#guns are for the underprivileged

[arcaneconfessions]

jayvik would fit so well as lesbians because they got that u-haul lesbians (literally a couple hours into meeting Viktor, Jayce corrects Mel on Viktor being his partner instead of Heimer's assistant they'd 100% move in after a couple of dates), madoka x homura-it's you everytime despite it all, i love you to the point of ruin vibe.

And arcane has fed me well with muscular women, but l'm greedy and Jayce ing a super built and skilled tool maker is cool af. Tan skin too!!!! Women have more slighter weapons, like

daggers/swords/guns so it would be fun to have fem!

Jayce still wield such a large and powerful hammer just to bash people with. Also idk why but jayce's protectiveness of Viktor also hits different, like a feral puppy, trying her damn hardest but making so many mistakes. so damn good.

Thinking of a snarky, intelligent, confident and compassionate woman with eye bags, wrinkles and such a sharp severe look is just so good. Like that scene where Viktor smacks Jayce's hands away, sure he's sicker but it's not an unequal power dynamic and he isn't weak or afraid to stand up for himself. I want more sickly, strong women. And yes i absolutely loved his long haired look, but short haired women are gorgeous too.

Idk if gender is an obstacle in the arcane verse like ours, because in our world being disabled and a woman would have a compounded effect compared to being disabled or a woman for example, so idk if Viktor's arc would be affected because of the additional "disadvantage*. Maybe it wouldn't but ig for me because im in this world and live in India; his arc about clawing back agency when he's underprivileged, faces "greater" obstacles and still desperately trying to carve a mark onto the world that denies you and make it a better place for people like him resonates more with me. She'd be just like me fr fr

Ilove thinking of them as lesbians. please feed me fem!jayvik!!!!

.

[caesariawritesstuff]

Hostage

Summary: As Bruce Wayne's sister, that makes you the perfect hostage in Edward's plans...but you just might be smarter than he anticipated.

Content Warning: Hostage Situations, Obsession, Flirting

Word Count: 1.6k

● Ao3 ● X ● Retrospring ● Read on Ao3 ●

You were the perfect target: as the sister of Bruce Wayne, Edward had been watching you for some time. The stupid, billionaire playboy would do anything to get you back. Besides, Bruce could stand to lose a couple billion, couldn’t he? It surely wouldn’t put a dent in his massive fortune, but it’d be enough for Edward to fund his next scheme against the Batman. He sent his goons to watch you closely and study your schedule over the last few weeks, but Edward wasn’t surprised to have his suspicions confirmed: you were a spoiled brat.

His goons reported back all about your fancy lunches with stuffy-suited business men, your extravagant shopping sprees. This wouldn’t be hard. You’d be just like the rest: a screaming, crying mess, begging for your life. He wasn’t interested in killing you so much as getting his money and using you as bait for Batman, to pull the Dark Knight into his next series of conundrums. He spent several weeks planning his scheme, gathering his men, procuring weapons from Penguin. And when the time finally came, Edward’s stomach filled with excited knots. How wonderful it would look when he pulled this off and everyone looked at him like he was the most superior, greatest mind in Gotham. Which he was, of course.

Tonight, you were hosting a fundraiser at one of Gotham’s art galleries; something about the underprivileged children of Gotham, Edward didn’t care much, they weren’t his kids anyways (not like he had any, but still). The gallery was bustling with people dressed to the nines, looking every so high and mighty and pompous.

“They’re just getting settled, boss,” one of his goons said through the walkie.

“Good. Wait until I give the signal,” Edward replied. He turned his attention back to the security camera of the van they were in, which he’d hacked into the gallery’s security camera feed only minutes ago. He gripped his cane tightly, watching the guests take their seats.

Moments later, you walked up the stage and took your place at the podium. Edward couldn’t hear what you were saying, but he watched you with a close intensity, rolling his eyes. What an incredibly waste of time, these charity balls. How…pedestrian. But he waited, checking his watch, and when the hand struck eight, he grabbed his walkie.

“Now,” he said.

His goons immediately moved in. He followed them out of the van, cane in one hand, pistol in the other hand. His men stormed the gallery, guns blazing. They fired shots into the air as people screamed, ready to bolt from their seats. But his men were outnumbered and out armed. Edward strolled into the room, flashing his best, charming smile.

 “Now, now,” he said. “No one has to get hurt. But if any of you cretins move a muscle, my men won’t hesitate to shoot. So please take this as you’re only warning.” He peered around the room at the frightened faces of the fundraiser patrons, before his gaze flickered back to you.

There you were, standing in the spotlight. A glimmering, navy dressed hugged your curves nicely, something he couldn’t help but take notice of. Your hands were glued into fists at your sides, face white, lips trembling.

“Ms. Wayne,” he said, pointing his gun at you. “Come with me and no one gets hurt.”

You hesitated and looked around the room. He could just see the wheels turning in your stupid head. But…he found himself a bit taken aback. He’d expected you to run screaming by now. Instead, here you were. Holding your own.

“Very well,” you said, a bravery to your voice. He nodded to his men, who approached and grabbed your arms, yanking you down the stage steps.

“No – you can’t, Ms. Wayne—” an older man said. He was cut off as one of the goons punched him in the stomach, and he keeled over.

“Hey!” you cried. “You said if I come with you, no one gets hurt. I’m coming, aren’t I?”

Edward paused as a sly grin passed his face. “So you were listening. At least you know how to do that.”

Your nostrils flared, looking less than impressed with him. But he didn’t particualry mind or care.

“Now, take her away,” he said. People gasped around him as you were hauled out of the art gallery.

Edward nodded to the two other goons, who walked up to the center of the room and put down one of his contraptions. A little puzzle boxed addressed to Bruce Wayne. If the billionaire was smart, he’d answer the riddle correctly.

Edward smiled, resting his weight on his cane. “Oh, and if Bruce Wayne doesn’t solve my conundrums in thirty minutes, well…” He raised his brows.

The Gothamites seemed to get the hint.

Satisfied, Edward left the art gallery. As he returned to the back of the van, he found you sitting in the corner, hands and feet bound. But to his surprise, you weren’t screaming or crying. You were still, quiet, eyes searching for an escape. As soon as you spotted him, you glared.

Edward grinned. “So, my dear, can you guess why I’ve taken you hostage?”

You sighed. “The same reasons all criminals do. For money.”

“Precisely! You see, my dear, you are—”

“Bait. I know,” you replied. “Bait for Batman, because you’re going to put me in one of your traps, aren’t you?”

Edward paused. “Don’t interrupt me! I’m not finished!” he cried, scowling.

You sighed, shaking your head, and rolling your eyes. Edward found himself surprised, something he did not easily find himself. But…why weren’t you confused? Scared? Right about now, his other hostages would’ve been screaming for help. So, why weren’t you?

“Edward Nigma, right?” you asked.

“Ah, so you do know my name,” he said, flattered. Of course everyone knew his name.

“I was right in the middle of hosting a fundraiser for Gotham’s under privileged youths, and you come ruin it? I’ve been planning this for months. Do you know how many children are counting on me?”

Edward blinked, feeling the vehicle begin to rumble as it pulled away from the curb. Here you were, in the back if his getaway van…and you were more worried about the children?

“You’re seriously more worried about the children than your life?” he asked, raising his brows.

“Yes,” you answered. “And if this is about money, I can get you what you want. Just let me go and we have a deal.”

“But I…but you…” he tripped over his words. He’d never had a hostage act so calm before.

“You like games, right? How about we play one? If I get it right, I’ll give you the money and you let me go. Deal?”

Edward laughed. “Very well. Three riddles. Answer them correctly, and I’ll let you go. Ready?”

You nodded. Your lips were pursed together, your brows furrowed. The look of someone Edward knew didn’t have much going on in that empty head of yours.

“Without fingers I point, without arms I strike, without feet I run. What am I?” he asked, smirking.

“A clock,” you answered.

He frowned. “Oh. So you knew that one. Very well. Second riddle: My greatest of my strengths is that I know my worth. I hug myself so tightly at every birth. What am I?”

“A knot.”

His frown deepened, anger churning in his stomach, cheeks burning. “What falls but does not break, and what breaks but does not fall?”

“Night falls and day breaks,” you answered.

He scowled, jumping to his feet. “You’re cheating, aren’t you? Who’s helping you? Who’s giving you hints? There’s no way a spoiled, empty-headed little rich girl like you could get those correctly!”

“What? Did you think that because I’m a Wayne, that makes me stupid? Well, sorry to break it you to, Mr. Nigma, but I’m not,” you said.

You stared at him with such a level of defiance that Edward wasn’t sure what to do. His first impressions had clearly be incorrect. A simple miscalculation, that was all. It seemed you did have some shred of intelligence after all.

“Well,” he laughed. “How about that? So you can think for yourself. I suppose we do have a deal, don’t we? I expect cash.”

“That’s what we agreed to,” you said.

“But my dear, you forget: you didn’t say when or where I had to let you go,” he said, grinning.

“That’s not fair!” you cried. “Now who’s the one cheating?”

“I don’t cheat!” he cried. “I artfully obfuscate.”

You laughed, a sound out of your mouth he found himself liking. But just before he could respond, the van lurched to the left,  and he stumbled forward. The screeching of metal filled with his ears and just as he collected himself, the back door swung open, and Batman stepped into sight. Edward reached for his pistol, but before he could pull the trigger, a Batarang knocked the gun out of his hand. He gasped in pain, and looked up just in time to see Batman’s fist flying through the air – knocking him out cold.

Later, when Edward awoke, he found himself in Arkham. Once more beaten, but not broken. But as he sat in the rec room, he knew you couldn’t have gotten those riddles right…Batman had to have cheated and given you the answers. But his eyes flicked to the TV, noticing you were currently holding a press conference to announce a generous donation and funding to a children’s program all throughout Gotham. But as you spoke, he suddenly found himself completely enamored.

Perhaps you were smarter than Edward anticipated. He’d never expected you to get his riddles right, to be more concerned with the people of Gotham rather than your own predicament…but a small smile touched Edward’s lips. Oh, yes. He certainly wanted to discover more about you.

And he couldn’t wait to see you again.

[bl-bracket]

Most Whipped Round 2: Tinn (My School President) vs Joke (Jack & Joker)

[Submitted Reasons Under Cut]

Tinn: He spends the entire series doing his most to be able to help Gun win the music festival so they can date. He risks his mother's wrath and his own time and grades just to help Gun, even tutoring him and taking care of him. He respects Gun and his wishes so much, and suffers through ages before even showing Gun what he feels. That man is obsessed have you seen him. and the way he talks about Gun to his friend is adorable, its obvious how much he cares about him, and doesnt care about the things other people consider flaws.

My guy was straight up hallucinating about his crush

Joke: the way joke looks at jack!! his eyes say it all. and the way he melts when jack just touches his face/neck.. he is WHIPPED!

Ok listen. Joke met Jack and they had ONE flirty conversation in a bar and that was enough for him to fall in love with the dude. After a series of well meaning but ultimately stupid choices, Joke ended up turning himself in to the police so Jack wouldnt take the blame for the bank robbery he commited. Let's keep in mind that this was after only knowing Jack for very little. He then spent 5 years in prison thinking of all the ways he could apologize to Jack and even wrote a list, and he also got tattoos dedicated to Jack. When he got out of prison, the first thing he did was look for Jack and did The Most to get him to forgive him. When Jack finally forgave him, he did everything he could to help Jack achieve his dream of opening a school for underprivileged kids. When Jack's grandma got sick, he swallowed his pride and asked his dad (a doctor, who was been nothing but an asshole to Joke his whole life and has basically traumatized him into feeling worthless and undeserving of love) to help Jack's grandma. He has both explicitly said and proved that the would do ANYTHING, even risk his own life, just so Jack could be free of the mafia boss that he works for and be able to live the life he wants. The way he looks at Jack with so much love and longing!! That man is so DEVOTED to Jack it's honestly insane. If this isnt being whipped idk what is

[staydandy]

Legal Mavericks (2017) - 踩過界 - Whump List

List by StayDandy Synopsis : Since losing his eyesight in an accident, his determination and perseverance are so reinforced that he has qualified as a barrister. He has also developed an acute sense beyond sight which helps him to gain the status of Blind Legal Knight in the legal profession. However, nobody really knows his true character. Fortunately, GoGo, his flatmate and private detective, and Deanie, a female legal executive with mob connections, are two buddies he can always rely on. The trio are known as Three Musketeers who never submit to power and are always ready to seek justice for the underprivileged. Their fate encounters turbulent changes while handling challenging legal cases. (MDL) AKA : Crossing Boundaries | The Unlawful Justice Squad

Whumpee : Man San Hop / "Hope" played by Vincent Wong (center)

Country : 🇭🇰 Hong Kong Genres : Action, Law, Crime, Comedy

Notes : This is a Full Whump List • TW : Animal Cruelty, Suicide

Episodes on List : 9 Total Episodes : 28

*Spoilers below*

13 : Man San Hop has a nightmare … (at end) car crash

14 : … continued from previous ep. ... Car crash, hospitalized

16 : Kidnapped, tied up, mouth taped

18 : (near end) Sick

20 : Attacked, back cut (tw:animal cruelty), collapses.. treated at hospital … (tw:suicidal)

24 : Hospitalized for a procedure to regain his sight … eyes bandaged … wearing microchip glasses to help him see, dizzy

25 : Trips & falls … head pain from glasses

26 : (near end) Fight, hit on the back with a board

28 : Fight, beat up, wound pressed … gun goes off next to his head, ear ringing … shot, buried alive

[gingerhastoomanyobsessions]

for a webbed site that claims to love rehabilitative justice tumblr sure has a love of vengeance huh. somehow we’ve created a digital atmosphere where literal murder is less bad than (checks notes) not emerging from the womb with a perfectly calibrated moral compass and the Correct Political Opinions

I’ve seen people on here say that, not only can people Not Change, but that people who try to change are a) lying b) manipulative and c) undeserving of the chance to change. besties…becoming a better person isn’t about whether or not you deserve to become a better person, it’s not even about becoming 100% perfect, it’s about doing damage control after you realize you fucked up. like yeah people you’ve hurt aren’t obligated to like you/forgive you/interact with you, but tumblrites seem to think that anyone who’s ever made a serious mistake should be exiled from society and/or guillotined. we’ve gone from reasonable and correct takes about how people change (ex. “it’s not my responsibility to teach you”— yes! of course it shouldn’t be up to underprivileged random people on the internet to educate the uninformed!) to utterly deranged ones (ex. “nobody with privilege will ever realize that they’re doing harm and the ones who claim to be in the process of learning are just virtue signaling and should be punished for it”— a take I’ve seen applied to men learning about feminism, cishets becoming allies, white people learning about antiracism, relatives of shooters who go on to advocate for gun control, etc)

you do realize that people can genuinely change for the better, right? I’ve seen my parents un-transphobia themselves firsthand, going from thinking that my sibling came out “for attention” to wholeheartedly believing in trans rights. my grandma’s father was every kind of asshole imaginable and she grew up indoctrinated, but as an adult she broke away from him and has spent the rest of her life working on unlearning stuff. my cousin grew up in the rural south and parroted his rural southern dad’s opinions until he was thirteen and started actually thinking for himself, at which point he did a total 180 and is now studying history with a focus on the evolution of the rights of the underprivileged

so when I see people on here say that people shouldn’t change because they don’t deserve to change it rubs me the wrong way. cause at that point it sounds like you’d rather have that person stay harmful so you can stay mad at them, instead of letting them change and gaining yourself an ally. again, you don’t need to interact with them, but. at this point it kind of feels like you care more about hating The Oppressors than about protecting The Oppressed.

[axkirak]

el paraiso de las pandillas.

Pairings: Pacho Herrera(Narcos : TV Series)x f!reader

Warnings: Guns,Blood(a lot of blood)

Synopsis: Y/N  are an ordinary woman who has lived a peaceful life in Colombia for two years, until one day a man appeared at your door covered in blood.

AN: I'm not a native English and I'm not good at English, but I hope you can understand what I'm writing. enjoy <3

Next Chapter

Part One :

Throughout her life, she had never made a mistake, not even once, until today.

Amid the debris and wreckage inside the restaurant that surrounded her, hot smoke from gunfire and the smell of death filled the air. She gasped for air, feeling more adrenaline than she had ever experienced before. She placed the gun in her hand forcefully onto the ground with a loud clatter. She raised her hands to cup her own face, realizing the enormity of the mistake she had just made.  

How can it go wrong? She wondered.

In that moment, the young woman lifted her head and caught the gaze of another person standing not far away. A tall, well-dressed man from a famous brand who usually looked luxurious and handsome every time she saw him, except this time, his condition wasn't much different from hers. He was staring at her with wide-open eyes, but what emotion was it? Surprise? Shock? Or impressed? It was hard to tell.

In that moment, She understood deeply,

Pacho Herrera that hijo de puta, was her mistake in life.

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Whenever someone here knows that you come from the United States, they always start with the same question: "Why did you move to Colombia?"

And your answer is always the same: "Because I can do so many good things here that I can't do in America."

Your story is simple, just a backpacking girl from the free world who accidentally fell in love with the beauty hidden in this country and decided to settle here. in a small, cheap rented house near the city, and support yourself by working as a high school teacher and volunteering as a community health worker every Saturday and Sunday.

Life during the two years in Colombia was mostly simple and peaceful. The only serious problem you encountered was dealing with underprivileged children in the classroom. There were those who were accustomed to bullying as a routine, girls who worked as prostitutes as a side job, and kid who sold drugs for money. This made it physically and emotionally challenging for you to be a good teacher to these kids.

You visiting the students homes to talk directly with their parents about the issues that arose. You found that, in general, each student was not inherently bad, but due to the societal circumstances of poverty, family institutions, and the country's chronic drug addiction problem, they had no other choice but to fall into such unfortunate circumstances.

Because you grew up in a relatively difficult family, burdened with deep-seated emotional scars, you was determined to provide your students with a better education and a brighter future, far from the troubles you had experienced. You genuine efforts paid off when your students accepted you as both a teacher and a close friend, and began to exhibit better behavior than before, which surprised everyone with the changes that the American girl had brought here.

Your good attitude, as a teacher and nurse who dedicated to helping the less fortunate, was accompanied by a striking appearance with fair skin and bright blonde hair that made you stand out from the locals. Soon, everything about you, including you looks and reputation, became well-known to everyone in the community.

That was what had happened to your life in the past two years, before everything was turned upside down when you entering the third year

And this story began with the sound of a gun.

It all started when you met him, on the day of the first gunshot that rang out in front of your own house.

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Neighborhoods with affordable housing often come with problems. Despite this, it's the only place where you can afford to live, even if you have to deal with unreliable neighbors and noisy drunks every weekend. But everything changes when gunshots ring out on a Saturday evening. The loud noise makes your heart almost stop, and you don't know what's happening outside.

You're too scared to move from behind the sofa in your room. Your blood runs cold, and you feel like death is creeping up on you.

They say that when death is near, people often think about their past. That may be true because you're thinking about all the terrible things that have happened in your life. For a moment, you think you hear your mother's screaming voice, who died a long time ago. But when you listen carefully, you realize it's not your mother's voice, but someone else's voice asking for help from outside your room.

It's probably the dumbest decision you've ever made in your life to open the door to help a stranger. You know that the best thing to do right now is to sit still and pretend like nothing is happening until it's all over. But every minute that passes by slowly, you can't help but think about the voice asking for help outside your door.

It was just a moment of weakness, the only moment you agreed to open the door for someone to come in. He rushed in quickly and almost fell onto the carpet in the room if you hadn't grabbed his other arm first.

You found that he was a tall, handsome man with a mustache and slightly tousled hair. A moaning sound kept coming out of his mouth and the blood flowing from his abdomen let you know that he was seriously injured and if you didn't do anything, he could die right there.

It was fortunate that you were a volunteer nurse. You quickly dragged him onto the sofa before searching for first aid supplies that you could find at that time. You accidentally took a deep breath when you had to take off his shirt, and saw his bare body covered in blood. His face didn't look good at all, but he still had enough strength to talk to you.

"Thank you for opening the door."

You don't answer him. In reality, you didn't trust him, but his injury is the most important thing you need to pay attention to right now.

You tried your best to keep your hands as still as possible as the sharp tip of the knife entered the wound to extract the bullet. It was a fresh surgical procedure without any painkillers, and it was amazing that this man could endure it without screaming or groaning, even though there were occasional curse words coming out.

The three bullets have penetrated different parts of the body, but luckily none of them have hit any vital organs. You safely removed all the bullets and threw them on the table before starting to sew up the wound. You raised your head and observed him for a while to check if he was still alive, and every time you looked at him, he always looked back at you as if he never missed a beat with all your actions.

"You are very good at stitching wounds," he said.

'I'm a volunteer nurse,' you finally answered him, but you still remained guarded and tense, which was noticeable to him because he laughed softly.

"I've never seen a blonde woman in Colombia before," the man continued to try to strike up a conversation. "Where are you from, America?"

"Yes, but actually my mother is Argentinean," you replied.

"My mother is also from Argentina," he nodded slowly, his expression unchanged. "Normally I don't like gringos very much, but I'll make an exception for you."

His words sounded playful, and he still didn't take his eyes off you once. As you pick up the sanitary napkin that you bought and use it to soak up the blood from his wound. and trying not to stare at the gun tucked into his pants.

At this point, you began to worry more and more.

The man with the gun had only two options: the police or the bad guys.

And you have absolutely no idea who you are saving the life of?

"Are you scared?" he asked.

You flinched at his question, feeling like he could read your mind. Your breath trembled as you saw his large hand touch the gun. At this point, you regretted your decision to open the door for him without thinking. You were a lone woman with nothing but a kitchen knife, while he can blow your brains out whenever he wants to.

Even though you didn't know who he was,you stared into his dark brown eyes, begging him:

"I promise I won't say anything. No matter what anyone asks me, okay?"

His facial expression looked surprising, as if he wasn't ready or didn't expect to hear a begged from you. For a moment, it seemed like he was thinking about something that you couldn't possibly know, but it wasn't long before he turned his attention back to you.

"I promise I won't do anything to you, and I won't let anyone else do anything to you," he replied with a chuckle in his throat. A faint smile appeared on his pale face.

"Just know that a Colombian man keeps his promises for life,"

You weren't sure if his words were true or not but your intuition whispered to you to trust him. No matter what promises he gives, he will definitely do as he says.

[forsakenpotato]

the response to this happening is absolutely a sign. one day (hopefully soon) the people of this fucked up country will realize we aren't each other's enemy and that the people we should be fighting are those who exploit millions. it's starting with insurance, but we can't just stop there. we need to fight against the exploitation of all people.

gun violence will only become a "problem" when it's against those in power, not when it's in underprivileged communities or even schools. keep fighting.

[riverdale-retread]

Riverdale S7 E 11 (Chapter 128) Halloween 2

Jughead has found some sort of closure with the death of Rayberry though no answers yet about his potential murder, so he’s back to narrating.  Except - you know how Veronica said that his storytelling had troubling sexual politics (i.e. misogynistic)? Well, he disappointed me by casually using the very unexamined & cliche misogynist phrase “crazy cat lady” about that woman who wanted to know if there was some milk she could borrow.

He is not showing his usual acumen at sussing out the weird.  Because her obsession with filching milk from the associates of a known suicide is very intriguing.  Some questions, such as:  Is  this area some place that is impossible to get milk delivery? Has she ever seen the milkman or is this a place the milk man never came and suddenly showed up for Rayberry?  Is this residence in a food desert where getting basics like milk is difficult? Jughead is usually sympathetic to the underprivileged and yet- 1950s Jughead casual misogyny!  #disappoint.

Anyway, after failing to follow up on that potential lead, he nevertheless goes charging over to Sheriff Keller’s house to bother him in the middle of a not great work month  to tell him he’s doing his job badly.  Unsurprisingly, Keller’s reaction is not amused.  Jughead thinks that the milkman is important - “a killer milkman at large”  he says, even though he doesn’t like saying it. He literally cringes at himself (decade upon decades ahead of his time) in having to say the words A, Killer, Milkman, At, Large.  His hands are up in a very defensive, hands-up pose,  begging Please don’t kick me out and Please don’t think i’m crazy.   Keller is being very courteous.  He says it’s already established that Rayberry suicided - which Jughead vehemently disagrees with. 

It’s very hard to get law enforcement to redo homework they’ve already turned in.  Keller is not at all an exception to this rule. He wants Jughead to produce someone who actually SAW a milkman, before he opens Rayberry’s case again. He tells Jughead to stop being annoying, trying to give him work and such, then segues immediately into exposition for this episode:  Halloween is “not for teenagers looking to make trouble,” so he wants Jughead, a known trouble maker in Keller’s eyes because of his obsession with making Keller do proper policework, to remember “our ban.”

He has Jughead all wrong, does Keller, and always has across all universes.  Like, the narrative shows that Jughead liked, at minimum, and probably adored (for unspecified reasons) Jason Blossom but Keller accused Jughead of somehow obtaining a gun, shooting Jason at point blank range in the forehead and then transporting his body all the way to the river to dump it there.  Jughead for the past several episodes has been entirely isolated from anyone who does anything social in Riverdale right now (Archie, Reggie, Betty, Veronica), is trying to nurture a romantic friendship with Tabitha Tate, and is also revealed to be someone who has milk as part of his nutritionally complete breakfast - he’s as buttoned up and wholesome in his daily habits as anyone can be, in short - but Keller feels compelled to tell him to not get into trouble on Halloween.

We’re at the very fancily done traincar (Seriously, is that ceiling really like that or is that clever trompe l’oeil hollywood magic via Veronica??), where Jughead, who still manages to sleep with his felt crown without crushing it, contemplates a very full bottle of milk like it’s the skull of Yorick before smelling it then pouring it down the drain.

Many questions again - Does Jughead’s *train car* get milk delivery service?  Also he has a drain? It connects to a sewage system somehow?  (I also wonder this all the time about the OG Universe Dilton’s Bunker which has a flush toilet.)   In any case, he just pours what he thinks might be poisoned straight into the sewage system. 

While Drac’s Back (the song) is playing, Veronica is having breakfast at the Babylonium, which has on its marquee “Science Fiction Double Feature.”  I have long black hair and bangs.  Why can’t my hair look like that? How does she do that?   She’s excited because she’s going to wear a whole dominatrix witch outfit to school.  

Veronica’s outfit is EYE POPPING.  Super high heels, large-gauge fishnet stockings, a boudoir chiffon skirt over a gem encrusted bodysuit, bare shoulders and arms, studded collar, an excellent broom prop  and a fantastic witch hat.  Her lipstick is black even.  Everyone is completely agog, then it turns a bit mocking. As she walks down the hall, Veronica realizes these people don’t do Halloween costumes at school.  At all. 

When she enters the student lounge, her appearance is greeted with a record scratch sound.  Betty can’t stop smiling about how hot Veronica looks to her (“You look- [grin grin grin] everything PLUS.”) Everyone’s reactions are so funny.  Dilton is startled but can’t not stare at Veronica’s ass as she walks past him to talk to the people who count.  Betty as I’ve said is very happy.  Veronica glows so hot Reggie can’t actually keep looking directly at her.  Archie is googly eyed with happiness.  Why Betty and Archie look at each other to confirm that Veronica is indeed looking very fetching is the question that should launch much speculation about their respective sexualities. 

In any case, Archie, then Cheryl, then Toni provide some context rules:  Riverdale is uncomfortable about Halloween unlike Greendale which actively celebrates it, to such an extent that teenagers have to observe a sundown curfew.  When Archie explains finally that a bunch of teenagers died in a tragic car accident on Halloween a few years back, Clay also looks intrigued.   Veronica is bereft about not being able to do anything much on Halloween. Also nobody is allowed to say “hell” - Archie says “raising Heck” and Kevin says “raising Cain.”    Reggie won’t even miss it - he’s never celebrated Halloween. 

Veronica gives a little speech about all the ways Halloween can be liberating - for sexual exploration as well as to “honor the dead.”    When Veronica says “back in Los Angeles” and describes what sounds like a normal Hollywood party, Cheryl has a really bad reaction.  Why is Cheryl so enraged every time Veronica talks about Los Angeles?   In any case, Veronica says the Lodges had “a family altar” where they lit candles for the dead.  Im’ curious about the insane amount of Halloween related decorations that are up in this room anyway  - no fewer than five carved Jack O Lanterns, a witch decal, more pumpkins, a couple skulls and ghosts and bats.  

Veronica announces that nothing shall hold her down. She also uses the word “gatekeepers” and I don’t know if that means anything.  Just in time to her saying, “Just when you think this town couldn’t get any kookier” in comes Jughead.   Who immediately starts freaking out about milk.  He starts screaming to NOT DRINK FRESH MILK ANYMORE.  He slaps Dilton’s milk carton right out of his hand.  He advises everyone to Drink Powdered Milk.   Veronica is so tired of his silliness.  I wonder if she’s going to do anything about it, because she is the only who is shown having a reaction. 

We cut to Ethel, on the phone next to a very overbearing Mother Mary statuary AND a crucifix on the wall, telling Jughead she’s OK.  Ethel says she misses Jughead (aww) and she misses school but this all just sails right over his head because he is still in his manic episode about the milkman.  He tells Ethel, incarcerated in an insane asylum for claiming a milkman killed her parents, that he doesn’t want to upset her further but then directly proceeds to tell her his theory that his favorite author (which she knows! Because they’re actually really friends!) was murdered by “a” milkman at the very least.   Then she has a great insight- that it would be useful to talk to whoever wrote the originating Killer Milkman comic.  Just as Jughead is about to exult about this idea, Ethel hurriedly says that she has to go because the nun is giving her the evil eye, ending with a meaningful “hopefully I will see you soon.”  Jughead wonders what she meant.

At the shop class facilities at school, Archie has successfully involved himself in Betty and Reggie’s twosome project to make Bella a usable car.   Reggie and Archie are wearing matchy-matchy his-and-his T shirts smudged just the right amount with gunk (Reggie in white, Archie in green).  The two of them flexing their muscles side by side doing car fiddly things makes Betty, who is dressed like Rosie the Riveter but with a pink paisley bandana that leaves most of her hair free, falls immediately into an erotic fugue.  Her fantasies are really very specific - a threesome when the two others have eyes - and lips - only for her.   Archie wants to give Reggie a “real Halloween” because all he’s ever done is cowtipping.  

Betty defines a real Halloween as 1. trick or treating, 2.  visiting a graveyard and 3. necking in a haunted house.  Archie is familiar with 1 and 2 but she just made up No. 3, I think, because his eyes are bugging out of his head.  He looks over at Reggie to see if he’s into it.  Reggie is all about it.  

Meanwhile, Veronica is flipping through the scrapbook of the Babylonium’s events of the past.  There was in 1942 a Halloween Ghost Show at this theater, where a Phantom Polka Dancer would “appear in person” for “one night only.”    The phantom polka dancer looks a lot like that possessed girl from The Exorcist.   Veronica wants to recreate this ‘Halloween Ghost Show’ but before she can complete her smirk of satisfaction she hears thudding from what should be the empty projection room. 

Very bravely, she goes to investigate.  In it she discovers the gays necking.   Clay pretends he left keys in the room.  Veronica wants to do a 1920s glam themed ghost show for a Halloween night indoor event for the teenyboppers - staying with the letter of the law in order to flout its spirit.   She’s so ambitious - it’s gonna be “monsters, movies, burlesque” ending with a “raising of the dead at midnight.” 

Is Jughead even going to school anymore or does he just pop in and out of the publishing house at lunch time?  In any case, his editor in chief keeps zero track of who has written what, so he doesn’t know who wrote the Milkman comics.  But he does invite Jughead to the staff party for grown ups. 

I guess Betty has completely subdued the school principal as well as his child psychologist boyfriend because the sheer amount of school real estate that Veronica’s promotional activities for her business is allowed to take up in its halls is astonishing.  For a town that supposedly has a lot of trauma about four teenagers that died on Halloween, the booth she’s erected is enormous and spectacular.   Clay and Kevin shout things like “There will be mayhem” but there isn’t a single disapproving  adult in sight.   Veronica is brazen. She promises that the four dead Riverdale students will “return from the dead before your very eyes.”

Later, Toni approaches Cheryl to show us that she’s back to her old bullshit. Here she is, drawing Cheryl ‘out’ again, to participate in a gay-backup-dancers-only floor show  choreographed by Veronica.  Cheryl isn’t so sure about any of this, and in any case, she has Vixen duties.  After giving Cheryl (and only Cheryl) an inexplicably hard time about race dynamics, now Toni brings up the need for LGBTQ solidarity in order to force Cheryl into doing something that Cheryl isn’t sure about, that will also cause her to renege on an obligation she feels is a “tradition.”  “People like us” is what Toni says.  She is so manipulative. 

At the end of basketball practice, Uncle Fucking Frank wants to make sure that none of his boys is gonna “go out wilding.”   The locker room is also festooned with Halloween paraphernalia.  Who put it up and why?  

Julian starts to immediately make trouble.   He has a little towel draped around  his lower half, and I wonder if he’s in the same erotic fugue about Reggie and Archie, because he unnecessarily spread his legs to put one foot up on the bench to show both of them his junk as he invites the two to go ‘wilding’ with him.  Reggie says no.  Julian starts bark-hooting to get the other boys riled up after announcing that the ‘wilding’ is going to begin in the school parking lot after sundown on Halloween.  Archie disapproves, turning  his back on everyone to open his locker.

WE HAVE A VERY COOL LOCKER TO LOCKER TRANSITION as Archie closes his locker which then turns into Veronica’s locker door in the girls’ locker room, which she opens.  She and Betty are talking about Reggie’s virginity (about Halloween) and how unbelievable that is.  Veronica knows that Betty has the hots for someone, so she asks about it.  Betty confesses that she has the hots for both Reggie and Archie.  She advises Betty to use Halloween night to figure out which one makes her clit tingle more (“figure out which way your love compass is truly pointing”).  Veronica’s skin in this game is that she wants to be told all about it the next day. 

At the Blossom mansion,  Penelope is drinking some red liquor. Her hair is amazingly ridiculous and it looks like a bitch to maintain it so it looks that exact degree of wrong and unflattering. Omg she’s so hot. Anyway.  She thinks that Cheryl is less likely to gayly molest the other cheerleaders if they “decamp” the sleepover to “the grand hall.”   Julian apparently is fully aware of what is being discussed, enough to object to his mother putting images of his sister engaging in “hanky panky” into the dinner conversation. 

Adult supervision finally catches up with Veronica just as she’s putting the final touches on the decorations for her Halloween show.  Alice Cooper appears, bristling with insecurity about the new competition in the Halloween entertainment of Riverdale of which she’s had a monopoly so far (“It’s not going to affect our ratings.”)  Hence the whole Halloween taboo is partially revealed to be not so much about lowering teen mortality nor in honor of the dead.  It’s about ratings & eyeballs on advertisers.   Alice says that she will “allow” the event to proceed, but tells Veronica that she has been “put on notice.”  About what?  That Alice disapproves of Veronica?

After stocking up on Powdered Milk, Jughead hears someone walk directly up to his (very insecure) residence.  He’s immediately terrified. He hides after grabbing some sort of hammer or poker or something.  

It’s Ethel!  She’s all smudged with dirt, wearing a very disheveled inmate uniform.  

Jughead wants to know how she escaped from the asylum.  She says that she’d heard about the escape tunnels, so she spent all her time looking for them.  Having located them, it was her truncated call with Jughead that “gave me the push I needed to make a break for it.”  Because she is alone that absolutely nobody ever calls her (not Betty, not Alice, not Dilton, not Ben) that she clung on to the one slight indication she was entirely forgotten!   The two of them exchange a tender look.  I like them together.    Ethel says her keepers were cruel and abusive, so she just needs to make it a “couple months” until she’s 18.   Jughead wants to invite her to stay with him, but it’s not safe.  He offers Rayberry’s apartment, because Rayberry had the very useful foresight to pay rent through to the end of the year.  

Jughead is just the nicest.  He is concerned that she might be too afraid to stay in a dead man’s apartment, but Ethel is stalwart. He also invites her to a party her first night sprung from jail.

In the bathroom at school, Midge seeks permission to not have to go to the slumber party from Cheryl.  Cheryl responds at first with the party line - the slumber party is “a Vixen tradition” and “the center must hold.” Midge folds immediately. 

Cheryl is, I will note again, incredibly powerful in this timeline.  Archie really, really didn’t know what he was talking about when he said people don’t listen to Cheryl.  He’s simply protected from her wrath by dint of having the ginger gene. 

But then, Cheryl realizes she wants to go to the Veronica-led event, so she comes up with the idea to let Evelyn (“that witchy witch”) to host the slumber party instead, so she and Midge can go to the Babylonium instead.  The two girls (the gay one and the pregnant one) sweetly affirm to each other how discreet each of them are, and promise to reveal a big secret on Halloween night. 

So even though he allowed (or was powerless against) Veronica to do whatever she wanted in terms of her commercial activities, Featherhead and his boyfriend still have hard-ons for giving Jughead Jones a rough time.   Jughead is subjected to questioning by the pair as well as Keller and Sister Woodhouse about the missing Ethel Muggs.   Being a smart boy, Jughead has learned all the right lessons from Rayberry about how to deal with these people’s pressure tactics.   He responds with sarcastic amazement that they’ve essentially ‘lost’ Ethel - that is, he avoids lying but simply neglecting to answer an unstated question.  Then when Keller threatens him with another home invasion, Jughead directly asks him not to ‘trash’ the place with a smile, which he wipes from his face immediately to demonstrate his disdain.  As he takes his leave, a very Halloween ghost cackles for him as part of the soundtrack transition to the next scene. 

At home, Archie and Reggie are putting themselves into the costumes created by Mary Andrews (who can’t stand to be seen now that there are THREE men in the house.)  Reggie and Archie discuss Betty.   The boys boast to each other about “getting vibes” from Betty.  Archie suddenly wonders if Betty might want to “make it” with one of them this night.  Made entirely of cheekbones, pouty lips and pecs, this causes Reggie to very homosexually get super close to Archie to say that it wouldn’t surprise him if Betty had such horny plans, since “she ain’t blind.”  

It’s very ambiguous actually if he means only himself, or Archie, or both of them.  In the mirror, he’s looking at himself frontwise, but he’s also looking at Archie’s sculpted arms and chest and the rest of him in the all american white T and jeans.   Archie either genuinely doesn’t (he is just not smart in this universe) or pretends to think that Reggie meant only himself.  So they stand shoulder to shoulder in the mirror, because that’s a very heterosexual thing to do, while Archie says that “she might wanna get with me, Reg.”   Having been thus rejected,  Reggie walks away from him.  Unholstering his big gun, Reggie suggests that if either of them get the feeling that Betty has chosen either one of them, the unchosen will “vamoose.”   Archie agrees, which leads to the two of them pointing their guns at each other. Twice. 

Ethel and Jughead arrive at the Halloween party.  I wish I knew what they were dressed as.   Jughead is wearing a huge stovepipe hat. Ethel is in the mask that Jughead promised her.  The extraordinarily elaborate costumes that all these comic book industry people are wearing would put a lot of cons to shame.  Bernie screams for Jughead, launching himself into an embrace.   Jughead looks extremely happy to be embracing Bernie.  Bernie says “It’s gonna be a crazy night” so Jughead and Ethel enter the fray.

While her parents are hamming it up on tv, Betty’s three suitors (Reggie, Archie and for some reason Dilton) are waiting for her to appear at their home.   When Archie and Reggie (meanly) imply that Dilton is there as a form of hero worship for the two of them in his role as “the water boy,” Dilton stands up for himself to let them know that Betty invited him in particular to be here. 

When she appears, Betty’s cleavage looks absolutely amazing.  It brings Reggie and Archie  to their feet.   Dilton is so agog that he doesn’t know what she’s supposed to be.  Betty has really thought of everything about this entrance, from the costume to the perfect thing to say.  She’s Goldilocks because “she couldn’t decide on a bed so she tried all three.   Dilton has a really huge pumpkin head as his costume. 

Reggie is having the best time trick or treating. He cocks out a hip and deploys his dimples to maximum effect.   Of course, the good times can’t last.  The four of them witness Julian and others bashing pumpkin decorations with baseball bats as they drive by, hollering.  Of course, the cops are nowhere to be seen when it’s Julian Blossom flouting the rules and causing actual property damage.  Dilton wisely decides he’s had enough, and goes home. 

At Veronica’s event at the Babylonium, things look very “Cabaret” to me, which is 1930s not 20s, but it doesn’t matter.  People look very sexy here.   The costumes for this are eye popping as well - one girl has a whole 3 foot tall headdress and everything.   As soon as Cheryl and Midge enter, Toni is all over Cheryl.   

I was so happy they didn’t make me listen to Fangs singing at his big gig, but Riverdale betrays me by forcing me to listen to him at this party. 

At the Pep Comics party, workaholic artists gonna art, apparently because sketching is going on - with Ethel participating!  Jughead interviews a series of very interestingly wonky-looking people.   One guy in a silk top hat who says he doesn’t know who wrote the Milkman story but is seething with jealousy over it.  Jonah, in smudgy eyeliner, doesn’t think it was that great.  Then Jughead talks to the devil, who tells him that it was “Ted Sullivan, a journeyman writer.”  (Ted Sullivan is on the writing staff at Riverdale, and wrote among others, the “Killing Mr. Honey” episode.)  After saying his name four times, Riverdale drops the bomb that this Ted is dead, died the same way as Rayberry, because he didn’t think he could live up to the masterpiece that was the Milkman Comic.  Then the devil launches into a speech about “the enemy is here, at home” and “we’re the enemies.”  Jughead is very startled.

After lighting a truly huge number of candles at the graveyard, Reggie and Bettie are howling at the sky.   Reggie says he knows a lot about wolves because he’s a fellow alpha who grew up with them.  His way of showing off is so cute and so dumb.   “Is that what you think you are? An alpha?” Betty asks in a butter soft voice.

I know they’ll deny it, but Riverdale writing team has read at least some of those werewolf-Serpent fanfics, because this set up - howling together ‘as a joke’ in a graveyard on Halloween then having Reggie and Betty talk  like this is almost a fricking prompt for some Retty/Beggie werewolf AUs to be drafted.

What could be a very interesting alpha-omega discussion between this pair is interrupted by Julian and a couple Bulldogs still whooping it up as they cruise around town being a nuisance.   Seeing Julian breaks the mood between Reggie and Betty, causing her to go seek Archie out.

Of course, Archie is sadly contemplating his father’s gravestone.  Betty starts to apologize immediately.  Even though he clearly isn’t, Archie reassures her that he’s fine and that it’s ok and it’s fine.  Then he demonstrates how haunted he is by this father’s absence -he immediately launches into a memory.  The two used to do a lot of trick or treating together as kids, even doing Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher.   Then I realize that I fell for it - THIS WAS ALL A PLOY.   Archie’s plan was to tug at her heartstrings so he could bring up that he was the OG hotstuff.  Well dang, Archie!

Reggie tries to interrupt but his face already admits defeat.  He asks to be taken to the haunted house.  The three of them go to the murder house.  Betty is not at all spooked, so she wanders further into the house to look for “eleven up.”    

Reggie is really the most honorable, because he takes this time to discreetly tell Archie that he’s going to vamoose as he originally proposed.  Archie is nice too, telling him he doesn’t have to do that, but Reggie is a man’s man (and a genuine ladies’ man) because cock blocking out of spite is just not something he’s willing to do no matter how enticing the girl.   Betty comes back with orange sodas.  Archie grants Reggie a good enough exit, by telling Betty that Reggie was tired.  Betty, despite her earlier threesome fantasy, doesn’t much care which of the pair she gets.  She smiles at Archie.

Veronica so loves giving speeches and hosting events. She looks so happy in her black lipstick, standing in front of four coffins. I still can’t believe that this event is going to go forward in this way.  This is so callous it’s kind of funny.  Anyway, Veronica is going on about the midnight feature, dropping the fact that Boris Karloff is her godfather.  

The music number is from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Which is very timeline busting. So are we doing like a backwards-reverse Back to the Future thing where instead of a fictional white guy taking credit for a real-life black musical invention from his past ( Rock ‘n’ Roll) we have a fictional Latina woman taking credit for a real-life musical written by a white man in her future?   The twisty turny of all this is also breaking my brain because the singing in the actual movie of the real musical (Rocky Horror Picture Show) was very very imperfect except for Tim Curry and Meatloaf, and intentionally so.  The singing in the musical numbers of Riverdale also have this same trait - it’s intentionally imperfect except when Josie and Kevin were singing.  The overall technical quality of the singing is better than in that musical film (Susan Sarandon can barely sing, which places the Cheryl, Betty, Veronica and Archie actors in a higher competence category).  But for some reason (oh fine, because I love Rocky Horror Picture Show) this marmoreal smoothness of the singing by everyone involved is very very horrifying to me.  I’m getting literal shivers of distress.  There’s just too much camp happening.   When it meets the airbrushed camp of Riverdale, the rough-around-the-edges camp of Rocky Horror evaporates, leaving only raunchiness.  Riverdale has highly sexual teens, and always has, but at the same time it gets very coy with how it describes sex, sexuality and sexual activity, so I was a bit startled at Clay belting out “orgasmic rush of lust” like that.

Kevin calling for “mommy” when we’ve never seen her but has caused him to be, well, how he is by calling him fat one time because he actually was and he never got over it, is a lot.  But then they pan away as he sings “what’s this? Let’s see” as he starts to look at his own crotch I REALLY WANT TO KNOW what the choreo was implied to be. Did he look into the contents of his own crotch  pouch? Why is the audience reacting like that??

Cheryl then comes out with the most on the nose bit.  She scream-sings:  I feel released/ Bad times deceased - and so on. Cheryl has ballet training, and again the technical competence which doesn’t at all cover up the extremely clunky nature of the steps she’s being made to do is horrifying.   At the end of her number, she pulls Toni close to kiss her in front of everybody. 

We cut to Veronica doing Frank’n’Furter which is a bit like Nicole Kidman being made to sing Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.  There are certain songs that can never be sung by anyone other than that one singer, and “Don’t Dream It” is really one of those songs.   The topsy turvy un-doing and re-doing continues, because for a woman (and a very cis, very pretty one at that) wanting to be “dressed just the same” as Fay Wray has zero subversive energy compared to Tim Curry as the transsexual alien doing it, so there’s a neutralizing of the power of that song. In order to make up for it, they put Veronica in a Marlene Dietrich tuxedo-for-girls from Morocco (where Dietrich sings a floor show and then kisses a girl on the mouth in front of everyone to general delight and applause).   It’s not fair to pit Veronica’s Riverdalian version of this song (and the screechy belting they make her do given the key choices) against the true blue one by Tim Curry, but it must be said:  There’s nothing sensual about the way Veronica is saying things like “give yourself over to absolute pleasure.” Everything she’s doing  - the volume of the singing, the thinness of the voice, the effortful meaninglessness of the choreography - is the opposite of giving yourself over to anything. 

Into all this, Alice, looking like a bomb has hit her, enters the theater. She reacts with horror. I don’t know if the horror is supposed to be about the nature of the song she’s hearing or it’s from being turned on by Clay dancing gayly in just his shorts.   Kevin articulates her shellshocked reaction with yet more exactly on the nose misappropriation of the lyrics (“It’s beyond me/ Help me Mommy”). 

All the extra give the hardworking main cast of Riverdale a standing ovation.

Elsewhere, Reggie is walking home all lonesome along  the deserted road when very ominously, Julian and two others in death masks stop beside him.   Julian says that Reggie should “join the fun unless you’ve got something better to do” because he is “going across the bridge to Greendale to raise some hell.”

OOOH HE SAID THE FORBIDDEN H- WORD!!  Was - was the strange word choices in Raising Cain and Wilding and all that leading up to this moment? 

Reggie isn’t going to make it with Betty today, so he hops into the car of destruction.  

At the haunted house, Archie finally makes a move to Betty, telling her he wants to kiss her.  She says she feels exactly the same way.  Unfortunately, they are cockblocked by a milkman who peers in on them.   Betty is smart - she isn’t afraid of no ghosts, but a real-life white guy being creepy is very good reason to run the heck away. 

After the event, Clay and Kevin are cleaning up like the good theater people they are.  Veronica wants to do a weekly midnight event at the theater that is “Fun and Campy.”  We are being extraordinarily on the nose today.  Anyway, the gays are worried about Veronica’s homelessness after parental abandonment, leading to her having to live in the movie theater.  Veronica lies about all of it (“everything’s peachy”) because she can’t stand sympathy or pity from others. 

At the Diner, Midge and Fangs have told Cheryl and Toni their big secret (her “honeybun” in the oven).  Midge then remarks on the fact that Cheryl and Toni have effectively come out to all the teenagers who were there at the Babylonium.  Toni is so glad that they’ve all put away their masks.  

I don’t know how loud they were speaking or if Evelyn just has superhuman hearing capacity, but she is there at the diner (somehow? why? how? isn’t she supposed to be hosting the sleepover? Is she there to pick up a midnight snack??)

Archie and Betty are safely back at home.   They tell each other that they had the “best” time ever.  Now, they are cockblocked by Alice, who takes out her distress at finding Clay very hot by yelling at her daughter in front of the whole neighborhood.  

With a quiet moment to herself, Veronica lights a votive candle to… Rudolph Valentino. Why is he on the altar with her grandmother?  Where’s Boris Karloff??  There’s a Jughead amount of candles lit in her small living area she’s made in the movie theater.  Veronica sleeps with a photo of herself with her parents.  Oh the poor baby. She’s very upset.

Jughead has walked Ethel to Rayberry’s apartment. Jughead is not wearing any sort of headgear - no crown, no jokey hat.  I - I feel like he’s en déshabillé.  Unable to resist the hair,

Ethel invites him in, using a tone of voice that sets all my shipping urges tingling.  Except -oh poor Ethel.  This is the universe - THIS IS IT! - the one where she could totally have a thing with Jughead, but there’s Tabitha!  Tabitha the Real is out there saving all of the multiverse and Tabitha of this world is out there on the bus tour against racism.  No dice.  Jughead says he’s tired and that he needs to feed the dog.  Sigh.   Ethel totally reacts like this is a rejection of her invitation to an assignation, but she’s nice about it.  But come on Jughead, live a little!  (Sorry, Tabitha, but Ethel was here - in my heart - first.)

As soon as Ethel enters the Rayberry apartment, dun dun dun, that weird guy in the milkman outfit is totally in there waiting for her.

Jughead is walking out when he gets accosted by that very plot-important lady obsessed with forcing her neighbors to make a milk donation to her cat.  She says, “Oh I thought you were the milkman” because she heard the bottles again.  There’s both a Dutch Angle AND dolly zoom happening as Jughead puts it all together, before rushing back to the Rayberry former residence shouting for Ethel. 

Jughead breaks down the door!  He falls faceforward into the apartment, only to make direct eye contact with the corpse on the floor.  “Jeepers” he says and - seriously, truly, this was wonderful line delivery.  I mean it. 

Ethel is having HER MOMENT.  She’s so super tall to begin with, so she looks totally magnificent, holding a bloody knife, standing victorious over the dead milkman, as she passionately tells Jughead, “I told everyone it was a milkman!”  Jughead looks so scared.

Archie is woken up in the middle of the night by Uncle Frank, who seems very upset.  He says a carful of Bulldogs went over the bridge into the River.  Archie stares upset at Reggie’s very empty bed. 

If they made Reggie die in the racist’s car I will be pitching a FIT.

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

At my barista job, we finally made it so you need a code to get inside our bathroom. This was after people would come use our bathrooms to shower and to use drugs. After the code got set up they still came in because they learned the code, but they didn’t come in as much. Instead of changing the code every month, we started changing it every week. Now that we’ve done that, the bathroom incidents happen only very very rarely, although almost anyone can ask for the code. Why is gun control so hard to understand?

I'm not sure I agree with your analogy here. Drug users are "underprivileged" in the obvious sense that they are sick and poor.

Purely on the basis of mentally illness / emotional stability, it's hard to argue that gun owners are "overprivileged" somehow. If anything they seem underprivileged in the normal way (poor, discriminated against, disproportionately imprisoned)

It would be better to say that gun owners are middle class, which they are.

[newgenog]

REVENGE

Notes: This is part three of chapter two. If you're just stumbling across this, and haven't already done so, please stop and start by reading part one of chapter one.

I'm posting the first few parts of each chapter here on Tumblr, and then wrapping up with the full chapter on Ao3 in week three. I'll try to post something every Friday (so far, so good!).

This is a #Batwoman AU based on the ABC tv series #Revenge. I was intrigued by the character parallels, and I decided to reimagine a world where Ryan Wilder has a more intentional pursuit of vengeance. 

CHAPTER TWO - TRUST (Part Three)

Summary: Robyn Wilde continues her plot to take down Gotham's most elite lawyer and favorite Clue Master, who was the assistant district attorney and federal prosecutor in her case when she was a young Ryan Wilder.

13 HOURS BEFORE THE LEAK

Ryan and Stephanie had shared a plate of fries and had one more drink together before they’d parted ways the night before. Stephanie told Ryan that one reason she wasn’t sure working for her father was the best choice was that he was always on, and she didn't really want to be a leader in a company that didn’t take great care of their employees. She realized this wasn’t completely abnormal for law firms, but she could run the finances for an employer that understood the value of (and cost of poorly prioritized) human capital. She also hinted at not loving how her father’s firm was earning all of its revenue. She clearly didn’t want to say much, but Ryan was already versed in Arther Brown’s dealings. 

13 YEARS AGO, GOTHAM CITY COURTHOUSE Ryan sat in the stuffy, sunlit courtroom, next to her public defender and watched as the drained, somewhat rumpled lawyer doodled on her legal pad. She’d just finished delivering her closing arguments, which basically consisted of describing Ryan as a disadvantaged, underprivileged youth, and weakly pleading with the jury to not add another Black kid to Gotham’s overcrowded with kids of color detention center when she should be given a second chance. Clearly, her lawyer didn’t believe she was innocent, but she rattled off some statistics that she’d bucketed Ryan into, and spoke to a jury that didn’t represent Ryan’s peers about a topic that didn’t concern them.  There seemed to be no shortage of people Ryan didn’t know sitting behind the other lawyer. At one point or another they or their children had taken the stand to provide vague recollections of the events that took place the day her mother died. Most of the children said they didn’t see much. A couple said they saw Ryan fighting with some of the kids, and the older woman struggling with one of them over a gun. It was always too dark, with a lot of commotion, to make heads or tails of anything.  No one sat behind Ryan - who would? When she had taken the stand, she pointed to the brunette girl with bangs in the audience who had told everyone to run, and a fair skinned, dark haired boy who sat in the row behind her as the one who brought the gun. Their parents and teachers were brought to the stand for their alibi and as character witnesses. No one was asked to speak to Ryan’s character. Her attorney seemed to make little effort or have no success in tracking anyone down. Ryan had suggested going to her mother’s church at one point, but she wasn’t sure if that ever happened. When permitted by the judge, Arthur Brown, the Assistant DA, stood up to counter with his closing arguments.  Arthur: “The defense has asked you to consider if Kane County Juvenile Detention Center has the capacity to take in another person, and believes that because her client might not have had the same advantages as the other children present the day that Cora Lewis was shot, that should be reason enough to look the other way, when the woman who was caring for Miss Wilder is now dead. Instead of arguing with more statistics of those serving time in our local detention center, I’ll remind you that your role is to determine if Miss Wilder has committed a crime. More, if you believe she is responsible for the circumstances that led to her adopted mother’s death, if the foster system where Ryan Wilder would be sent is the right place to rehabilitate someone who has broken the law. The defense’s client has claimed that Beth Kane is to blame for her mother’s killing, implying that she organized the party that took place in the apartment Ms. Lewis was in the process of securing for them. You’ve heard several accounts from the children present that day who agree that Beth Kane did not organize the party they attended, and that she learned about it through conversations at school the same way that they did. Without evidence to corroborate Miss Wilder’s story, we must look at the available facts. Only the apprehended children were found with drugs, which did not include Beth Kane but did include Ryan Wilder, and a gun that was registered to Cora Lewis was used to take her life. Miss Wilder sounds like a young woman desperate to avoid facing the consequences of her actions, and who is trying to redirect the blame towards a child who comes from a loving home. Arthur Brown made it sound like Ryan was picking on poor little Beth Kane because she was rich and more loved, as though Ryan was just jealous of her. And he made Ryan’s attorney sound like an amateur (which she probably was). The statements from the other children that had been detained with Ryan were missing, and the gun, which was not her mother’s, had magically been registered to Cora Lewis with a backdate. 

It ended up being a career changing win for Arthur Brown who'd earned the nickname "Clue Master'' among his clients for making anything that would have helped Ryan's case mysteriously evaporate, and replacing them with more quizzical evidence.

Stephanie and Ryan had agreed to meet at Brown Law Offices for coffee the next morning. Arthur would randomly pop into his daughter’s office throughout any given day to rattle off some financial question that he expected her to decode on the spot, and when he did so this morning, he’d be introduced to Robyn. In return, Stephanie would be Robyn’s plus one at The Gallery, so she could play wingwoman with Luke. 

The plan worked like a charm. 

Arthur: “Stephanie, I didn’t expect you to be in a meeting on a Saturday morning.” 

Stephanie: “Dad, this is Robyn Wilde, the new CEO at Jeturian Industries. She’s new to Gotham and I invited her here for coffee. You know it can be hard to get away…” 

Arthur: “That it can. Well, good morning Ms. Wilde, and congratulations on the new role. Is everything okay with Jada Jett?”

Ryan: “Great to meet you Mr. Brown. Jada is well, just taking some time away to spend with her family. So, I’m interim CEO. And, it feels a little too soon in life for me to go by my last name, so Robyn is just fine.” 

Arthur: “Fair enough. You can also call me Arthur. How are you settling in…?”

Ryan: “Definitely still getting my bearings. There’s so much to nail down when you move to a new city... I just bought a building yesterday, and sure could have used some legal advice to make sure I wasn’t overlooking anything.”

Arthur: “Well, your timing is quite fortunate, because a spot just opened up on our client list.”

Ryan is not surprised that Candice Long is no longer keeping Arthur on retainer. Luke’s quick passes through her emails informed them that she and her husband are now amidst a divorce, and he probably got Aurther in the friend split, since Candice is the one who betrayed everyone with her affair. While she deserves no pity from Ryan, the double standard that Jacob Kane’s life remains perfectly intact, while Candice’s falls apart is typical, and would normally disappoint Ryan; in this specific scenario, the bitch had it coming.  

Stephanie: “Look at that! Robyn was just telling me how lucky her timing has been since she arrived.”

Ryan: “Very true. Well, Arthur, should we set up a meeting?”

Arthur: “I have a little time this morning. My first call isn’t for an hour. Mind if I steal your coffee date, Steph?”

Stephanie: “By all means…”

Stephanie winks at Ryan. 

Ryan: “Well, alright then. Though, if you’ll forgive me, I should probably visit the ladies first.”

Stephanie: “Oh for sure. The bathrooms are in the lobby, where the receptionist desk was. As you can see, we don’t have coverage on the weekends, so you’ll have to buzz us to get back in. And then I can walk you to my dad’s office.”

Ryan: “Perfect!”

On the way out, Ryan overhears her dad complimenting Stephanie for bringing in new business, especially from Jeturian Industries. He could never get a meeting with Jada Jett. This also doesn’t surprise Ryan. Jada Jett had nothing to do with anyone associated with the Kanes. 

While father and daughter are occupied in their conversation, Ryan is able to slip behind the receptionist desk to place the spyware device Luke gave her in the desktop computer’s USB drive. 

Ryan Cell: Bug set.

Luke Cell: Great. Give me 5 minutes. I’ll be able to scan everything stored on their servers. And, because they’re using a wifi enabled phone system, I’ll have access to their recorded calls and voicemails, too. 

Ryan rolls her eyes at Luke’s need to spell out the technicalities of the device via text, when he should be focused on scanning everything over as quickly as possible (as if she really needs these details at this exact moment). 

Ryan Cell: You have 3 minutes.

Ryan rushes to the bathroom to make up for the lost time. She’s sure to flush the toilet and wash her hands, so that no one starts to wonder about her status. She’s lucky that Stephanie’s computer has her attention when she returns to the desk, and she’s able to reach over to grab the device out of the USB port without notice. She walks over to hit the buzzer, and Stephanie looks up at her with a smile. It’s time to make herself feel like a friend of the family.

~~~~~

10 HOURS BEFORE THE LEAK

Sophie: “I’m not going, Mary. Thank you, but no thank you.” 

Mary had just walked through the doors of The Hold Up with a very sunny disposition. She’d been texting Sophie, trying to convince her to attend The Gallery Pride event that evening, and Sophie had every reason for why she couldn’t go.

Mary: “Maybe it’s time to hire some additional help around here, so you don’t have to work all the time.”

Sophie’s face warmed a bit at the thought. 

Sophie: “That wasn’t really an option before, but it might be now. I still wouldn’t come if I had coverage, though.”

Mary: “I’m going to assume that smile wasn’t about Kate, since I’m pretty sure she’s the reason you don't want to come with me.”

Sophie just responds with a half, somewhat apologetic smile.

Mary: “Soph, seriously. I can’t do anything about her being my sister, but you’re my family too. You guys have to get passed this.”

Sophie: “There’s nothing for me to get passed. She’s the one who won’t move on. It’s been forever…”

Mary: “So who are you moving on with? Was I noticing a little something between you and the new girl with great style?”

Sophie: “I barely know Robyn.” 

Mary: “And do you want to change that?”

Sophie shrugs.

Sophie: “I know you heard she bought this place.”

Mary: “Business is more fun with a little pleasure.”

Sophie: “Oh, whatever. I’m not dating anyone right now. I don’t have time.” 

Diane Moore walks out from the kitchen, catching the end of their conversation.

Mary: “Like I said before, it’s time to get some help around here.”

Diane: “I agree, Sophie. You’re never going to find a husband if the only men you ever meet are the ones that walk through this bar. You need to go out and meet people.”

Sophie: “Mom, I’ve told you, I’m not looking for a husband.”

Diane: “Exactly.”

Diane was willfully ignoring the many times Sophie had told her that wasn’t in the cards for her. Her mom simply kept saying Sophie hadn’t found the right man yet, not able to understand or accept that she wasn’t ever going to want to be with a man.

Sophie: “Can we not do this right now?”

Diane: “Sure, because you need to take that colorful tarp out from in front of my window, anyway.”

Sophie: “It’s a rainbow flag, for Pride Month. All of the other restaurants and retail stores are doing it, so just look the other way.” 

Diane scowls at Sophie and turns around, talking under her breath about her not running anything in this restaurant, not caring about what other businesses are doing, and someone she created disrespecting her in front of customers. Mary reaches over and places a hand on Sophie’s. 

Mary: “If it helps, at least your dad isn’t a cheater.”

Sophie: “I don’t actually know that for sure, but what are you talking about?”

Mary: “Oh, just that my mom and dad have been having hushed arguments when they think we’re out of earshot about how he was having an affair with Candice Long.”

Sophie: “His Secretary! The Candy Lady?” 

Mary: “That’s the one. And, outside of our home, they’re walking around like the perfect couple, which is making me sick to my stomach to watch. So, per usual, it’d be great to have my best friend at this stupid performance of 'look at the happy, blended Hamilton Kane family!'”

Sophie: “I don’t know, Mary…”

Mary had become Sophie’s closest friend. The thing that happens in movies, where people have long, philosophical conversations with the bartender, would happen each time Mary drove Beth and friends to The Hold Up. They’d bonded over trying to relate to their sisters, and understand their mothers who seemed to have questionable taste in men. Both of them didn’t know their dads, and had spent time with step dads that weren’t proving to be any better. Sophie didn’t spend as long with her step dad (Jordan's dad), thankfully for her but not so much for Diane, but Mary was still trying to figure out the relationship she had with hers.

Mary: “Kate told me Robyn’s going to be there.” 

Sophie narrows her eyes, and shakes her head at Mary for thinking that would influence her decision.

Sophie: “She lives upstairs. I don’t have to go to a fancy benefit with people who don’t want me there to run into her, if that’s even what I was trying to do, and no one said it was.”

Mary: “I want you there! Why do we even go through this, Soph? You’re not really going to leave me hanging. You know Kate barely remembers me half of the time, and Beth barely tolerates me all of the time. I need you!” 

Sophie plops her head in her crossed arms on the bar. 

Mary: “Yes! I love you.” 

Sophie: “You better.”

~~~~~

To be continued...

Typical Endnotes:

Next week's conclusion will be posted on Ao3, but I'll post a link here to remind you to check it out.

I'll give you the character matches on Ao3 too.

All #Batwoman things I do now are in the name of #SaveBatwoman. Go follow all the social handles and support the cause, please. We are LIVING over Javicia's portrayal of #RedDeath, so come join the fun if you aren't already.

[anthonybialy]

Class Warfare Saboteurs

Liberalism helps those who are already rich.  That’s nice work unless self-appointed defenders of the downtrodden had a different goal.  Monocle aficionados appreciate politicians doing their bidding.  The underprivileged shouldn’t feel as enthusiastic.  Now, there’s a class war.

Aiding those who need it least is especially cruel when oafs explicitly state they’re pursuing the opposite.  I wish to avoid being a partisan and note outcomes turned out precisely how they said they wouldn’t.  But I’ll pursue amity some other time.  For now, Democrats keep inflicting what they vow they won’t just like always.

Nothing embodies the liberal ideology like helping their enemies.  Gun crime thrives when guns are blamed for crime.  The environment is presently suffering while smug fans of not learning how the outlet works insist upon powering cars with coal.  And the principle of governmental spending to allow people to do the same does just that except for having nothing left over after funding frittering in the first place.  Draining the economy to fill it has the same effect as sending power plants into overdrive in order to power very green cars.

Liberals are double agents in class warfare.  They’re cool undercover spies without realizing it.  Don’t presume James Bond’s gender.  Inadvertently aiding the other side is how they contribute.  It’s not like society’s amateur designers are going to start successful enterprises.  Serving as bad examples will have to suffice.

The noblest signalers would sell their principles in moments.  They think everyone else is just as calculating as they are, which is why they preen about their selflessness as overcompensation.  It’s at least easy to understand why such remarkably generous people demand to make charity mandatory.

I hate to alarm fans of the real New York City, but another faceless condo just replaced a bodega.  There’ll be another demolition by paragraph’s end.  Wondering where people are supposed to shop and eat is for right-wing capitalists who have no place.  Warehousing humans in pods is even more dystopian than the most imaginatively depressing science fiction.  Pete Townshend predicted the future.  I’m looking for that one block with a bank, Starbucks, and drugstore.  

A reduction of profits will surely motivate workers to toil harder.  Think of the collective, you selfish brute.  Now give more of what you’re decadently awarded to layabouts.  The next trash clearance will be the one that makes government clean.  Democrats would make a law limiting passing along costs before wondering how anyone could’ve possibly evaded such a restriction for fairness.

Punishments apply to all.  This isn’t the criminal justice system we’re discussing where deliberately unpleasant sentences only affect those defending against barbarians.  An emaciated economy leaves everyone hungry.  Dragging down those already at the bottom is a philosophy that some insist helps, which is as mysterious as wondering why anyone is surprised inflation suddenly became such a fad.

Universally harmful impositions are simultaneously unfair, which is one of those tricky outcomes like why removing competition fails to inspire productivity.  The rich can withstand whatever they can’t evade.  Meanwhile, alleged beneficiaries of liberalism cannot escape.  Proles are stuck with even smaller pittances.  Joe Biden and his flunkies claim the poor can’t get ahead then ensure that’s precisely what happens.  A self-fulfilling prophecy achieved by gaming the system is something they claim to oppose.

Policies that the rich can manipulate are great if your goal is to reinforce stratification.  Like valueless currency and the contemporary plague, a caste system is yet another recent shocking retro development that we can only hope was unforeseen.  Take how real estate barons are contributing to Eric Adams as he makes the city unsafe for their clients in what are totally not bribes to get cushy deals.  Capitalist’s foes bitch about beloved Chinese restaurants turning into rubble piles when they keep selecting the wrong number.

Casting themselves as fighters is merely the most obnoxious way liberals warp perception.  They are battling a cause, but naturally not in the way they figured.  Collateral damage is the only type they inflict.  Please stop aiming like that.  Democrats couldn’t cause more damage against the nation and their ideology if that was their goal, and Barack Obama resides in semi-seclusion now.  It’s easier to cause havoc against one’s own side.  Why doesn’t every combatant do so?  Toxic fighters aren’t smart like woke warriors.

Presuming the other side is for rich jerks is one of the open-minded ways Democrats wrongly presume what the other side holds.  True fans of fairness are actually for indifference.  Letting humans interact freely whether they’re trading merchandise, skills, labor, or currency while paying the same rate lets people succeed on their merits, which creates more of it.  That’s unless one doesn’t trust fellow humans, which explains the enthusiasm of oppression.

Not bothering people offends the particular ones who presume they know better.  Framing, say, a flat tax as a handout to conglomerate owners is particularly egregious for a policy that’d merely get government out of the business of punishing for the crime of succeeding.  Imposing regressive policies that harm the lowest earners the most is how Democrats help.  You may have also noticed crime spikes by uncanny chance wherever they impose gun control.  They’re excelling if the innocent deserve punishment.

[yrfool]

thanks for tagging me @vainoharhakuvitelma !! i don’t usually do these but i feel like i haven’t seen a tag game in years (although i might just forget to check my notes lol)

last song: de vez en cuando by facultdad de medicina

fav colour: i don’t have one but i look really good in yellow i think

currently watching: i haven’t watched any shows in a while actually someone please show me something good

last movie: gummo (1997, dir. harmon korine) so gross and uncomfortable but strangely beautiful in some ways

currently reading: i just finished reading nowhere man by aleksandar hemon so i need book recommendations too actually lol shit i’m fresh out of MEDIA

sweet, savoury, or spicy: yes

relationship status: no one cares but also let’s be honest i am on tumblr in 2023 because i have no life

current obsession: laceee i need to buy more lace. i feel like lace is coming back like it’s the ‘80s again (especially with the trendiness of couquetterie in paris, london, and new york but that is a whole other beast)

last google: i was searching for an anarchist gun club in portland, oregon that helps underprivileged (especially gay and trans people) get armed

currently working on : my next album yayyy i have a few songs left to finish

i can’t remember urls so if we’re mutuals and you’re reading this you have to do this or i curse u with a year of medium, average luck !! (no bad luck. i don’t want to make the superstitious bitches suspicious)

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Gerald Early

Published: Jul 19, 2023

In the spring of 2020, I taught a class at Washington University in St. Louis entitled “Black Conservatives and Their Discontent: African Americans and Conservatism in America.” Eight students enrolled in the course, all of them Black. Among the readings were portions of Shelby Steele’s The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America. On one particular day, we were concentrating on Steele’s objections to affirmative action. Steele made the standard anti-affirmative-action arguments: It stigmatizes Black people as inferior and fills them with self-doubt in a mostly white setting; it makes them trade on their past of victimization; it does not improve life for most Black people. When I asked my students what they thought of these views, they did not say much at first, probably waiting to see someone else commit. Finally, one of the more activist-minded among them said that he agreed with everything that Steele said about affirmative action, which he thought shamed Black people. But, he added, with strong emotion, “I hate Steele for saying it.”

There is an adage in football, this student explained: Take what your opponents give you, even if it is not exactly what you want. The ice broken and the tone for discussion set, the rest of the class agreed. Everyone disliked affirmative action and Shelby Steele in equal measure. It was a strange revelation, for all of us in that room knew that affirmative action had made this moment possible, both for me, as a Black professor at a prominently white university, and for them, as Black undergraduates at that same institution. At that moment, it was if the same realization struck us all: What does it mean that affirmative action brought us all here to criticize affirmative action? Why are we here? Therein lies a complex story of Black people’s feelings about affirmative action as both a gateway and a burden.

“For all its imperfections,” the sociologist Orlando Patterson wrote in his 1997 book The Ordeal of Integration, “affirmative action has made a major difference in the lives of women and minorities. … In utilitarian terms it is hard to find a program that has brought so much gain to so many at so little cost. It has been the single most important factor accounting for the rise of a significant Afro-American middle class.” It was the notion that I could more easily become a middle-class professional in the white world that led me to attend the University of Pennsylvania as an undergraduate in 1970, at the beginning of the era of affirmative action in college admissions. My family thought going to Penn was a great opportunity. My sisters had attended Temple University, the working-class college, but Penn was Ivy League, a high-status school. It could open more doors for a kid of my background, so everyone thought. Perhaps it did. I cannot say for sure.

There were a few things all of us Black kids who came to Penn in that year knew. We were the aggrieved and underprivileged being given access to education’s La La Land. We were expected to be a bit churlish — diversity must have its spice of difference and social adjustment — but also dazzled by the riches. We were Dorothy in Oz with a chip on our shoulders. Second, we knew we all felt varying degrees of severe inadequacy. Huddling together sometimes eased the dislocation, but it sometimes made it worse, reinforcing the sense of being a grunt lost in the gun smoke of a war. Finally, we all knew that this largess was not going to last. There was an expiration date to affirmative action. Everyone said so: jurists, civil-rights leaders, politicians, and folks on the street. “You better get it while you can,” I remember one Black co-ed telling me, “The white folks won’t keep the gates open forever. Once it’s closed, they’ll say, ‘we gave you your chance.’ White folks’ bouts of doing right by the Negro don’t usually last long.” Realizing this made everything seem urgent to me. I felt a bit like Jesus’ disciples immediately after he died: The end could come any day now.

Black Americans have had ambivalent feelings about affirmative action since its inception in the 1960s. Though the extent and implications of the policy have changed radically over time, it has never benefited more than a small minority of Black people. Yet its symbolic importance has been enormous, especially in how it has affected the culture of higher education. Once a few Black students were admitted to elite and prominently white universities, they began to exert pressure from within to admit more Black students and hire more Black faculty. This was the fight against tokenism. The two populations of Black students and Black faculty were intertwined as a political force; together, they helped to change higher education in the United States. (The other major American institution as deeply affected by affirmative action has been the military.) What made affirmative action important for so many Black people, despite the fact that comparatively few directly benefited from this rather boutique social policy, was that it changed the way we thought about where Black people could be or where they belonged. If it was not quite the broad-based intervention Black Americans needed, they were still happy to take what they made their opponents give them.

But if affirmative action was viewed as a civil-rights victory by many Black people it never directly benefited, it often became a source of embarrassment for some it did. In college admissions, affirmative action effectively protected Black students from competing against non-Black students. Black people felt stigmatized by affirmative action because it came to mean that you had lesser qualifications — that you were admitted to a college or appointed to a job merely because of your race. In academe, a whole phalanx of jobs — including appointments in African American studies, in diversity, equity, and inclusion offices, and the like — became “race” jobs, jobs that existed in part in order to diversify the campus. Many Black people do not hold these jobs in as high a regard as, say, being the dean of an engineering or medical school. (For instance, my mother, who never understood the nature of my job but was exceedingly proud of whatever it was, would never introduce me as a professor of African American studies but rather as a professor of English.) Many Black parents do not wish their children to major in or even take courses in African American studies, as they don’t think of it as a practical or prestigious field of study. But the phenomenon of “race herding” on college campuses — students and faculty of color clustering in disciplines directly related to race — is partly misunderstood: Colleges, by their administrative nature, tend to encourage cliques, silos, and fiefdoms as vectors of power. Black people, in part, are just conforming to the academic environment, by using the element that got us in the door: our race.

This institutional development over the past 50 years has made some Black people feel uneasy about, if not ashamed of, affirmative action, and led many Black elites on both the right and the left to deny that they ever benefited from it. How can one feel pride in winning something that perversely acknowledges, or even rewards, your historically induced inadequacies? Affirmative action seems to say not just that racism persists, but that there is — still — something lacking in Black life.

While the liberal-leaning Black majority has always had mixed feelings about affirmative action, Black conservatives have been virtually unanimous in opposing it. Indeed, they have had to, if they wanted to be taken seriously by their White conservative allies. As Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court, the most prominent Black conservative in the country, wrote in his 1991 essay, “No Room at the Inn: The Loneliness of the Black Conservative”: “For blacks the litmus test” for conservatism “was fairly clear. You must be against affirmative action and against welfare.” This point is reiterated more recently in the sociologist Corey D. Fields’s Black Elephants in the Room: The Unexpected Politics of African American Republicans, which states that many Black Republicans “thought affirmative action served as a test to gauge their relative commitments to the GOP and to their fellow African Americans, particularly since the issue could easily be framed as putting race and partisanship in direct opposition.” Because Black conservatives were looked upon with suspicion by their white counterparts, suspected of prioritizing racial self-interest above ideology, they had to constantly prove themselves. This pressure was intensified by the fact that Black conservatives had little leverage among conservatives, as so few Black people voted for Republicans. Black conservatives did not bring any sort of sizable constituency with them. Of course, to have Black conservatives espouse policies that white conservatives also supported protected them, or seemed to, from the charge of racism, since conservatism and racism in the United States have long been intertwined.

For Thomas, opposition to affirmative action is a not merely a test of conservative allegiance but a principle to be defended against the wrong-headedness of Black liberalism. His 57-page concurrence to the majority decision in Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College is a full-throated denunciation of affirmative action as a shameful and cynical form of institutionalized special pleading on behalf of Black people. He advances, once again, the paradoxical position that Black Americans can best press their claims as a special interest group by behaving as if we had no racial grievances and accepting the basic aspirational fairness of a colorblind society.

Thomas argues that “the Constitution continues to embody a simple truth: Two discriminatory wrongs cannot make a right.” The U.S. Constitution does not allow punitive racial discrimination, but it also does not permit, as the dissenters argue, any sort of compensatory racial discrimination as amelioration for past discrimination. It does not permit racial discrimination — period. He proceeds “to offer an originalist defense of the colorblind Constitution.” Part of this defense is countering the “‘antisubordination’ view of the 14th Amendment: that the amendment forbids only laws that hurt, but not help blacks.” There are two overall points that Thomas makes. The first is the legal one about the constitutionality of racial discrimination. The second is social and practical, regarding whether discriminating in favor of a racial group really winds up helping that group. The dissenters argue that affirmative action is “‘good’ for black students.” “Though I do not doubt the sincerity of my dissenting colleagues’ beliefs,” Thomas responds, “experts and elites have been wrong before — and they may prove to be wrong again.” Thomas is expressing doubt about the insistence of Black liberals that Black Americans can only achieve their full citizenship claims through racially specific emoluments. He thinks that belief is not only specious but has damaged Black people, by effectively making them more racially self-conscious.

In portions of his concurrence, Thomas offers a mildly chauvinistic version of Black history that, on the whole, shows us as a striving, hard-working folk who had intact families, full employment, and excellent schools, like the legendary Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, in Washington D.C. We Blacks went along on our self-reliant, religiously conservative, social valiant way until something called social-welfare programs in the 1960s came along, and Black progress came to a crashing halt: a virtuous, dignified people made into dysfunctional dependents overnight. (This declension story is much indebted to the economist Thomas Sowell, an intellectual who has had an enormous impact on Thomas; he refers to five different works by Sowell in his concurrence.)

Such jeremiads against the welfare state are the way Black conservatives display race pride: by telling the race to be true to itself and abhor the aberrations of liberalism and leftism. For the Black conservative, Black people being liberal or leftist is essentially inauthentic. After all, we are reminded by white Republicans and conservatives, as well Black conservatives themselves, how brave Black Republicans are for taking the positions that they do in the face of admittedly bitter and sometimes unfair or opportunistic attacks from Blacks who are, to use the conservatives’ language, still on the liberal plantation. These attacks are proof of the Black conservative’s sincerity. Black Americans were noble once, coming out of the hellfire of slavery, and they can be noble again, by following the conservative platitudes of responsibility, rectitude, and respectability.

Thomas details the principal points of the Black conservative’s opposition to affirmative action: It violates the colorblind intentions of the constitution, particularly the 14th Amendment; it stigmatizes Black people as inferior and in need of help; highly selective colleges that accept Black students who do not meet their admissions standards only hurt and demoralize these students; affirmative action helps only a small number of bourgeois-aspiring Black people. Nothing new in any of that.

Thomas’s concurrence is especially strident in its criticism of the dissents of his fellow Supreme Court judges, the liberal justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor. At one point, Thomas characterizes Jackson’s linkage of slavery and white inherited wealth as locking Black people into a “seemingly perpetual inferior caste” as “irrational,” “an insult to individual achievement and cancerous to young minds seeking to push through barriers, rather than consign themselves to permanent victimhood.”

Finally, Thomas emphasizes in his concurrence his intense dislike of racial categories, which he thinks “are little more than stereotypes, suggesting that immutable characteristics somehow conclusively determine a person’s ideology, beliefs, and abilities.” Orlando Patterson strikes a different chord: “The simple truth, the simple reality, is that ‘racial’ categorization is a fact of American life, one that we can do away with only by first acknowledging it.” Patterson’s view, like those of many other supporters of affirmative action, is that the virus that made you ill can be made into the vaccine that cures you. But if racism is evil, Black conservatives like Thomas would argue, how can the fruits of racism be good? To think as Patterson and other Black liberals do validates the logic of racism as something that can be manipulated but never transcended.

For Thomas, the ongoing insistence on racial categorization is the inevitable result of protest politics, which revels in the charisma of the category as identity. What Black conservatives fear is that Black Americans overvalue the power and the repetition of protest, which intensifies our experience as an immutable social category, which is why Black conservatives complain so passionately about Black people clinging to victimhood. This is the category-binding that denies Black people transcendence, any hope of escaping race consciousness, or of having a full-fledged, authentic life, as the Black conservative sees it. To glorify protest, Thomas and other Black conservatives argue, is simply to reduce Black people to anger and reaction.

There has been much mourning for affirmative action among liberals of all races in the past couple of weeks. But a recent Economist/YouGov survey found that 44 percent of Black people supported the court’s decision to end affirmative action, while only 36 percent oppose it. Perhaps affirmative action has been more of a burden on us than we have been willing to admit, and Thomas’s triumph may speak for more Black Americans than we realize. Will the strange hope in colorblindness in a country crazed by color save us from the tyranny of our categorization? It is actually touching that some Black folk think it can.

[ Via: https://archive.is/Vj1Jx ]

[celebchatter360]

T.I.: From Humble Beginnings to a $50 Million Net Worth

T.I., also known as Clifford Joseph Harris Jr., is an American rapper, actor, and entrepreneur. He was born on September 25, 1980, in Atlanta, Georgia, which makes him currently 42 years old as of 2023. Over the years, T.I. has become one of the most successful rappers in the industry, amassing a significant net worth through his various ventures.

T.I. began his music career in 2001 with his debut album, "I'm Serious," which was not initially successful. However, he rose to fame with his second album, "Trap Muzik," which earned him a Grammy nomination. Since then, T.I. has released ten more studio albums, all of which have been commercially successful, and he has sold over 20 million records worldwide.

In addition to his music career, T.I. has also ventured into acting, appearing in movies such as "ATL," "Takers," and "Ant-Man." He has also been a television personality, hosting shows like "T.I.'s Road to Redemption" and "T.I. & Tiny: The Family Hustle."

Furthermore, T.I. has been involved in various business ventures, including his own record label, Grand Hustle Records, which he founded in 2003. He has also invested in several other businesses, including the clothing line Akoo and the social media app Yopima. T.I. has also authored two books: "Power & Beauty" and "Trouble & Triumph."

All of T.I.'s ventures have contributed to his net worth, which is estimated to be around $50 million as of 2023. This makes him one of the wealthiest rappers in the industry.

However, T.I.'s journey to success has not been without its challenges. In 2007, he was arrested on federal gun charges and was sentenced to one year and one day in prison. He was later arrested again in 2010 for drug charges, for which he received an 11-month prison sentence. These legal issues have impacted T.I.'s career, but he has managed to overcome them and continue to succeed in the industry.

In recent years, T.I. has also become involved in philanthropy, particularly in his hometown of Atlanta. He has established a scholarship fund for underprivileged students and has donated to various charities, including the American Red Cross and Habitat for Humanity.

In conclusion, T.I. is a successful rapper, actor, and entrepreneur with a net worth of around $50 million. Despite facing legal issues throughout his career, he has managed to overcome them and continue to thrive in the industry. T.I. has also given back to his community through his philanthropic efforts, further cementing his legacy as one of the most influential rappers of his generation.

Deveondi rap music

[e1igius]

note ; this verse is also adaptable to any muse that comes form superhero related media ( marvel , d.c. , etc. ) it is just primarily centered around the boys but has been left vaguely open-ended for that purpose. reminder , for a full biography merge his main bio with the one for this particular universe. verse is affiliated w/ @executiioner &. @antisupe ( who was the inspo for this thing in the first place )

the absolute destruction of the fabric of reality was something he hadn't expected. the way that truth cracked aside by death alone , he'd been twenty two , in afghanistan , deployed once again on some routine turn around as they had been as a nation for who knows how long. he could remember the day he met a supe for the first time , the desert storm was over the horizon , and they were being surrounded by the enemy on all fronts. no chance of aerial assault to safe them , the mission would have ended in critical failure. the adrenaline in his veins had caused the memory to weaken , to shift and contort in many ways , but few things still felt as clear as water. his friend died that day , he had watched etan take a bullet to the jugular and pressed as hard as he could to keep as little blood form leaving , but in seconds the boys hands were drenched. absolutely soaked with the blood of his fellow marine as he choked out words begging him to stay alive. he had watched so clearly as the light left his eyes , and felt so guilty as he took the other twenty two year old's ammo for his own... his friend had risen from the dead , the noise had startled him. the utter fear as the body moved with the grace of the undead. the terror as the boy he loved was destroyed by machine gun fire and yet still walked through it , killing the enemy by eating them alive. the horror as , more dead marines did the same. the face of the girl , who looked his age , who had been given to them by vought to keep safe.... as she made eye contact for just a moment. and saved them all.

there had never been any issues with heroes. huckleberry had loved heroes as a kid. it was one of the main reasons that when he almost failed out of highschool the marines had been his first place to go. he hadn't been lucky enough to be born a hero but --- maybe he could become one. he remembered dreaming of soldierboy and wanting to be a part of the team. maybe that was why he had grown tired of the rules and regulations in the military. rules of engagement preventing proper justice , the geneva convention removing any possibility of revenge. he had always wanted to become a hero. and so he did , an unauthorized absence and desertion charge later and he was on his way to making history. it started with corrupt politicians , pedophiles , small town heroes taking advantage of underprivileged populations. but one thing leads to another and his criteria for who needs to be killed slowly starts to windle down , anything can be on the list. anyone , for any small crime.

his title is given to him by the same company that wants to be rid of him eligius covers the newspapers. the supe killer. although huckleberry himself always tried to remind the press , he didn't just kill superheroes... they were just the only deaths the news cared to cover. headlines over justice. but it didn't matter if he was doing the right thing. he keeps is eyes on other places. something in the back of his mind doesn't want to focus on the corporation itself. as if the backbone of america being corrupt is something that his brain can't quite take at the moment. but when enough small town bodies pile up it doesn't matter anymore , he's a supervillain. the public doesn't see that all of those supes were evil , they don't see that the congressman passing the protection act is a pawn , all they see is what vought tells them to see. and one man has no way of stopping them alone. they don't know who he is , why focus on anyone without powers , the news assumes he's a terrorist. but he manages to stay under the radar , for the most part. or so he thinks. one with no powers ( but no one knows that ) , no money and no way to fight a whole corporation by himself ? he does his best to avoid them until...

the news coverage that day shows an explosion , and huckleberry might have been the biggest fan because it takes less than a second to recognize the dead man on his screen. it feels like a message from god. modern day supers might be evil but , the true superhero has finally returned. risen from the dead , he was jesus christ incarnate. soldierboy , the message is clear... the anger and confusion in the explosion , the condition he is in ? vought tried to kill the man. so huckleberry must now kill vought.

[endlessreruns]

(Benjamin Wadsworth) [The Bastard Prince]. Please welcome [Roman Forest (he/him)] to Huntsville, WV. They are a [21]-year-old [VISITOR] who lives in [TOWN]. You may see them around working as a [None/Thief]

Name: Roman (Romulus) Xerxes Forest

NickNames: Rome

Face Claim: Benjamin Wadsworth

Age: 21 (updated age 22)

Gender/Pronouns: cis man he/him

Orientation: pansexual

Town Visitor

Neither Hunter or Gatherer

Occupation: None/Thief

Languages Spoken: English, Spanish, French, and some Farsi and Arabic

Traits: adaptive / charming / independent / tactless / crafty / aggressive / chaotic

(tw: kidnapping mention, guns/gun shot mention)

Like with most people, Roman’s story started well before he’d been born. His father and mother had met one night when his father was conducting business at one of the local gentleman’s clubs where his mother worked. His father had taken a liking to her, always asking for her whenever he came in, the two eventually starting up a relationship outside of the walls of the club. He was married, but neither of them cared, and the status that he held within the organized crime world meant that there was an imbalance of power as well. Even if she wanted to end their relationship it would be nearly impossible without risk of being killed or worse. However, when it was found out that she was pregnant with Roman, their relationship was cut off. 

Despite, not having any actual connection with his father while growing up, the man kept tabs on him and took care of him from afar. Usually financially, paying to send him off to boarding school, which his mother claimed was a scholarship they gave to out to underprivileged kids, or being the mysterious person to bail him out whenever he started getting arrested for various things as a teenager. It wasn’t until Roman was 16 that he learned the identity of his father. This coming after he’d been kidnapped while on a weekend outing during the school year. He was held for a week before some of his father’s men came in and took care of things. 

Roman arrived in Huntsville recently in a stolen car after an incident that left a number of people dead, and Roman driving as far as he could with a couple of minor gunshot wounds and other injuries. Keeping what he learned, both from his mother and the past couple of years with his father, Roman didn’t go to a hospital or any other medical facility, instead taking care of the injuries himself. If you went to the hospital with any type of wounds from a gun the police had to be notified.