#governments are like cults. corporations are like cults. families are like cults. not all of them Obviously.

[metanarrates]

seen a lot of analyses of severance lately from a ton of diff angles (family abolition, labor rights, mechanisms of control, just general psychological) but i haven't seen a ton of discussion on cults in specific and the overlap of cult and corporation in general. while i'm still not caught up on the show... i will say as a survivor of a highly corporatized cult a TON of severance feels incredibly accurate and astute to a lot of things i've personally experienced and noticed

[astrogre]

The Planet that is Pluto

Words: power, control, obsession, the underworld, intensity, intense emotions, intense everything, domination, taboo, depth, sex, repressed emotions, shadow self, the survivor, detective, alchemy, dark arts, superiority, fear, bravery

Astrological placements associated with Pluto: Scorpio, 8th house, Aries

Character I associate with Pluto: Femto-Berserk

The way Griffith sacrifices the souls of his people to transform into Femto and have dominance over others. What he does to Casca as well. He is the epitome of an extreme Plutonic character.

Honourable mentions: Homelander- The Boys, Laurie- Euphoria, Makima- Chainsaw man, Erik- Phantom of the Opera, Gaara-Naruto

Places: hades underworld realm, chess tournament’s, hell, anywhere with hierarchy aka corporate workplace, government institutions (because of power play/dynamics), caves, underground tunnel, escape rooms, secret society hidden meetings, nightmares,

Random somewhat astrologically influenced things that personally remind me of Pluto: Rigger, black grapes, death by strangulation, wine, babushka dolls, long nails, snakes, a public executor in the medieval ages, chess, cults, BDSM, the colour black, power play

Song I associate with Pluto:

Listen to this while you read it to immerse yourself in Pluto energy and surroundings, also read the lyrics too it’s very much Pluto energy

For you Pluto dominants:

(Pluto 1st house, Pluto 8th house, Pluto conjunct asc, Pluto conjunct Sun, many strong aspects to Pluto & Honourable mentions: 8th house stellium, Scorpio Stellium.)

This is entire post is dedicated to you

Plutos Traits:

Regenerative and transformative

Think of a snake shedding skin to become anew or when you’ve overcome and left abusive relationships and you’re back in your self confidence. Pluto is a phoenix bird it has a DEEP urge for regeneration and can transform itself from its own ashes into a diamond, Pluto itself is the pressurising machine. Say ashes represent the shittiest moments of our life e.g abuse, relationships, trauma, Pluto has the ability as an alchemist to use this horrible event to make something of more value, it transmutes basic base metal to gold. Transmutes pain and death to renewal. Pluto sees trauma as fuel. Without ashes (intense emotions or experiences) Pluto cannot show up and do it’s thing. Check where you have Pluto in the houses, this may be where you can get hurt most but it’s purposefully for a reason you’re supposed to use those intense emotions and make something beautiful of them

Eg. Pluto in 11th houser may have intense traumatic social circles or communities that ostracise, diminish, use or control them. As a Pluto 11th houser YOU have dominion here, you guys are social climbers the real life underdogs to Royalty stories. Use their exploitation of you as fuel, motivation and a resources to your success.

(Kylie and Kris Jenner have this placement and we all know how they absorb the drama, publicity and negativity from others like a champ, embody it, all to gain constant relevancy, power, influence and fame in their careers. Scandals make their profits go up like the whole Jordan woods drama and using it as marketing to do a sale on Kylie Jenner lip kit, Kris having their children’s private lives scrutinised and publicly available all so her family can gain relevance and wider opportunities)

Dominance and control

The reason why Pluto is known for obsession is because it urges to have the upper hand, Pluto won’t argue when defied he simply acts unbothered but exacts revenge in a cold manner, it wants to dominate and will go to extreme lengths to do that, it will go at all costs, the obsession manifests in an illogical, ego based way think of Gabriel Agreste from miraculous ladybug- how he prioritises triumphing ladybug over saving his wife, that kind of obsession. In my personal opinion I see Pluto as the second ego after Sun. It’s better if I explain by comparison… Think of powerful and dominating planets like Saturn and Mars, imagine if you owed each of these planets money and were in deep debt with them this is how they would respond:

Saturn: would employ you to do gruelling long hard work for many years, no retirement so that you’d die working on their behalf. If you refuse or die before debts are paid they would simply pass your debt onto your children make them do it to repay the money you owe. (If you’ve seen Chainsaw man, Saturn would work/treat the debtors children kind of like the way Denji was treated he had to pay off his fathers debts; in burdensome conditions where his health was being compromised for repayment.)

Mars: if you owed money to mars and were not able to pay it back, mars would most probably threaten you, beat you up, do a drive by shooting, physically destroy your assets like keying cars, graffiti and bulldozing your house, may be very aggressive think of loan sharks and mafia

Pluto: Now if you owe Pluto money.. Pluto is the kind to go further than mars, he would make you pay for it personally, in a way that can be grotesque/dark think of maybe rue from euphoria. When she owed money she just randomly woke up in a strangers bed and the house being filled with men implying she had been sex trafficked. Pluto is very wicked, obsessive and can be unsympathetic. It would not care if you feel pain and regret for inconveniencing them, it does this to put you in your place and prefers you repay the money with your suffering. Pluto may not even want the money anymore but rather the control and prioritises the debtors torture or will get the losses at your expense. eg. Sex trafficking you, have you wake up on the road after being unconscious and notice your kidneys are missing, hold you hostage, torture you, sell your body parts at an elite auction house, make detestable arrangements behind your back like forced marriage etc. This is how Pluto exacts its power and control.

Power obsessed

Pluto gets what it wants and exerts control over others while it does. That’s why it’s described as “scary” and associated with fear, a combination of ego and revenge. This is why wherever Pluto is in your houses it can show where you are intimidating, relentless and powerful and what you have constantly been resiliently obsessing over for years.

E.g Pluto 1st housers feel the desperate need to be in control and that they are seen to be dominant. They’re kind to get insulted if you call them “cute” or make jokes about their authority. (Leonardo DiCaprio, Beyoncé, Britney Spears and Justin Beiber all have this placement and came out of being typecasted or known as the “sweet good girl/boy” stereotype to powerful and to be taken with caution.

Taboo

Pluto is labelled taboo because it inserts itself into light AND darkness. It doesn’t mind and in fact rather enjoys exploring sex, defiance, repressed emotions, any subject that the general public refuse to speak of, Pluto relishes in that. I remember as a child there was a myth that I was told. It was that if you say “Bloody Mary” three times in the mirror you’ll get haunted and a ghost will appear to attack you, while other children may scream and dread in fear to even think of doing such an act, Pluto ruled natives may be the kind when alone to quickly run into the bathroom turn off the lights and try it out alone. That’s why they’re known to participate in dark arts, have interest in disturbing topics, they are fearless, like the challenge and find the minuscule information available on it a challenge. It’s not that Pluto ONLY has interest in taboo topics it’s just that it doesn’t hold as much fear of it as everyone else, talking about sex or death to Pluto is like talking about the weather, it’s no different, after all it’s just another subject.

The reason why they’re so fascinated by such topics and affiliated with them is because they see wasted energy and potential in these dark topics, abandoned resources that nobody wants meaning there’s more for them, and that’s why Pluto wants to explore it. Pluto isn’t wasteful. If Pluto were to kill a cow it would use its meat for food, bones for medicine, skin for rugs and teeth for necklaces, not a part of it would go unused. It gets excited when someone hits them because it means they can hit back.

Hidden self

Pluto is the hidden shadow part of yourself self you may want to hide and refuse to acknowledge. This is because as mentioned before Pluto loves the darkness and inside the subconscious there’s the good stuff and the bad stuff, our subconscious holds our fears, our beliefs, our desires and Pluto brings out all that stuff as conversation starters and wants to explore it and use it as fuel. This is why Pluto is known to be triggering because to be honest who wants to remember the fact they are afraid of touch and their abuser that caused that? But Pluto does. Pluto wants to remember them, Pluto wants to bring it up, Pluto wants to know who they are, Pluto wants to get revenge on them and put them in their place. Wherever Pluto is in your houses can also show how you can exact revenge so that it hits hard on others.

E.g. Pluto 4th house can suggest native can use powerful resources in their family, or their family has status, control, authority over others and can utilise it against others to contribute to their downfall.

(Megan Markle has this placement and she certainly lives up to it. She’s able to use the traumatic experiences she endured as a royal as fuel against them and is slowly contributing to the downfall of the monarchy by using her name and her affiliation to the royal family).

How to activate Pluto

Pluto can only transform and use its powers of Alchemy, transformation, control and power if you tap into its energy otherwise Plutos potential will be ignored. The same with any placement really. If you have a Venus 1st house, you want to be a beauty influencer but don’t put yourself out there, it’s energy will never manifest and remain as wasted potential.

The way you’re supposed to use Pluto is by confronting your fears. When you are most afraid, do it anyway.

E.g. Pluto 7th housers when you’re laying in bed and you’re thinking of that traumatic experience in your relationships instead of suppressing it, allow Pluto to remember it and allow that level of disrespect you feel to take action in the way of your Pluto sign.

(Shakira, Cardi B and Megan Thee stallion all have this placement and exacted revenge on their partners in different ways, Shakira and Cardi did it by artistically exposing them in music and making money form it, Megan did it the same way and also by lawsuits, doing public interviews on torey Lanes and pressing charges)

Anything Pluto touches is where you hold the most power in your birth chart. Usually people say how come i’m not good in that area?? It’s because you’ve not utilised Pluto. It’s because you won’t let Pluto explore it and turn your tribulations into gold.

What can Pluto tell us:

The best way of how you can exact revenge for it to successfully hit hard on others.

Where your wasted potential is. Basically where you allow your fears, desires, trauma to lay dormant instead of using that intense energy for Pluto transformation

Where we get excited when someone hits us because it means we can hit back. (Applies only if native is used to Plutos energy, otherwise you won’t be able to hit back. You’ll know if it’s active if when you have challenges under the themes of the house Plutos in you trust you can fight back like you have in the past)

Where you hold the most power

What you obsess over

How you deal with fears, death, change and trauma

Which part of your life you experience extreme transformation and changes

What you like to fight for

I will most likely be making a series that incorporates all of this for each house. However due to the fact that I am unfortunately very detail oriented this may take a while for me to commit to.

Pluto Series:

Pluto in 1st House

[sparkplgggrrrrrrr]

Modern day Affogato AU

____________________

_____________________________________________

✦ Characteristics:

For the sake of confusion, we’ll call this AU version of affogato „corpogato” because he runs a big ass company, obviously named Affocorp because he’d NEED his name plastered everywhere in the cacao kingdom, but in the modern day it would be called “The Cacao Republic”, as I believe it would be a communist country. The Cacao Republic is based off South Korea and Modern China. With the two cultures blending, representing the choco and coffee cookie descendants being in a cultural melting pot. This is not to be orientalist or mix two completely different cultures or ideas. The cacao republic faced a similar cultural revolution to China, heavily industrializing in its later days, and cacao’s leadership costed thousands of lives even if it wasn’t intentional. Many cacao residents suffered under said communism. For the conditions of these people, I referenced my own family’s experience in communism and stories I’ve read in books.

Affocorp is this mega corporation that started out as an unethical pharmacy, based on canon affogato’s link to medicine malpractice. At the time this pharmacy was called Affolabs, founded when Corpogato was just thirty. He has a master’s degree in pharmaceutical chemistry, so he is well aware of what substances do what, but he isn’t too concerned of the harm. The scientists backing him were apart of a union he started in secret, composed of underpaid scientists with a vendetta against Dark Cacao. Soon enough, they practically became his most loyal subjects.

Affolabs created pills that were advertised as pain medicine and antibiotics, but they were either placebo or hallucinogenic. Some even made the symptoms of ailments worse so they bought more. This “get rich quick scheme” seemed to work pretty well for the soon-to-be corporate giant, because corpogato got the “BRILLIANT” idea,, to look at other avenues of manufacturing. Keep in mind, this man is fucking evil. He’s not a misunderstood villain, he’s not morally grey, he’s EVIL. VILE. FOUL. PUTRID. So, he looked at the rise of online clothing shopping, and how people were just looking for affordable clothing. Taking advantage of this opportunity, he found a poor community, and took advantage of their labor. He set up a sweatshop, one of horrid conditions, set in the coldness of the northern cacao countryside. These workers had a terrible life ahead of them. Corpogato made their lives miserable, only working for a few coins an hour., yet the clothing was labeled as ethical, made from choco bamboo fibers or recycled material.

While he ran this hellscape, he set up his clothing brand extension: Affoexpress. Affoexpress was very much like what you think of when you imagine fast fashion. Think of it like Shein, Zara, or Romwe. Affoexpress, little by little, gained popularity, before exploding in sales with many cacao residents for its affordable prices. Many cacao residents are in poverty or at least close to it, because cacao cannot for his life manage the republic’s money, leading to a command economy. Corpogato jumped on this shit immediately. He took advantage of his preexisting close ties with cacao to “take his place.” He essentially began to expand the branches of his companies to manufacture more and more products until eventually he could make it so people could ONLY buy his products. As this plan took motion, he centralized his companies, it was now Affocorp. Each of his other companies were now just branches of Affocorp, so he could now keep a watchful eye on all of them. Corpogato had a stiff hold on his employees, he had practically a cult following on social media, and a quite literal cult underneath the layers of Affocorp. The cult in secret was very ritualistic, made up of Corpogato’s early team of scientists, who have slowly been brainwashed into unwavering loyalty. Affogato now with government power, as he did take advantage of his closeness with Cacao, bought properties, and housed his most loyal subjects. They viewed him as their savior, getting them out of the grasp of poverty, “saving their career” and now they repay him by practical worship. Corpogato made it get to a point to where they started to view him as a prophet of sorts, as Corpogato slowly laced their food and residential running water with the very substances they created.

Affoexpress started to sell more than just clothing, they began to sell cheap electronics and mini appliances. In order to do this, corpogato had to set up more and more factories, contributing to the growing air pollution of the cacao republic, leading the cacao citizens to go to his companies for medicine and masks to wear for protection from the air.

He essentially made the cacao people rely on his affocorp for every day life. Under all of this was something more sinister if you thought it couldn’t get any worse, corpogato was looking at oil drilling in secret, because once you get ahold of oil, you get ahold of the world.

_____________________________________________

Design choices:

His cult emblem, its central to his body because it is central to his existence, he cannot keep on if his cult cannot.

He was given soft curls as it was remnant of his milk ancestry.

His jacket was based off of his Silla Era hanbok in his canon design.

I imagine affogato has weak knees, as he probably grew up malnourished with a genetic disposition to low iron from a very young age, which can lead to various health problems. So his staff is likely functional, and that’s why I gave him a dripped out cane.

These pants are based off of the “Baji” or pants of the hanbok.

His eyes were tilted further to the center of his face to have a more direct stare, like he’s staring into your thoughts. I also gave him little blush marks because he’d likely apply that to appear more approachable and harmless. I also gave him a wrinkle thing that most older cookies have because this man is probably pushing 50.

If you use the sprite anywhere credit would be kewl

[pocketseizure]

Governance in Hyrule

A hundred years after the Calamity, the Hyrulean monarchy only exists in the form of a ruined castle and a legendary princess. Not much can be said about the monarchy in its absence, but it’s interesting to think about in relation to the other systems of governance in Hyrule.

Although the Zora have a royal family, they’re essentially living in a communist utopia of shared resources and communal living spaces. Everyone works according to their interests and talents, and individual disagreements are given voice but ultimately suppressed for the good of the group.

Rito society seems to be the opposite. Warriors are highly respected, and they act according to their own individual ideas of what they think is the best course of action. Kaneli, the chief of Rito Village, is a retired warrior whose role seems to be largely symbolic. Although the village chief is respected, he has no real control over the younger warriors.

Kakariko Village seems to operate somewhere in the middle. As the village elder, Impa maintains cultural lore and tradition, and she can suggest courses of action. Still, her role is symbolic, and she does not directly arbitrate disputes or issue commands.

The Yiga are a bunch of obnoxious theater kids who have formed a cult around the most obnoxious theater kid. They are an outlier and should not be counted.

The Gorons seem to be set up like a corporation. Bludo is the founder of the Goron Group Mining Company, and he oversees its operations and manages trade. He commands respect, but he isn’t particularly concerned with anything outside his own interests. A lot of people who work for him don’t agree with his decisions, but they take it for granted that “labor” is what they should be doing. The Gorons are modeled on a stereotype of the traditional working class of downtown Tokyo, and I think their portrayal is meant to be a lighthearted parody of working-class solidarity.

Riju is the only person even remotely resembling a true ruler, and she’s an almost platonic ideal of a just and benevolent sovereign. She commands soldiers, directly confronts outside threats, enforces security over the market, ensures the fair distribution of resources, holds audiences with advisors and individual citizens, and generally works to maintain the wellbeing of her people. The idea seems to be that, as the only actual city in Hyrule, Gerudo Town is the only place that requires an actual government.  

Meanwhile, the Hylians seem to be doing just fine without any sort of government at all. They live in a beautiful and happy post-scarcity world where everyone has a place to live and enough to eat. Roads, bridges, and public stables are carefully maintained, and trade flows smoothly. People travel for pleasure and are free to pursue their own interests, whether it’s studying leviathan bones or writing magazine articles or hunting for mushrooms or searching for romance.  

It feels like the only real function of the Hyrulean monarchy was to combat Ganon, and Ganon only exists in opposition to the monarchy. I don’t mean to suggest that the destruction and loss of life that occurred during the Calamity was a good thing, but maybe it wouldn’t be such a tragedy if the Hyrulean monarchy were to end with Zelda…?

[ritchiepage2001newaccount]

WHY UNIVERSAL BACKGROUND CHECKS ARE JUST AS UNLIKELY AS EVER, UNFORTUNATELY

I'm a leftist (Libertarian-Socialist), who votes progressive, because I live under an "elected" government, and I had thought I had purged the MSNBC/CNN Nation from my friends list, but apparently not, as my timeline is just chock-full of media-driven hysteria over current events, so here's a primer:

"Liberals" who think their arguments are clever or relevant to the Second Amendment are exhausting.

They are not the left; they are just one half of the good cop/bad cop act of the corporate owned fire-hose of bullshit that is the corporate media, and corporate America's governing criminal cartel/duopoly.

Both cults "I like simple and ineffectual 'solutions', because they make me feel like I'm doing something, and I'm just stinky with fear."

There are over a hundred million legal gun owners, who some want to punish for somebody else's crime.

Well, there are some things to consider.

We've been a heavily armed country since 1621, and yet the epidemic of daily mass-shootings didn't begin until 20 April 1999 (Columbine), at a time when gun ownership was at an all-time low, and five years after Clinton's assault-weapons ban, so maybe guns aren't the variable.

Worth noting: One of the first things the "Pilgrims" did when they betrayed the Native Americans, was disarm "King Phillip" and his men.

Maybe, just maybe, dead school-children are the price of the neoliberalism practiced under the "Washington Consensus" of BOTH right-wing authoritarian parties since the 1980's? When your country offers you no prospects, and you become terrified of the future, what then? Fear can make unstable people do desperate things. Add to that a culture of celebrity, and what could possibly go wrong?

Another factor that goes completely unexamined, is the way Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill emptied our state hospitals onto our streets, and onto families ill-equipped to deal with the sometimes violent mentally ill.

Thank God, the "solution" is so simple…

Also, 84% of NRA members support universal background checks. The problem is, every time a bill comes up for a vote, Democrats add poison pill amendments guaranteeing defeat in the legislature (and the courts), and then they proceed to tell the TV cameras that "once again the GOP and the gun lobby have voted down background checks and defied the will of the people", or some such nonsense.

If you want to watch Dems sabotage universal background checks (while Republicans roll their eyes and face-palm) in real time, go here:

P.S. You can probably guess which one of these three groups I belong to (Hint: It's the one that's growing and actually decides elections):

LaborPartyNow!!!

P S The line, "You don't need 30 rounds to shoot a deer!" is not clever.

The Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunting tools, toys for hobbyists (target shooting), or even weapons for self-defense.

It's about ARMS!!!

It's about the individual citizen's right to arms, so they'll be prepared to join a militia, not the other way around. ‘Well regulated’ at that time, simply meant, ‘efficient.’ In other words, in order for a muster to be efficient, civilians needed to be already armed.

So the "collective rights" argument has a couple of problems that make it quite unhinged from history and reality.

1) As I've mentioned above, Americans have always been relatively heavily armed. How did that happen in a collective rights paradigm?

2) Contrary to what you were probably taught in school, by the time of the Confederate artillery barrage on Fort Sumter, the war over slavery had already been going on for over six years, and was fought entirely by independent volunteer militia's. Fort Sumter was just the beginning of official involvement by government troops. How did that happen in a collective rights paradigm?

3) In what universe do government forces need to have their right to arms protected?

4) Since when do National Guard members keep National Guard arms (Hint: they're kept at the armory, and have been since colonial times)?

5) Obviously, "Liberals" are stupid.

Again: #LaborPartyNow!!!

P P S That was ENTIRELY the point of the first fruits of dissent, the 10 Amendments we've come to call the BILL OF RIGHTS (which have become a beacon to aspiring democrats all over the world), to protect INDIVIDUALS from the government they had just created. #TrueStory

[warsofasoiaf]

Have you watched the Fallout show on Prime and if so, what did you think of it?

I watched it. For the most part, it was good - well-shot and well-executed. Walton Goggins stole the show as our favorite ghoul hitman. The Brotherhood was finally and decisively moved away from its Fallout 3 Wasteland Crusaders vibe. I would have liked more of the technological cult of the Brotherhood emphasized a little more, but what they did was fine. Overall, it felt like a Fallout product, albeit a Bethseda one.

And then, the final episode ended up turning into the Mass Effect 3 ending.

Overall, the plot was still the Bethseda "find the family member" plot which is getting quite stale by this point, but having Lucy go through it rather than us going through it ourselves makes the ludonarrative dissonance of Bethseda's "find your family member, but also feel free to dick around literally everywhere" entries into the Fallout series" does make the pill a lot easier to swallow. Her dad being a bad guy was a perfectly fine twist, albeit predictable. I'm not liking how many people seem to keep popping up from Pre-War times as being cryogenically frozen, it keeps losing the magic of the pre-War times with every new Pre-War person.

That being said, some worldbuilding changes I was not happy with. Nuking Shady Sands was something that was desirable for a lot of Fallout devs in terms of wanting to change the world back away from Fallout 2's big established cities to something grittier. But the timing of it throws New Vegas out the window. I believe the writers have said it was a mistake, and it goes back and forth from being an actual outside writer's mistake to a mistake that an in-universe actor made in recordkeeping. To me, it looks like a lack of care for the setting. If that was it, I'd actually be fine with the explanation, but there's a larger pattern at work here.

The change to making ghouls dependent on some magic juice just annoyed me. There was no real reason to change it, and now it opens up a whole of retroactive canonicity issues. It didn't really service the needs of the story except as an excuse plot for the Ghoul to sell Lucy to the organ harvesters in exchange for the magic juice. There were cleaner ways to get the plot to move in that direction without it.

The final episode plot revelations though, about how the US actually won the Resource Wars with limitless power and decided to nuke the world anyway because of the nefarious oligarch business council, was an incredibly stupid plot beat, enough that the series left a sour taste in my mouth. The Resource Wars meant a whole lot to the feel of Fallout, and satirized the jingoist nature of the 1950's Cold War. And what's better is that the entire reason, that they need to ensure a return on investment, makes no sense. The Resource Wars already show us that there's a premium on resources, and the technology level of the Pre-War world is such that having enough power could alleviate all sorts of resource shortages. And it's all under Vault-Tec's control, so there's *no* need to actually get the nukes to start flying from Vault-Tec's perspective. Vault-Tec desires nothing more than money, so it destroys the world to make...a whole lot less money.

That's beyond stupid, and there were so many ways to make it actually work. China attacking the US with nukes in this scenario (which was the prior canon) actually makes sense with this wrinkle - because China has lost and it would rather destroy the world than lose the war. That's well-keeping in line with the themes of Fallout. Even having the US Government find out and attack via Poseidon Energy (a conspicuous absence from the Evil Oligarch Council given the importance of Poseidon to the Enclave). But no, they went with lazy, stupid writing, getting rid of the critique of the warmongering that nearly ran the world to ruin in the 1950's and 1960's for an ineffective satire of the unchecked power of corporations.

That's one of the things that bothers me most in worldbuilding is when lore events are changed, especially for incredibly stupid reasons. It kills the immersion of any series, especially one so dependent on atmosphere and with so much lore as Fallout. It was disappointing to see a series with such potential just fumble the ball in the final minute.

Thanks for the question, George.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[usaigi]

Ashen Wolves + Jeritza Modern AU HCs

Ashen Wolves in my fic (read it, it's funny) I couldn't fit everything in putting it all here

Yuri

Works at the bar Abyss (which has a secret BDSM dungeon in the basement)

Lives in a punk house with the others and unfortunately (but unsurprisingly) the only one responsible enough to pay rent

Everything else is a gamble. Will they have electricity this month? Water? Eh ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

“Hey wanna go out? I know a place” (takes them to the health food dumpster that tosses out perfectly good packaged food) 

“Am I scared of twink death? Please.” 

SWer out of necessity, sends most of the money he makes back to his disabled mom

(TW human trafficking mention) Yuri's father met his mother, a young poor vietnamese women. He promise he'd take care of her give her a better life in UK. Yeah right. Due to everything, she's extremely traumatized and unable to work.

Because of his and his mother's trauma, extremely protective of the most vulnerable in his community(women, children, immigrants, pwMI) 

Balthus

New Jersey represent 🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅

Italian-American. Always correcting everyone on how to actually pronounce Italian words

Got into a tinyyyy minor disagreement with the mob and, in short, he owes them like gazillion dollars

Half-ass faked his death (so much party city fake blood) and is hiding out in Europe

He wears a fake mustache and puts on a fake Italian accent whenever he's in public

Sells drugs to the Garreg Mach kids. 

“Balthus get a job.” “I have a business” “Isn’t that why you had to leave the States?”

The only one not to have a room. He sleeps on the couch (he had an air mattress. Had.)

Constance

In the late 1800s/early 1900s, her ancestor founded Nuvelle Inc., a pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporation

Her great-grandfather publically sided with the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War since he was in support of Basque Independence. Later assassinated by the fascist government in retaliation 

Later, Constance's grandfather got backstabbed by his board and fired from the company

Her family was in denial about the whole thing and desperate to keep up with the appearance of wealth and continue to spend a lot of money. By the time Constance was born, they was in loads of debt

(tw suicide mention) Lost her mother in an accident. Then her father committed suicide, leaving Constance an orphan by 13.

Used the little inheritance she had to go to Garreg Mach and pretend everything was ok. Would lie anytime someone asked about her home life. Was forced to drop out at 16 because she ran out of money. To embarrassed to ask for help, she lied to everyone and told them she was going to study in the states

Yuri found her sleeping on a bench and took her in. Offered to buy her a ticket home until she finally admitted she lost everything and has no home to go back to

Dumpster drives at Garreg Mach for designer clothes. Ridiculous how much these rich kids (Hilda) toss out

Hapi

Romani :) 

Ran away from home when she was a teenager to “see the world.” Unfortunately, got taken in by some questionable people 

Cordelia found her and just felt so bad for her :( “oh no, a poor brown girl in need of help.” Offered to take her in and promised to help her get back home

Bullshit.

Finally able to run away and flee the country. She meets Balthus and Yuri because they were dumpster diving at the same spot. 

She and Constance have this thing of getting naked and howling at the full moon each month

Emile Jeritza

Born into a religious cult in good old USA 🇺🇸 His father was the cult leader and had multiple wives. 

His mother had a child from a previous relationship. Despite having numerous half-siblings, Emile was only close to Mercedes. She was the only one who didn’t scold him for crying and having “feminine” feelings after all

One day, his mother and beloved sister disappear. He never even got to say goodbye.. 

unbeknownst to him, when his mother and sister left they were fleeing for their lives. His mother immediately started to fight for custody of him but she was not an American citizen (while Emile and dad were) and she was trying to take him back to Europe

When Emile found out about what his father did, he… 

On the run from the FBI :) 

The wolves know about his history but fuck his dad, mofo had it coming. 

Yuri was standing behind Jeritza at the store when he saw Jeritza didn’t have enough money for food and cat food. He told the cash register to put the sandwich back. Yuri bought him the sandwich. 

[ineffable-endearments]

I don't personally have trauma based on religion/a cult/etc (and yes, I'll delete this post immediately if I realize I've horribly misunderstood something), BUT, with that said: I tend to lump the religious trauma aspect of Aziraphale and Crowley's experiences in with similar kinds of complex trauma. There is significant overlap, and also, Good Omens seems to be meant to relate to a wide variety of experiences.

Surviving a cult, getting embroiled in an extreme political ideology, living in an authoritarian state, being indoctrinated from a young age into an oppressive religion, and being manipulated by a deeply controlling family all share aspects that fundamentally mess with a person's grasp of who they are, how they can fit into the big picture, and whether other people are safe to connect with. Any population of people - beings with both self-identities and collective belonging, angels and demons included - will involve the potential for abuse based on these social power structures. And because people are complicated, there isn't always a clean dividing line between how different experiences affect them. Don't get me wrong: every traumatic situation is unique and deserves to be understood individually. But there is common ground, and I'm pretty sure that's where Good Omens lives.

If my understanding is correct, for all of those types of trauma, there are many levels on which people have to disentangle. Realizing that there is some difference between who you are/who you want to be and what your community demands of you is only one small step; realizing that your community's entire worldview and social structure are skewed wrongly is a whole other massive can of worms; and redefining yourself outside of where your formative experiences come from is yet more difficult, traumatic in itself because it is likely to involve ego death.

In Good Omens, the main theme is free will. But as @tallerthantale pointed out the other day, an important piece of the exploration of free will is an understanding of what the self actually is. And I think this is what Aziraphale and Crowley are struggling with. Both of them! Aziraphale's identity crisis is obvious because of all the angel stuff, but Crowley, too, seems to still be figuring himself out in relation to other people, not just Aziraphale. And both of their struggles come from their entirely understandable reactions to this one particular system (Religion? Family? Government? Privately-owned corporation?) that has traumatized them.

[numberonesnarkfan]

This is the story of a being named The Narrator.

Many religions and spiritualities have invented concepts and nomenclature that closely describes the type of being The Narrator is. For a western listener to understand best, the closest definition would be that it is a type of ‘spirit’.

The Narrator, as you know it, is a spirit not bound by laws of physics as you are, but bound by laws that govern a realm invisible to humans. One of these laws that applies to The Narrator specifically, is that it cannot refer to itself with a name or pronoun that is not given to it by man. The Narrator never referred to itself at all for much of its life. Even ‘it’ is a new pronoun to it. It knew the pronouns ‘ham’ and ‘den’ from the ancient Vikings, ‘to’ and ‘afton’ from the even more ancient Greeks. ‘The Narrator’, too, is a new name, given to it only in the 1600s. 

The last cult who discovered and committed themselves to it called it him, and named him Mikonaxas. The last cult of Mikonaxas was only formed ten years after the turn of the millennium. They operated for three years, dutifully serving the spirit. Mikonaxas told his cult that he embodied story. In ancient times, he would speak to bards and philosophers and tell them things that would change the course of history, if only they would appease him. In this age, Mikonaxas grew bored of his role as a spirit existing only to aid man and instead desired to join them in their feasting and revelry, and in their glory and toil. He wanted to feel firsthand the emotions and desires that he had studied closely, that could only be felt by one in a corporeal body.

“What type of body do you desire, Mikonaxas, my lord?” a member asked, bowing his head to the spirit, its form only visible as a dark cloud. Jim held his breath. He hoped truly that the being would not want for a body that matched his own. He dreaded what the spirit might do to him.

“I’m thinking…” Mikonaxas mused, “tall and fat, a symbol of my power and prestige. I want to appear old and wise, yet a youthful spark in my eyes, yes… Do you know of the appearance of the ancient daemon, Pan? Something like that. But I don’t want my body to be only human, heavens no. I must embody divinity, I must exist beyond the limitations of man. Perhaps endowed somehow with your new ‘recording’ technology, so that my stories can live forever. Can you do that for me? I’d love that.”

Jim released his breath. While he was getting old, his previous lifestyle had rendered him quite particularly gangly. He didn’t fit the bill. He glanced nervously around the near-empty ‘church’, which was in fact built in the basement of an abandoned house. There was one man who he knew fit Mikonaxas’ request.

This is the story of a man named Angelo.

Jim had known Angelo for a number of years. In fact, he had once had a relationship with him, before he had become Angelo when he transitioned to identifying as a man. He had cut ties with his family, who did not accept him anymore, and named himself after his great-great grandfather, who had also faced persecution for his identity. Angelo lived in a small suburban home, with no company other than his two cats. Angelo remained friends with Jim after their amicable break-up, when Jim admitted that, in respect of Angelo’s transition, he was no longer attracted to him. Angelo, rather than being angry, felt grateful to Jim for treating him truly as a man. Now, Angelo was a friend of the cult through Jim.

Jim felt a pit in his stomach. Among gods, or beings who were worshipped as gods, Mikonaxas could sometimes be cruel. He had an explosive temper. If Jim failed to deliver him his desires, Jim didn’t know what he might do to him, or to the cult at large. Jim bowed to Mikonaxas and turned to return to his quarters.

In the days following, Jim found himself faced with a ‘trolley problem’, of sorts. One potential loss of life, or the potential loss of the lives of the entire cult? In truth, Jim didn’t know what would happen to Angelo’s body if he were given to Mikonaxas. But if he had to augment it somehow to make it ‘exist beyond the limitations of man’, that couldn’t be good for Angelo’s general health.

That night, Jim made up his mind. He called the cult to a meeting and described to them Mikonaxas’ request. Stefan, a nurse, piped up that he may be able to help, as did Lucy, who was part of a team who built robots for work and fun. Over months, they devised a plan and built a prototype. They presented it to Mikonaxas, who liked it, but proposed a few changes. After more months, they had a final version.

They would harvest parts from a computer and a professional microphone to implant into Angelo’s body. Some of his organs would need to be removed or replaced. The replacements and the parts were ready, now only one part of the plan remained: Angelo himself.

Jim was dispatched to Angelo’s home a few nights later. They had agreed to have dinner there, simply as friends. Angelo had prepared a beautiful meal and Jim had supplied the wine, along with a certain secret ingredient.

Angelo greeted Jim and allowed him in, motioning for him to sit down at the table. Angelo was on the older and heavier side, with long silvery hair that was often tied in a bun, as it was tonight. He had thick black eyebrows, the only visible hair on him that hadn’t been turned grey by the test of time. He had a square jaw and pale skin, his fingers now rapping on the edge of the table. Jim sat across from him and smiled.

For an hour, they talked. Angelo asked about the cult and Mikonaxas and Jim assured him that everything was going fine. He felt a pang of guilt in his chest. Partway through their meeting, Angelo excused himself to the bathroom and Jim dropped his ‘secret ingredient’ into Angelo’s wine: a powerful sedative.

Angelo returned from the bathroom and took a sip of his wine, none the wiser. It didn’t take long for the drug to take effect. Angelo didn’t want to be rude to his guest, so he fought to keep his eyes open. Around half an hour later, though, he told Jim that he was awfully sorry, but something must be wrong. Jim responded that he could take Angelo to the hospital if he wanted, but Angelo insisted he would just sleep it off. When he could barely get up from his chair, however, Jim insisted and took him out to his car. Angelo didn’t fight as Jim strapped him into the passenger seat and got in the driver’s seat. Jim started the car and watched as Angelo started to fall asleep.

Angelo didn’t wake up even when he was dragged out of the car and into the basement of the cult’s house, or when he was hoisted onto the table, or when he was tied down, stripped and duct tape gagged. Only when Stefan started to cut, did he wake up. He surely would have fought to escape, had he not been thoroughly tied down. Jim felt his heart sink as Angelo’s wide and teary eyes landed on him.

Stefan, though he was a nurse, was not at all qualified for a surgery of this type. Mikonaxas lended some aid through some kind of mysterious magic, allowing wires and parts to be laid in Angelo’s body, along with a vessel for himself, a small jar in Angelo’s midsection. Even still, when his eyes stopped moving, Jim knew that Angelo was dead. Mikonaxas instructed them to continue, though, and so they did. The final touch was the large microphone stand that protruded from his back, arching up over his head to dangle a recording mic in front of his face.

Finally, Angelo was reclothed and laid down, rigor mortis beginning to set in. Jim held his breath as Mikonaxas lowered himself into Angelo’s now vacant body. He watched as the last slivers of his dark, smoky form disappeared through the skin. All was silent for a moment, before Jim heard a sound like a computer whirring to life. Angelo’s eyes shot open, his irises now bright yellow, split by a slit pupil. 

With Mikonaxas’ deep, bassy voice, he spoke;

“N-no. This isn’t right.”

Blood began to dribble from his mouth as he got up from the table on shaky legs. He stumbled, then turned to face the cult.

“This isn’t–” Angelo - or rather, both of them, doubled over in pain as Mikonaxas rammed at the walls of his vessel, trying to get out. Wounds began to reopen, blood quickly seeping through his bandages and reddening his clothes. 

Wind started to whip and howl at the house, threatening its structure. Jim heard wood creaking before the sudden smash of a window upstairs. The cult members began to panic, but Jim’s eyes stayed on Angelo. 

Jim watched in horror as a black cloud exploded out of Angelo. It filled the room quickly. It felt like burning and freezing at the same time. It felt like falling and rising, like being turned to dust.

This is the story of two beings, known together as The Narrator.

The Narrator felt the dark explosion trickle back inside of him. He slowly stood up straight and looked around the room. The walls and floor were blackened and everything that had been in the room - the table, the altar, and the humans, had been reduced to dust, or perhaps soot. He felt the life draining from him again. Something inside him roused; a deep-set human instinct. For the first time in his life, he feared death. He refused to die.

The Narrator forced himself to move, stumbling through the room and up the stairs. The wind still whipped at the house, the support beams creaking. He limped out of the door, now ripped off of its hinges by the storm. He stepped out into the wind and rain and headed slowly for the closest building. It was a large office complex. The moon was nearly full, the office was the only building with its lights on in an immediate radius.

It felt like hours he was forcing himself to walk. His strength was waning as he pulled himself through the door. The receptionist didn’t appear to be present, so he stumbled through the building, tracking blood all over the carpet. He stopped occasionally to lean on a wall and throw up blood as he searched for signs of human life. The implants in his skin were starting to threaten to fall back out. His vision was blurring.

Finally, he came across an office with the sound of typing coming from inside. He pushed the door open. A man turned to face him as he entered, his face whitening in fear and shock. He was tall and lanky, with brown hair and arched eyebrows, with matching brown eyes. He appeared frozen to his chair in shock as The Narrator approached him.

The Narrator grabbed Stanley by the shoulders. He didn’t say anything, there was too much blood in his mouth for that, which at this moment was dripping onto Stanley’s legs. A horrible crack and a spark came from him before all of the lights in the complex went out. 

Stanley opened his mouth to yell.

The Narrator screamed over him as a black cloud exploded out of him. 

Then, the cloud began to whirl and implode. The wind picked up hard enough for trees to be pulled over outside. It was like a black hole. It was a black hole. Stanley was sucked in first, before it grew, taking more and more of the offices with it, then the entire building, before, in a flash of light, it suddenly vanished. 

…

.

..

.

The Narrator cleared his throat,

“This is the story of a man named Stanley.”

[staysaneathome]

Okay so because this won’t leave my brain, have a weird, tentative, not-quite canonical in any sense timeline:

Bad end of Wolf 359. Pryce and Cutter get the Dear Listeners’ cloning technology and secure the way for humanity’s domination amongst the stars

In response, Goddard Futuristics pulls funding for Dr. John Geistman’s cryotechnology development. After all, who needs to worry about the future of humanity if you’ve guaranteed your corporate survival? Sure, you’ll bring a few of them along as “citizen-employees”, but there’s new markets to conquer among the stars! Forget the sad kiwi, it’s time to diversify services!

And then Dr. John Geistman goes and develops inexplicable necromantic abilities. Hm.

Pryce and Cutter try to have him arrested, secreted away to the states, but the man makes a flesh fortress out of cows, of all things! And then is recruited by the U.S. government to have the sitting president reanimated after the president’s “accident”!

But Pryce and Cutter have excellent PR people, and you can’t survive the cold recesses of space if you can’t adapt! It turns out their corporate “rivals” have the same idea: the weird necromancer can say what he wants about “saving the Earth”, but it turns out that no one really wants to listen after being reminded of what he did to those cows! And those policemen. And the cult he’s steadily amassing.

All told, it’s easier than it feels like it should be to escape the rapidly failing Earth with all of Goddard Futuristic’s vital employees, plus a few lucky relevant non-employee participants (Dr. Geistman has some cousins that Pryce is most interested in seeing if she can awaken any latent wizardry in, see if their children can inherit anything—Warren Kepler is her reluctant lab rat in this). Really, blasting off to space with all the other multitrillionaires is almost boringly simple!

Dr. John Geistman somehow killing the entire planet, ascending to godhood, and destroying every other planet in his way to stop them escaping in an act of spiteful vengeance is the only interesting part of the whole ordeal! And sure one of the twelve ships gets slightly damaged and can’t make it the whole journey.

But Pryce and Cutter have decades of experience in cheating death. This academic can’t even make them break a sweat.

(The unfortunate denizens of this twelfth vessel attempt to soldier on and create civilization anew on the planets they do reach. When the Empire of the Necrolord Prime, the renamed John Gaius, retaliates by killing these planets, they get a bit testy. The descendants of the survivors form the rebellion group the Blood of Eden.)

The eleven ships set up shop several hundred galaxies away. This becomes the Corporation Rim, which warns its inhabitants to not expand too far for fear of “alien” (really necromantic human) remnants.

Goddard Futuristics, with the help of the Dear Listeners’ cloning technology and Pryce’s advances in AI, rebrand as Stellar Firma Ltd. and begin making and selling planets. Pryce and Cutter remain the shadow-rulers behind the all-powerful Board.

Their business rivals on the other six ships set up their own corporations, beginning to set up colonies for mining and contractually -obligated labor. Some of those colonies get lost in the violent in-fighting between these lesser controlled companies which constantly devolve and are reborn anew. Those abandoned colonies form their own governments and societies opposed to those of the Corporation Rim. These are much more successful, and even propagate higher learning and better infrastructure.

In order to keep up with the competition over this new source of income and potential exploitation, the Corporation Rim kickstarts the development of Security Units within their companies, with inbuilt monitoring to data mine their new clients.

Pryce and Cutter meet an untimely end when they take a party barge to the Pleasure Moon of Quixotic, along with the rest of the Board and their families. Stellar Firma, deprived of the overlords that have guided its course since the twenty first century, is thrown into chaos.

I.M.O.G.E.N., Pryce’s magnum opus, becomes the supercomputer behind Stellar Firma’s operation in constant conflict with Internal Standards. She is in charge of using the Dear Listeners’ technology to combine DNA that’s proven to be receptive to the obedience protocol (Donors include R. Min., D. Jac., D. Eif., and A. Max.) to create clone assistants to design and sales consultants. One of these clones proves to be resistant to this gene. She decides to roll with it.

Years later, a Secunit that managed to hack its governor protocol follows a young human that an Asshole Research Transport AI feels very protective over into a coffee shop run by a clone and one of the most powerful administrative AIs to escape the Corporation Rim…

[m--rtyr]

(I pre wrote this cause I got really into it, so if i repeat things you said, ignore it)

Given how you seem to be going a more mecha - anticapitalist - kinda cyberpunk route, I think the best idea for Shadow Knights would be a form of cyber-psychosis. In this case though, I am not talking about the modern interpretation of "too many implants drives a person mad" but the original "a corporation owns too much of my body to the point my actions aren't even my own". Very Stupendium - Data Stream vibes.

Shadow Knights in this are cybernetic warriors who had the majority of their body replaced by Shadow Tech machinery (or whatever large corporation). This means that their bodies have the ability to be controlled at any moment by the corporation unless actively fought against. The more usage and reliance on cybernetic abilities further integrates the technology into their system making them easier to control.

There are also two types of Shadow Knights, given how it is corporation technology and magic

Willing - Volunteers who chose and wanted to be a part of the Shadow Knights example possibly being Gene. Willing subjects could be taken from prisons or hired mercenaries who opted for it. That being said, Willing Shadow Knights are much stronger and easier to control given their reliance and integration of the tech.

Unwilling - People who were kidnapped or had their bodies stolen and revived as part of the process examples being Laurance and Vylad. Kidnapped to send a message and body found in an alleyway or something after being murdered. Are normally weaker and not as prone to control than willing participants BUT are prone to flare ups and pain.

Unwilling subjects are also more likely to be subjected to experimental versions of the tech as the can't risk the high end willing ones.

An interesting thing about going this route is that you can make the Shadow Knight corporation either a rival to the Romeaves or a part of their larger war tech company. Could be what some of the mechs were originally made to fight against before the company reached Gartes' hands or have them be Zanes side project.

Ooo yay. I am going the Punk route of cyberpunk I’m glad you noticed haha.

Tw, cult, non-consensual body modification,

I feel like the SKs should just be like. A gang. No huge company behind them, actually the opposite, a bunch of modified folks who were left behind and ended up indoctrinated into a little cult, who started doing their own mods and putting them in other people. A lot of unethical experimentation, putting mods in people who didn’t want them, swapping out mods so people ‘don’t have to be reliant on the government or big business anymore’. But it just makes them reliant on the SKs.

They model them after the old mechas, back when technology was raw and real, opposed to the polished bullshit made now. Modern tech descended from the Matron mecha, from the juror enhancements made from the mecha’s donated parts, until the tech advanced and evolved into what it is now. SK tech is based off of the designs for the Destroyer mech, they take as much old parts that remain of it, though most was taken by Aaron to make his his own mods. Belated family inheritance and all.

Shad will still somehow have some control, like his corpse being hardly even there, but being kept alive by fanatic SKs, and they have him hooked up to hardware to control people. Or something. I’d have to iron it out. The heart of darkness being his literal exposed, decaying heart with a bunch of machinery working just to keep it pumping.

I want to go very ‘this isn’t even possible it’s just fun’ with this. Because it’s just fun. But it means I need to think a lot more about specific things.

[wainwrightjakobshammerlock]

disjointed musings on the borderlands corporatocracy

Worlds of Borderlands has a lot of issues but it did confirm what I basically had in mind already; Borderlands megacorps are less like IRL corporate entities and more like Stellaris megacorporations; i.e. they resemble actual nations or similar systems of governance if you put them through the ancap hell-ifier.

The book straight up refers to the Six Galaxies' state of affairs as "the corporatocracy". It explicitly says some of the corporate leaders ruled more like feudal lords (which is a very apt comparison! Anarcho-capitalism is often, though jokingly, described as just diet feudalism lmao). Each of the major manufacturers has a distinct aesthetic, customer base, system of values, and internal corporate culture (the cutthroat, intrigue filled Hyperion offices, Maliwan being implied to have a cult like structure or at least elements of indoctrination, Jakobs describing themselves as one big family etc.); it's not a stretch to say they have other elements of culture beyond that, even if it's very, y'know, brand-ified.

My headcanon on all the corps being "governed" in a somewhat different way (the Crimson Lance being a political force within Atlas akin to the Praetorian Guard within the Roman Empire, Jakobs being akin to a noble court with the ruler of one dynasty and houses being specific departments, Dahl having military rank systems for EVERYTHING) has never felt more validated.

Also it's starting to make me think about the functions each division of a megacorp would have compared to irl corporations. Take Public Relations for example. This phrase means essentially what you think it is; keeping up the brand's image with the public. But in a world where all the other governmental bodies are corporations, it's not a stretch to imagine PR would also encompass what we think of as external diplomacy or espionage.

[robotonthemoon]

Beginning of Learning

I've been meaning to write this for a while. As I have previously mentioned here, I am told that market socialism would be a pretty good fit for me. Learning has been a journey that has taken me from some pretty deeply modern republican and libertarian views. I just wanted to share a bit of that journey. I'll put a break here because this will be long.

I am going to be completely honest here: the rise of Trump and his cult of personality has been a major force in driving me away from the party. I cannot stand the man and have never voted for him, even when he was unopposed in the 2020 primary. I just can't fathom how people can hitch their wagon to a guy who has been bankrupt that many times and couldn't sell alcohol, red meat, and gambling to Americans; as though he were some kind of business genius.

But this isn't about him. My journey started before his rise. And it didn't come from leftists telling me "hey, you should believe XYZ" even if I have since learned a lot from left leaning folks. No, my education really started from examining historical figures from the republican party.

"Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

Sounds like something a modern union organiser would say, doesn't it? And yet that was President Abraham Lincoln in his First Annual Address (December 3rd, 1861). Now Abe does go on to state that capital is deserving of its own protections, but he started with and emphasised the greater value and importance of labour.

"It is better for the Government to help a poor man to make a living for his family than to help a rich man make more profit for his company."

And this is from President Theodore Roosevelt (brace for it because I will be mentioning him again). These sentiments really helped push me away from notions of corporate superiority. I fully endorse labour rights and unions now, and can certainly understand where the argument for workers owning the means of production would come from.

Not much of a segue here, but I wanted to mention that if it weren't for health problems (and to a degree concerns about being outed as queer back in the late 90s and early 2000s) I would have considered military service. Probably the Coast Guard. I have a lot of respect for the good work the coasties do, especially the rescue services. Repelling out of a helicopter in the middle of a storm to pull someone out of the ocean is just... heroic.

That said, while I think we need to take better care of our service people, my attitude toward the role of capitalism in respects to the military were very much changed when I read President Dwight Eisenhower's Chance for Peace speech (April 16th, 1953).

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

This famous section in particular really struck me. He warns us about the military industrial complex. How our priority cannot be military might at the cost of the citizenry. Then I considered this in light of the Bush/Cheney administration findings (at the time, the current value may be different) that the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP, aka foodstamps) created something like $1.63 in economic stimulus for every dollar spent. A 63% gain on investment is excellent, in addition to helping people! Frankly, I feel like that means we'd do well to just eliminate means testing and give benefits to anyone who asks for it. Reduces bureaucratic overhead and waste while providing more economic benefits. Win win. And on the argument of taxes being put to this purpose:

"Taxes are what we pay for civilized society" Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (supreme court justice, republican)

My father is a bit of a hippie. He raised me with a lot of talk about saving the environment. Some of that sank in, but I must admit to having periods in my life where I thought along the lines of "screw it, just pave everything". Not anymore. I am strongly in support of environmental protections and restrictions on industry to protect nature. Here's where Teddy Roosevelt comes back in.

“We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources. But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils have still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields and obstructing navigation.”

Now, Teddy was saying this is the very early 1900s, more than a century ago. I wish we had listened more aptly.

“Defenders of the short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things sometimes seek to champion them by saying the ‘the game belongs to the people.’ So it does; and not merely to the people now alive, but to the unborn people. The ‘greatest good for the greatest number’ applies to the number within the womb of time, compared to which those now alive form but an insignificant fraction. Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wild life and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method.”

How could I not be moved by this? There are many other quotes by Roosevelt that I could share on the subject of conservation, and I encourage people to look into them, but I will refrain from posting them here because I've already gone on at length.

"This country will not permanently be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a reasonably good place for all of us to live in."

One more good Teddy Roosevelt quote to end this with. I hope I have succeeded at least a bit in explaining what started me on the road I'm on now. I'm still learning, and I'm sure I have a ways to go still. I will state, because this is the internet and I know the arguments that could come from this, that I am not claiming these men were perfect. In fact I am quite certain they did plenty of terrible things. I acknowledge that. But that doesn't mean I can't also respect the good they did.

I still consider myself something of a conservative, but my understanding of what that means has changed greatly. Perhaps I am completely mistaken, and I am far more a leftist than I recognise. I believe in slow but steady economic growth and long term outlooks. In building a solid economic base by prioritising workers. In caring for people, rather than judging and discarding those who cannot work. In protecting the environment (the EPA was even started by Nixon) rather than ruining it for next quarter's financial gain.

Not the modern neoliberalism, anti-regulation, profit first thinking that pervades the current right wing. I wonder if Ike is spinning in his grave to see the sort of fascy candidates the party puts forth nowadays, given he commanded forces against their ilk in WW2.

If you have read this far, I thank you for your patience. I know this may draw some people's ire. If you are on the right and feel the need to shout at me, I ask that you learn and consider more of our past. And if you are on the left, I ask you to remember that an imperfect ally is not the same as an enemy.

Have a wonderful day, genuinely. Thank you for your time.

[ritchiepage2001newaccount]

WHY UNIVERSAL BACKGROUND CHECKS ARE JUST AS UNLIKELY AS EVER, UNFORTUNATELY

I'm a leftist (Libertarian-Socialist), who votes progressive, because I live under an "elected" government, and I had thought I had purged the MSNBC/CNN Nation from my friends list, but apparently not, as my timeline is just chock-full of media-driven hysteria over current events, so here's a primer:

"Liberals" who think their arguments are clever or relevant to the Second Amendment are exhausting.

They are not the left; they are just one half of the good cop/bad cop act of the corporate owned fire-hose of bullshit that is the corporate media, and corporate America's governing criminal cartel/duopoly.

Both cults "I like simple and ineffectual 'solutions', because they make me feel like I'm doing something, and I'm just stinky with fear."

There are over a hundred million legal gun owners, who some want to punish for somebody else's crime.

Well, there are some things to consider.

We've been a heavily armed country since 1621, and yet the epidemic of daily mass-shootings didn't begin until 20 April 1999 (Columbine), at a time when gun ownership was at an all-time low, and five years after Clinton's assault-weapons ban, so maybe guns aren't the variable.

Worth noting: One of the first things the "Pilgrims" did when they betrayed the Native Americans, was disarm "King Phillip" and his men.

Maybe, just maybe, dead school-children are the price of the neoliberalism practiced under the "Washington Consensus" of BOTH right-wing authoritarian parties since the 1980's? When your country offers you no prospects, and you become terrified of the future, what then? Fear can make unstable people do desperate things. Add to that a culture of celebrity, and what could possibly go wrong?

Another factor that goes completely unexamined, is the way Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill emptied our state hospitals onto our streets, and onto families ill-equipped to deal with the sometimes violent mentally ill.

Thank God, the "solution" is so simple…

Also, 84% of NRA members support universal background checks. The problem is, every time a bill comes up for a vote, Democrats add poison pill amendments guaranteeing defeat in the legislature (and the courts), and then they proceed to tell the TV cameras that "once again the GOP and the gun lobby have voted down background checks and defied the will of the people", or some such nonsense.

If you want to watch Dems sabotage universal background checks (while Republicans roll their eyes and face-palm) in real time, go here:

It's like a version of Groundhog Day, where Bill Murray can't learn.

P.S. You can probably guess which one of these three groups I belong to (Hint: It's the one that's growing and actually decides elections):

LaborPartyNow!!!

P S The line, "You don't need 30 rounds to shoot a deer!" is not clever.

The Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunting tools, toys for hobbyists (target shooting), or even weapons for self-defense.

It's about ARMS!!!

It's about the individual citizen's right to arms, so they'll be prepared to join a militia, not the other way around. ‘Well regulated’ at that time, simply meant, ‘efficient.’ In other words, in order for a muster to be efficient, civilians needed to be already armed.

So the "collective rights" argument has a couple of problems that make it quite unhinged from history and reality.

1) As I've mentioned above, Americans have always been relatively heavily armed. How did that happen in a collective rights paradigm?

2) Contrary to what you were probably taught in school, by the time of the Confederate artillery barrage on Fort Sumter, the war over slavery had already been going on for over six years, and was fought entirely by independent volunteer militia's. Fort Sumter was just the beginning of official involvement by government troops. How did that happen in a collective rights paradigm?

3) In what universe do government forces need to have their right to arms protected?

4) Since when do National Guard members keep National Guard arms (Hint: they're kept at the armory, and have been since colonial times)?

5) Obviously, "Liberals" are stupid.

Again: #LaborPartyNow!!!

P P S That was ENTIRELY the point of the first fruits of dissent, the 10 Amendments we've come to call the BILL OF RIGHTS (which have become a beacon to aspiring democrats all over the world), to protect INDIVIDUALS from the government they had just created. #TrueStory

"Facts are stubborn things, so fuck your feelings." -John Adams

[ritchiepage2001newaccount]

WHY UNIVERSAL BACKGROUND CHECKS ARE JUST AS UNLIKELY AS EVER, UNFORTUNATELY

I'm a leftist (Libertarian-Socialist), who votes progressive, because I live under an "elected" government, and I had thought I had purged the MSNBC/CNN Nation from my friends list, but apparently not, as my timeline is just chock-full of media-driven hysteria over current events, so here's a primer:

"Liberals" who think their arguments are clever or relevant to the Second Amendment are exhausting.

They are not the left; they are just one half of the good cop/bad cop act of the corporate owned fire-hose of bullshit that is the corporate media, and corporate America's governing criminal cartel/duopoly.

Both cults "I like simple and ineffectual 'solutions', because they make me feel like I'm doing something, and I'm just stinky with fear."

There are over a hundred million legal gun owners, who some want to punish for somebody else's crime.

Well, there are some things to consider.

We've been a heavily armed country since 1621, and yet the epidemic of daily mass-shootings didn't begin until 20 April 1999 (Columbine), at a time when gun ownership was at an all-time low, and five years after Clinton's assault-weapons ban, so maybe guns aren't the variable.

Maybe, just maybe, dead school-children are the price of the neoliberalism practiced under the "Washington Consensus" of BOTH right-wing authoritarian parties since the 1980's? When your country offers you no prospects, and you become terrified of the future, what then? Fear can make unstable people do desperate things. Add to that a culture of celebrity, and what could possibly go wrong?

Another factor that goes completely unexamined, is the way Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill emptied our state hospitals onto our streets, and onto families ill-equipped to deal with the sometimes violent mentally ill.

Thank God, the "solution" is so simple…

Also, 84% of NRA members support universal background checks. The problem is, every time a bill comes up for a vote, Democrats add poison pill amendments guaranteeing defeat in the legislature (and the courts), and then they proceed to tell the TV cameras that "once again the GOP and the gun lobby have voted down background checks and defied the will of the people", or some such nonsense.

If you want to watch Dems sabotage universal background checks (while Republicans roll their eyes and face-palm) in real time, go here:

P.S. You can probably guess which one of these three groups I belong to (Hint: It's the one that's growing and actually decides elections):

LaborPartyNow!!!

P S The line, "You don't need 30 rounds to shoot a deer!" is not clever.

The Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunting tools, toys for hobbyists (target shooting), or even weapons for self-defense.

It's about ARMS!!!

It's about the individual citizen's right to arms, so they'll be prepared to join a militia, not the other way around. ‘Well regulated’ at that time, simply meant, ‘efficient.’ In other words, in order for a muster to be efficient, civilians needed to be already armed.

So the "collective rights" argument has a couple of problems that make it quite unhinged from history and reality.

1) As I've mentioned above, Americans have always been relatively heavily armed. How did that happen in a collective rights paradigm?

2) Contrary to what you were probably taught in school, by the time of the Confederate artillery barrage on Fort Sumter, the war over slavery had already been going on for over six years, and was fought entirely by independent volunteer militia's. Fort Sumter was just the beginning of official involvement by government troops. How did that happen in a collective rights paradigm?

3) In what universe do government forces need to have their right to arms protected?

4) Since when do National Guard members keep National Guard arms (Hint: they're kept at the armory, and have been since colonial times)?

5) Obviously, "Liberals" are stupid.

Again: #LaborPartyNow!!!

P P S That was ENTIRELY the point of the first fruits of dissent, the 10 Amendments we've come to call the BILL OF RIGHTS (which have become a beacon to aspiring democrats all over the world), to protect INDIVIDUALS from the government they had just created. #TrueStory

[hewholivesinhisname]

Your Belief System is the Matrix

So, up above us in the goddess system the people below the goddess, they are usually a bunch of asexuals and/or transgender types. Daniel even goes as far to say that you need something to break people's heads on before they will accept that they ahve a false belief system. I mean, with "Victoria's secret" it's obvious. Victoria's Secret is that she was actually born a guy.

I mean, I don't really see anything wrong with people wanting to change their gender, it's the specific way the gay movement goes about lying and also supporting gay supremacy I have a problem with and then saying that they are only supporting for supremacy.

It might be extreme poverty. After I became poor and homeless it was just awful and all the poverty that the system produces and the victim blaming that goes along with it is just terrible. I got sick first, then I lost my job, and then I became homeless or....well my mother just didn't really want to take care of us after we were 18, the family didn't want to stick together.

Maybe it IS the transgender movement though that will get through to them though. Because with the transgender thing, people are picking their genders left and right which means that people are saying how they want to be treated. I mean I don't know, how many people are there out there whose gender is that they want to be bossed around by anonymous things like institutions, jobs, money, society etc. Even with religion, there's a tendency to create little cookie cutter versions of muslim, christian, Jew etc., which de-individualizes and thus inherently degrades.

So, let's go down a laundry list:

-mass poisoning of children.

-destroying the relationships between men and women.

-pushing the queer stuff in a way that mixes up men and women to the point where

-Science and technology is the answer! (the brain chips

-selfishness (enlightened individualism) practiced on a mass scale will lead to wonderful things- enlightenment type thinking.

-Dualistic thinking in general (bad guys, good guys)

-terrible economic practices such as usury, giving corporations rights instead of people.

-corruption in the

-oversexualization of society leading to people

-lack of skills and connection with people.

-corruption in the churches including the changing of the bible, priests definitely not following god,

-feminism and female supremacy, a general attitude that women are sacred and the people for whom society should be built around.

-"Democracy is the best government system ever!"

-general lack of responsibility

-the food system

-torture of the animals and lack of animal protection. animal sacrifice in the religions.

-power politics in the name of equality

-black supremacy and lack of eugenics.

-people think they can make up whatever the fuck they want

-all the whoring...it's a big problem.

-all the simping, male inequality,

-war and the war industry

-the obsession that many have

-secret societies, secrecy in general, lying in politics, lack of transparency.

-only focusing on male sin

-the police

-all the environmental destruction.

-organization based on secrecy, money and the principle of might is right.

-meritocratic extremism.

-existential threats all around us such as nuclear bombs.

-all the vaccines causing autism

-the fake morality and belief system that upholds everything.

-the way that everything is surface level deep.

-the transposition of economics and sex as the "major sin" of society.

-the way that there is basically a death cult running society.

-lack of leadership, organization, love and just general hatred of leaders - also bad leadership such as the one in China which is running the organ trade.

-Meritocratic extremism

-the punishment industrial complex we call prison

-God isn't in charge

-the general lack of tradition

-too much specialization in society leading to no one really knowing what the fuck is going on (increases the chances of scams)

-all the scamming, lying, misdirection etc. especially in the economic system.

-excessive authoritarianism- let's call it tyranny- in the name of all sorts of horrible shit.

-blaming "criminals" and "bad men" for everything when clearly that isn't the case.

-the screen culture in general.

-all the conspiracies and all the disregard

-the general destructive nature of civilization, especially combined with a sort of worship of it.

-the way "the system" fucks over people such as my friend Daniel who was criminalized for hugging someone or my friend Doug White who had his

-People get together all the time to fuck over vulnerable people.

-The brainwashing and abuse (institutionalized) in the school system, including all the bullying.

-if you are a homeless person and you knock on someone's door to talk to them you very well might get thrown in jail....just for trying to talk to someone.

-general lack of children

-despair, depression etc.

-single mothers and the horrible neglect of children.

-monopoly capitalism.

-misdirection in the environmental community about the true nature of who and what is the problem.

-all the bad food, meat eating.

-addictions and drug dealing/addictive products.

-80% of all consumer products are consumed by women (this is an important little fact).

-men beating the shit out of each other and destroying each other for social clout.

-the destruction of the local social scenes, local papers,

-general delusion

-Heavy metals

-the King James Bible, the most well read "holy book" was written by a demonologist.

-Cern is apparently opening portals to bring demons in this world.

-we're actually living in a simulation apparently.

-Debt and all the debt that everyone has.

-drone strikes and general assassinations of everyone who pops up who tries to make things better.

-Satanism and goddess worship often masquerading as other things.

-glyphosate, microplastics and other poisons in the world.

-desertification and pollution everywhere.

-mass child abuse operating in various forms.

-sexual poverty (70% of men haven't had sex with women).

-all the inequality in general and the general unwillingness to

-the general public admires and loves all these fucked up rich and powerful people.

-the money system enables secret rulership (aka rockefellers in America).

-too many laws with many of the only laws being pursued

-overly complicated bureaucratic structure of society.

-Hatred of the poor (classism), refusal to hire them, keeping wages low, policies that prevent the free market from working.

-mob justice and mob rule masquerading as "Social Justice"

-international globalism trying to destroy any independence whatsoever.

-the entire economy

-the businesses that do the best tend to replace people with cheaper people.

-the prison system is basically a slavery system for "criminals" - people who have the audacity to not go along with the insanity.

-People at the bottom, rather than recognizing what the problem.

-the chatGPT insanity and other pyramid schemes.

-anti-whiteness and the general hatred of eugenics. How do you maintain a race, ANY race, without racism? seriously, if everyone mates at random you just get a genetic mess and it destroys the special genetics of a culture and usually the rest of the culture with it.

-the neverending war in the holy land.

-fracturing the mind MKUltra style in order to hurt god.

-you are no one unless you are a "star" or a high SEC/rich person.

-People don't even seem to understand that everyone needs to be working together take care of everyone's needs. That people should be pro-social. That people should strive towards independence, helping each other, getting to know , having good intentions etc. etc.

And I think that's generally where we need to start, because people just go out and get a job and earn money and they really treat each other like garbage.

I'll make another post after this focusing on the Power/Money/authority people.

The worst of it though is that the VAST majority of the people aren't even moderately awake to some of it. They think it's fucking great that there is AI's running around making all these rich people money. They don't find a problem with all the cars on the road. they think it's okay to obey things beside god and think that vast impersonal networks and organizations with little accountability such as in a "democracy" is okay. they think women are sacred and won. they think men are the problem. They cheer on the warleaders at the head of democracies when they go out and wage war. they go to churches (even I have done this) and basically without comment watch as gays, lesbians and secularists take it over. They don't have kids and believe the lie of overpopulation. they lead destructive selfish consumerist lives. Most people are running towards destruction and they run with them without comment.

So, I don't know. no one ever really comments on my posts. It seems no one is paying attention. Daniel says you have to somehow use "something" to shock people out of their belief systems and that's probably the truth although I'm not quite sure what that thing might be or how to present it. We need to get people out though because they will victimize me, other good people and commit endless evils, especially against children.