#but then on the last day of voting when gai thinks he has won

[depressedhatakekakashi]

Cannon

Competitions were something that Maito Gai thrived on. Win or lose Gai always felt as though he had accomplished something. Bettered himself in some small way.

So it was understandable that when word reached him about a competition being held throughout all of Konoha to decide on the most popular shinobi, he had to officially challenge his eternal Rival for the top spot.

If he didn’t make the challenge official between them, Kakashi wouldn’t put in any effort. As popular as he was, he simply did not care whether he was beloved or hated, so long as his friends were by his side.

An admirable way to exist most days, but Gai wouldn’t be proud of his win if Kakashi didn’t at least try.

He had hoped that his challenge would spark some energy into his rival, but instead Gai was greeted with a rather blank expression.

“A vote?”

“A vote.” Gai buzzed with excitement even though his friend looked exhausted at the mere idea.

“I don’t know, Gai. Wouldn’t you rather have a race around the village?”

Refraining from reaching out and feeling Kakashi’s forehead for any signs of a fever, Gai instead pointed to one of the posters hanging up on a wall beside them. A poster similar to the one that he had seen proudly displayed inside of the dango shop, though this one had Naruto front and centre while the other had portrayed Sakura instead.

“The village is handing us a competition, Rival,” He watched as Kakashi glanced towards the poster. “How can you ignore such a youthful challenge? To be named the most popular shinobi in all of Konoha would be the highest honour!”

“I’m already the Hokage, isn’t that enough?” Kakashi practically whinned, though anyone else who heard him would claim he sounded board. Gai knew better though.

He knew Kakashi.

That was a whine. A call for help from the man who wanted to do anything but partake in the greatest competition of their lives.

“The winner gets to choose dinner.”

“I already get to choose our next dinner,” Kakashi fired back. “Remember? You lost our handstand competition yesterday.”

If he could forget, Gai gladly would. It had been an embarrassing display on his part, and he would go to his grave refusing to acknowledge that competition.

Even if it was officially Kakashi’s win.

“The loser has to do the winner's chores for a week.” He offered instead, refusing to walk away until Kakashi agreed to take part in the competition.

“A week really isn’t that long.”

“A month,” Kakashi’s eyes widened with shock. “Loser does the winner’s chores for a month.”

“So… if I win-“

Gai could feel the hair’s on his neck standing up. He knew exactly what Kakashi was going to say and he hated it because it was the worst job anyone could possibly end up with. A job that Kakashi was more than happy to do most of the time, if only because no one else was willing to even try.

Even Naruto had begun refusing the job. Offers of free Ramen couldn’t make the great hero of the world pick up a hose and scrub brush and do the job for his old Sensei. “I will give the dog’s baths for a month, yes.”

Kakashi seemed to contenplate his choices, weighing them in his mind while Gai stood there practiclly exploding with excitement.

“The hounds could use some change in the routine, and Bull does like it when you give him his bath.”

“You have to win first, Rival.” Gai reminded him.

“Oh, well that will be easy,” Kakashi responded with a dismissive attitude, which quickly earned him a glare from Gai. “For some reason people like me. I’m not sure why, but they do.”

That was a lot too unpack.

“Alright, we’ll deal with your self-hatred later,” Gai declared, fully intending to keep that promise as soon as the competition was done. “I’m going to win.”

“Are there any rules?”

Gai’s hair stood up on end. A warning that his body had become accustome to giving him over the years whenever he could sense Kakashi thinking up a truly evil plan.

“No cheating.”

“It won’t be cheating,” Kakashi assured him. “It might just be a little… underhanded.”

Gai didn’t like the sounds of that. It was clear to him that Kakashi was scheming. Something that his friend was very good at.

It wasn’t going to win him the competition though.

No matter what Gai could claim victory. After all, he was the kindest shinobi in all of Konoha.

There was nothing that Kakashi could do to beat that. Even his signiture ‘puppy dog eyes’ wouldn’t beat Gai’s yourhful energy. Not if Konoha’s great green beast could help it.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

New Rule: Identity Crisis | Real Time with Bill Maher

And finally, New Rule: now that we're all recovered from St Patrick's Day, let's make it the last one. You know, I never understood Irish Pride or any pride in anything other than what you've actually accomplished. And as holidays go, St Pattie's is kind of malarkey. You don't get presents like Christmas or candy like Easter or joyless appointment sex like Valentine's Day. You don't even get a Peanuts special.

There's just a parade. And what rights are we marching for? The right to drink in the day? Do we still need to take to the streets in a public expression of support for Irish migrants?

I think now more than ever we need to stop talking about the things that make Americans different from each other and start honoring the things that make us the same. So let my people, the Irish, lead the way because again, the Irish think I don't give a shit.

But, I do give a shit who wins the next election. And outdated racial pandering is one reason Democrats lose elections. When Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi put on Kente cloth, I don't think it earned them one vote for their powerful emotional ties to Ghana.

Here in California, we're now segregating kidnapping. Really. California doesn't just have amber alerts for missing children, we have ebony alerts for black children and feather alerts for Native American Kids. What is that we look for them by listening on the ground?

Look, even if you like identity politics, this kind of thing is antiquated. From 2010 to 2020, the number of people identifying as multi-racial in America went up 276 percent. One in five newlyweds now are in an interracial marriage. And that number goes up to 100% in ads for Subaru.

You couldn't do a remake of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" today because almost 100% of Americans approve of interracial marriage. Especially with rich in-laws. And 95% of white women would leave their husband to marry Idris Elba. Idris Elba who says, "As humans we are obsessed with race and that obsession can really hinder people's aspirations." Actress Raven-Symone agrees. She told Oprah, "I'm tired of being labeled. I'm not an African-American. I'm an American." She says, "I don't know what country in Africa I'm from. My roots are in Louisiana."

And you don't have to agree with that, but it's a point of view a lot of people have. It should be respected. Morgan Freeman says the way to finish off racism is, "stop talking about it. I'm going to stop calling you a white man and I'm going to ask you to stop calling me a black man."

There's even a movement now to ban racial questions on the census, and many of its leaders are people of color like Professor Sheena Mason who says, "to undo racism we have to undo our belief in race."

The liberal group moveon.org formed in 1998 to urge Republicans to move on from the Clinton impeachment. Today's Democrats should move on from identity politics. It's not working. It's not working for them or for us. Democrats are hemorrhaging the very voters they think they're pandering to.

The Financial Times writes, "Democrats are going backwards faster with voters of color than any other demographic," and suggests the reason is that, "A less racially divided America is an America where people vote more based on their beliefs than their identity." Exactly. Far-left liberals are living in an old paradigm. Americans don't fit into into neat little boxes anymore.

Who has the number one country song right now? Beyonce. Lil Naz X won a country music award, and he's black and gay. And a brand ambassador for the waspiest purse in America, Coach. The biggest new star in country is Jelly Roll who was a drug dealer, then a prisoner, then a rapper and then a face tatted country music star. Not to mention a giant middle finger to the idea of staying in your own lane.

No, in America now, you're allowed to be many things all at once and that's a good thing even when it's really stupid.

Look, we're all Jelly Roll now. We're sloppy, complicated and contradictory. Two-thirds of Republican voters support weed legalization. And 41% of Democrats own or live with someone who owns a gun. Ms Marvel is Pakistani. And the winner of the last two NBA dunk contests is white. The new Captain America is black. And Spider-Man is black and Puerto Rican, just like AI George Washington.

Latinos make up half of the Border Patrol. And the name of the coolest black dude on the planet is Lenny Kravitz. Ru Paul has a ranch in Wyoming that does fracking. Really. And has a fortified compound with a bunker to die for. And somehow the leader of the Village People was straight. Really. Je just went to the YMCA to work out. And the leader of the Proud Boys isn't an old white guy he's Enrique Toreo, an Afro-Cuban. He burns crosses on his own lawn.

Caitlyn Jenner is a pro-Trump transwoman who supports a ban on trans athletes competing in women's sports. And there's even an LGBTQ organization called "Gays for Trump." And why wouldn't there be? Gays love drag queens.

Our black president was half white. And our black vice president is half Asian. And Tiger Woods is, oh we don't even have the time.

My point is, look, you're still building your politics around slicing and dicing people into these fixed categories. Democrats need to get the memo that you can't win elections anymore by automatically assuming you're going to get every voter who's not these guys.

The more you obsess over identity, the more you ignore the bread and butter issues that win and lose elections. The real issue is class, not race, and the real gap is the diploma divide. And the real future of the party and maybe democracy depends on Democrats figuring that out.

==

Prediction: Trump will win, because even if the Dems wanted to change course on this identity politics bullshit, there are far too many identarians who have been elected into it on that exact basis. Look at The Squad, where every single one of them is a pathological liar who plays only by identity cards.

They can't undo a decade of abandoning their core constituency, the working class, in favor of privileged woke academic elites in the span of only six months. Even if they wanted to. Not with the wingnuts still around, doing what they've been doing for years: sucking up all the oxygen and screaming about their imaginary oppression. And there's no sign they do.

[dankusner]

29. Homosexuality: Homosexuality is an abnormal lifestyle choice. We believe there should be no granting of special legal entitlements or creation of special status for homosexual behavior, regardless of state of origin, and we oppose any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality out of faith, conviction, or belief in traditional values. No one should be granted special legal status based on their LGBTQ identification. Retained with No Changes; 2022 Plank

For four decades, Hotze, an indicted election fraud conspiracy theorist, has helmed hardline anti-abortion movements and virulently homophobic campaigns against LGBTQ+ rights, comparing gay people to Nazis and helping popularize the “groomer” slur that paints them as pedophiles. 

Once on the fringes, Hotze said Saturday that he was pleased by the party's growing embrace of his calls for spiritual warfare with “demonic, Satanic forces” on the left.

Texas GOP Skews Further Right

While the primary runoffs had a few bright spots, the state party grew more extreme

Texans emerged on the other side of the Republican primary runoffs with some wins worth celebrating. 

But the overall picture is troubling.

State House Speaker Dade Phelan, who led his chamber to impeach Ken Paxton, survived a challenge from a political newcomer seeking to avenge our ethical mess of an attorney general. 

While Phelan prevailed by only 366 votes, David Covey conceded the race. 

That is a relief in a day and age when distrust in American elections has become central to the GOP’s identity.

In congressional races, state lawmaker Craig Goldman’s more moderate message won over voters deciding the nominee for Rep. Kay Granger’s seat. 

And Rep. Tony Gonzales fended off a challenge from a pro-gun rights YouTube influencer.

A group of staunchly conservative state House representatives, however, lost their seats for crossing Gov. Greg Abbott on school vouchers, while a handful were made to pay for supporting the Paxton impeachment. 

These are party members who went along with just about every issue except one.

That is the cost of being an elected official in the Texas GOP today. 

The governor and the state party apparatus demand ideological purity — matters of conscience and constituents’ wishes aside.

Redirecting tax money to pay for private schooling is a policy matter that deserves debate, particularly as it might help low-income families stuck in under-performing public schools. 

But Texans are in trouble once their elected representatives are targeted and expelled from office for thinking independently or for representing the will of a broad base of their constituents. 

That means that vital policy matters such as how to pay for our kids’ education will be decided based on fear, and by a narrow band of the electorate, not on the merits of the policies themselves.

The Republican Party of Texas had a chance to repudiate this backwards absolutism, to reject the divisive politics of former party chair Matt Rinaldi. 

Under his leadership, the party cozied up to the likes of antisemite Nick Fuentes and to billionaire donors Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, whose goal is to tilt Texas to the far right.

Instead of changing course and opening the tent to more Texans, the state GOP doubled down and elected Rinaldi’s hand-picked successor, Abraham George, as party chair. 

His rhetoric is yet another serving of the same tired tropes of the far right. 

It’s the kind of stuff that certain primary voters eat up but that most Texans, and many conservatives, find nauseating.

At its convention over the weekend, the party embraced a ban on candidates who have been censured by the party, which now occurs frequently when an official dares to disagree with any of the Texas GOP’s extremist platform. 

This ban includes judges, even though many conservatives would agree that judges should make decisions based on the law and not their personal politics.

The state party’s proposed platform, presented at a convention last week, includes language that declares abortion is “homicide,” that calls for military bases to restore the names of Confederate “heroes” and that demands the right to use gold and silver as legal tender. 

We worry about what will emerge after the delegates’ votes are tallied.

The Republican Party of Texas may feel comfortable ratcheting up the extremism in the safety of a red state and in the midst of an unpopular Democratic administration. 

But the party’s longevity depends on appealing to a growingly diverse electorate. 

The Texas GOP is sacrificing broad appeal for the gain of an ever-insular inner circle.

Texas Republican party platform wants rural votes to count more

Texas Republicans have a clever idea to guarantee they remain in power, even if their candidates can’t win the popular vote in statewide elections.

Delegates to the state party convention have ratified a new platform that would change how statewide officials, from governor to land commissioner, are chosen. 

To take office, a candidate would have to win the popular vote in a majority of Texas’s 254 counties.

The proposal, akin to the federal Electoral College, would give voters in Loving County, population 64, more power than those in Harris County, where 4.7 million people live. 

King County, with 265 people, would wield a vote equivalent to Bexar, with 2 million.

Does this sound like a political party that has won every statewide election for 26 years? 

Or a party that has confidence in its electoral future?

This shameless bid for autocracy comes as many Republicans recognize a demographic reality: 

Hispanics are the majority, and soon, residents of Democrat-controlled big cities will outnumber the older, whiter, rural voters who make up the GOP base.

Given a choice between recruiting more people of color or rigging the system, delegates at the Republican convention in San Antonio chose to change the rules. 

This way, only candidates popular with rural voters can win statewide office.

Tomlinson's Take

After all, there is plenty of precedent for this kind of thing.

Political historians quickly remind us that the United States has never been a true democracy. 

From the beginning, the founding fathers gave some voters more weight than others to determine our nation’s future.

Their most shameful compromise was counting enslaved people as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of allocating congressional seats. 

Enslavers in Southern states knew Northern states would dominate the national legislature unless Black lives mattered at least a little bit.

The intellectual hypocrisy of simultaneously treating someone as sub-human and yet insisting they count for political representation is galling. 

Then there’s the U.S. Senate.

Today, 18 states with populations smaller than Houston elect 36 senators. 

But that’s not enough power, so the cloture rule gives those 36 senators the power to block any legislation they don’t like. 

Wyoming votes carry far more power than Texas votes.

Lastly, there is the anti-democratic Electoral College. 

States are allotted electoral college votes based on two senators plus the number of representatives in the House, and the winner typically takes all. 

Votes cast in Delaware, therefore, have greater weight than Californians. 

Five presidents have won the White House while losing the popular vote as a result.

Texas Republicans, therefore, see plenty of precedent for their anti-democratic proposal. 

Why not elect statewide officials based on the number of counties they win?

Many readers will scoff at the idea that such a radical change has a chance of becoming law, and I hope they are correct. 

But as a longtime observer of Texas politics, I remember when a near-complete abortion ban and the permit-less carrying of pistols in public spaces seemed absurd.

Outrageous ideas can become law, especially in places where a single party controls all the levers of power for decades. 

The Republican Party of Texas’s 50-page platform supplies plenty of fodder for dystopian fiction writers looking for inspiration.

Republicans want to require Bible lessons, servant leadership training and Christian self-governance in public schools. 

They also want elected judges to give the party platform primacy, even where it contradicts state or federal law.

As a student of Texas history, I am fascinated by the party’s commitment to white supremacy. 

The platform calls for protecting Confederate monuments erected by Ku Klux Klan activists and demands the U.S. military restore base names that honored enslavers and traitors.

If these reindeer games strike you as unconstitutional, you’re probably right. 

That’s why the GOP platform calls for a Convention of the States to rewrite the Constitution. 

If that doesn’t work, new Republican Party Chairman Abraham George and Vice Chair D'rinda Randell have promised a referendum on Texas seceding from the United States.

Lastly, the party rules state that any elected Republican not advancing these ideas will face censure. 

The party has already penalized several reasonable Republicans, including House Speaker Dade Phelan and Rep. Tony Gonzales of San Antonio.

This is not my grandfather’s Republican Party, focused on small government, low taxes and free markets. 

Conventional wisdom says the holier-than-thou activists will eventually push the GOP too far to the right, and Republicans will lose elections.

These new measures are designed to ensure that doesn’t happen.

https://texasgop.org/official-documents/#platform

TexasGOP 

The Republican Party of Texas (RPT) is proud to announce the 2024 Legislative Priorities and Platform.

These documents are the culmination of thousands of hours of work by activists, delegates, committee members, and other dedicated volunteers. 

A heartfelt thank you is required to all of them for the multitude of ways they have shaped this final product.

Delegates to the RPT Convention vote yes or no on every one of our platform planks, which gives the RPT one of the strongest and most grassroots lead platforms in the country. 

Planks must receive a majority vote of the delegates to be passed in the final version. The 2024 platform contains 252 planks and 7 resolutions, which passed with an average vote of 95%. You can view the final platform here:

2024 Platform

Delegates also vote on the top 8 Legislative Priorities for the coming legislative biennium. 

The Legislative Priorities Committee selects 15 issues based on resolutions passed from Senate District and County Conventions, and then Delegates vote on the top 8. 

This grassroots led model is being copied in other states and is the pinnacle of Republican directives to their elected officials.

The Legislative Priorities for the Republican Party of Texas for 2024-2025 are:

1. Border Enforcement

To repel invasion and deter illegal immigration: • Creating a Texas Department of Homeland Security to prevent illegal entry and trafficking, and to deport illegal aliens to Mexico or to their nations of origin. • Prohibiting, with mandatory fines and jail time, individuals, corporations, non-profits, governments, and social media entities from assisting or inciting illegal entry. • Requiring the use of E-Verify by all employers in Texas with significant penalties for business owners who violate this requirement. • Ending all subsidies and public services, including in-state college tuition and enrollment in public schools, for illegal aliens, except for emergency medical care.

2. Secure Texas Elections

Securing elections from each citizen’s registration to the final count of legal votes by: • Requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. • Requiring the Counties and the Secretary of State to update the voter rolls at least quarterly. • Requiring a mandatory photo ID for every election, without exception. • Restricting mail-in ballots to disabled, military, and eligible citizens who are out of their county for the entire voting period. • Using only hand-marked, sequentially numbered paper ballots on anti-counterfeiting paper that are signed on the back by the election official at the voting location. • Standardizing in-person voting, with early voting limited to a period of no longer than nine (9) days, no gap before Election Day, and assigned-precinct voting locations only. • Counting ballots in precinct using a dumb-scanner method as soon as the ballot is returned by the voter and with publication of the results prior to submission to the County. • Closing party primaries for only registered Republicans. • Explicitly codifying the ability of the Attorney General to prosecute violations of the Election Code. • Removing existing Secretary of State waivers to comply with current Election Code.

3. Stop Sexualizing Texas’ Kids

Stopping the sexualization of minors, which leads to abuse, exploitation, and trafficking, by: 

• Prohibiting taxpayer funding to any entities that permit or promote sexually inappropriate content to minors and legislatively banning instruction on sexual orientation and gender ideology in schools and libraries. 

• Repealing affirmative defenses in Texas Penal Code (43.24, 43.25) and redefining “harmful materials” to remove loopholes provided by the modified Miller Test. 

• Establishing an independent Inspector General for Education to investigate fraud, waste, abuse, and criminal conduct within schools and refer findings to prosecutorial authorities.

• Compelling superintendents to report sex crimes within schools to outside law enforcement and removing immunity from civil liability for schools and their employees.

Human Sexuality: We affirm God’s biblical design for marriage and family between one biological man and one biological woman, which has proven to be the foundation for all great nations in Western Civilization. We oppose homosexual marriage, regardless of state of origin. We urge the Texas Legislature to pass religious liberty protections for individuals, businesses, and government officials who believe marriage is between one man and one woman. We oppose the granting of special legal entitlements or creation of special status for sexual behavior or identity, regardless of state of origin. We oppose any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose non-traditional sexual behavior out of faith, conviction, or belief in traditional values.

[pashterlengkap]

Malcolm Kenyatta wins historic race on road to becoming PA’s first out statewide official

Out gay Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D) won his primary race against Mark Pinsley for the role of auditor general, an administrative position overseeing the state’s accounting and financial functions. Kenyatta’s victory makes him the first out gay man to be selected by a major party for a statewide office in Pennsylvania history. If Kenyatta wins in the November general election against Republican incumbent Tim DeFoor (the state’s first-ever Black auditor general) Kenyatta would become the first out LGBTQ+ statewide official in the state. “I am honored to be your nominee and look forward to serving you as the next Auditor General,” Kenyatta said after beating Pinsley by winning over 64% of the vote. “As Auditor, on day one, I will rebuild the Bureau of School Audits and demand accountability from all schools. I will also create the first-ever Bureau of Labor and Worker Protections to take on wage theft, employee misclassification, and union busting. Additionally, I will use the power of the office to measure and support efforts to make communities healthier and safer.” Kenyatta became the first LGBTQ+ person of color to be elected to the Pennsylvania General Assembly when he won his 2018 race at the age of 28 in a landslide victory. After receiving compliments from former President Barack Obama, Kenyatta was one of 17 rising star Democrats to deliver the keynote address at the 2020 Democratic National Convention and one of the first three out LGBTQ+ people ever to do so. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kenyatta was booed by his peers while talking about fair wages for essential workers.  In 2022, Kenyatta lost his bid to become his party’s candidate for the U.S. Senate. That same year, he married his longtime fiancé Dr. Matthew Jordan-Miller. “As somebody who inhabits all of these intersections, growing up in an incredibly poor neighborhood to a working poor family, as one of only two openly LGBTQ members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly and the only one that’s a person of color, I see all the different ways that frankly our systems are broken,” he told LGBTQ Nation last year. In general, Kenyatta thinks the government should work for working families and believes in what he calls a “basic bargain” that says everyone should have access to safe and affordable housing, quality healthcare, a safe education, and clean neighborhoods. Several LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations praised Kenyatta’s victory on Monday. “Pennsylvanians trust Malcolm Kenyatta to be their watchdog as auditor general because that’s exactly what he’s been as a legislator,” said Annise Parker, president and CEO of LGBTQ+ Victory Fund. “He has the experience to win this race and carry on his fight for students, seniors, and workers as Pennsylvania’s auditor general. LGBTQ+ Americans are severely underrepresented in public office and the numbers are even worse for Black LGBTQ+ representation. I look forward to doing everything I can to mobilize LGBTQ+ Pennsylvanians and our allies to get out and vote for Malcolm this November so we can make history.” Brandon Wolf, National Press Secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, said, “Malcolm’s overwhelming victory in this race is a big deal. Not too long ago, the idea that a gay, Black man from Philadelphia would be the nominee for statewide office in Pennsylvania would have been unimaginable. This victory is, first and foremost, a testament to Malcolm’s unflagging work ethic and the fact that Pennsylvanians know he will have their back as Auditor General.” While Biden and Trump won their primaries in the state, 157,126 Republican voters (representing 16.6% of the vote) voted for Trump’s former political opponent Nikki Haley, and ⁦68,556 Democratic voters (representing 6.9% of the vote) voted for U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips (D-PA). These votes could signal continued intra-party disapproval of Biden’s handling of Israel’s ongoing attacks in Gaza and Trump’s authoritarian leadership of the Republican party. The state primary race also saw a… http://dlvr.it/T5zKBm

[fahrni]

Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning coffee lovers! Hope you’re ready for some randomness because you’re gonna get some. Cheers! ☕️

Associated Press

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Thousands of frustrated Texans shivered in homes without power for a second day Thursday, most of them around booming Austin, and fading hopes of a quick fix stirred grim memories of a deadly 2021 blackout after an icy winter storm across the southern U.S.

Poor Texans are, once again, struggling through big cold snap. It’s not surprising though, the GOP run state doesn’t care about people, only profits.

I read something yesterday that rings true: How can you tell when you’re going to have six more weeks of winter? Ted Cruz goes to Mexico.

Folks, stop voting for Republicans. They don’t care about you one little bit.

Ars Technica

HBO’s The Last of Us tries a little tenderness in a surprising episode 3

This was a fantastic episode! We got to see a couple live their best lives under terrible circumstances. I didn’t play the game so I didn’t know Bill was gay but he was already an interesting character up to that point. A prepper with the talent of a gourmet chef and a musician. Being gay was just the cherry on top and his commitment to his partner was heart warming. This episode was a quiet reprieve to what I’d imagine will be non-stop violence to the bitter end.

ESPN

Tom Brady says he is retiring “for good” from football, ending a storied 23-year NFL career during which the star quarterback won seven Super Bowls and set numerous records.

Tom, Tom, Tom. I have a horrible feeling Mr. Brady returned to football because his wife broke the news to him that she wanted a divorce not long after he retired. Football was the distraction he needed to get through it. Now the divorce is final, he’s suffered that initial pain, and it’s time to move on.

I’m so sorry you had to go through that Tom. Divorce is nothing but pain for all involved. I hope you have a beautiful life. You are football’s GOAT.

NetNewsWire

Because of Twitter’s announcement that free access to the Twitter API will end February 9, we will be removing Twitter integration from NetNewsWire in the next release (6.1.1) for Mac and iOS.

Space Karen strikes again! This time he’s hitting anyone whow uses the Twitter API. He’s tightening up while over on Mastodon things remain completely open for business! Following folks on Mastodon from your favorite feed read is so easy you don’t need a special plug-in to do it! It supports RSS right out of the box. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

Also, who wants this domain? It would be great for a Space Karen watch site, like Twitter is going great.

Jeffrey Zeldman

Before the present owner, I was a Twitter Blue customer, because I always pay for software—to support its creators and help prevent it from disappearing, as so many great websites and platforms have done over the years.

Jeffrey Zeldman is an American treasure and web hero. I’ve enjoyed reading him for years and years now. This time Jeffrey shares his adventure of trying to give Twitter money. Their payment system failed. Doesn’t surprise me.

America, America

The authoritarian strongman types want us to believe in their power. They may even want us to think that their power is divinely influenced, a sign that they’re not like the rest of us, but better. Look no further than the surreal video released just weeks before the Florida gubernatorial election, complete with Voice of God-style narration and mad text about how Ron DeSantis is the fulfillment of God’s plan for a protector and a fighter.

I’m sure Florida has it’s share of wonderful people but why would you choose to live there? DeSantis is a true authoritarian scared of America’s future without bullies like him. Future America will happen. You may slow it down but it will happen. I hope to one day have a liberal society built on love and compassions for our fellow man, not some nasty place full of scared, old, white men grasping for every little bit of power they can. It’ll happen. May just be after I’m going. Here’s hoping it happens before then.

eFinancialCareers

The real problem is that C++ is neither easy nor loved. Rust got an 87% approval rate in the “most loved” category of the Stack Overflow Survey. However, only 9.3% of respondents used Rust at all and only 8.8% did so professionally. C++, meanwhile, languished at 48%.

Look, I don’t want to work on some web3 thing either. Why would I use my talents as a C++ developer to work on a thing I don’t care for? Sure, you could offer me tons of cash and it would be tempting but ultimately I’d be bored to death.

I’ve worked on award winning Windows Applications and highly performant video encoding and decoding systems. I can’t see working on trading systems. Nope, nope, nope.

NBC News

The U.S. military has been monitoring a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that has been hovering over the northern U.S. for the past few days, and military and defense leaders have discussed shooting it out of the sky, according to two U.S. officials and a senior defense official.

This is really strange to me. We should bring it down, but in a controlled way if at all possible. It would be fascinating to examine what the onboard package contains.

Who knows, maybe it’s full of radioactive material in hopes we will shoot it down. That would be our luck. 😂

Yahoo!

WESTLAKE, Ohio, January 30, 2023–(BUSINESS WIRE)–TravelCenters of America Inc. (Nasdaq: TA), the nation’s largest publicly-traded full-service travel center network, announced today an agreement with Electrify America to offer electric vehicle charging at select TA/Petro locations with the first stations planned to be deployed in 2023. Electrify America is the largest open direct current fast-charging network in the U.S.

This is excellent! There are so many nice electric vehicles on the market today so setting up a massive charging network makes sense.

The old time car companies have caught up to Space Karen’s car company and in many ways surpassed it. Good. We need the competition.

[lastsonlost]

On Sunday, 19 top administrators of the San Francisco School Board condemned the 2016 tweets from the board's Vice President Alison Collins 

The officials said the tweets 'perpetuate gross and harmful stereotypes and leave no room for nuance or potential misunderstanding'

Their statement addressed Collins' tweets that she shared on December 4, 2016

In thread, Collins explained that she was seeking to 'combat anti-black racism in the Asian community' and at her daughter's mostly Asian American school 

Collins said Asian Americans used 'white supremacist thinking to assimilate' 

The entire senior staff of the San Francisco schools has denounced a black school board member's tweets that claimed Asian Americans use 'white supremacist thinking' to get ahead. 

On Sunday, 19 top administrators at the district's central office condemned the 2016 tweets from the board's Vice President Alison Collins, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. 

The city's top elected officials including its mayor, nearly all city supervisors and the area's state legislators all called for Collins to resign - but she hasn't.

The school officials said the tweets 'perpetuate gross and harmful stereotypes and leave no room for nuance or potential misunderstanding'. 

Their statement addressed Collins' tweets that she shared on December 4, 2016

The officials said the tweets 'perpetuate gross and harmful stereotypes and leave no room for nuance or potential misunderstanding'. Their statement addressed Collins' tweets that she shared on December 4, 2016

In the thread, Collins said that she was seeking to 'combat anti-black racism in the Asian community' and at her daughter's mostly Asian American school. 

Collins said that Asian Americans had used 'white supremacist thinking to assimilate and "get ahead."'

She also included a reference comparing Asian Americans to 'house n***ers'. 

'Where are the vocal Asians speaking up against Trump? Don't Asian Americans know they are on his list as well? Do they think they won't be deported? profiled? beaten? Being a house n****r is still being a n****r. You're still considered "the help,'" she tweeted at the time.

Collins has not resigned from her position and would not return calls from the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday. Instead she directed people to an op-ed she wrote that was published on Medium in which she claimed her past statements were taken 'out of context.' 

'A number of tweets and social media posts I made in 2016 have recently been highlighted. They have been taken out of context, both of that specific moment and the nuance of the conversation that took place,' Collins tweeted on Saturday with a link to her article. 

A fellow board member, Jenny Lam, called the post a 'non-apology.' 

The controversy comes as San Francisco’s school board has been slammed recently for voting to rename 44 of the city’s schools that were alleged to have insensitive names. The person in charge of the renaming effort admitted he researched the topic on Wikipedia and didn't consult historians.

In January, the board voted 6-1 to strip the schools of their current monikers because they honor 'racist' figures from American history. Schools named after politicians including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln are now set to be rebranded in the coming months.

Meanwhile, a gay white father of a bi-racial child was denied a spot on the San Francisco Board of Education's volunteer parent committee in February because his race doesn't bring enough diversity to the group.

And the district of 52,000 students has been in a bitter dispute with unions over re-opening of the schools, which have been closed since the height of the coronavirus. Some schools will open April 12, but it’s not clear how many.    

Collins, the school board's vice resident, said in the Medium posting that 'as a Black woman, a mother, an educator and a fierce advocate of equity in our schools I utilize my social media platforms to speak out on race and racism. Even when these conversations are difficult in our very divided society.'

In the Medium piece, Collins wrote: 'As a Black woman, a mother, an educator and a fierce advocate of equity in our schools I utilize my social media platforms to speak out on race and racism. Even when these conversations are difficult in our very divided society'

In the post, Collins noted that then-President Donald Trump had just won an election when she made the remarks on Twitter

Meanwhile one of my daughters had recently experienced an incident in her school in which her Asian American peers were taunting her Latinx classmate about “sending kids back to Mexico” and the KKK. It was a time of processing, of fear among many communities with the unknown of how the next four years would unfold,' Collins wrote. 

'But whether my tweets are being taken out of context or not, only one thing matters right now. And that is the pain our Asian American brothers and sisters and siblings are experiencing. Words have meaning and impact. 

'Trump showed us that clearly with his sowing of hate and pitting communities of color against one another for political gain. I acknowledge that right now, in this moment my words taken out of context can be causing more pain for those who are already suffering. For the pain my words may have caused I am sorry, and I apologize unreservedly.

'What matters more than anything is showing up and supporting Asian American communities and victims of hate crimes. Let me be clear: I stand with the Asian American community against acts of violence. I have spoken with leaders in the Asian American community over the last 24 hours and I acknowledge the pain they are feeling,' she added. 

Collins' tweets resurfaced just days after eight people, mostly Asian women, were shot dead in Atlanta, Georgia. 

Police in Atlanta are still investigating suspected gunman Robert Aaron Long's motive in connection with the shooting on Tuesday. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is assisting with the investigation.

All eight deceased victims have been formally identified as: Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33; Paul Andre Michels, 54; Xiaojie Tan, 49; Daoyou Feng, 44; Soon C. Park, 44; Hyun J. Grant, 51; Suncha Kim, 69, and 63-year-old Yong Yue. 

Meanwhile one of my daughters had recently experienced an incident in her school in which her Asian American peers were taunting her Latinx classmate about “sending kids back to Mexico” and the KKK. It was a time of processing, of fear among many communities with the unknown of how the next four years would unfold,' Collins wrote. 

'But whether my tweets are being taken out of context or not, only one thing matters right now. And that is the pain our Asian American brothers and sisters and siblings are experiencing. Words have meaning and impact. 

'Trump showed us that clearly with his sowing of hate and pitting communities of color against one another for political gain. I acknowledge that right now, in this moment my words taken out of context can be causing more pain for those who are already suffering. For the pain my words may have caused I am sorry, and I apologize unreservedly.

'What matters more than anything is showing up and supporting Asian American communities and victims of hate crimes. Let me be clear: I stand with the Asian American community against acts of violence. I have spoken with leaders in the Asian American community over the last 24 hours and I acknowledge the pain they are feeling,' she added. 

Collins' tweets resurfaced just days after eight people, mostly Asian women, were shot dead in Atlanta, Georgia. 

Police in Atlanta are still investigating suspected gunman Robert Aaron Long's motive in connection with the shooting on Tuesday. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is assisting with the investigation.

All eight deceased victims have been formally identified as: Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33; Paul Andre Michels, 54; Xiaojie Tan, 49; Daoyou Feng, 44; Soon C. Park, 44; Hyun J. Grant, 51; Suncha Kim, 69, and 63-year-old Yong Yue. 

[vs-redemption]

As someone with an eurovision tattoo, I think I'm qualified enough to talk about this 😅.

Eurovision is a wonderful mess.

Europeans yelling at each other trough music, cursing at countries only, crewing other countries over with voting and all collectively rooting against the UK when it comes last again. Yes it is high in betting odds, but I believe in my fellow Europeans that we can give UK 0 points again. It's tradition!

Though Eurovision has a fascinating history! It started in 1956 to bring Europe together again after the wars. At first mainly Western Europe participated, then in 1961 Yugoslavia debuted, making it the only communist country to participate. The Soviet Union didn't like that the country became close with the West but that's a different story! Yugoslavia actually won the contest in 1989 (with Rock me by Riva), making it the first and last communist country to win.

In 1974 the legendary band ABBA won with Waterloo. ABBA is well known for their musical and movie Mamma Mia and its sequel. Funfact this was Swedens first win, so they won with a Classic!

In 1987 Johnny 'Mr Eurovision' Logan won the contest for the second time, he also wrote the 1992 winning entry 'Why Me' he is the only winner that won multiple times, though many have tried.

In 1993, the first ever pre-qualifiers were held in Ljubljana, Slovenia. 7 countries wanted to debut in Euroviaion, the EBU (broadcaster) didn't want that many new nations, so the qualifiers were held. Slovakia, Romania, Estonia, Hungary, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia took part, the last 3 countries qualified for Eurovision. The other 4 debuted with Poland and Lithuania the year after.

There have been many political songs but I wanted to talk about Bosnias Eurovision song that year. Sva Bol Svijeta, all the pain in the world. At that time Bosnia was at war. Sarajevo (capital) was under siege. Europe watched as it didn't want to get involved. So the band Fazla, sung about the war, how they wouldn't give up, halfway trough the song they turned their back at Europe, The same way Europe did at Bosnia. To this day that song makes me cry. The band and spokesperson, who was in Sarajevo giving their points got alot of applause for this.

Well some fun facts

Serbia won the year they debuted in 2007

Portugals 1974 song became the signal against their dictator weeks after the contest.

Lucia Moniz (Portugal 1996) was in the classic Christmas movie, Love Actually. She played the Portugese Love interest of Jamie, the writer. She was also the highest result for Portugal until they won in 2017. Making it the longest wait to win in Eurovision! Now that title belongs to Iceland.

The youngest winner was a 13 year old girl, who lied that she was 15. Sandra Kim from Belgium.

Eurovision is sometimes called the gay superbowl and is more watched than the sport.

3 songs were performed in a made up language (Belgium did that twice and NL followed its neighbor in 2006)

I always root against my country.

Some countries almost won on their first attempt, and for some it's still their best result

Lithuania best result is a joke entry (2006, we are the winners, wich came 6th)

Joke entries are the best and the Baltics are the kings of the jokes.

The presenters of the 2008 contest got married in 2012

The presenter of the 2006, 50 years of eurovision made a joke that Finland would not win if they kept screaming, couple of weeks later Finland won, with a screaming band (Lordi)

Moldova is the meme country (epic sax guy, door meme...

The UK gets voted last as a joke by the rest of Europe.

Euroviaion had a mascot in 1990, called Eurocat. Never saw that again.

Some of my favorite entries if you want to check them out

Hajde da Ludujemo by Tajči 1990

Tih dezeven dan by 1x band 1993

Nekonecna Piesen by Tublatanka 1994

Romeo by Ketil Stokkan 1986

My Star by Brainstorm 2000

Honestly I could go on and on about eurovision and I might send another ask in the morning about Eurovision, but its 3 am and I'm tired!

-Enis

Wow Enis! You really know a lot about it!! I’ll look at some of your favorites later. I’m excited! I can’t believe it has so much history. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom! 💖

[chocoholicannanymous]

If the Spit Hits the Fan (Glee) Part XV

Follows pt I, pt II, pt III, pt IV, pt V, part VI, pt VII, part VIII, part IX, part X, part XI, part XII, part XIII and part XIV.

Being Sebastian's boyfriend really isn't that much different from being his friend. They do a lot of the same things, and talk about the same stuff, only now there's hand-holding and kissing and cuddling with it. Apart from the touching though? Nothing really changes much.

Which kind of makes it sound like how it was with Blaine.

It's not though.

Sebastian will hold his hand in the hallway without worrying about being seen. And yes, Dalton is different from McKinley – so, so much different, and safer – but Blaine even hesitated to hold Kurt's hand in the choir room, surrounded by friends.

Sebastian kisses him in a way that never leaves Kurt doubting there's attraction, and has to stop his hands from wandering too far on a regular basis – yet never making Kurt worry he won't stop.

Sebastian makes Kurt have to stop himself, both from allowing it and from doing his own wandering. They're still too new to go there, no matter how much Kurt's hormones sit up and beg every time Sebastian touches him. (They'll get there, Kurt's sure, just... Step by step, and not yet.)

Sebastian reaches out for Kurt without looking – sometimes seemingly without thinking – to pull him close, and always makes a space for him.

And when Sebastian sings, it's with Kurt, or for him, not at him.

It's a far cry from scheduled make-outs and avoiding even PG13 levels of PDA and being made to feel like his boyfriend is more interested in his own hand than in Kurt.

It's amazing.

There's a rainbow rose hanging on Kurt's door on Valentine's day. He and Sebastian have been dating for two days – a day and a half, if he was to be picky – and Kurt knows from last year's insanity that there's not a flower shop within two hours of Vesterville that carries rainbow roses. They have to be ordered special, and with a lot more warning than two days.

Kurt's not the least bit ashamed about how he squeals, or how he turns on his heel and kisses his boyfriend (!) for long enough to be a little dizzy afterwards.

This isn't to say that Sebastian is a perfect boyfriend. He's not. Then again, neither is Kurt. He's working from romantic movies and the examples from the New directions, and of course from his time with Blaine. Neither is a good road map. Romantic movies have so many flaws Kurt don't really want to examine, and a lot of his favorites are set too far back in time to be useful as guidelines. The loves lives of his old glee mates are...well. They're flawed too, when seen without rose-colored glasses and envy.

As for his relationship with Blaine... Even if he's not counting how it ended that relationship was so very less than perfect, and honestly it was both their faults. Kurt's not without blame, he knows that and can admit it without somehow pretending what Blaine did wrong never happened.

So he's trying to learn from his mistakes, and other people's mistakes, and he does his best to communicate with Sebastian – who does the same in return.

Also, no one can say that they don't argue. They definitely do. They have from the beginning, and they're both opinionated passionate people, so why should they stop now? Their relationship has changed – they themselves haven't.

It's just that they manage to argue in a way that works. That doesn't makes Kurt pull out his claws to eviscerate Sebastian, that doesn't scare Kurt, or make him give in to “preserve the peace”. That, right there, was one of the things that had sent his relationship with Blaine down the wrong turn. When he'd first told his dad that he'd begun dating Blaine Burt Hummel had told him never to go to bed angry with his partner. He'd meant to sort out arguments and disagreements, but Kurt had interpreted it as needing to back down and push down his anger or hurt. With Sebastian he doesn't.

They argue, because that's who – and how – they are, but they do it in as mature and healthy way as they are able to, being teenagers. And they apologize if they step over the line. Not Kurt apologizes, regardless, with Sebastian pouting until he does, but both of them.

If Kurt had to, he'd call it damned near perfect. Instead he'll just say it's good, and he's happy.

That's never something to look down on.

The week of Regionals is weird. Kurt's never felt as prepared or as calm with a competition approaching, which is rather telling. The rest of the Warblers are a different story though. Kurt has made it clear that his primary goal is to beat the Troubletones, and his friends are feeling the pressure. They even ask if Kurt and Sebastian won't reconsider singing 'Human Nature'.

“Look, guys, I'm honored, really, that you would trust me, us like that. But I want to win more than I want that solo. And even if we ignore the fact that Ohio doesn't seem ready for a gay duet, I really do think the setlist we have is stronger as is. The Troubletones have a great presence, and both Mercedes and Santana are awesomely talented. However, everything about the Troubletones are built around them. The rest of the girls are background and dancing. If we go on with a number that's the same they are going to win, for no other reason than that most people find girls prettier and nicer to look at.

“But if we go on as an actual choir, for a show choir competition? We'll win. I'm sure of it. We've worked so hard with our songs, and I wouldn't change a thing about our setlist.”

And it's true. They have an amazing setlist, and everything flows in a way that makes Kurt feel practically professional, and he's not giving that – and its chance to win – up to stare longingly at Sebastian while singing a song that exposes them to the core.

No. Kurt's going to have quite a lot more time in the spotlight than he'd expected when turning down a proper solo. He's going to sing with his friends, and his boyfriend, and he's going to show McKinley what it means to be a team onstage.

The Troubletones are just as amazing onstage as Kurt thought. They've done a good job picking their songs, and Mercedes still has the best voice he's ever heard live. Santana's not quite as talented, but give her the right song – which these are – and she'll blow your mind. Their choreography showcases the girls poached from the Cheerios without making Mercedes look too far behind, and their clothes look good.

Kurt would vote for them any day, even with Rachel being given a place in the background, except this one. This is going to be his day. He meets Sebastians eyes as they line up and nods.

Showtime.

'I want You Back' does exactly what it's meant to, namely getting the audience in a party mood. As the last notes flows into the first from 'Man in the Mirror' the mood shifts and Kurt feels his own shift with it. His solo feels a little raw, because in no way can he sing those lines without being reminded of all the crap he's gone through over the past 6 months.

“...a willow deeply scared, somebody's broken heart and a washed out dream...”

Well. His heart might have been broken, and his dreams about Blaine did wash out. But he's got new dreams, and his hearts healed, and no matter the scars he's whole where it matters. And even if he wasn't? He's looking in the mirror, and he's changing.

They bring the party back with their last song, giving their all transforming the sounds of 'Beat It' to sounds that can be reproduced by the human throat. The dancing is the most demanding Kurt's ever done onstage, and he knows he will definitely be beat after. But they look and sound awesome, and that's all that matters.

Or maybe not, he ruefully thinks as he sees Finn on his feet, jumping up and down and whooping as the Warblers are proclaimed the winners and Rachel looks like she's been pelted with eggs again.

“You stole our songs!”

Of course. All Kurt wants to do is get on the bus, go back to Dalton and celebrate. Okay, shower, then celebrate. So naturally Rachel is waiting to ambush him. Well, that's not going to go the way she's probably thinking.

“Really? Really Rachel, you're going there? You know very well that we didn't steal anything. Oh, I know that there was a suggestion that the New Directions do Michael for Sectionals, but I also know that you were the one who refused to accept it.

“You really blew it there. Michael is a great choice for Sectionals or Regionals, what with the Ohio mindset, and I'm pretty sure you would have won with the setlist the guys suggested. I'm not surprised you put a stop to it though.”

Rachel draws back, looking first shocked, then insulted, then finally like an angry goose, complete with hissing sound. He's not letting it touch him though, lets it run over him, one might say, like water over a goose.

“There are no songs in Michael Jacksons discography that's a given for you, no certainty that you'll be featured. And in the end, that's what mattered, wasn't it? Not that the New Directions won, but that you won. You wanted to beat the Troubletones, didn't you? Wanted to show that you were better than Mercedes, wanted to prove that her beating you when auditioning for Maria was just a fluke. Wanted to prove what everyone knows, that's she's every bit as good as you, and sometimes better, is wrong.

“Well, congratulations. You got what you wanted in terms of the setlist and the spotlight, but you fucked up everything else. And not just for you, but for everyone.”

An expression of pain flies across Rachel's face, and he pushes the knife in a little bit further.

“We weren't as blind though. The minute Finn told me about the Michael setlist I knew it was a winner. As did the other Warblers. I asked Finn first, and Sam and Puck. They didn't think we needed their permission, as you didn't use the songs, but they gave it any way.”

Kurt looks at Rachel, looks at the way she's still fuming, still refusing to see any other side than her own. It won't matter what he says – she'll keep ignoring any and all arguments against her. Once he might have tried harder to make her understand, but as things are he just wants to leave. His boyfriend's waiting and that makes Kurt out of time to spend on his former friend.

“Your loss, our gain.”

He starts to leave, but thinks better of it. He's got one more jab in him.

“Oh, and Rachel? Don't worry. Going to Nationals is a privilege, and we won't waste it. We've already gotten started on a setlist.”

It's petty, but. So's she.

That evening the Warblers celebrate as thoroughly as a bunch of uniformed boys in a well-staffed boarding school can. This means that it's late when Kurt drags Sebastian to his room (unlike him Sebastian's in a single), but neither of them is under the influence of anything but happiness.

That's important to Kurt as they tumble into Sebastian's bed while kissing, because he doesn't want there to be any doubt in Sebastian's mind that when Kurt pulls off his shirt and then goes for his fly it's because he wants to.

Having Sebastian stop him is frustrating, to say the very least.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

It's only the fact that it's Sebastian, and that he's shown himself trustworthy in so many ways over the past months that stops Kurt from storming out.

“I thought we... You know?”

It's so hard to say, to open himself up like this, years of being told he's a predator, or ugly, or plain wrong getting just as much in his way as the fact that he's never done this, and the only time he's been even close wasn't even about him.

Apparently he's going to have to use his words regardless, because Sebastian's not taking the opening.

“I thought we could have sex.” There. Words. Consent. Door wide open.

And yet Sebastian's still not taking the opening.

“What's the hurry?”

Kurt pulls back a little, hurt blooming.

“No, no, don't. Talk to me, okay? I'm a bit surprised I guess. We haven't even been dating for two months yet, and I know this is new for you.”

“So? It's not like I'm waiting for marriage.”

Kurt knows he sounds a bit snippy, and he has sort of been waiting – not for marriage, but for something, some feeling of more. He's got that feeling with Sebastian, so what's the point of waiting any longer? Everyone else his age (or so it feels) is having sex so why can't he?

Some of it must bleed through because Sebastian gets that “aha” look, and nods a bit.

“Look, regardless of what I might have said or implied when chasing Blaine, I'm actually not the whore of Babylon. I have, however, rounded a few bases and enjoyed them. I think you'd enjoy them too, and I would love to find out first hand. But that doesn't have to mean we go straight to fucking.” Kurt blushes, because he might be ready to do it, but those words...

“So. I'm not going to push, and I'm not going to rush. I am more than interested though, I'm just happy to take it a bit slow. To build up to every step. As far as I'm concerned you've earned that.”

Sebastian's looking so earnest it kills Kurt annoyance, and then lightning-quick it's replaced by a vicked look than makes him shiver all over.

“I wouldn't mind showing you the first of many, many bases now though. How about it, babe?”

Kurt doesn't mind either, neither then nor the next day.

[qqueenofhades]

Did Ivan and Fedyor ever have, like, one of those big first fights where there is this uncertainty of "are we over now?" ? I mean, they would be alright in the end, but between Fedyor's overthinking and Ivan probably not having a lot of experience with relationships, there would be room for them worrying for a time after it.

Sequel to this and prequel to this. Set, as usual, in Phantom!Verse.

Moscow, 2013

June 30, 2013, is not a good day. In fact, it might be the worst of all the days of Fedyor Kaminsky’s life to date, and it is made absolutely no better by the fact that he’s long known it was coming – he just hoped, however vainly, that it wouldn’t. Three weeks ago, on June eleventh, the Duma unanimously passed the law formally entitled “For the Purpose of Protecting Children from Information Advocating For a Denial of Traditional Family Values,” with only one abstention and no dissenting votes, and President Putin is going to ceremoniously sign it into law today. It’s more pithily known as the “anti-gay law,” and it basically prohibits anything related to acknowledging that homosexuals exist in Russia. Fedyor has been anxiously following its progress with his activist friends in their group chats, all of them praying for some last-minute miracle to swoop in and knock it off course. Now that’s not going to happen. He has no idea what is going to happen, but to say the least, it won’t be good. He’s taken some body blows before, but this one sucks.

Fedyor vacillates wildly between wanting to watch the signing ceremony just to scream obscenities at it, and wanting to hide under the covers with the pillows over his head and cry. He texts frenetically with his friend Lyosha, who lost his position at Perm State University a few months ago for daring to do research about LGBTQ people, and is already planning to head into exile abroad. Does he have to do that too? Fedyor has lived in Russia his entire life, even if he has traveled internationally and has lots of foreign friends. He could stay. He could try to fight this thing somehow. He could do more. He should do more.

But how?

When Ivan gets home from work at six o’clock that night, that’s where he finds Fedyor: sitting on the living room floor under a quilt and neurotically eating chocolate biscuits, texting and crying. He drops his backpack and rushes over. “Fedya? Fedya! What’s wrong?”

“He signed it,” Fedyor says flatly. No more elaboration is necessary. “So now we’re fucked.”

Ivan looks troubled. He rocks back on his heels next to Fedyor and searches for the words. Then he says, clearly trying to be helpful, “Maybe not. Nobody has to know about us. If we just keep on like before, go about our daily lives, it will be all right. We are not important people. Why would they bother with us?”

“What?” Fedyor wipes his eyes with the back of his hand and lurches upright, shedding the quilt and a shower of cookie crumbs. “What are you talking about? Just – deny ourselves and go back in the closet and pretend we’re not here, that those assholes won? Go out, but make sure I never hold your hand walking down the street or dare to pretend that we are together? I don’t want to be afraid every second we’re out in public, Vanya! I don’t want to be wondering if maybe they’ll look at my emails or cook up some other reason to come after us! Lyosha already got fired before this even officially passed, and – ”

“Lyosha was a radical beforehand,” Ivan says dismissively. “It wasn’t because of this, I’m sure. So what? He’ll get a fancy position somewhere else. The West will love to take in the gay Russian, persecuted by the barbaric Putin regime, to show off how humane and enlightened they think they are. He will be fine.”

Fedyor looks at him as if he has two heads. “That’s how you’re reacting to this?”

“What am I supposed to do about it?” Ivan shrugs. “We have to make the best. What else are we going to do? Leave Russia?”

“Maybe we have to. What other choice do we have?”

“Stay?” Now it’s Ivan’s turn to sound like he’s talking nonsense. “Russia is our home!”

“Look, Vanya. I know you and I think differently about things, and we’ve gotten used to that. But I can’t – I physically cannot – stay in a place where I am criminalized for existing, for loving you, for being afraid that something will happen to us. We have to go.”

“No.” Ivan’s voice is colder than Fedyor has ever heard it. He sounds like a stranger. “No, we don’t. That’s crazy talk. Where would we go? America?”

“At least America doesn’t have this law!”

“America has no law that is helpful for us!” Ivan shouts. “And I’m not going there. The end! You make that choice, Fedya. Exile, or me?”

There’s a horrible silence in the wake of that pronouncement, as they stare at each other and Ivan instantly looks like he wants to bite it back, but it’s too late. Fedyor turns on his heel and marches away in frozen silence, refusing to utter a single word to Ivan for the rest of the night, even as Ivan tries to apologize and coax him into speaking again. Finally, taking the hint, he takes his things and silently goes to sleep on the couch, and Fedyor lies in their bed, staring at the ceiling and tossing and turning. Ivan didn’t mean that, right? Or maybe he did? Flee Russia, start a new life somewhere across the sea, but leave his boyfriend behind? Until recently, he thought Ivan Sakharov was the love of his life. Maybe he isn’t. Or even more terrifyingly, he is, and Fedyor will have to give him up anyway.

The rest of the week is just as bad. Ivan leaves early for work and keeps to himself when he gets home, while Fedyor starts Googling the U.S. asylum-claim process and reaching out to North American-based friends who can help with logistics. He spends hours on the computer, takes reams of notes, and doesn’t feel any better. Is he planning this for them or for him? He needs to answer that question like, now, and yet the prospect fills him with sickening dread. He cries himself to sleep with the bedroom door shut, and hears awkward shuffling in the corridor outside, like Ivan is listening and desperately wants to come in, but doesn’t think Fedyor wants him there. That’s even worse.

Finally, on Saturday night, Fedyor decides that they can’t go on like this. He drags himself out of his cave of blankets and cooks a nice supper, while Ivan goes for his usual afternoon workout at the gym, and when he comes back, he blinks. “Fedya? What’s this about?”

“We need…” Fedyor’s throat is a desert. “We need to talk about us.”

Those six little words are usually the kiss of death in any relationship, and he has no idea what’s about to happen next, but Ivan’s face wrenches in half like a torn piece of paper. He opens his mouth, shuts it, shakes his head furiously, and comes to a sudden and unassailable decision. With that, still in his gym clothes, he drops his bag and goes to one knee on the creaky wooden floor of their kitchen, in this humble sixth-floor Moscow flat that is the first place Fedyor ever knew pure and perfect happiness. “Okay,” he says. “How is this for a start. Fedyor Mikhailovich Kaminsky, will you marry me?”

Fedyor stares at him, utterly blankly, seized with the horrible fear that Ivan is making fun of him. “Have you – are you – are you serious?”

“Yes.” Ivan reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small box. “I wanted to do this in a different way, but maybe this is better. Fedya, I don’t – I can’t – I don’t want to live without you. I’ll even move to America if you want to. I’m no good without you. I can’t. Please.”

Fedyor continues to stare at him. Then finally he moves closer, as Ivan holds out the ring with a look of utter, silent entreaty, his heart wrung out and raw in his eyes. “Are you – ” Fedyor’s voice is a whisper. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Ivan says again, strong and steady. “More than I have ever been about anything.”

Fedyor starts to answer, and simply can’t. He starts to shake from head to toe, and Ivan scoots forward, still on his knees, and wraps both arms around Fedyor’s waist, burying his face in Fedyor’s stomach. Fedyor clutches hold of him and sinks down, the two of them barely making a sound. Finally, he whispers, “You hate America.”

“I don’t,” Ivan says. “Not really. But either way, I love you, Fedya. And I’m choosing that.”

Fedyor grips Ivan’s face in his hands and kisses him thoroughly, then remembers that he still technically hasn’t accepted his proposal, and he should do that. He holds out his right hand so Ivan can slip on the plain band, with the promise to buy him a nicer one once they get to wherever they’re going. He’ll help with arrangements, he promises. Whatever Fedyor needs him to do.

They board an Aeroflot flight, Moscow Sheremetyevo–New York JFK, on the evening of August 3, 2013, with all their worldly belongings either in the cargo hold or waiting to be shipped over by Fedyor’s parents. They hold hands in the terminal, unobtrusively, and when they get on the plane. And even as the jet engines roar into takeoff and the lights of his homeland fall away into the clouds for what might be the last time in who knows how long, Fedyor Kaminsky can’t help but feeling, once again, ready to start anew.

[bagog]

What On Earth Has Happened

Hey, no story here, no experiments. Just a play by play of an awful year in my life. Please don't reblog. Trying to just get it down in one place for people who care about me. Long, sob-story beneath the cut.

Air - 'Things are looking up!' I had started to drift a bit from tumblr. The porno purge came and a lot of my friends trickled off the platform after that. I went back to school, attempting to score myself a Masters degree in something that would pay enough to get me out of Student Debt. I was doing great, picking things up fast. I got a new job at a company doing pretty menial work, but the people I worked with were great conversationalists. The work didn't involve dealing with customers at all, paid well, and was small and accomplishable tasks. Essentially I was being prepped to take a better position at the place once I had my Masters. Covid happened, then. Earth - 'The Whole World Sucks Right Now' My company was "essential," so I continued going to work, now on weird schedules. The company I worked for was profiting off Covid, all the while making fun of it as an overblown conspiracy, even as their own epidemiologist urged them to take better precautions. Work became hard to swallow. Water - 'When your lowest place could be lower' The apartment I shared with my boyfriend flooded. The lowest place in any sewage system is typically the bathtub, such that if it backs up, it does so into that tub. Our lowest point is the toilet. So the apartment flooded. Three times. Roots growing through the sewage outflow meant that, often, you needed to wait a solid hour between toilet flushes, or else the toilet would back up with such gusto the sewage would slosh down the hallway and into the living room. We mopped many times. The problem was finally fixed 8 months later, necessitating our having to camp because our house had no water. Fire - 'To destroy all you've done' One afternoon, I smelled burning. Going to our bedroom, I found our shelf a column of flame. I could barely breathe for all the smoke, but I managed to grab a blanket and beat the fire out. On the other side of the room, the pages of the books upon another shelf had begun to crisp from the heat, the blinds on all the windows were warped. The whole apartment had been about to go up. I'm kinda scared of fire now. Heart - 'When moving is too much to ask' Personal health sorta hit a new low. Migraines kept me out of work for two full weeks. I have seasonal foot pain, I always assumed from hiking for a living in my 20s. Turns out it was gout, all the while. Gout is exceptionally painful: it's like a messy pile of razor blades in the ball of your foot every time you step down. At work, I could barely stand. Walking from my car to the door became something I needed to psyche myself up for. Not a lot can stop a gout flare-up once it's in full swing, so I just had to wait it out. For a month. Two. Some of the worst sustained pain I've been in. Little did I know that, in January, come the kidney stones. Kidney stones feel awful. Feel like total shit. Gout and kidney stones are comorbid--brought about as a result of the meds I take to help me focus. So any day I don't drink enough water is a day when my kidneys or my foot just starts aching. But going back to September of 2020... Homophobia - 'goddammit' Finally things are looking better. I'm limping quickly again. Then I am called into the HR office. I am told that two sexual harassment charges have been brought against me. I'm told that one individual has alleged that I, while in the restroom, used a reflective toilet brush to attempt to peep him under a stall wall. I did not do this. I do not understand--reflective toilet brush?? wtf. The second allegation: I just straight up looked over a stall at a guy. I didn't do this either. I'm asked to defend myself, I ask who or date or time of day. I am given nothing. I remark that I don't think I'm tall enough to see over the stall, and I do not understand about the toilet brush. Of the ten minutes of the meeting, I spend 8 of them trying to get my head around how a claim about a reflective toilet brush has me here. "Would you like us to go now to see if you're tall enough to see over the stall? If that would help your defense?" says the HR head. "Yes, I

would," says I. We did not go. I am told that the accusers have no reason to be collaborating, or to even know each other made a claim. This is bullshit, because it was a company of 80 people, and only a quarter of those employees used the restroom where my alleged harassment was to have taken place. Before I am dismissed from work for the day to go home and wait to find out if I'll be fired or not, I march into the HR office once more and say "I hope none of this is happening because I'm gay." The HR head looks positively offended. I got fired cuz I'm gay. Next day I got a call. They'd come to the "objective truth" (that phrase is burned in my mind), and were terminating me. Apparently they discounted the toilet brush rumor, after all. But they really honestly believed I looked over the stall at a dude. Nightmare - 'No Fear One Fear' Let me tell you something: this is a nightmare. This is my honest-to-god nightmare. I've been terrified of getting accused of something in a bathroom since I was 11 years old. I am incredibly self-conscious and careful in public restrooms. To be fired? From a place full of people I like? And all of them will think I'm a pervert. My boyfriend worked at the same place. He would now have to work there every day dealing with people looking at him and wondering what he must think of his boyfriend. That sent me on a spiral. I'm still out of work, almost a year later. It would have been the worst mental health crisis of my life if it wasn't for my boyfriend, my support network, and the meds I've finally been able to get ahold of. Oh, also. My two accusers? Were roommates. HR knew they were roommates. They basically collaborated on a story to get me fired. The story circulating around the place (I still have acquaintances I talk to working there) has dropped the reflective toilet brush entirely. I guess they thought it was too unbelievable. So anyway, the people who accused me are now telling a different set of events than what I was told. Absolute horse shit. Tried to go to my city's human right's council to see if my situation warranted further attention. I gave my side of the story--including tales of the straight manager who had had enough harassment charges brought against him that he was no longer allowed to meet female staff--which indicated I'd been treated differently and wrongly. My old job made an impassioned argument that the committee violated their First Amendment rights(?) ('Freedom of speech' is the biggie with the First Amendment, for people who cba re:USA). I won the vote!! But one member of the committee was missing. So there weren't enough people for the vote to pass. Dismissed. We took it to the EEOC to make an official federal complaint. Just a week ago, an agent of the US Government patiently explained to us that these laws are literally designed to fuck over the worker and protect the employer unless they are epically stupid, and unfortunately, mine had not been epically stupid. So there's nowhere to go, no recourse to be had. It's over, I guess. Family - 'How to sum it up quickly...' My family hit me with the old soft-disown. No more calls, no more communication. They think they are loving me by not having contact with me. By depriving me of my family, they hope it will make me realize that the path I'm on is destructive, and I'll return to them living an upright life. No. I'm living an upright life, now. And if my family can choose to throw me away, then they are not a family I choose. Then my dad hit me back two months later, absolutely gaslighting me and pretending we never had the disown conversation at all. Reality - 'I don't know who I am anymore' I have trouble knowing what's real, anymore. Every message my dad sends on the surface seems loving and supportive and plaintive. I feel I must be the one in the wrong. I got fired for bullshit reasons. It doesn't feel real. "My family can't possibly have ceased contact with me: that's one of those things I know can never happen!!" But that did happen. So what else that feels real, actually isn't? I do

mean to be so dramatic, and I won't apologize for it. But I truly do feel like my mind has been pretty thoroughly unseated by the last year. Whoever I am, I'm becoming someone different. More distilled, at very least. I've discovered a lot of things about myself: trauma that has likely led to a lot of my mental health problems. Discovered I actually have RAGING ADHD, and it has robber me of a lot of things I wanted to do, and now is sort of consuming me completely. I'm looking for help. Trying to get better. Here's hoping. Every bold point above could be its own book, for all my thoughts about them. But enough of that for now. Love you. Thanks for reading.

[teachingtales]

I’ve had to answer this a couple times already so I want to share it with you to help make some sense of the Capitol Hill Attack. In bold are the questions/comments from someone else and then my response follows. 

I don't know what these people expected by doing this. We must first remember that these are not the "average person". These are people who firmly believe in an underlying persecution. I grew up in such a cult, where we were taught that everyone is persecuting us, secretly or overtly. To account for the fact that we were part of a religious majority in the US, we were taught that the "other Christians" were not "true" Christians. They were liars who pretended to believe in God hoping for eternal life, but would vote for "worldly and Satanic" ideas like gay marriage or abortion.

These people genuinely believe that the entire political system of the United States is a Satanic cult that sacrifices children. They are told not to donate blood because the Satanic Leaders (politicians and celebrities) steal this blood in order to use it for youth (by putting it on their skin or ingesting it or both). In some cases, young Christian children are stolen and drained of blood for this purpose. They believe that Trump, and only Trump, was fighting a secret battle against the Powers That Be. They believed that Trump's lack of presidential activity/effects was due to him being far too busy fighting the secret Satanists. In other words, the fact he was ineffective (in public) meant he was effective (in private).

So, to your question: what did they expect by doing this? Any or all of the following:

die a glorious death for the man hand-selected by Jesus, thus gaining access to Heaven

they believed they would find the "hidden votes", exposing the Satanic Politicians and showing the world they were really right this whole time

force another recount, which would finally prove that Trump actually won

The election was fair, there's no damning evidence of election fraud and Trump's legal bullshit is baseless and a desperate attempt to cheat the system.

True. But these are not reasonable people we are dealing with. In their minds, the lack of evidence is the evidence, that cheating the system was done so well that they made sure to really cover their tracks. Oddly, they also believe that it was done so sloppily that they do have evidence in the form of a video that Trump referenced multiple times in his Georgia Phone Call. It doesn't matter that the actual, unedited footage wholly disagrees with Trump's accusations; remember, he was hand-selected by Jesus, and the people in possession of the unedited footage are hand-selected by Satan. This, then, means Trump's video and Trump's claims are automatically correct, while anyone else is a liar and holds forgeries. After all, Lucifer is "the Father of Lies", so his agents (politicians) surely can lie effectively.

Again, we are left with this problem: the lack of evidence is the evidence.

Storming the Capitol was a shitty idea, what was going to change? People are dead because of this "overthrow". The government wasn't going to be affected by this.

In addition to what I mentioned earlier, they have a very small view of the world. These are people who typically believe the Earth is only 6000 years old and evolution cannot happen because they cannot fathom the long periods of time it takes. These are people who believe that those of us outside of the US are all collectively lying about the SARS-CoV-2 virus so we can hurt President Trump's reputation. They cannot understand scale. They are the people who watch movies like “Independence Day”, where a single person who has no knowledge of alien computers can take down the entire fleet. They don't understand how complex things really are. Thus, they genuinely think a "last stand" type of attack on a building will bring on the glorious end to this troubled tale.

Trump repeatedly bashed people who protested for BLM and said it was violent, unnecessary, etc. But when people riot and kill in his name he's just like "well they didn't do anything wrong".

This is unfortunately an easy one to answer: if they're against me, they are wrong...but if they are for me, they are right.

This is a classic "in-group/out-group" type of thinking. In-Group: the group you belong to Out-Group: the group you do not belong to (often with directly opposing views) In this type of thinking, you stereotype the Out-Group by their worst actors but your worst actors in your In-Group are different. We can see this in the media in the form of the following examples:

Example A: foreigners who attack something on national soil are "terrorists", but domestic attackers are "troubled individuals"

Example B: if the majority is white, a 17 year-old black male who shoots some people is written about in the news as a "violent man" or "man opened fire on innocent victims". If the shooter is a 17 year-old white male, the news is characterizes him as a "troubled teen" or "boy open fires at school, family wonders where they went wrong"

Example C: if the minority religion has a passage in their holy book that says "Women are less than men", it's because that religion is clearly false and laughably erroneous; if the majority religion has a passage in their holy book that says "Women are less than men", it's not sexist and just needs to be understood in cultural context

The subconscious reasoning for this type of thinking is very tribal but also ego-preserving...that we each believe we are always making the most correct and most reasonable/logical choices, so if someone makes a different choice, that person and choice are unreasonable and illogical.

None of this excuses the behavior, but I hope it helps shed some light on this type of extreme thought process. 

[rev-1832]

please for the love of all fuck explain mcyt to me

Omg I've been waiting for this

So mcyt means minecraft youtube, but usually also includes Twitch streamers. It's like a in general thing, and not pointing to anything specific

But since you sound so confused, I'm gonna explain to you the Dream SMP lore 'cause why not

TL;DR: Chaos and war, basically also like a hamilton, heathers, and les mis crossover (but i mean if you want to understand everything you should read.)

If theres spelling mistakes, sorry

Note: Everyone on the smp has three canon lives, and when you loose all three you're canonically dead (except philza minecraft. he has one canon life bc hes known as the hardcore guy bc he had a minecraft hardcore series for 6 years until he was killed by a spider while trying to fight a baby zombie lmaoooooo)

IMPORTANT: THIS IS ALL RP. IRL THEY’RE ALL FRIENDS. THERES A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE PLAYER AND THE CHARACTER. THE RELATIONSHIPS AREN’T ACTUALLY TOGETHER IRL. ITS ALL THEIR CHARACTERS THAT THEY MADE UP. (obviously the best friends stuff are irl)

In the beginning there were 8: The Dream Team (Dream, Georgenotfound [the guy in my pfp btw :)] , Sapnap), Badboyhalo, Awesamdude, Ponk, Callahan, and Alyssa. Around this time, nothing much happened since it was all brand new, uhh yeah (this was around may-july of this year)

Then around late july new members joined: Tommyinnit, Tubbo, Wilbur Soot, Eret, Skeppy, Fundy, Punz, Purpled, and Schlatt. This part is very important to the lore, because the lore kinda started off with the british (so tommy, tubbo, wilbur, eret) Schlatt was banned, cause Sapnap was the one who invited him and Dream didn't know who he was. He'll come up later.

So Wilbur and Tommy decided to create a new nation called "L'Manberg". Also around this time (i think) Nihachu and Jack Manifold joined. They also were part of L'Manberg. There was this huge revolution between Dream Smp and L'Manberg. Very historical period on this smp. In the end, (i think it was?) L'Manberg who won (if memory serves).

After that, L'Manberg had started growing bigger, with a lot more buildings added and stuff, notably Church Prime, which where they created a religion for Twitch Prime, which is how you can sub to your favorite twitch streamer for free if you link your amazon prime account. I'm pretty sure around this time, Quackity, Karl Jacobs (if you watch Mr. Beast; yes, that karl jacobs), HBomb, Technoblade, and Antfrost joined. And then the railway war started. It happened when Tommy accidentally ran over Dream with a Minecart and then took his stuff. This is how the disc war started (once again, if memory serves). The two discs Tommy owns are his prized possesions, and Dream took them. Also around this time the Pet War started, with Sapnap killing someones(i forgot oops) pet. And then more pet killing. Annnnd then even more.

Then there was the L'Manberg eletion. There was POG2020, who was Wilbur and Tommy, SWAG2020, Quackity and George, Coconut2020, Fundy and Nihachu, and Schlatt2020 which was Schlatt. Oh yeah and he got unbanned btw

SWAG2020 and Schlatt2020 decided to combine their votes, thus Shclatt became president and Quackity his vp. Oh and ever since the election Quackity has this grudge against George bc he slept through the election. Schlatt renamed L'Manberg to Manberg, and exiled Tommy and Wilbur from it.

Schlatt is a evil dictator who likes power. He and Quackity started fighting, and so Quackity became part of Tommy and Wilbur's side. Around this time was The Battle of the Lake and The Burning Eiffel Tower, both part of the pet war. (It seems like a innocent war but its actually brutal lmao) Also (irl) Mr. Beast had a $10,000 Taco Bell gift card hunt. Eret won. It was at the cords 6969,420, because haha funny number haha weed number. This has nothing to do with the lore but yeah. Eret also became King of the SMP 

Then there was the Manberg festival. It was to celebrate democracy, but Tubbo puts it as "i decorated my own execution" bc he helped decorate it, but he was murdered there. At the festival was the Manberg Massicare, where Technoblade was forced to shoot tubbo, but he released a firework rocket kiling Tubbo, Schlatt, Quackity, and a few others. Many people lost one of their canon lives. Wilbur went all J.D like and planted 11 stacks of TNT underneath Manberg, and wanted to blow it up.

Pogtopia was formed, which is a ravine which i think is underneath? manberg? Which included basically everybody who wasn't neutral or with schlatt. On November 16 was the Manberg VS Pogtopia war, but the Badlands were also there. The Badlands is a nation of four people: Bbh, Skeppy, Awesamdude, and Antfrost. They faught with the loosing side, so the chaos could continue. Eret disobeyed Dream and got stripped of his royalty, and gave it to George. Oh and during this time, George had no idea there was a war and was building a cottagecore mushroom house with callahan and was very confused with all the death messages in the chat. Schlatt died canonically of a heart attack or stroke (no one knows tbh). Tommy became president, passed it to wilbur bc he still has unfinished buissness with dream (the discs), and wilbur passed it to Tubbo, who made Tommy his vp. Technoblade then argued about how government is bad, and they're just repeating history. Philza Minecraft joined the server, but no one could find him, until Wilbur blew up L'Manberg (they rechanged the name also). Wilbur then made Philza kill him, so Wilbur also became canonically dead. Then Techno, still mad at L'Manberg and governments, summoned two withers and made it attack the others. The Geogre decided to check out what was happening and helped fight. After the chaos, Captain Puffy and ConnorEatsPants joined the smp. About one to two weeks later Vikkstar and LazarBeam joined, then about three months after that Ranboo joined.

They rebuilt L'Manberg on stilts, and there water where the explosion was, but now with coral and stuff to make it all pretty. Tommy and Ranboo decided to go steal from Georges mushroom house, but then also griefed it and burnt it, and Dream, being a George simp, built obsidian walls around L'Manberg. They took Tommy to court, and was put on probation. Then Tommy got exiled (again) but this time by his own best friend. This made Quackity vp and Fundy secutary of state. Dream also took Georges king thing and gave it back to Eret because Eret has a good relationship with everybody, whereas George being King just caused chaos cause hes close to Dream. Quackity and Karl made Mexican L'Manberg, and George and Sapnap joined in also. War against Dream SMP, it was a negotiation and it got renamed into El Rapids (reference to Chilling in Cedar Rapids, which Hilary Clinton once said, and Quackity referenced it, got it trending #1 one twitter (well i mean dsmp gets things trending like everyday but), and got DONALD TRUMP TO SUBTWEET HIM. (This happened irl)

In his exile, Ghostbur (wilbur as ghost) and Tommy made Logstedshire, and Dream was often there to watch him. Dream then blew it up, and now Tommy is living with Techno in his arctic place. Currently, Quackity made a thing called The Butcher Army, so they could execute Techno. Tubbo, Quackity, Fundy, and I also think Ranboo? are trying to get another festival, and yes its a secret execution plan, but for them to kill Dream, who they realized is who they need to kill first. The disc war is still not over. Tommy has one of his discs, but Skeppy is in possesion of the other one.

Unluckily for Tommy (reguarding the discs), something happened in the Badlands. Bbh was digging out his underground statue room (he plans to make a statue of everyone of the server) and found this crimson egg. He, Antfrost, and Captain Puffy kinda got possesed. Also since Skeppy didn't really hang out on the server at night, but bbh does (OF FUCK I FORGOT TO MENTION HE AND BBH ARE BEST FRIENDS) Captain Puffy created Discount Skeppy, which is her in a Skeppy skin. Skeppy found out, had a little conflict with her during her stream, but it was resolved, and at one point in the stream, he asked bbh to choose between him and the egg, and when bbh didn't answer, he went to the egg, put himself inside it, and logged off. Couple days later, bbh and puffy got him out, hes now possed by the crimson, called Technoblade his "best friend" infront of bbh, and is now living in a grass hut. Bad is convinced theres still some skeppt left, but yeah. Skeppy also wanted to burn the disc.

End of lore for now, bc its like if you miss ONE STREAM YOU MISS LIKE A REALLY IMPORTANT EVENT AND ITS STRESSFUL

Not much part of lore but Nihachu and Captain Puffy once went on a date. They’re both bi irl and Puffy was on Nihachu’s Love or Host (twitch dating show. its really entertaining) Captain Puffy was a contestant, and chose love. (LoH is also how Nihachu and Wilbur met.) 

Funfact: Theres 5 irl lgbtq+ ppl on the server (people who came out, anyways cause you never know, ya know?) Antfrost is gay, Eret, Nihachu, Captain Puffy are all bi, and Karl Jacobs is ace spec 

Family stuff: Philza Minecraft (he'll come up later) had two twins with a Samsung Smart Refrigerator in the 70's. The two twins being Wilbur and Technoblade (he'll come up later also) and also had another son, Tommy. They also adopted Tubbo, who they found in a box on the side of the road. When he grew up, Wilbur met Sally the Salmon, and they had a fox together (dont ask just go with it), which was Fundy. (The character) Fundy is trans, and yeah . Bbh is a dad to sapnap and yeah

Oh and a new member is coming on today on Quackity’s stream (twitch.tv/quackityhq at 5pm CST if you want to watch) 

I left out some parts, sorry, but theres always the wiki...

Wilbur Soot is also a musician! He wrote I’m In Love With an Egirl, The Internet Ruined Me, and Your New Boyfriend. (did you know the last one beat taylor swift for #1 trending on youtube? idk why but im really proud of him for that) They’re all catJam’s. Go listen!

[kurts-still-here]

SongFic #3 Of The “Kurtbastian Singing Adam Lambert” series. “Sure Fire Winners”

This one is just Sebastian and Kurt having fun and being sexy together 😎😎. Songfic #4 will be up in a few days most likely but I hope you enjoy!!

Please leave any comments you have etheir on here or on A03 or FanFiction.Net !! 😁😁🤗🤗 Thank you!!

Archive Of Our Own: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32874553

FanFiction.Net: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13927358/3/Kurtbastian-Singing-Adam-Lambert (Chapter 3)

“We are so going to win this,” Kurt exclaimed as he walked out of the bathroom stall and looked at his outfit in the mirror. He was wearing a black leather jacket, a skintight black shirt, black leather pants and black, knee-high laced up boots. He had on sunglasses even though it was indoors and his hair was spiked up with hair gel. He had drawn a star on his cheek and had blue and purple glitter on his face along with guyliner.

“Well they might as well just give it to us now with the way we look,” Sebastian said, walking out of his stall and up to Kurt. Him and Kurt were matching except Sebastian wasn’t wearing the laced-up boots. He looked his boyfriend up and down and smiled. “We look hot.”

“I know we do babe,” Kurt said, kissing him on the cheek. “And our performance is going to be even better, I know it.”

“Yeah well we better get going, don’t want to keep everyone waiting. Do you think Mr. Schue and Artie have everything set up?” Sebastian asked. They had asked Mr. Schue if they could have some special effects and props for their performance and their teacher had happily agreed.

“I don’t know,” Kurt said, taking out his phone. “I’ll text Artie and ask him.”

The week’s assignment in the glee club was to sing a song about victory and Kurt and Sebastian had admittedly known the perfect song for them to sing. It was upbeat and full of energy. The assignment was a competition and whatever group won got the duet at Sectionals. Sebastian didn’t really care about winning since he had been the lead soloist for the Warblers and had sung solos at the competitions but he knew that Kurt wasn’t as lucky as him even if he was the most talented performer in the group. He knew how much a duet would mean for Kurt so they went all out with costumes, make-up, special effects and props. They also came up with matching choreography and Sebastian had to say that it was the most work and effort he had ever put into anything. But it was all worth it because he knew they were going to win and he really wanted that duet for Kurt. His boyfriend deserved it.

Kurt had told him about the glee club’s duet competition last year and about how he ended up singing a duet by himself because Finn didn’t want him to sing with Sam. It had just hurt Kurt even more when Sam and Quinn had won the competition and Kurt had told him that even though he loved singing “Le Jazz Hot” that he was glad he had a partner this year. Sebastian had seen the video of Kurt’s performance and thought that Kurt would be the only person in the world who could pull off singing a duet as a solo.

His costume was so creative and so was the background he had designed. He had also designed costumes for the Cheerios he had paid to act as background dancers for him and the choreography was stunning. Sebastian thought that he should’ve won but Kurt told him that Finn and Rachel were acting fishy the whole time so they probably had something to do with Sam and Quinn’s win. Not that they didn’t deserve to win but even Santana and Mercedes’ performance of “River Deep, Mountain High'' was mind blowing. Kurt didn’t care about winning so much as having someone to sing with and made a joke saying that he may be able to sing a duet by himself but that he didn’t want to have dinner by himself. But last year didn’t matter anymore because this year they were going to win a duet at Sectionals and not some stupid dinner at a cheap restaurant when Sebastian could easily pay for his own date and could take Kurt to a 5-star restaurant.

Plus this time the group couldn’t vote for themselves so as long as they blew it out of the park then they were for sure the winners. They were the last to go this week seeing that they had spent so long preparing themselves and that they had just finished up their performance the previous day. Brittany and Santana had sung “Try Everything” by Shakira, Finn and Rachel had sung “The Climb” by Miley Cyrus, Sam and Puck had sung “Victorious” by Panic! At The Disco, Tina, Mercedes and Quinn had sung “Shake It Off” by Taylor Swift as a trio and Mike and Artie had sung “On Top Of The World” by Imagine Dragons. All the performances were good but Sebastian thought that the only competition they really had was against Sam and Puck since they had picked a song similar to theirs, the only difference was they didn’t put in the extra effort. They had it in the bag.

“He says they're ready,” Kurt squealed. “Oh, I’m so excited, Seb, just imagine us singing a duet at Sectionals. Together. It’d be so romantic and fun and we would win the competition for the New Directions.”

“Well you won’t have to imagine much longer. You deserve this more than anyone else Kurt. Don’t go down without a fight, okay?” Sebastian told him. Sebastian thought that sometimes Kurt went too easy on his friends and let them push him to the side when Kurt was a star. He needed to stand up for himself more and go after what he wanted.

“I won’t, I promise.” Kurt said and grabbed ahold of Sebastian’s hand. “Now let’s go win this duet.” He cheered and they grabbed their stuff before walking out of the bathroom.

They walked to the choir room hand in hand, mentally preparing themselves for their song. They couldn’t help but worry a little too much, especially Kurt. The choreography was a little complicated and it had taken them some time to really nail it down but it would be worth it in the end. It was fast, just like the music and they had to mind the spacing in the choir room also.

Once they reached the choir room they stood outside of the doors, Kurt to the right and Sebastian to the left. They were planning to come into the room when the music started to surprise everyone and to add an effect. They would storm into the room, grabbing everyone’s attention and the lights and the costumes and the choreography and the singing would be a crowd pleaser.

“Okay, why am I so nervous?” Kurt asked, pacing back and forth, fidgeting with his hands.

“I don’t know, why are you?” Sebastian asked. Kurt had no reason to be nervous right now. He was amazing and he could and would pull this off. “Hey, look at me babe,” He told Kurt and took his hands to hold them. “We’re going to win this and we're going to perform at Sectionals. Don’t worry about it, you’re going to psych yourself out.”

“I know,” Kurt nodded. “I just… things are never certain and I really want this Seb. It’s my last Sectionals and I want it to be really special.”

“I know you do and I want this for you too so just calm down, focus, breathe and get your head in the game.”

“I will,” Kurt said, doing what Sebastian told him to do and taking a deep breath. “Artie says that he’ll text me when they're ready inside but the band is still setting up.”

Sebastian nodded and gave Kurt a kiss before going back to the other door to the choir room. Inside everyone was talking to each other about the setup of the room.

“Of course this is for Lady Hummel and Fivel, gays always go full out,” Santana said, looking around the room.

“Well doesn’t this seem like a little too much?” Rachel asked the group who just shrugged in response. “I mean it’s not like they’re going to win over me and Finn.”

“You know what Man-Hands,” Quinn snapped. “Just for that I’m not voting for you. And The Climb was the worst. How is that about victory?”

“It’s about overcoming obstacles in life. My obstacles being you guys and how hard it is working with people who are less talented than you.” Rachel said, nonchalantly.

“Rachel, babe, you can’t just say things like that.” Finn told her. “It’s not nice. But anyways, this does seem like something Kurt would do. Remember his “duet” last year?”

“You mean the duet he did by himself because your homophobic ass couldn’t handle him singing a song with Sam?” Quinn asked, raising an eyebrow. “I remember and he nailed it. You guys better watch out because now he has Sebastian and we all know how badly he wants a duet.”

“Hey, I wasn’t being homophobic, I was looking out for the team. Sam knows what I’m talking about right dude?” Finn asked Sam who shrugged.

“I don’t know man, some of the shit you said was really offensive. And I was all set to sing with him and then you talked to us and he set me free. I would totally have still done it if it wasn’t for you.” Sam explained, narrowing his eyes at Finn. Sam liked Kurt a lot and they were really close with one another. Sam treated Kurt like he was one of the guys and they had only bonded more when Kurt had helped him out the previous school year with his siblings. He had really wanted to sing with him but then Kurt had let him go and Sam was too worried about his popularity at the time to try and get Kurt to keep their arrangement. Up until now Kurt and Sam had only sung one or two lines together in a group piece and Sam had always thought that maybe he could still see if Kurt wanted to sing with him. He’d have to ask him.

“That’s not what I meant, it’s just…” Finn’s voice trailed off and threw his hands in the air, frustrated. “... you just don’t get it,”

“It doesn’t matter now anyway. Kurt has a partner this time and it’s obvious that he’s in it to win it with Seb,” Tina said. “He should’ve gotten this a long time ago.” She rolled her eyes at Rachel.

“Yeah well he could’ve gotten a solo at Sectionals two years ago if he would’ve hit the high F but he couldn’t despite saying he was able to. It’s not my fault that I have a superior vocal range.” Rachel sneered.

“You know what Berry I’m sick of your shit,” Santana yelled, pointing her finger at Rachel. “Let me give you a little newsflash here. First of all, half the people in this room like Artie, Mercedes and I have a better vocal range than you. Kurt can sing just as good as any of us but no one ever gives him the chance to shine. He can hit that note, he’s hit it several times before right in front of you but you never noticed because your ego’s ten sizes the size it should be. We weren’t going to tell you because we didn’t want to risk you throwing a hissy fit and blabbing your mouth but we already decided that we’re voting for him. He deserves this and he’s the only member of this club that hasn’t had a chance to shine yet. So shut up, suck it up and deal with it you selfish bitch.” Santana fell back in her seat and folded her arms across her stomach as she watched her friends' (and Rachel’s) expressions.

All the girl besides Rachel looked proud of her (and why shouldn't they be), the boys looked surprised and shocked (which they shouldn't be because that wasn’t the first time she had told Berry off) and Finn and Rachel looked like she had just slapped them (and they were lucky that she didn’t because she really wanted to).

The room was silent for a few seconds before Artie and Mr. Schue came out of Mr. Schue’s adjoining office. “Okay everyone, I think we’re all ready to watch our last performance from Kurt and Sebastian. Artie you can get Kurt to tell him that we’re all ready for him.” Artie pulled out his phone to text Kurt while Mr. Schue continued talking. “Now after they are finished we’ll be voting to see who wins the competition and remember, you can’t vote for yourselves this time.”

“Is there even a point in voting?” Rachel muttered and everyone except Finn shot her a death glare.

“Okay, he says that they’re ready,” Artie said. “Let’s start up the smoke and then he says they’ll come in when the music starts playing.”

“Alright then,” Mr. Schue said, going over to the smoke machine and staring it up. “Hit it you guys,” He said, referring to the band who started playing the background music for the song.

“Wait,” Kurt said. “I hear the music,” He told Sebastian. “Ready babe?”

“Born ready babe,” Sebastian assured his boyfriend. “Let’s do this,”

And with that they opened their doors and walked into the choir room like they had planned to. They admittedly started singing while going through the choreography like they planned. The scene was perfect. They were blue and purple lights flashing around the room and Mr. Schue and Artie had properly set up the smoke machine so that the room was misty. Kurt and Sebastian felt like they were at an actual rock concert which got them in the mood for their performance even more.

We're coming up like killing machines

Our big guns gonna shatter your scene

It's pandemonium on the floor

'Cause everybody wants a little more

They wanna ride on the rocket ship

Ride around the moon for a velvet kiss

'Cause all the girls and the boys wanna know

How far this bad wild child's gonna go

Everyone seemed to be enjoying their performance already except for Rachel who had a stony expression on her face and who sat there in her chair with her arms crossed. They kept dancing and Kurt felt a sort of high when he realized that they were hitting the moves exactly like how they had planned. Kurt turned into Sebastian and then Sebastian took his arm and spun him back out. Then they had prepped themselves before going into a roundoff back handspring in the choir room, earning clapping and cheering from their friends.

We are the sure fire winners

Uh-oh yeah big time hitters

We are the sure fire winners

Uh-oh yeah big time hitters

Bringing the heat and the word is out

Giving you something to shout about

We are, yeah, we are, we are the sure fire winners

Sure fire winners, sure fire winners, sure fire winners

They both sang the chorus and walked around the room and interacted with their audience, Sebastian high fived Puck and Sam while Kurt danced with Quinn and Brittany. ‘So far so good’ Kurt thought to himself, excitedly. He was so happy that they seemed happy about him being so extra about the performance and that they seemed to love it. He was just a few minutes away from winning the duet, he could feel the feeling of victory already and the song just pumped him up even more.

Flick the switch and the missile will fire

I'm a heat seeker when I'm full of desire

We're all drawn to the heat of the flame

'Cause you wanna be a star in the hall of fame

I was born with glitter on my face

My baby clothes made of leather and lace

And all the girls in the club wanna know

Where did all their pretty boys go?

The boys went back to the center of the room and Sebastian quickly glanced over to Kurt and was happy to see how into it he was. He was moving along with the music, adding his own pizazz to their dancing. He put his hand on his face and dragged it down his face to emphasize the glitter and then took his jacket off his shoulders slightly, matching with the lyrics. On the last line they stood back to back and sang it together as the audience continued to cheer and holler.

We are the sure fire winners

Uh-oh yeah big time hitters

We are the sure fire winners

Uh-oh yeah big time hitters

Bringing the heat and the word is out

Giving you something to shout about

We are, yeah, we are, we are the sure fire winners

Winners winners

They started singing the chorus again. They stood on opposite sides of the room and swung one leg forward before forcing it back and flipping over into a backflip. Then Kurt slid to the floor in a split and swung his legs forward to spin himself around on the floor. Sebastian walked over to him and took his hand spinning him around in the floor before helping him up off the floor. Kurt stood up gracefully and Sebastian dipped Kurt back. They held the pose as Sebastian took over the lyrics and then Sebastian lowered Kurt down so he could fall into a backbend. He let go as Kurt kicked himself over and then they started singing the bridge.

Ooh yeah, take a walk on the wild with me

Gonna take you to the top to the brink of what you believe

Never gonna stop 'til we reach the top

Never gonna stop 'til we reach the top

You'd better get out of the game it's never gonna be the same

Move over 'cause a new boy's calling it time

They both hit the high note and Kurt had to resist the temptation he had to ditch the choreography and to jump up and down with excitement. They walked around the room, clapping their hands together and the rest of the glee club even Rachel joined in on the clapping. There was no way they weren’t going to win. Everyone was loving them and they were doing amazing. They were on fire, they were pumped up and they were going to finish out strong.

We are the sure fire winners

Uh-oh yeah big time hitters

We are the sure fire winners

Uh-oh yeah big time hitters

Bringing the heat and the word is out

Giving you something to shout about

We are, yeah, we are, we are the sure fire winners

They pumped their fists up in the air as they sang the lyrics. Mercedes, Tina and Quinn were singing the lyrics along with them, Mike, Brittany and Santana were doing their own moves in their seats, Puck, Sam and Artie were pumping their fists along with Kurt and Sebastian and Finn and Rachel were quietly observing the scene but Kurt could tell that they were both impressed with him and his boyfriend.

Ooh yeah yeah-oh yeah yeah yeah

Mr. Schue’s expression was the best though. He seemed shocked with Kurt’s and Sebastian’s dance moves and singing, like he didn’t know they had it in them. There was nothing more that both boys loved more than proving people wrong while also proving themselves.

We are the sure fire winners

Uh-oh yeah big time hitters

We are the sure fire winners

Uh-oh yeah big time hitters

Bringing the heat and the word is out

Giving you something to shout about

Yeah we are, yeah, we are, we are the sure fire winners

Kurt walked over to Sebastian and they stood next to each other as they finished out their dancing, ensign off with a series of complicated footwork. They got it right, matching it up with music and ended their song, posing, back to back again, with their arms crossed and their heads bowed down a little so that their sunglasses slipped down to the bridge of their noses.

Gonna take you to the top to the brink of what you believe

Gonna take you to the top to the brink of what you believe

Gonna take you to the top to the brink of what you believe

The music faded out and they held their pose as they got a standing ovation from their friends. Everyone cheered and clapped for them and Kurt finally gave in to his temptation and jumped up and down, holding hands with Sebastian. They hugged each other and Sebastian lifted Kurt off his feet.

“Wow,” Mr. Schue exclaimed. “That was amazing boys. The costumes, the special effects, the energy, kudos to the both of you.”

“Thank you,” Kurt said, still full of energy. He was so happy at the moment, he wouldn’t even be that upset if they had lost. Of course, they weren’t going to though because they had kicked ass but nothing was written in stone yet.

“What do you say guys?” Mr. Schue asked his students. “Are we ready to vote?”

“Actually Mr. Schue, I don’t think that’s necessary,” Rachel said, standing up. “We all decided that we want Kurt and Sebastian to sing at Sectionals. Kurt really deserves it and I think that his performance with Sebastian just goes to show that even more.” Everyone nodded their heads in agreement and Sebastian squeezed Kurt’s hand. He was getting his duet!

“I couldn’t agree more Rachel,” Mr. Schue said as he turned back to the two boys. “Well, congratulations you two, you won the duet. Start brainstorming some ideas and we'll talk about it tomorrow. Oh, and try to incorporate some of those moves. That’ll guarantee us a win alone. Well done gentleman.”

“We did it Seb,” Kurt said, hugging him again. “We did it. We’re gonna sing at Sectionals. Oh my god.” Everyone laughed at how excited Kurt was and clapped for the boys again.

“I know, I know,” Sebastian told him. “This is great. You did great. You were amazing babe.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you, Seb” Kurt smiled and they kissed each other before going to sit down in their seats. They would have to do this all over again and they both couldn’t wait.

[antoine-roquentin]

interesting comparison in how the nytimes and wsj report on international affairs in their articles on the seoul mayoral election

new york times: Election Rout Signals a Shift in South Korea’s Political Scene 

Mr. Moon was elected ​in 2017, ​filling the power vacuum created by Ms. Park’s impeachment. As a former human rights lawyer, he enthralled the nation by promising a “fair and just” society. He ​vehemently criticized an entrenched ​culture of privilege and corruption ​that he said had taken root while conservatives were in power, ​and vowed to create a level playing field for young voters who have grown weary of dwindling job opportunities and an ever-expanding income gap.

Mr. Moon spent much of his first two years in power struggling to quell escalating tension between North Korea and the United States, successfully mediating diplomacy between the two countries. He shifted more of his attention to domestic issues after the two summit meetings between North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and President Donald J. Trump failed to produce a deal on nuclear disarmament or the easing of tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

But things quickly turned sour on the home front ​as well.

In 2019, huge outdoor rallies erupted ​over accusations of forgery and preferential treatment in college and internship applications​ surrounding the daughter of Cho Kuk, Mr. Moon’s former justice minister and one of his closest allies.

The scandal flew in the face of Mr. Moon’s election promise of creating “a world without privilege,” and prompted outrage against the “gold-spoon” children of the elite, who ​glided into top-flight universities and cushy jobs while their “dirt-spoon” peers struggled to make ends meet in South Korea’s hobbled economy.

​South Koreans expressed their growing cynicism over what they considered the hypocritical practices of Mr. Moon’s progressive allies with a popular saying: naeronambul. It roughly translates to, “If they do it, it’s a romance; if others do it, they call it an extramarital affair.”​

Nonetheless, the Democratic Party won by a landslide in parliamentary elections last year as Mr. Moon leveraged his surging popularity around South Korea’s largely successful battle against the coronavirus. But Mr. Moon’s virus campaign has lost its luster.

In recent months, South Koreans have grown frustrated with prolonged social-distancing restrictions, a distressed economy and the government’s failure to provide vaccines fast enough. On Wednesday, the government reported 668 new coronavirus infections, the highest one-day increase in three months.

Mr. Moon’s most devastating setback came last month when officials at the Korea Land and Housing Corporation — the state developer — were accused of using privileged insider information to cash in on government housing development programs. Kim Sang-jo, Mr. Moon’s chief economic policy adviser, stepped down last month when it was revealed that his family had significantly raised the rent on an apartment in Seoul just days before the government imposed a cap on rent increases.

“People had hoped that even if they were incompetent, the Moon government would at least be ethically superior to their conservative rivals,” said Ahn Byong-jin, a political scientist at Kyung Hee University in Seoul. “What we see in the election results is the people’s long-accumulated discontent over the ‘naeronambul’ behavior of the Moon government exploding. Moon has now become a lame duck president.”

wall street journal: South Korean Conservatives Are on the Rise a Year Before Presidential Election 

South Korea’s political right and left have widely different foreign-policy views. Under Mr. Moon, the government has given priority to inter-Korean cooperation, avoided zero-sum language about the U.S.-China rivalry and taken a pro-diplomacy approach that has had a “net stabilizing effect in the region,” said Jessica J. Lee, a Korea specialist at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a Washington-based think tank

South Korea’s conservatives in the past have taken a more confrontational stance with North Korea and expressed skepticism about China. Right-leaning presidents have also aligned more with Washington on security, showing more appetite for large-scale military exercises with the U.S. or greenlighting the installation of an American missile-defense system that angered Beijing and Pyongyang.

A right-leaning South Korean president adopting a traditional foreign-policy playbook “will likely increase tensions on the peninsula and make denuclearization less likely,” Ms. Lee said.

South Korean conservatives have lately appeared more supportive toward Washington’s growing concerns about Beijing than their liberal counterparts.

Last month, the conservative party’s chairman said South Korea should join forces with the U.S., Japan, Australia, and India—a grouping known as the Quad—to work together against an increasingly assertive China, just as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was visiting Seoul.

“South Korean conservatives have found their political legitimacy through Seoul’s alliance with the U.S.,” said Kim Meen-geon, a professor of politics at Kyung Hee University in Seoul.

“This now means more support for policies on China that align closer to Washington,” she said.

South Korean public opinion is firmly behind the conservatives when it comes to China, recent opinion polls show. More than 80% of South Koreans view China as a national security threat, while 60% see it as an economic threat as well, according to a poll released by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a think tank, this week.

the breakdown in voting patterns by gender and age is pretty interesting, with the 20-something men breaking harder for the conservative party than the 60-somethings. in large part, this has to do with a. the doubling of property prices in seoul since 2014, while wage growth has slown to 0% b. ahn cheol-soo, a south korean tech millionaire with a centrist bent (progressive domestically, hawkish in foreign policy), who previously threw his weight behind moon while the conservatives were in charge, pushed the conservative candidate this time to maintain his centrist credentials. i don’t know if this is replicable nationally. south korean conservatives seem to have rallied around the only person not tainted with the stain of the dictatorship and its corrupt apparatus, a sergio moro type named yoon seok-youl. the popular liberal candidate is gyeonggi governor and proponent of universal basic income, lee jae-myung. one thing not mentioned in any of the articles is the betrayal over lgbt rights. moon jae-in, while seen as being more conservative, was expected to shepherd an anti-discrimination bill favoured by 90% of koreans into law. instead, evangelical christians have managed to halt the process, helped by the fact that korea’s first big covid outbreak was caused by a gay man (although an even bigger outbreak was caused by evangelical protests against church restrictions). in the face of high profile suicides by trans figures, as well as the fact that this seoul election was caused by the suicide of the seoul mayor (the first lawyer to ever win a sexual harassment case and a promoter of women’s rights) over a sexual harassment scandal, leftist youth has abandoned the major centre-left parties (including the one widely seen as the biggest alternative, as the leader resigned over a sexual harassment case) in favour of numerous breakaway parties. whether these voters would return to moon’s party in a national election, especially under an economic populist, remains to be seen.

[skateboardtotheheart]

Alex vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda

hello, everyone! i’ve been working on a fic titled “Alex vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda” for quite a long while, and i’m finally biting the bullet and posting the first chapter. this fic is based on the novel "Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda" by Becky Albertalli! it will be very closely based on the book, as well as some things from the movie "Love, Simon", and you may find dialogue or details that you recognize from either version of Becky Albertalli's story! i have no rights to the novel/movie or the JATP characters depicted in this fic. that said, there are a lot of details that are changed, and you'll be able to spot those really easily. this fic will be crossposted to my AO3 and can be located HERE. 

like i said, this fic has been a long time coming, and there is tons and tons i have planned for it. here on tumblr, i will be posting things like extra details, bonus content, and maybe some sneak previews! for now, let’s get into the fic!

SUMMARY: Alex Mercer is just like everyone else- only he has one huge ass secret. Nobody knows that he's gay, not even his closest friends and bandmates Luke, Reggie, and Julie. The only time he's ever mentioned it to someone, it was in an anonymous email chain with Ghost, another Los Feliz High School student. Alex can't risk coming out to anyone, but when his emails fall into the wrong hands, his secret is at risk of being thrust into a spotlight. Suddenly an already stressful junior year is all that more complicated as he juggles everyday drama, the school's annual band competition, blackmail, and trying not to lose his shot with the best guy he's ever met.

READ CHAPTER ONE BELOW THE CUT

Everything about this conversation is so out of the box of normal that I barely even register what's happening. Of course I'm the type of person who can't tell when this- something so crazy and awful and stressful and honest to God what the hell is happening- is going on. In my defense, Caleb Covington has never spoken to me before. I had no reason to assume that the first time he did, it would be to blackmail me.

We're taking a water break in the bleachers when Caleb saunters over. No greeting, no introduction- just words to send my entire junior year of high school spinning on its head.

"I read your email."

I swallow my water. "What?"

Caleb raises an eyebrow at me, and there's no other way to describe it but menacing. It's funny looking back on it all; I'd always heard Caleb was a really nice guy.

"I was in the library. And I read your email."

"You read my email?"

"Not on purpose. You really should have logged out of Gmail."

There's nothing I can do but stare at him, dumbfounded. What in the name of David Bowie is happening right now?

Caleb, thankfully, stops towering over me and takes a seat in the bleachers, a foot or so away. To anyone else, it might look like we're friends. To me, it feels like I can't breathe.

"Why the fake name?" Caleb asks, and my entire soul screams a wish that he would stop being so casual about this. 

I want to tell him that the point of a fake name is to keep people like Caleb Covington from knowing my secret. Way to freaking go, Alex. He must have seen me sitting at the computer like the monumental dumbass I am.

"Would it interest you to know my cousin is gay?"

"Um. No, Caleb. It really wouldn't."

He still has his eyebrow raised and a small smirk on his face. If I focus hard enough- kind of impossible right now- I can picture Luke punching it right off his face.

"What do you want Caleb?"

This is the longest five minute water break of my life. 

"Look, Mercer, I don't have a problem with it. It's not a big deal."

Yes, it really is. It's a huge monster of a deal. This is the biggest disaster since Luke slammed his fingers in a door and couldn't play his guitar. 

"But. . ." Caleb drags out, and I can feel my leg bouncing quicker by the second. "It's pretty clear to me that you'd rather keep it all hush, hush."

I mean. Yeah. Kind of. The coming out thing doesn't scare me that much. Except it does. Because if people know then my parents will know and if my parents know then my whole family will know and if my whole family knows then I've become like a living, gay, everyone-finds-out version of If You Give A Mouse A Cookie, and I'd rather die than have that happen. So maybe the coming out thing does scare me. But the biggest problem if people found out? 

Ghost.

I have absolutely no idea what it would mean for Ghost if Caleb was going to tell anyone. The thing about Ghost is he's a pretty private person. I bet he wouldn't forget to log out of his email so people like Caleb Covington wouldn't see it. I bet there's a good chance he'll never forgive me if he finds out about this. So really, I have absolutely no freaking clue what would happen to Ghost- to us.

And I'm still sitting in these stupid gym bleachers, the pink hydroflask Reggie bought me limp in my hand, desperately wishing Carrie would call an end to this godforsaken water break. I can't believe I'm having this conversation with Caleb right now. Why couldn't anyone else have logged into Gmail after me? Why was I so impatient to see if Ghost had emailed me back that I used the freaking school computers? Why did this stupid school insist on blocking the wireless so I had had no choice but to use the school computers? But it had been one of those days where I couldn't even wait to get out of dance practice to check my phone in my car.

I'd emailed Ghost this morning, and it had been a pretty big email. I was desperate to know if he'd emailed back.

I must have been just staring at Caleb for a while because he cocked his head at me and said, "Don't worry, Mercer. I'm not going to show anyone."

I take a relieved breath. Then my hydroflask finally slips from my fingers as I freeze, and the sound echoes through the gym. I don't even look at the rest of the dancers when their laughs break out.

"Show anyone?" I ask. 

Caleb leans in a little bit, smirk wider on his face. I feel sick.

"Did you- oh my god, did you screenshot my emails?"

"Yes, see, I wanted to talk to you about that."

"You took a fucking screenshot?" I hiss out, thankful I'd put my stuff farther away from the rest of the dance team today.

Caleb has the audacity to roll his eyes. "I've heard you're in a band with-"

"What the fuck does that have to do with- Let's go back to how you screenshot my email."

"Or you can shut up and listen to what I have to say." 

Something about the way Caleb's gaze catches you, it's hard to do anything but what he says. Fuck.

"I believe we may be in a position to help each other out."

Jesus Christ, what 18 year old talks like this?

"Why the hell would I do anything for you?"

It's a stupid question, I realize as he stares at me calmly. Calmly. Like this isn't the end of my life. Whatever he wants right now, it'll be in exchange. I do this, and he doesn't broadcast my private emails with Ghost to the entire student body.

All this time and I really thought Caleb was supposed to be this nice guy. Fuck me.

"You're going to make me do whatever you want?"

Caleb tsk'd like the condescending bastard he clearly is. "Well, now. I'm not making you do anything."

"But if I don't help you, you'll what? Post my emails on the fucking tumblr?"

LosFelizSecrets. The bane of every Los Feliz student's existence. Ground zero for more gossip than anyone in their right mind knows what to do with. A school of almost 3,000 kids but if it's on the tumblr, most people know within a day. A complete and utter hellscape disguised as a blog.

When Caleb stays quiet, I speak again. "What do you want from me, Caleb?"

He sneers. 

"Music of the Night."

Once again, I'm stuck staring at him. Music of the Night? That's what this is about?

"Your band is signed up, as is mine. The HGC lost to Dirty Candy last year, and I will not lose again this year."

Music of the Night is this competition Los Feliz holds every year as part of the music program. At the end of the year, there's this huge concert held at the Orpheum theatre in Hollywood. At the beginning of the school year, anyone can sign up. Then each band has 4 months to perform at school events, outside gigs and parties, and whenever they have an opportunity, really. During winter break, the student body votes on who the headliner of the concert will be. Last year, the headliner was Dirty Candy. Because they won last year, they're out of the running this year and are in charge of organization and things for the concert. This year, I was hoping the headliner would be Julie and the Phantoms. My band. Caleb and his band HGC has entered the competition every year, and he's never won. He's a senior, and I know this will be his last chance. I also know who his biggest competition is. 

Us.

"So. . . what? You want me to sabotage my own band?"

I feel breathless and dizzy as I ask. Caleb just shrugs casually.

"Whatever you need to do. So long as it's my band that gets the votes. Like I said, I think we can help each other out. Think about it."

Caleb winks- he actually winks- and walks away. I stare dumbly after him. No way. No, I'm not doing this. I can live with being outed. Right? 

But my thoughts travel to Ghost. Because he's a part of this, too. He goes to Los Feliz, and he's my age, and he uses a fake name, and he's not out. 

Ghost isn't out, and Caleb has my emails.

Fuck.

----------

Any hope I have of forgetting about that stupid conversation clearly isn’t worth it. I have an hour before dinner, and right now I’m basically willing to do anything to avoid my family. Trying to talk to my parents is exhausting. You can’t just get away with telling them your day was good or bad. No, you have to ring out every excruciating little detail. Everything that happens in my or my siblings’ life, they want to know about it. In all honesty, I used to love telling them all that stuff. Now I can’t get away from them fast enough. Especially today. I’m barely in the house long enough to put my backpack in my room before I’m slipping out the back door and leaving again. 

I try to drown out my thoughts with Axl Rose screaming into my earbuds. But my mind is stuck on Ghost, emails, and Caleb freaking Covington. Caleb wants to win Music of the Night. I can’t exactly blame him for that. Everyone wants to win it. 

Except he’s blackmailing me. And by extension, he’s blackmailing Ghost. And that makes me want to hyperventilate a little bit. Maybe go scream somewhere. 

But Axl Rose is helping. The familiar route of walking to Luke’s is helping. We don’t get much of a fall in LA, but the air feels a little crisper in mid October, and I can already see the houses that are getting ready for Halloween. 

When I reach Luke’s house, I don’t even bother going through the front door. I just cut through his backyard and head through the backdoor right next to Luke’s bedroom. I hear them before I see them. Reggie’s laugh fills the air, paired with a frustrated groan from Luke. They’re sitting side by side on Luke’s bed, facing the small tv with some video game I’ve never seen on the screen. They look like they haven’t moved in hours. Luke pauses the game as soon as he sees me, waving, and I can’t help but smile a little bit. The guy won’t put down his guitar for you, but he’ll pause a video game or movie without a second thought. 

“Great, you’re here! Tell Luke he’s shit at this game and he should let me play Mario Kart.”

I roll my eyes, “Dance was great, Reg. Thanks for asking.”

Reggie sticks out his tongue, and I crack a smile. This is the most comfortable I’ve felt all afternoon. I throw myself into the beat up bean bag chair Luke keeps in his room.

“Luke, you’re shit at this game and Reggie wants to play Mario Kart.”

Luke gapes at me, a betrayed gleam in his eyes, but I just shrug. Luke grumbles a bit as he gets up to switch out the game, and Reggie whoops in victory. I let out a soft sigh. I think I needed this. The chaos of Reggie and Luke playing whatever game, the strange mix of leather, Axe, and his mom’s Hawaiian Breeze cleaner that makes Luke’s room smell awful and entirely wonderful at the same time, and the familiarity of Luke and Reggie. Everything just fits right when I’m with them. 

As Luke sets up the game, Reggie looks at me excitedly. “Alex, Luke hasn’t heard about le wedgie.”

I snort a little, “Ah, yes. Le wedgie. C’est une histoire touchante.”

I don’t know why Reggie bothered to wait for me to tell the story; he’s the far better storyteller between us. Maybe it’s just because I’m better at French. 

Luke stares at me, “English, please?”

Reggie and I thought we’d be fancy and take something fun like French for our required language credits. Luke decided to take something actually useful and learn sign language. This story is stupid, and my reenactment is stupid, but it feels kind of perfect. Like Caleb and secrets are all things of my imagination, and nothing exists but this bedroom and me, Luke, and Reggie. Benefits of having known these dorks since elementary school, I guess. 

About as they finish the second race in Mario Kart, Luke lets out a yawn. Reggie reacts so quickly I barely realize what he’s doing. He grabs a crumpled up Hershey’s Kiss wrapper from Luke’s nightstand and throws it into Luke’s mouth. Luke sees it just in time to clamp his mouth shut. Reggie sighs in defeat, but shrugs.

“Keep yawning, I’ll get you one of these times.”

“Why are you so tired?”

“Because I party real hard. All night, every night, baby,” Luke says, slamming Reggie’s bike with a green turtle shell. 

“Alone in your room with your guitar. Some party that is,” Reggie retaliated with a bomb thrown in Luke’s direction. 

As the race finishes Luke yawns again, and Reggie’s Kiss wrapper bounces off his cheek. 

“I just keep having these weird dreams,” he explains. 

I raise my eyebrows. “TMI, dude.”

“Not that kind of dream!” Luke tosses the wrappers at me, Reggie cackling beside him. 

Luke starts explaining his dream- something about every time he started playing his guitar his cord had magically unplugged itself from his amp- and Reggie and I just share a look. We were used to Luke being in his weird, feels-the-need-to-analyze-everything moods. But even after all these years, it was almost like a movie, watching Luke get so weirdly passionate about things- music and otherwise. It made me glad that Luke was a brother to me by everything but blood. Partly because if he wasn’t, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop myself from falling for him. And I have a strict policy about not falling for straight guys.

To everyone but me and Reggie- immune to him after knowing pretty much every thought that’s ever gone through his head since elementary school- there’s this pull to Luke. Like he casts a spell that has everyone in a 10 mile radius tripping at his feet and each and every girl swooning. Poor Julie is not immune to the spell, it seems. Lucky for her though, Luke doesn’t seem immune to her either. 

It took barely a few weeks into the school year before I noticed Luke switching seats with Willie Meyers at lunch to increase the odds he’d end up right next to Julie. Then there’s that stupid, puppy-dog, love-sick look in his eyes that Luke gets every time he thinks Julie isn’t looking. And it’s not like Reggie and I haven’t put up with a pining Luke before, but everything seems a little different with Julie. It makes me think of Ghost. 

Would I look like that if I saw him in person? Would he look at me like that? 

If Caleb leaks my emails and Ghost hates me forever, I don’t think I’ll ever find out.

-----------

chapter one complete!

i'll let everyone know right now that i have no clear updating schedule for this fic; it's kind of hard to write and get down the way i want, so i'm not sure how long anything will take me. but it is summer break for me, so hopefully you'll all start seeing consistent posting of new chapters!

i hope you all liked this first chapter, or are at least intrigued to read some more. as i said in the starting notes, this will be cross posted to my AO3! Feel free to leave me a comment here if you would like, or head over there if you have any comments about the fic at any point! feel free to send me a message/ask on here if you have any questions or comments, too! my inbox is open any time <3

if anyone would like me to start a tag list, let me know and i’ll get that done right away!

this fanfic is definitely my baby, so i really hope you guys all like it as much as i do!

thanks <3

[yibuo]

UMMM I would love to know what exactly happened with xnine too if you know??

i didn’t know how to answer this without hating on long danni but... that’s not possible when you’re talking about xnine

CORRECT ME IF I’M WRONG IN ANY WAY @ DIMPLES AND CFANS

tldr ceo addicted to producing survival shows realizes boy group is incapable of feeding her fat rabbit because of her OWN mismanagement and throws them away (literally? probably not, maybe, idk)

HOLY SHIT THIS BECAME RLY LONG IM BEGGING KEEP READING TO WORK LO LOL LOL

long danni= wjjw company ceo

wjjw=company that xnine, xz, r1se, etc are under

huo mala: fat company rabbit that WILL give u nightmares goodness gracious thinking about him sends chills down my spine

alright so long danni (ldn i will refer to her) & ee media along w/ tencent and sm made the survival show x-fire... the premise of xfire was that 16 contestants split into two different teams (white and red) and then at the end it would boil down to each team having 4 members and the winning team would debut as a group called xfire...but wait...the group’s name is xnine? so out of red team (peng chuyue, baishu, xiao zhan, xia zhiguang) and white team(wu jiacheng, gu jiacheng, zhao lei, and guo zifan) white team won...and they unofficially debuted as xfire..went abroad to train yadda yadda yadda and then a few months later, TELL ME WHY LONG DANNI DECIDES TO RELEASE POLLS TO LET FANS VOTE IN 5 MEMBERS INTO XFIRE TO CREATE XNINE! ldn PLEASE if u wanted to rig the show you should’ve decided in the beginning what was the point of making the teams and the fans fight against each other...

so yeah xz and crew weren’t actually supposed to debut according to show rules...i mean i’m glad they debuted obviously bc x9 is x9 but ee media and frickin ldn couldve handled this better...like every member except chen molerat is amazing and great but....WHY DIDNT MaNAGEMENT NOT BLATANTLY RIG THEM INTO THE GROUP

but also thank u ldn for also letting us get to know the 4 guys who were added n not chen molerat <3 but like DO UR JOB PROPERLY

anyway the polls were RIGGED obviously thanks ldn what did u expect out of making POLLS, and xiao zhan, peng chuyue, xia zhiguang, yan xujia, and chen z*** were added to the group to create xnine...talk about rigged when chen z*** the molerat lookin turdface misogynist was added... anyway at the time he wasnt known to be problematic but ya the whole rigging thing caused a whole rift esp when x9 debuted bc there were fanwars and death threats initially but xfire did well because it was one of the (if not only) survival shows at that time and x9 debuted w/ a good response etc

then they got moved to wjjw (still owned by ldn thanks ldn) and wjjw is known for hoarding artists and not promoting them (THEY HAVE LIKE 45 ARTISTS BUT WERE FORMED 3 YEARS AGO MAKE IT MAKE SENSE) and not being promoted properly was EXACTLY what happened to xnine. as idols what they needed was music promotions, variety shows, etc stuff to get them as people out there but this genius ldn decided to promote them through stupid zodiac dramas like super star academy (to promote xfire finalists) and oh my emperor (which was an xnine drama). now i haven’t watched OME, but SSA gave me enough brain rot and gunk for me to not watch OME. (the only person who could act was baishu), and the story was SO BAD. nevermind the acting, because the boys weren’t initially slated to be actors, but the story was horrible, girl without superpowers suddenly becomes white cult goddess at the end??? WHAT???????? why didn’t ldn just promote them normally !!!!!! are they an actor group or an idol group???? I LOVE XNINE, THEY ARE TALENTED ARTISTS !!!! and eventually some went into acting (xz, guo zifan, gu jiacheng) BUT WAS THAT THE TIME DLFNJNF and then they just kept getting sent into random dramas and movies as random side characters instead of being able to make music and promote????? i’m sorry i’ve been stuck on using dramas to promote x9 for a while because that’s such a SILLY IDEA *vigorously shakes head* 

ldn knows how to do survival shows but she doesn’t know how to promote her artists thanks ldn. xnine has so much talented, we know xiao zhan is a great singer, but other main vocalists like wu jiacheng, zhao lei, and peng chuyue are amazing as welll, here’s me plugging this video of zl and pcy performing their self-written song on produce camp because it’s the most beautiful thing ever

-oh yeah somewhere in here insert chen molerat getting outed as a pedo misogynist cheater by his gf who still has the audacity to have xnine in his weibo name because xnine starting to get popular gtfo rat lookin ass i WILL barf, when we say ot8 xnine we mean xnine w/o chen toadratass but sometimes ppl think it’s xnine minus xz which is untrue-

they also have talented rappers (gu jiacheng yan xujia) and dancers (xia zhiguang guo zifan) like xia zhiguang can end me with his spinning flying kick thing and i WILL let him 

so YEAH !! TALENT that went to waste because wjjw gave them weird random hiatuses and kept pushing them as actors??? seriously what is with this actor stuff...so that’s why they debuted in 2016 and have very little discography to their name because wjjw just gave up...trying to promote them GOD thank u so much ldn for ur incomptency <3333 xnine had members in diff stages of life (ranging from xz who was born in 91, to yan xujia born in 2001, they were all close tho soo cute) and wjjw really was like nope we’re not gonna try to promote yall’s dreams of becoming singers on the stage because they couldn’t add 34783473 pounds to fat huo mala’s weight

so ya a lot of people are like omg wjjw hates xiao zhan!!! ya no they hate all of xnine but now xz is bringing enough money to make huo mala even fatter so good for huo mala i guess /s

also rumors and any bad media? lol wjjw doesn’t care they do a shit job at handling bad things too WHAT A WELLROUNDED COMPANY

OH ALSO TALK ABOUT HOW THYE HAD 3 DAYS TO PREPARE FOR A CONCERT???????????? WHAT????????? wjjw u mfs

anyway to summarize my rants above wjjw did  a SHIT job of promoting xnine as idols when the boys worked so hard and wjjw kept tryna push them to acting bye (some of them can’t act and literally don’t WANT TO ACT HHHSFLNF), wjjw is also horrible at letting all of the xnine members shine when as i mentioned before, they’re ALL TALENTED!!!! and then they just gave up on xnine somewhere in 2017-2018... ok anyway so is xnine disbanded? no although some may say their last concert in dec 2018 was their last concert ever they’re not disbanded

xiao zhan , gu jiacheng, and guo zifan went into acting

wu jiachang is focusing on his music etc (he was actually the first member of xnine i came across when i watched the collaboration/cyzj in 2018...yes carats this is That wu jiacheng!!!) MAN CAN SING

peng chuyue, zhao lei, xia zhiguang, yan xujia all went on produce camp 2019 (aNOTHER SURVIVAL SHOW BC THEY WANTED TO BE ON THE MF STAGE BC THATS WHY THEYRE HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE WJJW) along w/ fellow labelmates zhou zhennan and zhai xiao wen ... and everyone but peng chuyue made it to the final 11 spots and got to debut in the group r1se...UNFORTUNATELY ALSO UNDER WJJW HELP SEND HELP

if they’re in r1se does that mean they quit xnine? no! they’re in both that’s just how survival shows work it’s kind of weird

peng chuyue recently released a song and it’s really good and you can’t not tell me that it’s gay here it is

anyway xnine hasn’t disbanded!! the X玖少年团 (xnine) in the non-r1se members’ weibo names say that loud n clear!!! and when the r1se members from xnine won produce camp 2019, they all made xnine signs SO XNINE IS ALIVE and they do keep in contact!!

why haven’t we seen blatant public interactions btwen xiao zhan and the xnine members? because some frickin annoying xz solo stans/xfx claim that the other members use xz for popularity (HELLO??????? IN WHAT WORLD DOES THAT MAKE SENSE HALF OF THEM R LITERALLY HIS KIDS BUT OK) 

anyway in conclusion wjjw doesn’t know how to promote any of their artists, thus screwing over xnine members and making them go on a group hiatus where they focus on acting/singing/r1se for r1se members but they are very much xnine as of now !!!

here’s some REALLY GOOD RESOURCES to follow xnine bc as an ifan it’s mf hard

-xnine slideshow

-xnine faq

-xnine eng sub channel by yuer

-all of that content i listed above was made/subbed by one person and she is the queen of uhh...xnine international fandom outreach (????) how do i word it but she’s been subbing and spreading xnine long before xiao zhan’s popularity skyrocketed so go follow her for updates and memes here

-xnine intl fanbase twt and tumblr

-and here’s this twt account with dumb pics of xnine because why not

also i’m pretty sure there’s a wip video explaining x9′s history being created (by yuer because queen) so when that’s posted i’ll rb this and post it here

also here’s this video dragging wjjw