#but it forgets that the losers club is a unit. that they love and protect each other above all else

[s-oulpunk]

<3

It makes me So So Sad that this imagery was cut from the movie and that a big majority of the fandom doesn’t even know about it. The Losers’ love for each other is so poignant in the novel. The Losers’ signing Eddie’s cast is such a big moment for them as a friend group, and of course there’s the scene where they visit Eddie in the hospital despite how his mother screams at them. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with the loser/lover imagery in the movie but it does lose the impact Eddie’s broken arm had on the Losers as a group.

[theunvanquishedzims]

Calming my post-election anxiety with sweet sweet logic

So Trump is a wannabe dictator with crazy screaming fans who are headed toward violent armed meltdowns. What’s to stop him from going full dictator and refusing to leave office?

I’m glad you asked!

You see, the major difference between wannabe dictators and actual dictators is ALLIES. Dictators are surrounded with tight security, aided by the military, cheered on by media that they control, and are either helped, encouraged, or just ignored by other countries with the power to stop them.

Trump has charged the Secret Service money for the privilege of protecting him and his family since day one. You remember the first year, when his wife and son refused to move to the White House so the Secret Service had to RENT FLOORS in TRUMP’S BUILDING to be close to them? And how his extended family went globetrotting and the Secret Service had to accompany them? And when Trump himself insisted on hosting people at his golf club, he made the Secret Service RENT GOLF CARTS from TRUMP’S CLUB to follow him while he went golfing?

The end result was that halfway through the first year of his presidency, the Secret Service could not pay their own wages. Because half their yearly budget had gone straight to Trump’s pockets. And that’s just financially. I think we all remember how the White House came down with Covid and Trump still insisted on Secret Service agents driving him around to wave at people. He has not been kind to the people who are sworn to protect him. These people have had a front-row seat to his circus since 2016. When the time comes from Trump to leave the White House and Biden to take over, I doubt they’ll betray the country out of loyalty to Trump. If anything, they’ll be the ones to drag him out.

As for the military, Trump insulted and fired four generals from his administration staff. He said on multiple occasions that soldiers who get captured or killed are suckers and losers. He refused to visit a cemetery to honor the dead because it was raining. He tries to pander to the military by massive increases in defense spending, but that money goes to capitalists who make weapons and war technology, not the soldiers or veterans. (He also hypocritically accused military officials of being in bed with those same companies.) In a poll of 1000 service members 50% said they disliked Trump. Overall, he doesn’t act like a leader, and the way he skirts responsibility (like taking charge during the pandemic) doesn’t appeal to a group that functions on trust in their leadership.

A proper dictator would have spent the last four years cozying up to his generals and making sure they knew the financial and social benefits of answering to him personally, not the office of the President. And while Trump did adhere to the adage “find a foreign foe” to unite people against, he badly misjudged what most US citizens consider “foreign.” He hasn’t found a villain that we would root for the military taking down, and the people he targets (Latinx, Blacks, immigrants, and people in countries our military has already devastated) are not a minority he can turn the majority of the country against, especially with how many of the former two serve in the military themselves. When the time comes for him to leave office, the military might be the first to cut ties with the wannabe Dictator-in-Chief.

Now, the media. They’ve been treating him like a joke candidate since day one, but after he was actually elected and took office they’ve started to take him more seriously. He’s gotten his catchphrase “fake news!” to catch on, but that doesn’t change the fact that under his administration news reporters have been harassed, illegally arrested, and generally poorly treated by Trump, especially if they’re women. He’s trashed talked everyone, with Fox News being the last bastion of semi-legitimate news that openly supports him (and their credibility has taken a big hit over it.)

Despite this support, in recently months Trump has been increasingly dumping on Fox, even throwing the mediator they provided for the debate under the bus, and risking alienating them in the process. If his supporters listen to him and start considering Fox part of Big Fake News, it might possibly be the death of Fox, leaving most of his supporters adrift and isolated from their source of right-wing news, and sending the more extreme fringes into the arms of conspiracy theory websites. (I’m not saying this is bad, being cut off from Fox and its toxic stream of “information” can actually help rehabilitate the right.)

Honestly, I don’t think Trump ever had a shot at controlling the media like a dictator would, mainly because of social media. He’s in love with attention, and Twitter has provided him a nonstop stream of it. No other President has threatened, insulted, promoted, or hinted at war over social media the way Trump has, and he gets so much direct feedback and interaction with the public and the world as a result. He could have leveraged that by buying the company (through a shell corporation, obviously) and setting it up as The One True Source of Information, manipulating public perception of him and his administration by keeping a tight grip on what information he let out.

But he’s just. Not. That. Clever. He blurts out everything that crosses his mind, leaving his administration to play clean-up on his messes, put out fires he keeps pouring gasoline on, and claim he’s joking when everyone knows he’s testing the limits on what he can get away with saying. He took advantage of the direct communication with legions of supporters, but seemed to forget that his detractors had equal access and would absolutely call him out on things he definitely said, it’s right there on his Twitter account, they have the Tweet pulled up on their phone right now. Instead of operating a single state-run media outlet while crushing all free press and limiting internet access like other dictators, he’s mooned the world’s cameras and acted surprised when they put his saggy butt on tv. “Fake news! That’s not my butt! THIS is my butt! [image attached]” he tweets. “Twitter is so biased, they haven’t censored any of Sleepy Joe’s photos!” he later tweets.

And lastly. The key to a dictatorship’s success. To prevent outside intervention, the country a dictator runs must be unimportant and ignored, wealthy and well-connected, or scary and well-armed. Minor warlords are the former, Putin is the latter, Trump might have weaseled his way into being the middle. But at the end of the day, America’s whole thing is new leadership every four years. It was revolutionary to replace a lineage of kings and queens stretching generations with a non-royal elected leader who only held office for four to eight years, but we’ve stuck to that for 200 years and everyone’s used to it by now. It would take a charismatic and powerful person to move the American people towards abolishing such a basic tenant of our democracy, and despite the mob mentality that lead a small portion of his supporters to chant “sixteen more years!” in the heat of the moment, Trump is not that charismatic. He’s not that smart. He’s not that well-connected. He’s not that savvy. He’s not that good at politics. And he’s not that powerful.

(I was going to say something here about him being the laughingstock of the world’s leaders and shouldn’t expect any outsiders to help him stay in power, especially since his tax returns came out and showed he owes people a ton of money that he doesn’t have, but this post is long enough so let’s cut to the chase.)

Trump is a greedy, small-minded man that has clung to power by appealing to the worst in humanity and scraping away at the best. But he hasn’t succeeded. He’s a sad old man who will say anything to be loved, and I don’t think he even knows what love is, so he’ll settle for attention. He doesn’t have money, he doesn’t have an army, and the only allies he has are using him as a political pawn to further their own interests. They will cut him loose the minute he stops being useful.

Now, the bad part: crazy screaming fans. Fringe groups on the internet. Mobs chanting “sixteen more years!” Men with guns and bombs and kidnapping plots, men trying to get into voting centers to destroy the election, men driving trucks with black flags that say FUCK YOUR FEELINGS, TRUMP 2020 (available on Amazon for $11.99, I wish I was joking.) I have no idea how many people in this country genuinely love Trump. It is hopefully significantly less than voted for him. There are some big issues in this country that are make-or-break, and unfortunately by reason of running Republican Trump has aligned himself with some of them.

There are people who hate everything about Trump, but he put a pro-life judge on the Supreme Court so they’re voting for him. There are people who are uncomfortable with Trump, but they’ve forgiven their grandpa for saying worse at Thanksgiving dinner, so they’ll vote for him. There are people who don’t know a single thing about Donald Trump, but they see (Republican) next to his name on the ballot, so they vote for him. None of that means those people will side with him if he tries to make a move towards dictatorship.

Now there are people who love Trump. They’ve heard and seen the vile things he’s said and done, and are genuinely okay with it, because they are full of hate and rage and want to change the world to put themselves on top. I do not know how many of these people there are. I know they exist all over the country, not just in red states. I know some of them have guns and want a reason to use them, because they’ve been talking about it for decades. I don’t know if we can trust the police to side with us over them if fights start breaking out. (And I pray pray PRAY people de-escalate any fights, because monkey see monkey do, and one news report of a MAGA extremist shooting someone can inspire a hundred copycats can lead to full-on civil war like we've never seen.) I know we need to be careful the next few months, to take care of ourselves and watch out for the more vulnerable in our communities.

And above all, I know this: Trump is not going to keep this country. He got it through trickery and deceit and foreign influence and national indifference and people not taking him seriously. We’ve learned. We’ve grown. We’re taking him seriously now, and we will not let him take what we’ve already told him he can’t have. The election is over. He’s a loser. He’d better start packing his bags. Because he’s not staying in office.

[erinelizabethh]

Forget Me So | Stanley Uris x Reader (IT 2019)

He dreams of you.

Or rather, he finally remembers you.

*WARNING* Suicide and Spoilers!*

He dreams of you.

Or rather, he finally remembers you.

His eyes wander up to the ceiling and all he finds are stains of ruby painted across your cheeks, his blood a juxtaposition to the upward tug on your lips; alive the Losers were, you sported a grin appreciative of that fact and turned the other cheek at what the crimson spilling from that damned cut in your palm meant for you. “You wouldn’t wanna miss out on all the fun, would ya’ Stan?” you told him, a phrase that enticed his lips against yours again as his fluids left their imprint on your skin for the second time. A giggle escaped you, glad that it was over, glad that twenty-seven years would come to pass before the best summer of your life would return to haunt you. The fuck did it all matter anyway; the future was never promised, and for all you knew, neither was the return of the Losers swearing otherwise. As each of them stepped back, inhaled the faint breeze of the beginning summer, you and Stan eyed the crunch of flower petals beneath their feet as they departed with the intention to reunite the following day. Your eyes then aligned with his own, finding the gentle sway of the open field surrounding you both behind him, minds irresolute with the realization that now everything mattered.

The nerves beneath the skin of his wrist panic with the sharp intrusion, gasping for air as his arm hangs over his bathtub, not yet desensitized to the pain that causes his eyes to clench and force out tears. Yes, that is one reason for it, yet his fleeting consciousness leaps toward the direction of his beloved as the sight of you grabbing ahold of his hand to flee from what petrifies you eases his transition into the unknown. Your hair—long, short, who cares—falls behind you as you drag the man along the field, feet swift as the guffaws from an infamous clown draws closer to the two of you running for your lives, for something other than this. You’ve grown into the cheeks he used to poke to gain your attention, the forehead that crinkles when you weigh the options before you; all he sees is an illusion of you, one that somehow weaves him into the plot when he is already dead. Your feet remain planted in that spot he holds dear now, your place among the circle of Losers during a summer twenty-seven years prior, lips so soft trembling because you don’t want to die. “St-Stan,” you cough out, “Please don’t go.”

The blood trickles down the pads of his fingers, perhaps akin to tears that refuse to fall from his eyelids. The droplets reach the tiles of his bathroom—thank God, not your blood—as he sacrifices his time for perhaps more of yours. Because he takes his chess piece off the board, he thinks that the Losers Club, united, now stand a chance. He wishes for it so, unable to face what hardships and losses will plague his best friends; the best part is that the last memory of his will be the eight of you riding on your bikes, cheeks stretching wide as all of you smiled like the kids you were. The image of you catching up behind him begins to fade, echoes of your being seeping into his cuts, yet perhaps the sight of you alone as his last dream is why it remains just that. Twenty-seven years ago, you were protected by him, a boy insisting you were too audacious for your own good. And because of that, you were loved by him.

Twenty-seven years later, he dreams of you, he craves you, and yet he still misses you.

[thefoxintheflowercrown]

Friends for Safekeeping

Believe it or not, I was never good at making friends. When I grew to the height of an average four-year-old, I was still hiding behind my mother, clenching to her knees as her work colleagues bent to my level and introduced themselves so politely. Though introductions were difficult and I found myself fearful of friendships, I soon learnt their value and the joys of conversing, laughing and playing with others. My parents and their friends often described me as shy, but I believe as a child, I was simply distant though nonetheless, very content. Absent minded and unfazed by babbling mothers and their screaming toddlers in the park sand pit, I could amuse myself for hours alone without any need to converse or befriend.  As far as I was concerned, my mother was my best friend and my father, my hero. When my sister was brought into the world, she was unwelcomed by my evident display of jealousy, but soon she became the very one friend I cherished above all others. I had everything a girl could want, so I naively believed there to be no need for any other companions. As the first few vital years of my life passed, I excitedly entered school. First grade was notably a nightmare, until I met Suné. From day one, her jet black piggy tails and freckled smile gave me a reason to cheer and chant. Every day with her was pure bliss. She taught me how to master hopscotch, jump rope without losing my front teeth, and play chess. Although I was always bested by her in the clever game of chess, she never once boasted of her victory. She was a humble, kind and intelligent girl whom gifted me with so many life lessons. Now, she reaps the fruit of her goodness, an international chess champion from South Africa and a beautiful, grown woman – such wonders our world has instore for those who are kind and deserving. She was my first real and true friend, certainly one I will treasure forever. Though she is living her life across the seas and a great distance from me, I will always remember her. After all, it is trying to forget the first person you shared such an intimate friendship with. 

When I came to Australia, I was awfully displeased. It was a foreign place, a place I had never heard of until that fateful night my parents sat us down and announced our family’s new adventure. It was the fifth grade and the year 2008. I was mortified at the thought of exposure to Australian children. I believed they would surely make a snack out of me, and I was convinced I would never again see the light of day, or witness the pleasantries of a friend. It was bizarre to me, how my parents could deny me my basic human rights by dragging me to such an alien place with such foreign people. Note, I was young and overdramatic – Australia is now my home and what I believe to be the world’s greatest paradise, and land of the free. Unbeknownst to me, I was not the only new girl losing my marbles in my fifth grade classroom.

Nikita Mathur, a shy but earthly girl of identical qualities and interests was enrolled that very same week. It is not very often you share the title of ‘new girl’ with another. Of course, our boisterous and bubbly teacher, Mrs. Reader believed this to be the perfect opportunity for middle school matchmaking and instantly paired us together. From that day forth, we not only became eternally indebted to our glitter crazed teacher, we also became completely and undoubtedly inseparable. We experienced all things together, from High School Musical marathons, to pillow fights, embarrassing stunts, uncontrollable laughter and truth or dare ketchup shots. She became the ying to my yang, my best friend. Till this day, she is the one friend that has stood by me through thick and thin. I certainly have envisioned our forever friendship, to grow old side by side, knitting matching sweaters and sporting the same pair of outrageous slippers, whilst drinking Tequila infused tea. She keeps me well in line when I stray from the right path, inspires me to do my very best in all I pursue, and encourages me to be kind and accepting of others. Nikita is the best this world has to offer, and she chose me as her closest companion. Quite simply, this life is sweeter with her in it and therefore, I am perhaps the most privileged woman to know a friendship as gracious and inviolable. To my readers, find a single soul, a friend like Niki to stroll through both life’s lousiest and loveliest ventures – it is well worth your while. Today, I’ve made several other wonderful friends, like the health crazed, inspiring and beautiful Anna Patch, and the cool, confident and stunning India Lawrence. Both these two girls have contributed greatly to my happiness and provided me with such a positive and powerful perspective on life. You could say they are two angels – though independent, they have always embraced me with undying love and support.

Now, as for the present. I have been undoubtedly blessed with what I can only describe as a united company of brothers that does everything in their power to love and protect their plump and poise, meals on wheels of a sister – that’s me. Jack Nolan, Isaiah Dunrobin, Chris Whitehead and Aaron Luckman are the men of legends, the dreamboat gang of geeks you know and love, or learn to after several drinks (I joke, I joke). Though the squad of six, including myself and Jamie King, formed a year before my return to the Gold Coast in senior year, I was welcomed with open arms. Jamie introduced me and by the end of senior year, I knew I would never quite suit any other mould. Fast forward to 2017, and we are still together despite all odds, come political debates or poorly scheduled Maccas runs.  Indeed, we are an outrageous bunch, a recipe for chaotic adventure, an unlikely group of diverse individuals, a family. To aid you in your understanding, we are much like the Losers Club from the hilarious horror movie IT, a squad of distinct characters, devoted not to the town of Derry, but to one another. In my eyes, each and every one of them are so vital to the longevity of our family.

Isaiah, said to be the one with a heated temper is, in actuality, the one with the greatest patience. He has tolerated all the crude humour and bad banter, adoring us just the same as the day prior. He is a strong and lenient man with a faithful heart, filled solely with good intention, nobility, and a passion for big guns and fried chicken. Though he may be the loudest, I love him for that very reason – oh, and the Elmo hello he insists on projecting every time he sees me. Jack, though quiet and awkward at first, is the most kind, honest and hilarious member of the pack. Though he jokes about his forehead being his biggest feature, I believe it to be his heart – which is why he is very dear to mine. Though my weird remarks and outright affection cripples him in cringe, he has always been there for me, and I am certain he will be in future. He is an intelligent, true and daring man with an unpredictable sense of spontaneity and compassion. Chris, otherwise known as the leader of the crew, is a charismatic, caring and competitive individual with a heart of gold. He certainly gives the best hugs and never ceases to surprise me with his wisdom. He’s made me laugh uncontrollably, stood by me when times were tough, and always considered me when I felt belittled or excluded. Much like Isaiah, he is the big brother I never had. His willingness and goodness is beyond admirable – and his love for chicken dinners, even more so. Aaron – wow, what a guy. The pink power ranger, whom rallies at every gig in town, fearlessly chugs alcohol, pulls all-nighter shifts at the Krusty Krab, and curses his squad with terrible puns. He is a kind-hearted, aflame legend, the dungeon master of our D&D sessions and a heck of a friend. He brings immense soul and sound to the group, with the Veronicas on repeat and a whacky catch phrase on standby. Finally, Jamie, the peacemaking prodigy, the sweet-hearted and open-minded individual that stole my heart at only fourteen. I could carry on forever about him. He inspires me daily to be the best I can be, to be a light in the world, and to pursue my passions. His down to earth nature, selfless ways and humble heart never ceases to amaze me – how lucky we all are to know and love him. Jamie is courageous and wonderful, patient and persistent, and just like all the others, he demonstrates a passion for life, for adventure and for his friends.

These five men are the mighty musketeers whom brings joy to my life, along with my dearest Nikita, sweet Anna and spirited India. They have undoubtedly changed me for the better, as their friendship has invested into my becoming. I certainly cannot claim to be the young girl I once was, shy and fearful of friendships. I am however, still as absent minded and a handful, so thank the heavens they are all patient with me. To my friends, I am grateful for each and every one of you. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for being yourselves, and for contributing to my life in the most beautiful, exceptional way. I can only hope that I have done the same for you, and that our journey together will never cease. You are all outstanding. To my readers, I cannot stress enough how important it is to seek out the right friends whom will lift you up, support you, and guide you through your life expedition. Furthermore, do not shy away from friendships. Of course, it is okay to be afraid, it is understandable that you might prefer to be on your own – but as I have come to learn, life is meant to be shared and thereby, embraced.  Do not deny yourself the pleasures of company, of companionship. Friends are made to be cherished, to be loved, and to hold near and dear. If you are reading this now and can relate to these words, your heart filled with warmth as you identify the key individuals that have enriched your life the way these people have mine, then I want to encourage you to let them know. Our time is limited on this earth, so be it through song or poem, spoken word, a letter or message, a text or phone call, a hug or a kiss, announce your appreciation. Make your love known and share it with the world, for you are valued, and those you value should know of your gratitude.

All my love,

Jean-Mari Vos

Illustration by: Grace Helmer, So Super Awesome. Find her at: http://sosuperawesome.com/post/121234395440/grace-helmer-on-tumblr