Roppongi. Mikey almost extended an offer for them to join as executives, bringing their vast network of intel and experience into the fold, but Kisaki cautioned against it. To Mikey, he warned that the Haitanis would never bend the knee, would plot against him; to Hanma, he admitted that the Haitanis would accept Mikey as their king but would battle him for second place.

Forced out of the fold, the Haitanis can’t be classified as yakuza. They work freelance for the city’s elite with a small gang of hired help beneath them. Mostly bodyguard work for corporate bigwigs, silencing political dissidents, making problems disappear for spoiled trust fund brats. The older one, Ran, is stylish, charming, the kind of man who puts suits at ease and gets the job done. They accrued a small fortune sucking up to the already powerful.

Partnering with the HJK would be an out of character play on their part as it would risk the little empire they curated. Neither Haitani is that stupid…

…But it might be their only chance to come out on top of the criminal underworld once again, and Hanma doesn’t doubt they are tempted.

“Well, anyway, none of this would matter if that pisspot Sendo could keep his eyes on the pretty fuckers like he’s meant to,” Hakkai gripes.

“They’re good. Hard to tail,” Hanma says.

He doesn’t add that Sendo is torn between two jobs at the moment, answering to two masters. Earlier that day, Sendo called to let him know that he is failing just as miserably at bugging your apartment. Restricted by Hanma’s order not to break the door down, Sendo hasn’t been able to force his way in. And neither you nor your boyfriend are incautious enough to open the door to a stranger.

Frustrating, the not knowing how you spend your time when he isn’t there. At least Hanma expects a debrief about your boyfriend any day now. You act like you chose your boyfriend on a whim, as if you won him at a carnival and thought you might as well take him home. But still, there might be clues to unravelling you somewhere in his background.

Unravelling you would be fun. At night, Hanma sometimes falls asleep, imagining you are like a tangled clump of necklaces, the various strands tangling and overlapping. He imagines plucking each one, testing the tangle, pushing this way and that to see if there’s any give. Find the right strand, move it in the right direction, and the whole messy thing will unwind in his fingers.

Exiting the bathroom, Hanma spots Tanigawa bent over his brother’s corpse with a look of twisted interest. One hand hovers over the pulp of the softened skull.

Hanma rolls his eyes and covers the phone for a moment. “What did I tell you about throwing your DNA around?”

Tanigawa scrambles back and starts blathering promises to run the list through the airport database first thing in the morning. Hanma waves his hand dismissively, already halfway out the door. No neighbors spot him, which is convenient. He shoots a text to some of his men to revert the building cameras once Tanigawa leaves and exits out into the dry heat.

The sun beats down cruelly, unseasonably warm for a July day. The streets are empty. Everyone with a cool office or apartment has retreated inside to escape its rays. Hanma likes the heat, likes the hot soreness on the back of his neck as his skin begins to burn, likes staining his crisp suits with streaks of sweat for someone else to wash.

“Do you have plans on Saturday?” Hakkai asks.

Hanma swings one leg over his motorbike – parked several blocks away from the crime scene – revs the engine. “Why?”

A passing grandmother stares at the incongruous image he makes with his suit and motorcycle. He smiles blandly.

“I wanna try a new restaurant in Chiba. I’ll treat,” Hakkai says.

Frowning, Hanma says, “I’m busy.”

“Oh, okay, cool. Some other time then.”

Technically, Hanma isn’t lying. You and he have a date on Saturday. And it’s long overdue. The bike takes off, leaving the scene of the crime long behind him.

- - -

The sky is a serene blue, almost spotless. Despite the lack of shade, the humidity is manageable, and the sun is low. People flock to the streets to experience a perfect summer day. Maybe that’s why you texted him to move your appointment.

Rather than meet at your stuffy office, you told him to meet you in Fuchū, at the Tokyo Racecourse. It is the offseason, so no major races today, just low-grade horses and the low-grade losers who will bet on anything.

Normally, when he comes to the track, Hanma goes to one of Toman’s reserved boxes. Kisaki loves horses, loves the process of building one into a winner, and has had moderate success. One horse even placed in the Tenno Sho a few years back. The boxes are air conditioned with staff to serve food and party favors or take bets as needed.

You were not waiting in a private box. Hanma found you halfway up the main grandstand, precisely in the center. A spot that affords you the illusion of privacy as the closest patrons sit several rows away.

Directly below the viewstand, is the track. There is a grass course that stretches in an oblong for a mile and a quarter. Then, the slightly shorter dirt track for other races. You can see the finish line and the winner’s circle from your seats. The video screen – the largest not just in Tokyo but in the world – projects a horse stamping calmly toward the starting gates where a host of retainers wait to prep it.

For the last fifteen minutes, you both have been sharing impressions and opinions about Crime and Punishment. Hanma will not admit that the story is fresh in his mind, only finished last night in a feverish sprint to get his homework done before seeing you again. Better you think him a swot than too stupid to read a fucking book.

“Did you relate at all to the reason Raskolnikov killed the pawnbroker?” you ask him.

“Do I relate? I stayed in that sad-sack’s brain for hundreds of pages, and I don’t even know why he did it.”

“Does murder always have a logical motive?”

“Suppose you’re saying it’s for emotional reasons. You really are a shrink.”

Not that you look it today. You dressed for the track in all white, loose-fitting clothes, linen pants and cotton shirt. Something a tourist might wear to the beach. It is the most casual he has ever seen you.

With his eyes, he traces the lines of fabric, how they skate over and obscure your curves. He thinks it might be intentional, a pretense put on that you don’t even have a body. Nothing there for him to lust after. Your mistake as Hanma has a vivid imagination.

“I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer. Some people focus on Raskolnikov’s alienation from society, how miserable the city and his circumstances are. Some people focus on the psychological, on his belief in himself as special. Both are true to me, nature and nurture and all that,” you say.

The hollow at the base of your throat throbs and deepens as you speak. He might thrust his tongue into the little hole it creates, drink the sweat from the chalice of your skin, drift lower until he mouths fabric. Your outfit leaves no openings: shirt tucked into pants, sleeves tight at the wrist, neckline flat. No way to reach your skin without undressing you entirely, without tearing something open with his teeth.

Cold biting anger creeps into his stomach as his imagination encounters this obstacle. So much time and energy spent to deny himself when he should be using those resources to fulfill his desires. Anger at your continued paltry defenses against him.

“Fine then,” he bites out. “Did I relate to the reason? On the surface, sure. Stealing when you need money is as natural as eating when you’re hungry. To be fair, I wouldn’t need to murder some little old lady to get her money – people underestimate how much this is a skilled profession – but also, sure, if I had to kill her, why not? But all that garbage he spouted about Napoleon, about being above the law because you’re such a special boy who’s going to change the world? Bullshit.”

“You never justify your actions on the basis that you’re special?”

“I never bother to justify my actions at all! Why should I?” Hanma retorts. “The worst are those guys that run around talking about the strong versus the weak all the time. You see them a lot. They’re constantly talking about survival of the fittest. They might as well wear a sign: ‘I’m insecure. Please tell me how big and strong I am.’ It’s not about the strong versus the weak. The weakest motherfucker can get the jump on you. It’s just about…about want. Do what you want, what you choose. So long as you’re prepared to live with the consequences – and I mean real consequences, not those phantoms of guilt you see in the book – then the only human thing to do is act.”

You nod, piercing eyes digging into his own. They give so little away while demanding so much from him in return.

His cock twitches. Hanma can’t decide if your eyes will hold that same power when you are on your knees for him.

“Do you believe you’re special at all? Better than other people?” you ask.

“I guess I’m different, and I don’t like other people all that much. But I don’t walk around thinking how great I am all the time either. It doesn’t matter to me if other people think highly or lowly of me. I never wanted to be number one in Toman or Valhalla or school or anything else. I don’t need respect. Don’t believe I’m going to change the world. I don’t have many opinions about myself in general,” Hanma says.

“That’s surprising,” you frown. “It’s fairly uncommon for people diagnosed with ASPD to not also exhibit traits of narcissism.”

“It’s still narcissistic, isn’t it? I don’t care what others think of me. I don’t compare myself to them. Do you think God thinks highly of Himself? Because I doubt He bothers to think about Himself at all.”

“You think you’re like a god?”

An eastward breeze blows through the stands and ruffles your hair. The strands hover above your neck for only a moment before settling, but they don’t return to their previously pristine positions. There is disgust beneath your façade.

“You’re not listening, Doc. I don’t think much of myself in general,” Hanma chastises. “But I wonder if you can say the same. All that work you put into getting your fancy degree, into becoming independent, someone worthy of respect. I bet you think pretty highly of yourself.”

The way you dress, hold your shoulders at right angles, smile pleasantly with hands folded, these are all choices. You are a construction made up of an amalgamation of choices designed to project the right message, to bolster your status, to protect yourself from demons. Nothing is left to chance, to some inherent instinct at the core that is you. How could you not think highly of yourself when you had so purposefully chosen to be this thing you call yourself?

You shake your head vehemently, a strong reaction by your standards. “Not at all. You’ve got me all wrong. I don’t think I’m anything special. I’m boring, uninspiring even.”

“Oh, come on, sweetheart. You know you’re smarter than just about everyone here,” Hanma says, gesturing around to indicate the other patrons.

“What does that have to do with anything?” you say shortly. “I’m smarter than some people. Others are smarter than me.” And now it’s your turn to gesture around, first pointing to where a jockey is walking the track. “The jockeys are more athletic than me, better with animals. You’re stronger than me, better at…whatever it is you do. And, all these people, I bet most of them go home to loved ones at night, that they touch the lives of the people around them. They’ve known love all their lives and take it as a matter of course. But me? I’m a ghost. People see me, but I can never quite touch them. What’s so special about that?”

Boisterous laughter rises above the dull crest of chatter. Hanma identifies it as coming from a group of young men, university-aged but dressed like day laborers, probably coming together on a day off. They are seated not too far from you both, though he only takes real notice of them now.

Glancing around, Hanma eyes the other patrons that he didn’t bother to observe before. On a weekday, most of the track’s clientele are lone gamblers, addicts who chase after escape. On a Saturday, however, there is more companionship, more reminders that human beings are in fact social animals.

There is a father who’s brought his kids – probably a weekday addict with weekend visitation – bribing them with jelly candies to sit quietly through the race. There is a man dressed for a date, earnestly explaining how the betting cards work to a woman dressed for the office. There is a group of old men that take up an entire row, familiar with each other in a way that suggests decades of shared friendship, surviving marriage, divorce, children, hospitalization, and all the other vagaries of life. No matter how he tries, Hanma cannot picture you joining any one of these groups anymore than he can picture himself.

In short, you and Hanma are surrounded by lives that intertwine and touch each other, while your own lives stretch on in unmeeting parallel.

“I know what you mean,” Hanma says, and he intends it kindly. Neither of you feel quite of this bustling, happy world. It makes Hanma forget he half despises you. “You know, Hakkai asked me to get dinner with him recently.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, he does that sometimes. It’s not work related. Sometimes he just asks me to…hang out, I guess.”

“He enjoys your company. I remember how he spoke about you in our interviews,” you say.

“Yeah, but…I don’t know…it’s weird,” Hanma says finally.

“Why?”

As a child, Hanma spent most days in the company of kids his age, but only because the games and entertainment available to children so often required a group. With every passing year, he grew more independent, more reclusive. He liked having people around for fights, then for fucking, or to serve as an audience, the reasons were endless; but there was no need to form bonds with people to achieve those things. Today, if Hanma wants an audience or entertainment, he merely walks into a new bar and the audience casts itself with whoever’s there. The players are interchangeable.

Except.

“Hakkai’s not the first person to want to hang out with me just because, but he’s the first person that…I suppose I could almost…maybe see myself saying yes,” Hanma admits.

Something slimy slips through his guts. Immediate revulsion. Here he is making a confession of unearthed truths, and he didn’t even barter something of equal value from you in exchange. When did he relax around you enough to misstep so needlessly?

“Try it,” you recommend. The cool tone of your voice only exacerbates his growing fury. “Something new is worth exploring, right? At the very least it will be novel. Treat it like an experiment and take him up on the offer.”

Hanma crosses his arms because if he doesn’t, he is going to touch you. Whether that touch will make you cry with pain or pleasure he doesn’t know. No mistakes. He promised Kisaki.

“He only wants to get dinner or drinks or see a movie. I’ve done all that before, Doc.”

“But you’ve never done it with him.”

“So?”

“Doing something for the first time with a new person can change it completely,” you say.

“Ya know, Doc, this sounds an awful lot like more homework,” Hanma says, sly.

A slight dampening of his palms in excitement. Such restraint he showed in waiting to bridge this topic, in letting you relax into your false security as authority and professional. How kindly he allowed you to pretend you aren’t a dripping little slut beneath it all. You don’t show half so much restraint with him as you carelessly prod his buttons, and it’s time he tears yours off completely.

“Tell me,” Hanma purrs. “Were you a good girl this week? Did you do your homework and pet that pretty pussy for me?”

Your eyelashes graze the soft curve of your cheek as your eyes flutter closed. More defensive posturing, now your eyes can’t give you away.

Two points swell against the fabric of your shirt, nipples hard enough to show through your bra. They draw Hanma’s eyes like savory targets, sweet little gum drops for him to chew and suck.

It’s time for you to pony up.

“That’s now how this works between us, and you know it,” you say.

The loudspeakers blare as the start of the race grows near. Hanma didn’t think to place a bet before, and now he regrets it. The way things ‘work between you.’ It’s boring how you insist on repeating yourself, insist on making him repeat himself.

He opens his mouth to snarl at you, almost certain it will be a sincere threat for once, but you speak before he can.

“We’ll bet on it, same as we always do. You win, and I’ll tell you in detail. If I win, you agree to try a mood stabilizer for the next three months. It should soften the swing you experience between depression and mania. This isn’t an official diagnosis per se, but you meet the criteria for bipolar disorder, and I want to see how Lithium impacts your daily experience,” you say.

“Trying to turn me into a vegetable, Doc?”

“No, we’ll monitor closely for side effects. Acute fogginess or mood swings, and we’ll lower the dosage or remove you entirely. You’ll need regular lab work as well. None of which I’ll conduct. I don’t want to diminish you, Hanma. But I do want to give you the tools to lead a better life. I’ve done the research and patients with a diagnosis of ASPD and bipolar depression often benefit from mood stabilizers. I think this could really help you stave off the worst of the boredom and help you manage your impulsivity when you can’t.”

As Hanma considers your suggestion, he stares out at the track. The horses are corralled at the starting gate, blinders around their eyes to soothe their anxiety. Skittish creatures horses, starting at the smallest disruption and requiring protection from the caprices of the world.

He will not be the blind horse. He will not dull his senses and hide from his own interiority because the reality is too frightening, too stimulating.

Though, doesn’t he do just that by his own volition already? Every time he takes a bump or drowns himself in liquor or pussy, isn’t he doing his best to escape a world that doesn’t hold anything for him? If he were to view it as just another pill…

You are an object of fixation for Hanma, not meant to be a person worthy of real judgment or feeling. He shouldn’t care enough to hate you, but in that moment he does.

He despises you. Despises the way you analyze and ascribe meaning to everything he does. Despises the way you confront his passive existence and reveal it as something cold and wanting. Despises that you pretend that there is an alternative out there for him to feeling this way.

“I win and you answer in detail,” Hanma says, each word slow and deliberate. “And you give me your underwear.”

The fingers on your left-hand flex, a little tell, but then they unwind. “That seems fair given how big my prize is if I win.”

After all this time, you still keep him on his toes. He can never predict when you’re going to fight him and when you’re going to submit so perfectly. Your lingerie has also kept him guessing. Not obsessively. But vaguely, between other thoughts, he would wonder what you preferred under your work uniform. Were you the utilitarian, comfortable type? Did you prefer soft silky fabrics or revel in the naughty secret of lace, the thought of which taunted your patients and kept them up at night?

Somehow, he has become no better than the sex pests that frequent your office, clamoring for just a peak at your panties.

He really fucking despises you.

- - -

The stands are quiet now, chatter dying out as the time for the starting bell approaches. Hope is so often silent. It’s dread that deafens you with the noise, so it’s no wonder that your ears are ringing.

The bet is simple. You divide all the horses in the race between you. Whoever chooses the winner onto their roster wins.

Hanma accepts your terms without an argument, though you fear you spot a hint of malice in his eyes. A glint of gold that menaces you.

Prior to this week, you knew nothing about horse racing, but you prepared for this session, reviewing the history of every horse in the race and reading blogs to determine your best angle to victory. Hanma shows less circumspection in his draft, choosing mostly based on name. You almost chuckle when he picks a horse with terrible odds named Smooth Criminal. Typical.

From the stands, the horses appear tiny. The jumbo screen somehow equally fails to capture the size of the beasts and how they tower over the diminutive men that ride them. You saw a horse up close only once on a middle school field trip to a farm, and you remember your dreams of sweet ponies crashing down around you at their sheer scope.

Unlike the sturdy, passive farm horses you once saw, the racehorses are agitated. Preening primadonnas that stomp their hooves and crane their necks toward the crowd, as if they know all eyes are on them in the breathless moments before the race begins.

You fold your hands before your chin. It doesn’t matter now if Hanma can see your nerves. Of course, you’re nervous. You spent the better part of a week debating the best strategy to convince him to try lithium after spending the better part of two weeks consulting with experts about its likely efficacy for Hanma’s case. Your entire treatment strategy rides on the results of this bet.

Not to mention, you are pretty attached to your panties.

The moment before the race begins meanders, as if your nerves have frozen time, as if the few seconds have somehow gotten lost, but then they are off.

It amazes you how much anticipation is built for such a short race. The first furlong is finished in twelve seconds. Two horses draw slightly ahead of the pack. Both – Mezuki and Hiro’s Hero – belong to your team. Smooth Criminal trails not far behind in third place. The gap between the rest of the pack is small but substantial.

The horses thunder around the first turn, tilting precariously. It looks like the jockeys might slide off and be trampled underfoot.

You glance at Hanma. Repeatedly, he fiddles with his glasses, like he might zoom in for an even closer look at the action. His eyes are gleaming. Like, when he raced his car through town two weeks ago, though you could barely bear to open your eyes to look at him then. It is the same manic glee, life returned to a man who walks through the world like a zombie. The only other time you can remember him looking half so alive is when…

Muzzles bent low, the horses focus singularly on the track as it speeds by. Beneath their hooves, it looks like a treadmill cranked up to the highest level, like no animal should be able to move that quickly without the ground assisting underfoot.

Around the fourth furlong, Mezuki loses steam, slowing so that four horses can careen past him. Places three through eight swap constantly as the jockeys lay into their horses’ sides, and they release their last reserves of energy, but Hiro’s Hero remains stubbornly in first place with Smooth Criminal trailing him.

The horses round the last corner, drawing clearly into the crowd’s line of sight. Everyone forgets the jumbo screen with its artificial pixels to focus on the real thing happening before them.

So close to the finish line, and now Smooth Criminal gains a second wind. He gallops tight to the rails, reduces the gap with each bound. The jockey bounces wildly on the horse’s back as he all but flies forward. A hair’s breadth from overtaking Hiro’s Hero.

The excitement from earlier twists into anxiety. You are going to lose after all your thought and research. And then, you are going to burn from the inside out as you tell Hanma in detail just how often you dipped your fingers into your pussy this week, just how impossibly he haunted your fantasies, how tremendously the first orgasm shattered you and your tremulous grasp on ethics. All while you squirm in discomfort, your panties in his pocket.

You can’t. You can’t. You can’t.

Wildly, your hand seizes Hanma’s. Anything to anchor yourself. Cold rings bite into your fingers, and you retaliate by digging your neatly trimmed nails into his flesh. You both sit so close to victory or loss. He squeezes your hand.

And then…

The race is over. Hiro’s Hero crosses the finish line 0.7 seconds before Smooth Criminal comes in second place.

After that, all the other horses thunder past in a matter of seconds. The stadium is loud as people celebrate or bemoan their bad fortune. There will be another race in fifteen minutes, and all the hubbub will repeat itself, but for now, the event is over.

You breathe heavy. Your heart palpitates, not having gotten the message that you won. The deed is done, and you are victorious. Laughter sticks in your throat, no deeper, stuck in your soul. You pat the back of your neck and collarbones with a handkerchief. The residue of sweat isn’t removed so easily.

Only then do you realize you are still gripping Hanma’s hand and release him.

He is aglow with the same exhilaration. Despite his loss, his mouth is cut into a crooked line that you believe is his true smile, not the shark-like one with all teeth that he uses to intimidate.

This is why you chose to take Hanma to the track. While you admit that you are spiraling now, drawn into Hanma’s web and making terrible choices, there is professional justification for this at least. You determined that he needs to develop a roster of high adrenaline and high reward activities. Then, you can work on replacing his impulses, so that when he’s in the depths of depression, he chooses to bet on the horses rather than take it out on his fellow man. You should also work on lessening the intensity of his mania, not just its outlet.

But you must admit that in the depths of his mania you find Hanma the most beautiful.

The two of you stay for another hour. Hanma helps you place more bets – this time for money – on a number of horses, and you win a few thousand yen, enough for tomorrow’s lunch. Between races, you discuss the dosage, impact, and potential negative side-effects of lithium. Hanma listens to you carefully and without resistance; he lost after all. He is not pleased when you inform him that he will need to reduce and ideally cut out drinking and drugs altogether but does not argue.

While you discuss his treatment, he almost feels like a typical patient, albeit one you’ve met at a horse track. You start to relax into the role within which you spend almost all your time. You feel confident.

The day is still young when you exit the racecourse. Flimsy white clouds layer on top of one another like brushstrokes to block out the sun and paint the day in muted blue tones.

There is no reason not to take the subway home. In fact, it would likely be faster. Still, when Hanma offers you a ride, you accept gratefully. You wish to share a few more ideas about his treatment.

The Bentley from your hellish drag race is gone, and you are reminded at its absence that you vowed that day to never get in a car with this man again. Today, however, he is not planning to get behind the wheel. A sleek black town car pulls up to curb, complete with a driver.

You have never been in a car like this one. The back is partitioned for privacy and there are two rows of seats facing each other, almost like the car is a shrunken limo. You nestle contentedly onto one side as Hanma stretches out on the other. The space is cramped, and your knees knock together.

“I know you’re going to make fun of me for giving you more homework, but I would like you to do one more thing. This one’s critically important, actually. Start documenting how you feel on a scale of one to ten. I have a phone app you can use. If you could log it three times a day at least, but ideally, whenever you feel your mood shifting. Whenever you fall below a four, add a few notes about what is running through your mind. We want to start identifying what your thought patterns look like so that we can replace them with something more productive.”

You show him the app on your phone, and he obediently downloads and creates an account. He even agrees to friend you, so that you can check his log in real time.

“Sometimes people struggle with the number scale because they question their instincts about what number they should choose. So, why don’t we do a test round? Hanma-san, what number would you give yourself right now in terms of mood with ten being the best and one the worst?”

Hanma doesn’t take more than a second to answer. “A two.”

A little puff of air escapes you like a burst balloon. You were having fun, you realize. You were having fun and therefore assumed Hanma was as well.

“Only a two?”

“Of course, I’m in a foul mood,” Hanma confirms. His arms stretch out across the seat, taking up his entire side of the car like some enormous bird of prey. “You’re a fucking tease, aren’t you? Getting my hopes up and then crushing them. Didn’t even give me a sniff of your panties to give me a reason to live. Fucking soulless of you.”

Sometimes, when Hanma flirts with you, your insides squirm and dance with pleasure at the attention. Your pancreas becomes the giggling schoolgirl you never were in your youth, your liver a blushing bride, your kidneys twin whores for the sound of his voice. But now there is the threat of meanness behind his words, and you find little reason to delight.

“I’m sorry that you lost our bet, Hanma-san,” you get out through a tight throat. “If you’re struggling with losing, maybe we should play another game. Is there…is there another game you’d like to play?”

Wildly inappropriate, but you vow that you will not bet your underwear or details about how you touched yourself to the thought of him, regardless of what he suggests next. You’ll let him win something to assuage his ego. That’s all.

Hanma smiles, feral and far too happy, and then he does something that drains all the color from the lovely day you were having. Something that leaves you wondering how you could ever have been stupid enough to get in a car with this man.

He pulls out a gun.

“Actually, Doc, I know just the game,” Hanma singsongs. “One round of Russian Roulette for the lady!”

You have only seen a gun once in your life, and that was a smoking gun, just shot into a man’s skull by the very man before you. It may even be the same weapon, though he probably replaced it. How did they even get guns into the country? A stupid question. Your brain is simply spiraling. Anything to avoid confronting the weapon before you. To avoid cataloguing its details, like that it looks like a plastic toy, not the shiny metal you imagined at all. It has a long, straight nozzle – is that even the right term for it? – resembling a stapler that tapers into a fat handle. Your eyes train on the trigger, unable to look away.

There’s supposed to be a safety, right? To stop it from just firing? Was it on now? What did a safety even look like.

The car jolts over a pothole, and you almost vomit.

Hanma opens the chamber, dumping the bullets out before reloading just two. Two death sentences and ten possible pardons.

“You look like you aren’t familiar with the rules, Doc. No need to worry. It’s easy,” Hanma says. “Look, I’ll even go first.”

Before you can summon the strength to stop him, to protest, the gun rises to Hanma’s temple, the little nozzle slotting right into the flesh, and he pulls the trigger.

You don’t hear the click as the gun engages. The sound is drowned out by your strangled little gasp. An image of Hanma but not Hanma blurs before your vision. It is an un-head, a space where a head should be, blood and gore and shattered bone fragments unlike anything you’ve ever imagined.

And then, you’re blinking rapidly, and the image is gone, and it is a smiling Hanma before you. His skull is firmly intact, his handsome face unblemished.

It is not the face of a man but a demon. Only a demon could laugh so maliciously as you slump bloodless against your headrest. You fixate on the cold – the car is frigid, air-conditioning pelting against your numbed legs – anything to protect your fragile psyche from the reality of the demon in front of you.

“You know, this is the twelfth time I’ve played this game. I should be dead now. Maybe next time,” Hanma says.

You stay stubbornly silent. He can playact this little drama all by himself, you won’t give him the satisfaction. Not that you can stop him as he drinks up every quiver of your body with glee. Not that you could speak if you tried through a mouth made of sandpaper.

Hanma extends the gun toward you, but you don’t move.

Sighing, he kneels in front of you on the floor of the car. It rocks as he moves, and you worry again that the gun could misfire.

“Do you need some help, baby? I’ve got you.”

Strange, but you don’t resist as Hanma puts the gun in your hand. You don’t resist as he folds your fingers around the handle and then the trigger. You don’t resist as he draws the gun and hand alike up to your own temple, positioning it for a clean shot.

And, you don’t resist as he presses his finger against yours and the gun fires.

Nothing happens. A great stirring stillness. You didn’t even scream.

You could have died. You almost died.

The realization is building up with the promise of earth-shattering destruction. Had you died, your last thought would have been of nothing, brain too numbed for regrets or memories. No, or rather, you had no memories worth remembering. Your life was a vast desert with only loneliness and missed opportunity to keep you company. You might have died without ever having lied.

You could have died.

Time must have passed while your brain sat on pause because you suddenly become aware of your surroundings. You are now spread across Hanma’s lap, the man almost purring as he strokes your hair in a mockery of comfort.

You know you must be alive because the anger that courses through your veins is too powerful for a dead woman. You slap him with all your strength – not because you want to spare him the pain of a punch but because you can’t wait the half-second it would take to form a fist. No, instead, you are striking him everywhere with an open palm. Twice heavily on his chest, so that he jostles a little against his seat. But you crave skin, so you slap him across the face again and again as the rage possesses you.

“Get it all out, baby,” Hanma murmurs quietly.

He sounds unaffected, like all this means nothing! The answering anger drives you to twist about on his lap, so that your thighs straddle him. Now, you can draw back and put more forth behind your blows. Bright red blooms on his cheek at your next hit.

“Oh, yeah, do that again,” Hanma moans.

You do. Again and again. A little harder each time as Hanma makes little noises and writhes beneath you. Somewhere in your consciousness, you are aware of the way his hips buck a little at each hit, and how they strike like a bullet between your parted legs, but you can only consider where you will hit him next, how to make him hurt.

The next slap is aimed higher, lower on the palm as you target his glasses. You want to shatter them in his eyes, blind him forever. He doesn’t deserve to even look at you. The force knocks them askew, though they remain unbroken.

Completely disheveled with hair tangled in every direction, bright red cheeks, and glasses dangling off his nose, Hanma decides he’s had enough. The next slap is stopped by his much larger hand capturing your wrist. You immediately default to the other, but he stops that one as well. Your hands are effectively disarmed. You struggle wildly, thrashing from side to side and bucking your hips to unseat him, but Hanma weathers it all. He isn’t laughing anymore, but he doesn’t look angry either, at least not as you now understand anger to be a seething beast that can’t be stopped. No, he looks alight with something else.

Hanma can pin you down all he likes, your anger still demands to be fed. It will have blood.

You throw your whole torso forward, heads knocking clumsily. Your teeth find his lower lip easily, a tender piece of meat beneath your front teeth. They close tight around it.

Iron floods your mouth and spills over both your lips. Hanma’s mouth is parted as he grunts loudly, and the noise is swallowed up by your own mouth.

Hanma releases your pinned hands but makes no effort to dislodge you. Instead, they firmly grip your ass, pull you closer into his lap. You tug cruelly at his bleeding lip, and he kneads your flesh in return.

The beast of your anger howls in triumph at every pained breath that escapes Hanma’s lips, and as it sates itself on Hanma’s blood, more feeling returns to you. For example, you acknowledge fully how large and powerful the hands on your ass are, how much territory they cover with spread fingers. Then, there’s the way his hard thigh drives into the core of you, sinful as only a demon could be. And, the hard hot length of him is there, too, pressing into your stomach.

You don’t only hunger for his blood.

Hanma spanks your ass with both hands, hard enough that you release his lip on a shallow gasp. Free for a moment, he rips at your clothes. You instinctively lift your hips to help him, step out of your pants and panties as they slide off, and scramble at the buttons of your shirt so that it slips off your shoulders. You work together to make quick work of his belt.

Helpfully, you arch upwards as Hanma busies himself beneath you. The head of his cock smears across your cunt. It collects wetness you hadn’t realized pooled between your legs, cuts a path through the heat of you.

He is utterly focused on the feel of you, on the feel of his own cock, staring down in concentration. You are more focused on his face. Chin and mouth are covered in blood. The wound is still oozing from how deeply you bit him.

The rigid cock between your legs finds the opening of you and spears through. You aren’t prepped, and it hurts. Despite the inflexible ring of muscle fighting against him, Hanma makes it fit anyway.

The sting is sharp. You lean forward and take the other side of his lower lip between your teeth. It breaks beneath your bite just as easily, leaving him with a second wound like a set of piercings on either side. Hanma hisses at the pain, and you both hover still and pierced by the other.

When the pain in your belly lessens, you relax, and gravity does its job of sinking you lower on his cock. It is large just like everything else on this giant of a man. It doesn’t just not hurt. It feels good.

A shiver starts in your toes and vibrates up your entire body. Ringing pleasure in your nipples. Soothing comfort from the hands that again knead your ass.

You part from his mouth to lift your hips. Deliberately, you ride him in a slow grind that scrapes your clit along his navel and pushes his cock against your back walls.

He touches a place so deep inside you it feels like a secret just discovered.

“That’s it. Use it, baby. Use it however you like,” Hanma moans out.

You accept his offer. You gratefully grip his shoulders to support your slick grind in his lap. He doesn’t try to lead you at all, doesn’t try to encourage you to bounce on his cock. Let’s you shift back and forth until your stomach is squirming and your eyes are watering.

“Use that cock to cum,” Hanma encourages. His helpful hands are wandering now. They squeeze a tit dangling out of your open shirt, tickle your upper thighs, and caress your sensitive sides. “Cream all over me, baby.”

The walls of your pussy clench tight, shutting Hanma up, or at least, transforming his words into stuttering groans. The last thing you need right now is him telling you what to do. No, you’ll cum when you’re ready.

You’ll just sink your weight down fully, so that he spears that heavenly deep spot inside you and circle your hips a few times so that no part goes untouched, raise your hips on each upward grind, so that your clit is rubbed raw, and then…only then…

You cum.

You cum and it is annihilation and it is rebirth in one. Your hips twitch and your muscles tighten around a burst of pleasure that is almost agonizing in its strength. Tears spring to your eyes. You are cumming, and it feels a little bit like heaven might, only it isn’t heaven at all, because this is living. You are alive. There is blood coursing through your veins and nerves lighting up throughout your body because you are alive. And you will live to cum again, and again, and again, whether that be by tongue or cock or your own hand. And you are so unbelievably grateful for it.

Limp like a doll, you slump into Hanma’s arms. His cock is the first anchor, holding firm inside you, and his shoulder the second as you tuck your chin into the crook of him. Spasmodic flinches of pleasure dance through your pussy even as the orgasm ends. Your body is so worked up, and your brain is so very very tired. It is a fog, not so different than how you felt when Hanma pulled the trigger. You hum in contentment.

Hanma lifts your hips up, so strong you don’t fear he’ll drop you for a second and begins to thrust up into the slick of you. Warm, wet breath tickles your ear as Hanma pants through his thrusting. Now that it’s his turn, he uses you hard and fast. Each thrust is a punch that forces the air from your lungs. In other circumstances, it might hurt, but now you just sink into the weight of him inside you, and how that means you are wonderfully and truly alive.

To be stretched and used so thoroughly! To be touched by another person, greedy hands roaming your back, pinching and prodding at soft flesh!

Hanma grunts out what a good girl you are, how well you’re taking him, how hot you feel. It is a kind of lullaby.

A lullaby so soothing that as Hanma loses himself inside you, hot ropes of cum making their home in your body, you have already drifted off to sleep.

[thenovelartist]

ABC Fluff Headcanons - Vyn Richter - Tears of Themis

A = Admiration (what do they absolutely adore about you?)

If this was a fairytale, it would be Beauty and the Beast. Except he was simply the Beast and you were his magic rose he got to watch bloom. But instead of watching you under glass, he preferred it to be removed, even if it shredded your innocence in the process, but oh, watching you grow anyways, both blooming beautifully while growing fierce thorns to warn anyone before they touch, just to spite the adversity you were faced with was his truest pleasure. Your fortitude; that was what he truly admired about you.

B = Body (what is their favorite part of your body?)

You’d think it’s your eyes, being the windows to the soul and all. But you’d be wrong; it’s your hands. Specifically, your tender touch. It’s gentle, warm, and safe. Being able to hold your hand feels intimate for him, and he actually enjoys when you tap his arm to get his attention, then let your hand linger when he gives it. It’s like a reward and a comfort all in one.

C = Cuddling (how do they like to cuddle?)

He does enjoy a good cuddle, but hugging you from behind might be his favorite. Whether sitting together on the couch with you on his lap or spooning you in bed, he likes when he can nuzzle the side of your head or rest his chin on your shoulder.

D = Dates (what does their ideal date with you look like?)

He will have planned this to a T because he’s not much for spontaneity. And it would involve a walk together, flowers, and he will either have made you a dessert or the two of you will make something together. It’s something quiet and intimate for you to enjoy time together, talking about anything and nothing while the date is riddled with affectionate touches and some kisses.

E = Emotions (how do they express emotion around you?)

Good grief, this man’s emotions are… complicated. He’s very logical, but he’s not ignorant to his emotions. It doesn’t seem like it, but he frequently tempers them, only to bring them up again in full when he records his diary so that he’s able to manage them.

But you have ruined him. His carefully kept emotional balance has been thrown to the wind. You make him feel intensely and strongly, to the point it almost trumps his logic, which makes him uncomfortable. His diaries have been getting longer as his inner turmoil increases, and that’s all your fault. It’s something you notice, too, watching his even temperament waver more and more frequently around you as the emotion inside him wars with his rationality. You will have to give this man time. Time to open up and be honest with himself, and you, about his emotions. Be prepared to validate his emotions in his moments of weakness. It’s the only way he’ll get better about honestly expressing them to you.

F = Family (do they want one? If they do, when?)

He wouldn’t be opposed to staying childless. He also wouldn’t be opposed to having a child, and you could probably talk him into two if the first goes well. Little humans would be fascinating studies, after all. (“Dear, do not psycho-analyze the children.”)

G = Gifts (how do they feel about gift giving? What are their habits when it comes to this?)

He does not care for trinkets. Nor does he care about giving you them. Gifts should be practical.

At least… that’s what he likes to think. His one exception to this is when he gives you something to wear. It’s his way of marking you and wearing it will spark a possessive streak in him.

H = Holding Hands (when/how do they like to hold hands?)

He likes—no, needs to be either touching or holding your hand in quiet, private moments. And he wants to hold your hand when he’s jealous. Especially when he’s jealous. And you know when he is because he holds tight as though reminding you that you’re his while also sending passive-aggressive signals to the cause of his jealousy. When you’re just out walking, he will sometimes hold your hand, but he also likes when you loop your hands over his elbow and he can escort you like a proper gentleman. (It also causes you to pull yourself in close to him, so he actually quite enjoys when you do that.)

I = Injury (how would they act if you got hurt?)

Depends. Minor cuts or burns are treated with care and, occasionally, a kiss. Get into an accident, and he gets shockingly worried about you. However, if you end up hurt because of a reason to do with NXX, he’ll be sick with emotions. Guilt, fear, anger; all of them brew for a deadly concoction. He will not rest, even to the point of abusing his own body, until he finds the person who hurt you and sees to it they are paying dearly for their crime.

J = Jokes (do they like to joke around with or prank you? how?)

He doesn’t always joke around, but when he does… this man is a wicked tease. Don’t expect to get off the hook easily. You better learn how to tease back, or he’ll use words and puzzles to twist you exactly where he wants you, which normally is you as a blushing, stuttering mess.

K = Kisses (how do they like to kiss you?)

Sweet kisses off-the-cuff are quite nice, and so are the passionate ones, but the ones he likes best are the slow, lingering ones that take place hidden away in your own world. They convey so much with no words. There’s no frantic holding or clinginess. Rather, it feels like a moment of security, coming together and staying. He likes the comfort they provide him and the way they actually settle his heart.

L = Love Confession (how do they confess?)

He actually was super nervous to confess. He’ll have practiced and planned this confession before it happens. Which you never would have guessed because it was in such a smooth conversation during one of your outings that he admitted he held feelings of a romantic nature for you.

M = Marriage (What does the wedding look like?)

He wants it small, intimate, and preferably outdoors in a garden. He wants it nice but not overly fancy. He won’t fuss over the smaller details. Besides, he doesn’t realize it yet, but he will barely remember anything beyond how utterly stunning you look in your wedding dress, anyway.

N = Nightmare (what is their worst fear?)

He hates being a failure, but if he’s everput in a position where he fails you, he will never forgive himself.

O = Oddity (what is one quirk they have?)

This man has literal decks of cards of only one kind of card. You want a 52 card deck with all ace of hearts? He has that. Ten of spades? He has that too. Four of clubs? Yup. You don’t know why he has them, and he won’t tell you, but you think it’s literally just because he’s highly amused the way you wrack your brain over it.

P = Pet Names (what do they like to call you?)

He’s classic. Love, Dear, Darling, Sweetheart. But he’s half-German (At least, that is my best speculation considering he was called “Vilhelm” and is canonly mixed-race), so “Liebling” is also an endearment he calls you, and my guess is he saves that one strictly for the sweetest, most tender moments you share.

Q = Quality Time (how do they like to spend time with you?)

Calm setting, electronics put away, and preferably some form of physical contact with you. This could be working together in the garden, side by side, or going out to walk around town together, but those are not his favorite. Baking with you is one of his top ones, though. Expect him to tap some sort of batter or frosting on your nose. His other favorite is lounging together on the couch, your back leaning against his chest, and just talking. Communication is important to any relationship, and he finds it a joy to communicate with you.

R = Romance (how do they show their love and affection?)

He’s the kind that shows his affection by giving you his time and attention. He’ll show it in the little touches exchanged back and forth and in the way he’s attentive to your well-being, particularly your mental well-being.

He’ll also show he loves you by playing mind games on you until you’re a blushy, stuttering mess. He’s usually forgiven with a kiss and “I love you”. You know you’re too soft on him, but whattcha gonna do?

S = Secrets (how open are they with you?)

He is an onion you have to peel back layer by layer to get to open up to you. And like an onion, there’s likely going to be some tears shed as you do that. Time will determine how many secrets he’s willing to share with you, and it’s likely going to take years for him to fully open up to you. But keep at it. You will be rewarded with his innermost thoughts and feelings and the discovery of how insecure this seemingly unflappable man is.

T = Time (how long did it take you to get together?)

This man doesn’t believe in love at first sight, but falling hard and fast for you? That he did. One of his biggest hurdles he had to get over was logically evaluating his feelings and what he thought your feelings for him were as well as coming to terms with the way he’s been treated in past relationships (And not just romantic ones. He has an… interesting way of creating carefully crafted ties to people.) So it might take a little time for him to get comfortable enough to ask you out. And throughout the relationship, he’ll probably still be working with his past demons, so be prepared for that.

U = Upset (how do they act when you’re upset?)

He’ll comfort you the best way he can if you’re a sad upset. A mad upset, and he’ll probably give you a little space to work yourself out while offering his guidance. And upset at him? This is where a good chunk of your arguments happen, to be honest. So then you both have to calm down before coming together again and talking it out. But you always do and are stronger for it.

V = Vaunt (what are they proud of? Do they like to show you off?)

He’ll never admit it, but he loveswhen he can leave you impressed. It thrills him if he can show off a trick or his general intelligence and have you praise him for it. Occasionally, he’ll search for ways to impress you just because he wants that attention. But never will he admit it.

W = Warrior (how do they feel about you fighting? Would they fight for you, beside you, etc?)

Well…he’s all okay with fighting as long as it’s not physical fighting. If you’re going to verbally spar with someone, he’s more than happy to let you go, and he takes pride in the fact you usually wipe the floor with your opponent. But the moment it’s going to turn into a physical altercation, he’s your shield. Part of him thinks that in times he is unfortunately not around, it might be good to have some self-defense under your belt, but at the same time, he’d rather you just flee instead of fight. Because he knows you well enough that if you had the ability, you’d probably knock someone’s lights out if they came at you.

X = X-Ray (how well are they able to read you?)

He’s a psychologist; he can already read you well. But on top of that, you are his favorite study, and he will catalogue everything he learns about you away to pull out for future reference. So while he already reads you well early on into your relationship, give it a few years and you have basically no secrets from this man.

Y = Yes (how would they propose to you?)

He will never forget the “surprise over romance” opinion on proposals you shared with him. So, determined to give you the best, he sets up an elaborate puzzle for you, getting all the important people in your life to get in on it. Together, the two of you will trapeze the town hunting down little clues—in places, that you only realize later, hold significance to both of you—before he’ll “conveniently” take his leave so you can finish out the last leg, which ultimately ends up leading you to his office, the place you first met. And there he is, sitting behind a house of cards sits made solely from the Ace of Hearts with a ring in the middle of the top tier which was made from two different cards: the king and queen. Only once you realize that and he revels in your joy and tears will he properly get on one knee and ask you to marry him.

Z = Zen (what makes them feel calm?)

When everything is “right” in his world. His patients are doing well, he’s got no massive cases on his plate, nothing requires his immediate attention, and you are close by, doing well in your own right.

[robertreich]

Remembering my date with Hillary

Last Tuesday, during a Guardian Live interview, Hillary Clinton said the United States remained in a "real battle for our democracy" against pro-Trump forces on the far right who are seeking to entrench minority rule and turn back the clock on women's rights. 

"I do believe we are in a struggle for the future of our country,” she said, adding that "the January 6 insurrection at our capitol was a terrorist attack."

Her words reminded me of the warning she issued back in September 2016 — that Trump had “lifted up” and “given voice” to the “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic” parts of America. He had legitimized them, she said, with his “offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric,” and she noted that “their websites that used to only have 11,000 people, now have 11 million.”

She was widely criticized at the time for demeaning Trump supporters. I suppose calling them “deplorables” wasn’t the best way to earn their affection and votes.

But her overall concern was exactly right. She still views America’s central challenge as a battle over hate and intolerance, and she’s still right.

I first met Hillary Clinton in the fall of 1966 when she was a college sophomore named Hillary Rodham. (Five years later I introduced her to Bill, but that’s another story.) She had long hair and thick glasses, and an infectious laugh. She was president of her class and I was president of mine. We were both interested in reforming American education. I invited her out — not so much for a date as a kind of presidential summit. We went to the Nugget Theater in Hanover, New Hampshire, to watch Antonioni’s film “Blow Up.” That’s all I remember.

Fifty years later, when she ran for president, a reporter from the New York Times phoned me. He had come across some of her letters from college. In one of them she mentioned our “date.”

His voice grew serious. “Is there anything you can remember from your date with her that might shed light on how she would perform as President?”

I didn’t know how to respond. This was the New York Times, for crying out loud.

I told him we had gone to see Antonioni’s “Blow Up.”

“Anything else?” he asked.

I paused. “I probably shouldn’t be saying this...”

“What’s that?” I could hear the eagerness in his voice.

“She wanted an inordinate amount of butter on her popcorn.”

There was a long silence.

“Hello?” I asked, fearing my lame attempt at humor had put him off.

“Still here,” he said. “Just writing all this down.”

[askaceattorney]

These are letters regarding the situation that recently transpired. After this, we will no longer be answering any letters regarding politics. All of us agree that this blog needs to strictly stay out of politics. In truth, politics should never have been the center of this blog. After this, any letter regarding politics or the situation will be deleted.

This is a blog that focuses on answering letters to Ace Attorney canon characters. It does not discriminate anyone or any mod based on race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, politics, etc. and such actions are not tolerated. If you believe one of our mods is discriminating for whatever reason, show solid evidence and we will handle this privately. A support for a former or current president of a country is not proof of discrimination and neither are political memes posted on a personal account.

(More Politics Ahead)

Dear rogertheegg,

Co-Mod: Nope. Everyone’s welcome here, regardless of political leanings.  I’m afraid I’m as clueless as you are about what exactly happened with the two former Mods (they didn’t even say anything to me about it), but it’s all water under the bridge as far as I’m concerned.

Mod Edgeworth: Absolutely not! I have never tolerated political discrimination. You are allowed to believe whatever politics you want.

Dear kunaiman,

Co-Mod: High five.

Mod Edgeworth: Thank you very much for your support.

Dear Mistakes,

Mod Edgeworth: I’m not going to go into anything else regarding my politics, but I will state my reason for outing myself: I’m doing this for Co-Mod.  I do consider him a friend of sorts and I do not wish for him to have to suffer this blowback alone. So, if you want to state your grievances, go ahead.

Know this though, I am still the same mod you have met and have never hidden my character from any of you. My politics do not define my character and neither does Co-Mod’s politics define his character. The same goes for anyone else. I’m just someone that leans Conservative and voted for Trump. If that makes me a bad person, even if I do stand against any discrimination, then I will gladly accept it.

Co-Mod: So, here’s the truth about me, Donald Trump, the MAGA Committee, etc. (and this is from the horse’s mouth, so anyone who says otherwise is lying) -- I’ve never been a huge fan of the guy, but I supported the good things he did and wanted to do during his presidency -- creating jobs, draining the political swamp, promoting patriotism, and so on -- and for that, I feel no shame.  I also wished he could’ve kept his big mouth shut about a lot of things, but overall, I saw him as someone who stood up for people who’d been largely ignored before he came along -- namely, middle class Americans. If you see him and his presidency differently, I won’t hold anything against you for it, so I respectfully ask that you do the same for me.

Dear Anonymous,

Mod Edgeworth: Don’t worry, I know who you are. You maybe under anonymous, but when we receive your letter, it isn’t anonymous lol. What we do is place your letter in photoshop and get rid of all your identity. Thank you for your support and I agree.

This blog will continue, even if it’s under a very few of us. I will allow everyone to display their grievances in the comment section. They have just as much right as Co-Mod and I do.

If there’s anyone I wish for you to support, it’s Co-Mod. He’s the one being the most effected by all of this. I don’t believe politics should have been involved or that we should have to justify why we believe in our politics. Neither have to do with our love for Ace Attorney.

Dear I’m still surprised,

Mod Edgeworth: I’m guessing this is for Co-Mod, because it doesn’t seem like you’ve read my own defense. I literally stated that both Co-Mod and I support LGBT and that the letters deleted because of shipping had nothing to do with any political beliefs. Beyond what I stated in my defense (despite what Co-Mod states below), I won’t say anything more. Non of us have to justify why we support a former president. I have my reasons just like anyone else. It doesn’t make me a terrible person and I will forever stand for everyone’s rights to believe whatever politics they believe.

Co-Mod: It’s a shame I have to say this on an Ace Attorney blog of all places, but where is your proof that I or anyone on my side of the aisle takes any enjoyment in seeing anyone dead or oppressed, whether in a minority or otherwise?  I can only assume you’ve been listening to some skewed sources, or that there’s something huge I’m missing, because I’ve yet to see any right-wing groups reach that level of hatred.  (And if you know of any, please fill me in.  I mean that honestly.)

As for why I left same-sex attraction out of this blog, it’s simply because I see it as a divisive topic rather than a simply controversial one, (i.e. the death penalty, game piracy, etc.).  I’ve also proven several times that I’m not very good at addressing it without people getting rubbed the wrong way, so I decided to play it safe and not discuss it at all.  I’m happy to talk about it anywhere else, but a blog about Ace Attorney didn’t seem like the right place for it to me.  On top of that, there are plenty of blogs about peoples’ same-sex ships all over Tumblr, so why complain about this one?  If there’s a rule stating that Ace Attorney-themed Tumblr blogs are required to include those ships, I sure haven’t heard it.

I’ll admit this much -- like Phoenix, it’s something I can’t claim to understand, so maybe I still have some learning to do about it, but if I’m going to be accused of bigotry, I’d like to see some solid evidence of it.  Assumptions don’t count in my book.

Dear Dailystir,

Mod Edgeworth: Thank you. I’m not going to address anymore than I already have. I will not and refuse to mention anything else on my politics. Just like how you said, I am more at the center in the political world. I lean more Conservative, but I am Independent. I consider both Republicans and Democrats to be two different wings from the same bird.

I’m also glad you do not consider being a Trump supporter to be in the same basket as being a racist, bigot or any of that. These days, I can declare myself as a supporter of Andrew Jackson (I’m not btw) and not be against Natives, even though he was the reason for the mass genocide of thousands of Native Americans. I can openly support Martain Luther King, yet not be considered homophobic, even though he was against LGBT. I can consider myself a Bill Clinton supporter and not support raping women, even though that’s what he did in office. Yet, the moment I declare myself a Trump supporter, I’m automatically Anti LGBT, a bigot, a sexist, a racist and a phobe of some sort, because Trump supposedly is? What a world we live in! I can’t remember the last time supporting a political figure or celebrity made you a terrible person.

As for Mod Vera and Mod Maya, I still wish they could’ve said something to me or Co-Mod, if they truly felt uncomfortable. I’m still willing to talk to either of them and hear them out. I don’t blame them for doing what they did. I don’t know them or what life they live in. I have talked to someone, who had faced bigotry  and hate from Trump supporters in their area to the point of fear. I’ve even seen a Trump supporter bully an Anti Trump Supporter and I ended up reporting the bully, then calling them out for their behavior. I can say from experience that when you face real discrimination, it puts you in a state of fear to never express yourself or your identity. My family faced that and so did I. It’s the reason I’ve never revealed my race, gender or sexual orientation and can understand where Mod Maya and Mod Vera are coming from.

I think the real takeaway is to not judge anyone based on their politics, but also to not hate anyone who does. You will find bigotry on any side of the political spectrum from any group. To say there is none on any side is spouting ignorance.

Dear Anonymous,

Mod Edgeworth: It is sad, though even if I do understand where Mod Vera and Mod Maya are coming from, I still can’t justify them not talking to either of us first. They never spoke to either of us and assumed the worst out of both of us. They never asked us anything or mentioned their concerns. I’m certain, even now, they’re still assuming things.

Had they mentioned their grievances, I would have been willing to talk with them and work things out, but we were never given that chance. It kinda hurts, because they said they understood when I told them I was staying out of politics and was willing to admit that I supported Trump and am an Independent Conservative. Then, they pull the rug from under us and claim we are against ethnic minorities and LGBT. That’s why I wish they could’ve said something.

I’m still willing to talk to either of them, but I doubt they’ll want to hear from me. No amount of context is going to change that. If it did, they would’ve talked to me about it before leaving.

-The Mods

P. S. Co-Mod: As ugly as this can of worms is, it’s been a fun practice in defending my beliefs and decisions.  Never underestimate that skill, everyone.

Mod Edgeworth: I still can’t believe this was brought out at all. I’m so sick of politics!

[angels-heap]

I just got a glimpse of that “fandom isn’t for adults” ask (I haven’t had internet access for a solid 6 weeks) and I’m just like

Wtf has happened in the past 15 yrs? When I was a young teenager and joined a fandom in 2008, EVERYONE WAS AN ADULT. Mostly mid 20’s and above. It was a forum, and there were maybe a handful of teenagers out of the hundreds of people active any given day. We even joked about it and had a little forum group called “Teens of [forum]” bc there were so few of us

At 14 I was well aware that fandoms were mostly adults and that I was a guest in their spaces. I pretty much expected that everyone I’d talk to on the site was an adult and that I, a teenager, was an outlier.

Fandoms were built by adults. I legit don’t get why some kids these days are so entitled, who do they think writes most of the fic? Makes fanmerch? Also this obsession with being a “minor” like when I was a teenager no one EVER called themselves “minors”. We were “teens” and I hated being called a kid or a child, found it infantilizing

I haven't been active in fandom long enough to have a clear sense of when, why, or how this shift happened, but speaking as someone who spent most of their late childhood and teenage years in a different adult-oriented online space... yeah. I remember being very aware that the internet was not made for my safety or comfort, and I was (and still am!) grateful for the cool adults who made a point of engaging with me while remaining cognizant of my age and setting appropriate boundaries. I'm still in touch with many of those people 10+ years later and some of them became close friends as I grew up.

But god, I hated being called a child or kid or even teenager publicly, because it felt infantilizing and I had a healthy, reasonable fear of being "outed" as a minor in public spaces. This whole culture of kids loudly advertising their "minor" status (and their birthdays! and their real names! and where they live!) in the name of "internet safety" gives me hives. That's, like, the exact opposite of what you should be doing if you want to stay safe, and demonizing all adults means there's nobody to look out for you if things go wrong.

If I had to guess, I'd say the whole "I'm a minor!!!" thing probably evolved in tandem with the rise of purity culture in fandom spaces, though I'd be curious to learn more about the exact sequence of events that got us to this point. "Minor" seems to be the preferred term, as opposed to "child" or "kid," because it highlights the important (and, granted, often US-centric) legal distinction between a "child" and an "adult," which makes some sense... until you see it used as a trump card in Extremely Online fandom discourse that has nothing to do with ns/fw content or anything else where the legal meaning of "minor" actually matters. And, of course, there are those cases where it's obviously being used as a substitute for "child who can't be expected to know better," even when that "child" is way over the age of 18 and/or has done or said something objectively reprehensible. (Being a “minor” doesn’t let you off the hook for harassment and suicide baiting, kids.)

I don't have much to say here that hasn’t been said more coherently elsewhere, but hoo boy, a part of me almost wants all "adults" in fandom to swear off of it for 6 months or something and see how quickly the kids complain about the lack of merch, zines, new content, and cons.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The politicization of K-pop stans

The politicization of online fandoms is always weird. Most fandoms (usually) have no intrinsic political valence, and indeed, a common strong affinity for an apolitical genre can make strange allies, bringing together people of very different politics.

I remember going to Dungeons and Dragons club in Toronto in the 1980s and bailing early to go to anti-nuclear proliferation protests, to the absolutely shock and dismay of the far-right types who found their way into the hobby through wargaming.

This makes for some bitter splits when a majority (or large minority) of a fandom decides to politicize. The closest I came to quitting SFWA was when the board unwisely promulgated a loyalty oath stating "respect for intellectual property" was a condition of membership.

(Don't worry, that's no longer the case and the people behind it are not active in the org anymore. You can still be an sf writer even if you hate patent trolls, copyfraudsters, or the toxic business-model of Elsevier)

As the fight for racial justice in America has heated up and moved back onto the streets in the highest-possible-stakes way, an unlikely fandom has thrown its support behind the cause: K-Pop Stans (AKA megafans of South Korean pop music).

Earlier this month, there was a massive flood of K-Pop "fancams" (short video clips of musical performances) in far-right hashtags, and to the snitch-line set up by Dallas police to rat out protesters.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/03/white-nationalist-pogrom/#solidarity

At the time, some people were skeptical of K-Pop stans' commitment to justice; I heard from several people who'd been targeted by K-Pop harasser mobs that flooded queer and racialized online spaces in precisely the same way.

At the time, I thought K-Pop fandom was probably undergoing a politicization comparable to other fandoms - like the purging of Nazi elements from the punk scene and the emergence of an explicitly anti-authoritarian, queer, leftist character to a genre of music and fandom.

I think I was right. Yesterday, Trump held a rally in Tulsa, OK. In advance of that rally, his campaign manager boasted of over 1,000,000 RSVPs and the campaign planned for massive outdoor overspill areas with jumbotrons.

But when the doors opened, only 6,000 people were there, enough to leave the 19,000 person hall - a true Emptysburg Address.

The Trump campaign (predictably) blamed it on fear of antifa supersoldiers who'd scared off his million+ throng.

But what ACTUALLY happened is that Gen-Z K-Pop stans and Tiktokkers had sent a million fake signups to the RSVP system, flooding it. That's why they were expecting a million people.

https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1274499021625794565

(As to why only 6,000 showed: Trump isn't that popular, and his base skews old and unwell and understand that going to a rally during a coronavirus pandemic could kill them)

The politicization of K-Pop stans has a really interesting recent historical antecedent: Anonymous. The movement had its origins in 4chan's /b/ forum, a notorious source of online harassment and anarchic "fun."

But during Occupy and the Arab Spring, a large plurality of Anonymous participants became explicitly politicized and declared the movement to have an explicit political character.

The path to that political character is complicated, with detours through a Scientology lawsuit and other odd alleyways, but that's where they ended up.

The very best person to read on this is the cyber-anthropologist Biella Coleman. Here's my review of her 2014 must-read on Anonymous, "Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy":

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-anonymous-ghost-in-the-machine

But after Biella's book came out, 4chan kept going. The rump of 4chan/b people who didn't want to follow Anonymous's new politics became...Donald Trump's authoritarian online footsoldiers.

And there WERE homophobic and racist K-Pop stan raids in the past. Progressive politics were not a condition of K-Pop fandom membership (until now). So there's probably a rump of bitter, vicious racist trolls who have mastered the same tactics we're celebrating today.

That said: as Yim Hyun-su documents in a fantastic Korea Herald piece on K-Pop fandom in Korea and abroad, the US K-Pop scene is pretty queer and pretty racially diverse.

http://m.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20200612000721

And K-Pop's fringe status in US culture has welded together the fandom in a movement that cut its teeth flooding I Heart Radio request lines.

He quotes Michelle Cho, a University of Toronto media scholar, who describes how the controversy over K-Pop's appropriation of Black and hiphop culture has turned into a solidarity movement.

It's a really complicated and nuanced cultural story, and it's only getting started. If Anonymous is any guide, then the backlash with the fandom is gonna be ugly. Buckle up.