#i keep seeing shit about like federation workers

[m0nochromem0use]

also i have been watching charlie’s qsmp vods because i said if condi got on i would watch it and i’m not a coward or a liar (even if he’s not actually in smh) and i have to ask guys what the fuck is the federation

[pandemic-info]

UPDATE: a judge blocked this for now: https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-pause-federal-grants-aid-f9948b9996c0ca971f0065fac85737ce

—

This is a huge fucking problem.

These grants account for more than 10% of the GDP. 3 trillion – wiped out.

From the article:

The funding freeze by the Republican administration could affect trillions of dollars and cause widespread disruption in health care research, education programs and other initiatives. Even grants that have been awarded but not spent are supposed to be halted.

“The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve,” said a memo from Matthew Vaeth, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget.

(Use of that language, that entire segment, "Marxist equity ... policies" is disgusting. If you think you're wary of propaganda and you do not see the enormous red flags in that statement, I do not know how to help you. If you're not beyond it, maybe pick up a history book — the 1930s are particularly pertinent.)

The average person may not understand just how far-reaching this is, how many programs and services are covered by grants, that regular people rely on all across the US and globally.

Not to mention how many people just had their livelihood demolished.

Researchers, for example, spend months and years writing grant proposals, their work and income relies on these cycles. So even if this is "temporary", a lot of people are going to struggle.

This is not just a few people in lab coats somewhere, working on something you don't care about. Government-funded research is released to the public, since we paid for it, and is very typically about things the public will want to know:

Is this product safe or deadly?

Is this medication actually a "wonder drug" or does it harm you in the long term?

Is this pollution going to affect us long-term?

Etc.

Seriously, if you wanted any of those things to get better — you wanted lower rates of cancer and other deadly and disabling disease? You worry about trusting public health guidelines because you're concerned about bias and vested interests in research? You want "small government" that doesn't interfere with people's bodies based on a small group's religious dogma, with zero basis in factual, verifiable reality?

Then you should have voted to keep this administration out of government.

Because their idea — which is outlined in Project 2025, and they are following it closely — is that research will be required to rely 50% on private funding.

Guess what private funding introduces a ton more of: private interests, private bias. The interests of stakeholders who do not give a shit if you are being killed by their product, as long as line goes up in the short run.

But even beyond scientific researchers — and those who rely on that work, e.g. journalists, science communicators, public health advocates, scientific artists —

grants fund others like: teachers, police, farmers, women's and homeless shelters, native orgs, medical workers, and on the list goes.

All pending "review" by a thoroughly unqualified gang of convicted criminals and cronies.

[hopepunk-humanity]

this is hope-punk to me but i'm not quite sure how this'll fit with the rest of the blog so i'm anon-ing. this is very heavy into the US's situation right now, so anyone that that may make spiral, maybe sit this one out

y'all know about the attempted "buy-out" of govt workers? my parents are govt employees. my mom told me the night before about the mass emails sent out basically saying "hey guysss if you quit now we'll pay your through september pretty pretty please quit"

mass emails don't usually get sent out from the OPM like this. workers receive emails from the individual department heads.

this is a massive fuck-up, because people knew it was fishy immediately. some even thought it was fake. people are confused and angry. my mom said "they're so tech-savvy yet they can't even write a convincing email", and thousands of other workers are saying the same. because this email is the exact same email that Melon Husk sent out to Twitter employees before he cut them

but this isn't Twitter. this is the entire US government workforce that hundreds of millions of people rely on to do their jobs every single day.

mind you, the govt is gonna run out of money March 15th (if the debt ceiling isn't raised). they CANNOT pay any workers who resign through september, if they pay them at all, which senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) is openly highly skeptical of and there is a video of him on the senate floor telling government workers to not take the deal, echoing exactly what federal unions are telling everyone

and now tens of thousands (probably hundreds, if i'm being honest) of govt workers are standing firm. they know what this means. the fed subreddit is just filled with "stand firm! hold the line!" posts and propaganda that i fucking love to see. one post has over 60k upvotes on it. saw dozens of comments that all say something like "i've been begging for a way out for the past few weeks but this email just reignited my passion for public service and upholding the law".

this is a war on the american people and they are ready to stand up to it. they know mass resignations will fuck up so much shit, and that there is NOT enough people wanting to work for the government to fill those holes.

as of 2pm today (1/29/25), a lawsuit has been filed by the AFGE about Trump trying to politicize the civil service, with special emphasis on how he's going about it. this will not go down quietly. add that to the list of every other lawsuit being filed against him

my mom sent out "keep calm and carry on" to her team and offered guidance if anyone was thinking about resigning (mainly, her younger team members who don't have tenure - understandable). this is a tumultuous time that is scary. my mom is never phased but she is so over this bullshit, as is my dad

this administration is trying to scare/threaten people into quitting because they know a gutting is not going to be easy or even possible and to be completely honest, that email was absolutely a threat to people's jobs.

this is a grand stand of solidarity to the american citizens these people took an OATH to work for. they are tired but they are re-fired up to fight this administration with everything.

and do you know what fighting tyranny looks like for government workers? doing their jobs well. making sure people get what they need. standing up for the constitution. because for some goddamn reason, the clown show believes that government workers just sit at a desk all day and do absolutely NOTHING

Donny may be smarter this time 'round and he knows what he wants, but he has no idea how to get any of it.

bottom-line is, a large chunk of federal workers are in republican-lead states in roles that encompass every department. a lot of government work involves blue-collar workers that get paid jack shit and are NOT partisan in any capacity. this is going to fuck people up, REGARDLESS of political affiliation

so stand behind the government workers who do so much. they need us just as much as we need them. and trust, WE NEED THEM.

if you want us to be okay, you have to believe that we CAN be okay first. and i'm believing that we will come out onto the other side of this. because american citizens hold all the power here, and not him, and this (so far failed) government takeover is just proving that even more. he is overconfident.

in the darkness, this is a spark of hope. people know what we have to lose and they are FIGHTING for it

As someone who was trying to get a federal job before this mess forced me to put those efforts on hold for now, I've been watching this situation unfold closely. I'm thrilled with what I've seen from the federal workforce. It makes me all the more confident that this is the career I want, because the people already there have the same mindset about it. It assures me, too, that there a huge swathes of the government (far more people than in congress) who have this country's best interests at heart.

Suffice to say, it's been really difficult to be hopeful about the U.S. government for the past several years. But for me at least, the federal workers are re-writing the narrative.

Hold the line. Don't resign.

[isa-ghost]

AU where Cucurucho can see through all the Fed workers'........ well they don't have eyes, but don't worry about it.

Do I even have to mention the angst potential between Tubbo and Fred? Or Walter Bob? Or any of the other workers we or the islanders actually got kinda emotionally invested in?

Something something eventually he can see through the islanders that work for/with the Federation's eyes too. Cellbit, Fit, Foolish.

Maybe also the ones that have pasts with or get too close to the Feds or Cucurucho himself. Bagi, Baghera, Jaiden.

And maybe also the ones the Feds have kidnapped and done things to. Phil, Felps, Pac, Mike, Roier.

Maybe the latter two groups aren't compromised yet, but Cucurucho certainly has aspirations to get to that point.

Once the islanders who aren't compromised are told about what's happening, paranoia explodes among the islanders. They start suspecting each other despite trying their best to keep trust strong. They start wondering if the eggs are being used too. Even SecurityCraft cameras start getting suspected.

This is the shit the Codes were trying to warn them about. They Know. They're the previous iteration of islanders.

It's Etoiles's time to shine. Granted, several candidates that were being considered eligible to join The Resistance are now compromised or Could Be compromised, but they can figure that out as they go.

He builds an underground meeting place in the spirit of Order Theoritas. He'd use The Order itself if it weren't for Cellbit being compromised and having full access to the hideout he built. This is the place he'll use to sort out what to do to stop Cucurucho, or at least to find a way to disconnect his eyes from the islanders. He calls it La Résistance Aveugle, which translates (perhaps incorrectly because Google Moment) to "The Blind Resistance."

He definitely finds a way to disconnect the eyes at some point, bringing the saved people under The Resistance's wing, letting them recover from it before recruiting them to help save the others.

At first The Resistance is made up of the other people who have been Touched by the Code. Charlie, Maxo. Luzu (or more accurately, Arin) is also vaguely involved, more like another informant that's not physically in the picture.

The Codes do their best to get Etoiles intel from within the Federation ASAP in an effort to try and stay one step ahead of Cucurucho, or at least so they have some ability to anticipate what the Federation's next move(s) will be.

Etoiles decides it's most important to seek out the vulnerable islanders and recruit them first, before Cucurucho can get to them. Bagi, Baghera, Jaiden, Phil, Felps, Pac, Mike, Roier.

But he's not going to just welcome them in so easily. They're essentially quarantined in a secret location meant to look like where The Resistance is based, but in reality it's a decoy. In this place, they're screened and monitored for a period of time to ensure The Feds didn't beat The Resistance to them.

Once they pass all the tests to ensure they're not compromised yet, they're brought into The Resistance officially and brought to the REAL hideout. And there's a diabolical plot twist I'm planning for this part. :)

Phil and Roier pass the tests for sure. Roier is particularly feisty throughout the process, he wants to save Cellbit ASAP. Phil's hatred of The Federation is potent. Etoiles trusts them wholeheartedly by the end of their testing. Codebreakers and Bloodhounds >>>>>>.

While the processes with The Vulnerable are ongoing, The Resistance also try and reach out to people they're confident haven't been compromised yet. Tubbo, Bad, Tina, Pierre.

It's a long shot to contact them, but they try to go to the people who are rarely around too, since they're also unlikely to be compromised. Missa, Mariana, Niki, Mouse.

Etoiles has mixed feelings about it, but out of necessity he forms a blacklist of members he absolutely refuses to recruit, for the sake of keeping things secure. Quackity, Antoine, Vegetta. He has valid reasons for all of them.

Tubbo's on board immediately, he's been grilling Cucurucho and challenging him since his first days on the server. With his intelligence and ability to plan combined with Etoiles's skills, The Resistance surely stands a better chance.

They successfully assemble Bad, Tina, Pierre, Missa, Niki, and Mariana (after an Average Slimariana argument and subsequent hatefucking). Mouse's correspondence is pending (she's a very busy demon!) but Tina and Niki are able to vouch that she'd be likely to help them too.

By the end of all their recruiting, The Resistance consists of Etoiles, Tubbo, Bad, Tina, Pierre, Missa, Niki, Phil, and Roier. Hopefully Bagi, Baghera, Jaiden, Pac, and Mike will join them soon, they're still going through their screenings. (Pac especially is working hard to earn their trust, he wants to save Fit as much as Roier wants to save Cellbit).

I'm gonna place this fic pre-Purgatory, which means the eggs are actually missing at the moment. It makes things easier plot-wise, LMAO.

But that isn't stopping Niki. She proposes The Resistance devotes a portion of themselves to figuring out what to do about finding the eggs. They can't just abandon the kids! Suffice to say it's a controversial idea to The Codes, but she has a point. Much spicy debating to be had about it.

As THE babysitter ever, Bad volunteers to assist her, though he also intends to be in the thick of everything, not just lingering on the side worrying about the thing they were all trying to resolve prior to this whole crisis.

Phil basically joins Bad, because 90% of his reason for living on the island are Chayanne and Lullah. But make no mistake, he too wants to be a smidge more involved. Anything for a reason to beat The Federation's ass. He also has experience with these kinds of things thanks to The Syndicate, he has wisdom to offer.

Ideally, over time and through so much DELICIOUS suspense and tension and angst, they'd find a way to stop Cucurucho. But I don't know if I'd end the story 100% happy so maybe not Everyone can be saved. I dunno. It wouldn't be a completely unhappy ending though. :)

EDIT: I GOT MORE.

This fic will be called Eye Spy With My Evil Eye! :D

Every chapter's title will complete the phrase, Chapter 1 being "Something... Wrong."

It'll start off with Cellbit, and he's the first to have a moment where a weird encounter with Cucurucho sets off alarm bells that something is more off than usual. Cue Investigator Mode.

Fit and Foolish will have similar moments in the chapter where something is Just not right enough for them to get wary there's some new fuckery afoot, but unlike Cellbit they kinda brush it off.

I'm incredibly proud of how I characterize Foolish already and in classic me fashion, my notes on the chapter are fucking hilarious. Behold:

After they each have their "Well that's even more weird than usual" moment, the chapter will return to Cellbit as he contacts Fit and Foolish because he suspects that their association with The Federation is doing something to them in a similar vein to how the Codes have affected Etoiles, Charlie, and Maxo.

The Horrors(tm) will unfold from there, I already have 4 chapters plotted and it'll definitely be more than that. No idea how long the fic will be in total though.

[grison-in-space]

worker uprisings are not an upside.

I see this rhetoric here all the time, and it drives me up the wall. So you're all getting a good rant here: a worker uprising is not good.

The worker uprisings that bought the NLRB paid for it in blood and lives, and another uprising means that we will have to find the price to buy it again. And there will be families, people, and lives blighted in the meantime. Worker uprisings are not upsides for anyone and they are not fucking consolation prizes. They happen when things go bad, horribly bad, and they generally only result in positive change insofar as they create so much chaos, bloodshed, and disruption that the overall situation has to change. In the mean time, people are still left dead, destitute, and maimed. If we can avert a worker uprising by using nonviolent means of pressure to force accountability, we should do that, because it results in vastly more stable outcomes for everyone. If this pissant, damn-fool shortsighted Supreme Court decision goes through and violence is the only remaining option to enforce change that anyone sees, that is a bad thing.That is not a flood gift. People will die fixing that bullshit. People did die fixing that bullshit!

You know how we got the NLRB the first time, back in 1935?

It took almost fifty years of labor unrest in the United States before we got the NLRB. Let's start with the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 (which was majorly disruptive but happened before labor unionizing was widespread). That's a great template for your fucking worker's uprising: there's no union leadership to coordinate fury and direct it properly, so when workers lose their shit after the third goddamn time wages get cut (not "fail to keep the pace of inflation," actually "you get less money now"), they all kind of do things on impulse without thinking much about long term strategy. The fury just erupts. In the case of the Great Railroad Strike, angry workers burned factories and facilities, seized rail facilities, paralyzed commerce networks, and existing power structures panicked and called out militias, National Guard units, and federal troops to forcibly suppress the workers. About a hundred people died.

Let me pop a cut down while I talk about what happened next. Spoiler: there's a lot of violence under the hood coming up, and like all violence, it absolutely sloshes around and hits people who aren't necessarily directly involved in conflicts.

You have continuing incidences of violence over strikes throughout the next several decades as nonviolent strikes are met with violence from pro-employer forces and workers resist with violence back. I can't even list all the violent incidents here that ended in deaths, because they were frequent. The 1892 Coeur d'Alune labor strike broke out into an actual shooting war and resulted in a number of deaths, not to mention months of detainment for six hundred protesting miners; the same year, you have another shooting war kicked off between hundreds of massed paid private Pinkerton security and striking workers in Pittsburgh through the Homestead Strike. Imagine how that's going to go down today.

And the thing about violence like this, and tolerance for violence, is that eventually you just get used to using it to get your way. You actually also do see quite a bit of violence conducted by striking labor workers, sometimes without recent provocation from management. For example, the national International Association of Bridge Structural Iron Workers embarked on a campaign of bombings from 1906-1911 that eventually culminated in a bombing of the office of the LA Times that killed 20 people. Do you want to live in a world where the only way to resolve conflicts like this is to risk someone bombing your office because your boss mouthed off at his cause? Even if he's right, do you want to risk losing your life, your arms, your friend, your sibs, to someone who thinks that the only option available to him to address systematic inequality is violence?

And you think about who really suffers when violence erupts, too. Look at the East St Louis massacre in 1917, when management tries undercutting the local white-run unions by hiring black folks who are systematically excluded by the unions. (If you think labor solidarity is free from the same intersectional forces that hit every other attempt to organize in solidarity for humans, you really need to go back and revisit your history books. We can do better and we should, but when we set up our systems and hope for the future, we have to be clear-eyed about the failures of the past.) Anyway, when labor tensions between white union workers and management's preferred use of cheaper, poorer, less "uppity" black people erupted, the white union workers attacked not management, but the black parts of town. They cut the hoses to the fucking fire department, burned huge swathes of East St Louis belonging to black homeowners, and shot black folks fleeing in the streets.

Money might not trickle down, but violence sure fucking does. The wealthy insulate themselves from violence by employing intermediaries to do all the dirty work for them, or even to venture into any areas that might be dangerous. When we resort to violence as the only way to solve our problems, inevitably the people and communities who pay the highest blood prices are the ones who have the least to provide. You think any of those robber barons are going to wind up on the ground bleeding out? They have their Pinkerton troops for that shit. The worst they lose is money; the rest of us have to stake our bodies and our homes.

No one should look forward to a worker uprising. If the Supreme Court is stupid and short-sighted enough to reduce avenues of worker redress to extra-legal means, the worker uprisings will come back around again, sure enough, and we'll all write our demands in blood once again. But the whole fucking POINT of the NLRB is that the federal government objects to having to sort these things out when they dissolve into open violence, so it sets rules about what the stupid short-sighted greediguts fat cats up top can do to reduce violence erupting again.

Anyway. Best thing I can think of right now is to get a Congressional supermajority in with the eye of imposing limits and curbs on the Court. Because look, I'll march if I need to, but I ain't going to pretend the thought puts a smile in my mouth and a spring in my step. Fuck.

[wackytheorist]

A love letter to qsmpblr because everyone's making one and I think appreciating your favorite pages is wonderful.

(I'm not the best at introductions but you guys really do mean a lot for me, so here's my story)

I never used to care about tumblr, I only had an account to check out the funny posts and maybe reblog them on my sideblog but this account was colorless. I was just wead(random text spam that I can't remember).

Why? Because socializing was(and still is) quite hard and handling a community online was way to much stress for me, an overthinker. Of course I made occasional vague posts in the heat of the moment but I never wanted to be considered a qsmpblrian.

But then came the qsmp reset, and wayyy to many thoughts in brain I began posting. Then came the ghosties arc and so I began liveblogging and theorizing and ignoring my overthinker thoughts because qsmpblr was a big community and no one cared for little ol' me right?

I was so wrong, and happy to be wrong because now, I regret nothing and this community is the 9th most important thing of my life.

You see I love appreciating people inside but when I try to talk about it, I stumble hence the weird wording

PEOPLE I'D LIKE TO THANK UNDER CUT

@ultra-raging-ghost You used to be my primary source of badboyhalo vlogging, thank you for catching me up to date. It was so fun go insane over badboyhalo with you, even if it was for a short time.

@kadextra I'm devouring your art oml, also loved to liveblog with your so cool omg.(I'm so so so honoured to be your mutual)

@alchemicaladarna Holy shit your brain please keep yapping if alchemicaladarna made a lecture on badboyhalo lore, you bet your ass I'd be there.

@q-starhalo , @rhiaarrow , @imferns , @pomme--bleuet and all the other bbh vloggers I couldn't mention for various reasons, thank you for your services o7

@iminyourbookshelf I loved chomping the heads of federation workers with you, your amazing and cool :D

@semifontos I've said everything I wanted to say everything in your reblogs but omg your writing is insane/pos

@tubborucho I didn't expect you follow back, your sosososososo very cool :D

@pommunist Thank you for your services to bringing us information about the qadmin situation(and for being the based af)

@ethertheaether The fanfiction on Omelete made my shitty month 2000x better.

@itsbebebrainrotting @faffodil @imnotasweetie @dotterelly @annimator @artistnerd24

@theroseyhues @lilghostlettuce @qsmp-extraordinaire Your reblogs make my day pippipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipi

@qsmpcryptid @insanitybl00m @adreamoverlife @etoilesbienne @sarcastictissy and a lot of blogs I can't all capture thank you!

@qsmpincorrect @qsmp-where-they-shouldnt-be @which-qsmp-egg-would and all the events that kept us entertained.

AND @YOU QSMPBLR USER!!

[unhingedwomandiaries]

It's fuck-off o'clock in the morning and I've just spent four hours reading about the 4B Movement and Project 2025 because apparently, I hate myself and the concept of sleep. Here I am, 35, married, and still up reading political manifestos like some caffeinated uni student, except this time it's 922 pages of pure dystopian wank that makes any murder plots look positively wholesome.

Let's chat about Kamala Harris, because Christ on a bike, the internet's lost its bloody mind over this one. Apparently, if you think she was a shit candidate, you must hate women - which is about as logical as saying if you don't like Marmite, you must be plotting to destroy British cuisine. Yeah, being a woman fucked her over. Being not-white didn't help either. But let's be real - she couldn't give a straight answer about trans rights, going all "let's follow the law" which is politician speak for "I'm too chickenshit to have an actual opinion." Plus, she locked up people for smoking weed after admitting she did it herself. Bit rich, that. While she was trying to actually govern (mental concept, I know), Trump was out there building his cult like some bargain basement Charles Manson, and everyone's shocked she lost the popularity contest? Fucking hell.

Then there's this 4B Movement bollocks. Started in South Korea and now we've got women demanding to see voting receipts before dating. Like, actual proof of voting. What do they think we do, keep our voting slips in a special wank bank next to our collection of celebrity crushes? My Jewish granddad married a Catholic who ended up an atheist, and somehow they managed without checking each other's political CVs. I've got family from all over - Colombia, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Peru, Lebanon - and somehow we've all managed not to murder each other without demanding to see everyone's voting history. Mental.

But the thing that's proper doing my head in is Project 2025. I read all 922 fucking pages because apparently, I'm a masochist. It's like someone took every dystopian novel ever and thought "bit tame, these - let's make them government policy." They want to make tens of thousands of federal workers political puppets, bin off the Department of Education, gut Medicare and Medicaid, make porn illegal, fuck over anyone who's not straight, and use the military as domestic police. They're actually trying to change "pursuit of happiness" to "pursuit of blessedness" like we're living in some medieval morality play. The Constitution apparently doesn't let us do what we want, only what we "ought to." Who decides what we ought to do? Three guesses, and the first two don't count.

The education stuff is proper mental. They want to kill the Department of Education, move special education somewhere else, cut funding for poor kids, and end free school meals. Because nothing says "make America great" like starving children, right? Bunch of twats.

And get this - they want to bring back the citizenship question on the census even though the Supreme Court told them to fuck off. They're suggesting merging banking regulators while casually hinting that maybe deposit insurance isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's like they're playing Jenga with people's lives, except instead of wooden blocks it's actual humans.

Their president, Kevin Roberts (what a bellend), actually wrote that we need to fight against "children suffering the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries." I grew up with a Muslim roommate who wore her hijab when she felt like it, parents who couldn't agree on God but agreed on not being dicks about it, and somehow I turned out fine without the government deciding what makes a "good life."

I should probably sleep, but I can't stop thinking about how a country that was meant to keep church and state separate is seriously considering a plan that's basically Jesus's manifesto with a side of fascism. Trump's lot are now going "Project what now?" even though the document mentions him more times than Dexter has murdered people (and that's saying something).

Maybe what's keeping me up isn't just the policies, but the fact that we're not just deciding what kind of country we want to be - we're deciding if we want to keep being a country that gets to decide things at all.

P.S. Remember when we thought the biggest threat to democracy was people not voting? Fucking amateur hour, that was.

[eriophorumcallitrix]

ok so i wanna talk about my biggest gripe with the latest reason for disliking tubbo. this ended up accidentally being a more in-depth character explanation from my/tubbos pov. and boy do I mean the compulsive overexplanation really popped off on this one

(disclaimer: you’re obviously allowed to dislike any character you want, I’m not your mom and I’m just voicing my own view + experiences lol)

one of the biggest criticisms for him im seeing as of the moment is that he’s being annoying. and I completely agree. I think he’s being inflammatory at really awful times. but what I don’t agree with is the lack of discussion about why he’s acting this way. chalking his callousness up to simple neglect or lack of care is a disservice to his character.

my interpretation of tubbos current mental state and how he got here is like this:

tension has been high strung for weeks now due to the egg island workers showing up and harassing people. they’ve killed empanada, and there really does not seem to be shit they can do about it. the federation doesn’t give a shit, the workers are OP as all hell, and tubbo has tried everything in his power to keep sunny and her siblings safe. not even his busted set of armor kept him from getting three-tapped. like tubbo said: “why try if there’s no chance of winning?”

so already, he’s depressed and frustrated with himself for not being able to do a damn thing to keep the people he loves safe.

then we get into his relationships with the people around him. in tubbos eyes, pac and fit are forming a close relationship that he feels is going to leave him behind. pac, fit and Ramon have each other now. they’re family now in a way that tubbo doesn’t seem to be a part of now. I can’t remember if he said this exactly, but it was along the lines of: well now there’s not going to be any space for me [if they’re that close.] his closest friends are moving on without him, and there’s nothing he can do about that either.

now we have a depressed barely-adult guy whose self esteem has TANKED because he feels like there’s no use for him anymore. his friends are moving on without him and the only thing he’s good for is how useful he can be to others.

except for sunny.

it barely took a week for them to get attached to each other, and now it’s them against the world. sunny is all he needs, and tubbo is all she needs. they mean everything to each other, and would burn it all down if it made the other smile. and right now? it’s looking like it’ll be just them against the world until further notice.

but sunny has her friends. she has her siblings! she loves them to death and they love her to death too. she has her accountant bad, her bodyguard fit and driver pac! (if I remember correctly xd) and they’ve got her. sunny can trust them, and has them to stick around for.

tubbo does not have this. don’t get him wrong, he’s incredibly grateful that she’s got people on her side that love her other than him! but this doesn’t come without unspoken jealousy and resentment. not resentment towards sunny, obviously, but definitely some jealousy of her relationships with the others. and possible resentment towards the others for not sparing the same kindness towards him.

this is where I tie back to my original point. the difference between sunny and her pa is mostly communication and trust of others. sunny is willing to communicate and trust others, and tubbo is not.

to start with why tubbo isn’t communicating with others right now: i believe he’s reached the point of emotional shutdown. he has tried his damndest to do what he can to resolve the situation and nothing has worked. this is already something I believe is stressing him out really badly, thus taking up a significant portion of his emotional threshold.

and now he can’t even seek solace or help in his friends because he cannot let himself trust them.

he has tried to give out cries for help in ways that aren’t necessarily straightforward. and he’s also said some seriously worrying things lately under the guise of being jokes. i don’t blame the others for not getting that, but I still can’t help but wonder why nobody’s really thought to look any deeper into it? like don’t get me wrong, tubbo says some completely inane shit sometimes. but has the frequency of these “jokes” and his inflammatory behavior not tipped anyone off at all?

regardless, tubbo feels like he’s tried. he’s not that good at communicating, and even when he is, he may not come off as treating the situation with proper sensitivity. it’s already a struggle to communicate, not even mentioning trying to ask for help. this is a whole other layer to wondering why he even tries doing things “right.”

he already thinks people only keep him around for what he can provide, so thats the only thing he thinks he’s got going for him and he’s barely hanging onto it too.

so as a result of not knowing how to cope with the situations around him and pretty much being extended past his emotional capability, he acts out. he doesn’t want fit and pac together because they’re gonna leave him behind. so he tries to ruin it. it doesn’t work, and they are continuing to move on without him. so he constantly comments on how annoying it is, and in a way, tries to get them to push him away themselves. he just wants a resolution to this hurt he’s feeling, and he wants them to just get “the move away” over already. but obviously that’s not gonna happen.

so he makes insensitive jokes, says stupid shit and does stupid shit too. he lies and blames others. he wants his friends to push him away already and give him a good reason to finally run away with sunny and completely isolate. this is beyond his capabilities, and all he needs at this point is a solid reason for him to finally hit the ground running.

but each day he comes back to spawn, doing everything he can to not completely lose it for sunny. he’s trying his best to keep it together for her, and he can’t let himself be weak. admitting his feelings in the place he’s currently in would end up coming out as a breakdown. and he cannot let the people around him see that. it would be a fatal error to open up when he cannot trust the feds nor the egg island workers not to take advantage of his weakness. and he needs to be there for sunny, to at the very least protect her if nothing else.

so essentially: tubbo is past his emotional threshold and is barely keeping it together. the facade is slipping and the harshness/what people perceive as annoying is continuously slipping out from the cracks.

(with this next bit, this is just me recognizing autistic patterns of behavior in myself + some others in tubbo’s character. i dont actually know if he’s autistic this is just me drawing parallels from my experience. and how I have seen these behaviors be treated within the qsmp fandom. don’t say I’m armchair diagnosing him or whatever for the love of god please)

so tubbo cannot cope with the situations around him, which is resulting in his mask slipping. he’s fully aware that he’s being insensitive and kind of an ass, but he is quite literally past his capability of keeping up with social niceties at this point. and i do think the unnecessary jokes in bad taste are purposefully to get people to either notice something is wrong or to get them to push him away so he doesn’t keep hurting their feelings.

and people getting onto him about communication I think simply do not get how utterly difficult it is to communicate when you have reached the point where you’re struggling to mask. not to mention the danger he could put himself in by being vulnerable to others on top of that. so ultimately, brushing off his fears and character traits as a simple “he could do this but doesn’t want to/is just stubborn and annoying for no reason/for a reason that isn’t good enough for me” is kind of ridiculous. it also reminds me of some things I’ve been told in relation to my struggles with autism, but that’s just me. not that i think people are actually being ableist but i do think some of y’all’s arguments are slipping a little too close to ableist rhetoric.

once again you’re allowed to dislike whoever you want and think they’re annoying, but i would encourage you to think a little more in depth as to why you think they’re annoying.

(and I’m not saying some people don’t like autistic traits that aren’t cute n quirky but… it’s getting a little too close for comfort >_>)

[gunnrblze]

What jobs do you think the ghosts would have if they retired/ never enlisted? Including rorke plz 🙏

Ooh this is a thinker

Hesh- I definitely see him joining the military in some fashion regardless, but when he retired, I’d imagine he’d need some kind of hands on job to keep him busy. Blue collar type like construction or mechanic. I think not being physically busy would eat at him, so if not that, some kind of dog/K-9 trainer

Logan- if he hadn’t joined the military (which i definitely think he also would’ve regardless, following Hesh and Elias’ footsteps and all), I could see him doing some kind of forestry job, or being a firefighter lol. Something laborious and physical like that whether it’s from the get go or post service.

Elias- also cannot see him not being military lol, and he strikes me as the type to retire but not really retire. Talks about it for years, never does. Will carry out his service until the government tells him to gtfo. After that I think he’d actually retire and just live the rest of his life. It’d eat at him that he can’t work anymore, but I can’t see him doing anything else after his career, EXCEPT being very physically active. Could probably not sit still for too long lol

Merrick- another one that I can’t see not having enlisted, considering his father&grandfather were both big military career men. So I think similar to Hesh, he’d retire and need some kind of physical job to busy himself. Another blue collar guy, truck driver/carpenter/etc. OR he’d do some kind of private security contracting work in either scenario. He’d remain a ghost, just in a different way.

Keegan- whether he never enlisted in the first place, or did so after retiring, I also see him doing some kind of blue collar working job. Welder/mechanic/factory work is the vibe I get. OR, since I hc that he’s either a little southern/midwestern, I could see him being a rancher/farmhand (cowboy Keegan, yum)

Kick- since it’s implied he’s a tech specialist in the ghosts, and I hc that technology has been a big part of his life, I can see him going down that road either pre or post military service. Some kind of programmer/engineer/IT specialist/cybersecurity dude. Possibly would open his own tech business doing something along those lines

Rorke- I think if he’d never enlisted, he’d either be a police/security/correctional officer type dude, possibly on a big scale like FBI/CIA territory tbh. OR lol like a lot of these mfs, he’d be a blue collar worker, painting houses or some shit. However, after retiring from working with the Federation, I think he’d actually just retire and live the rest of his life somewhere in South America (most likely hiding from any remaining Ghosts🫣)

[anonymous-dentist]

Can you give me a recap. What's happening with Cellbit???

God what isn’t happening with Cellbit

Basically, here’s a list of what the Feds have done to him, and his current response:

15 years ago, the Federation kidnaps him after he sees something he shouldn’t have. It seems like he was being held for observation. He escaped, but I think he was caught again? Idk I don’t speak Portuguese

He got shipped SOMEHOW to the Hunger Games with no memories of his childhood with Bagi and his parents

Time passes. He’s put in prison because people were “afraid of [his] potential”, aka probably because he was entirely too chill with killing the shit out of people

Time passes again, he crashes onto the island, and Problems Start

My guy gets chainsaw tortured! Aka he gets chased down a hallway and murdered by a laughing Cucurucho and then revived and chased down a hallway and shown his corpse by a laughing Cucurucho. After an interrogation, he’s elevatored upstairs to… Richarlyson’s old bedroom area, which was basically the Feds saying “Hey we’ll do this to your son too lol”

Felps aka Cellbit’s best friend get kidnapped

Bobby dies and so does most of Roier’s soul

Because of that, Cellbit joins the Feds to investigate secretly and shit. He then gets kidnapped and he ends up losing like three days’ worth of memories

He tells people about the chainsaw torture and they laugh in his face and/or ignore him. For MONTHS

The Feds try and murder him during the elections, but that’s fine, he ends up murdering himself

The Feds trick him into giving up a HUGE amount of information in a secret office under his house (this is a surprise tool that will help us later)

They keep making him go on jobs for them, and he’s pretty sure that they’re the guys threatening to kill his son if he tells anybody about the missions (that was probably the Resistance tbh, but he doesn’t even know they exist)

ElQuackity happens. Just. Everything about him tbh, but especially him threatening both Richas and Roier to the point of Roier Cubito legit being afraid for the literal first time ever that Cellbit has known him

Then the eggs get kidnapped, and the Feds aren’t doing shit to help

Then Forever and Pac are drugged

Then Forever is sent on a suicide mission into the Nether

And then the eggs aren’t back

And then there’s a Federation prison on the server

And then the eggs aren’t back and neither is Forever

And now Roier is even more of a broken man than he already was because the Federation isn’t doing shit to help find the eggs

And then Cellbit finds out that he’s missing 12 or so years of his life because of the Federation. That he had a HOME, and then. He didn’t. Because of them.

Tbh I think that last bit was the real final straw, but then:

The Mini-Me event was because Cellbit got intel from a rebel worker (kinda) who promised Cellbit information in exchange for the “goods” at the presentation

Cellbit didn’t feel Anything even after he won the day by all means necessary after stealing the Mini-Mes

So he went home and had a nervous breakdown and now he’s killing workers because like. Okay.

So why is Cellbit killing all these workers? Well, he isn’t thinking super clearly now, but he’s basically trying to get his family off the island safely. That’s his priority. They can’t leave until the Feds are gone, so he’ll make the Feds gone.

He’s tired of the complacency everyone else is showing. After all the shit they’ve been put through on the island, why isn’t anybody actually fighting back? Don’t they want to leave?

So. Yeah! :D

[mass-convergence]

About Shutdowns

Hi. It’s December 20, 2024.

If you’re in the US (or if you’re not but get blasted by news that happens in our country regardless because ‘Murica) you probably have heard about some stuff that’s been happening in regards to our budget.

Strap in folks this is a long one but bottom line up front: we shouldn’t be rooting for a government shutdown. It’ll fuck a lot of shit up and it’ll hurt a lot of people (and not the ones you’d want to “hurt” because Congress will still be getting paid through this shitfest).

Basically, in the most oversimplified way I can summarize: Congress every year has to pass a budget. Said budget allocates funds and such for the continuing functioning of our government - this is known as appropriations. This budget/appropriations (will just call it a budget from here on out) has to be passed before the fiscal year is up (so by the beginning of October). Sometimes Congress gets locked in some kind of back and forth over the bill - like in 2018-2019 it was over the stupid funding for the stupid border wall that Trump wanted to build. This tends to keep Congress from passing a budget. If Congress doesn’t pass a budget by the deadline, the government effectively shuts down because well … we don’t know where the money’s supposed to go. Sometimes Congress gets its shit together enough to pass something called a Continuing Resolution or CR - which basically lets them kick the can down the road for a bit so they can squabble more about what to do with the money. Sometimes Congress can’t even agree on the CR. And so the government shuts down.

Well, this is basically what’s happening right now in the US. There was a fight over appropriations back in September which lead to Congress passing a CR to fund the government through December. They had another CR lined up for vote this week to fund us through March. It was a behemoth of a bill that included stuff like disaster relief for the areas impacted by hurricanes this year, relief for the Maui wildfires, and funds to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. It wasn’t a popular bill but there was at least enough support that it could get through Congress and fund us through March.

Well. There was enough support until certain people interested in “government efficiency” decided to complain to their Twitter followers. That effectively torpedoed any GOP support for the bill. Which means we now are less than 24 hours from the government shutting down due to a lapse in funding.

This is not a good thing.

I’ve seen some people (including my own mother) who are frustrated with the current dumpster fire that is our political situation basically taking the “FAFO” stance. They’re essentially rooting for the government to shutdown because people need to see what they’re going to get because they voted for Trump (disregarding that half of the US didn’t even vote for the guy). I understand the frustration and I even understand the reaction of “you made your bed now lie in it”.

However we should not be rooting for a government shutdown.

On the larger scale - this would negatively impact our economy, which according to the last election was something people really cared about. The federal government is the largest employer in the US with around 3 million employees. If the government shuts down then a portion of those employees would be furloughed (hard for me to find exact numbers on this - most reports just mention a nebulous “hundreds of thousands”) which means they can’t report to work. Other employees like the military, law enforcement, etc. who are deemed essential for the protection of life and property would have to work but won’t get paid until the shutdown is over.

“Yeah but I hate the military and cops”

Yeah well other essential government workers include: medical staff, fire fighters, air traffic controllers, and meteorologists for the NWS (who work 24/7 putting out life saving forecasts and warnings). All those people won’t get paid either.

When you’ve essentially stopped paying 3 million people - that has negative impacts on the economy. Because if you’re not getting paid, you go to spending whatever money you do have on the bare essentials and nothing more. I don’t think I need to explain why that’s a bad thing for the economy.

On the more personal level:

A lot of government employees are paid on something known as the General Schedule or GS scale. It goes from 1 to 15. As of 2024: GS-1 employees earn ~$25k per year and GS-15 employees earn ~$144k. In terms of number of GS employees per grade - this Reddit post from a few years ago shows the breakdown (and I checked on FedScope and the data is about the same for 2024 so I’m just stealing this dude’s graph).

So we have a fair chunk of folks in the GS 5-9 range then another chunk in the GS 11-14 range. Makes sense, GS 5 is a common starting salary for a federal employee who has a bachelors degree. Depending on the agency you can progress to the next pay grade after a year (my job basically has a progression where you increase a grade each year until you get to 12). Base pay (so if you’re working anywhere in the US that’s not expensive as fuck to live in) GS 5-9 salaries are ~$40k to ~$60k per year.

For an 80 hour pay period that’s $1500-$2300, ignoring taxes. Again - you may make a bit more if you’re working somewhere expensive. Still, as someone who started out as a GS-7, that’s still a paycheck to paycheck existence. And I live alone and I don’t have any student loans to worry about. I could make ends meet but I had zero savings and if I missed a paycheck I would have been in trouble.

Now imagine if I had a family. And if I were the sole income owner for said family. Even as a GS-12 (-~$87k per year or $3,400 per pay period) I would be struggling if I had to support a family.

During these shutdowns? You’ve got federal employees who are lining up at food banks because they can’t afford groceries. You’ve got people like me who are essential workers and thus have to show up for their 40-hr (or more) per week job but since we’re not getting paid, we have to take on temporary side gigs like Uber drivers or whatever… on top of our full time jobs.

And it’s not just the employees getting screwed over by this. It’s also everyone who relies on the government programs that are going to have to push pause while the shutdown happens. Social security checks and stuff will still go out but things like WIC, SNAP, etc will be impacted. You still may get those benefits but depending on how long the shutdown lasts, those programs could run out of funding. Loans and stuff will also be impacted since the people who are in those offices processing the paperwork for said loans will go into furlough status and therefore won’t be working at all during the shutdown. Regulators and inspectors for agencies like the FDA and USDA may also be put on furlough, putting food safety at risk.

Look there’s a lot more stuff I can say on this - the federal government is a behemoth of an organization that has its hands in a lot of stuff necessary for the continued functioning of our country - but in the interests of not writing an entire novel about this I will conclude with this:

A government shutdown is bad and should not be rooted for. Please go yell at your representatives to get their heads out of their asses and pass a goddamn budget.

I’m speaking as a private citizen and not as a representative for the government.

[lazyscience]

so there's something I feel like young leftists are not getting at all when they rail furiously about how "we keep voting for Democrats but they keep just pandering to the right, what are we supposed to DO to get them to change OTHER than not vote for them?"

It has to do with fundamental assumptions about what "governing" is supposed to mean in the modern era, and this is a conversation that has to happen culturally in and around what is happening at the ballot box in a lot larger sense than it is. putting in a readmore because this gonna get long and also ranty.

It also means I'm taking another Tumblr break because I can not, I CAN NOT with the current political discussion any more and even with terms blocked I'm seeing it, and I don't want to spend my evenings alternating between rage and depression, I get enough of that from the news.

This conversation was happening even earlier than this, but the timepoint at which it was first coming to a head and when I became familiar with it was 1994 and Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America". Prior to this point, the ethos on both sides of the aisle (in public) was that in general, a congressperson's job (especially in the House, a little less so in the Senate maybe) was while you were under the umbrella of one of the two parties, you were mostly looking out for the particular agenda of your state and only secondarily working towards a national agenda. And secondary to this idea, most of them agreed on basic principles that gridlock was bad (wouldn't produce anything useful/re-electable for your state), civil service employees and appointees weren't supposed to be blatant political operatives (there were, of course, but that was considered more sleazy and corrupt than "elections have consequences, hurr hurr") and that for the stability of the country, things like the debt ceiling were best mutually avoided.

So for the better part of the 20th century, the Democrats were more the party of regulation, the social safety net and the reality and use of powers on a federal level; the Republicans were the party of "leave these decisions to the individual states" (this is obviously a grotesque oversimplification, people have literally written dozens, probably hundreds, of scholarly books about this shit). And Newt Gingrich, ambitious little shit from an at the time deep red Republican state, said "you know what, we need to embrace a national party and federal control the way the Democrats have--because until then, WE can't control it." So the Contract With America was born - and the goal became instead of "well, whatever, as long as I can weasel out concessions for my state/special interests that hired me" the game ALSO became "demonstrate that federal government doesn't work by MAKING it not work." By using all the procedural stupid dirty tricks that a reactionary old bunch of white dudes that had just been through a war put into place to make any point of settled law that had happened basically as hard to change as fucking possible.

Now, the Democrats couldn't/didn't WANT to play by those rules, because their biggest and most popular successes (qualified, imperfect, but still) - Social Security, Medicaid, the civil rights movement, antitrust, worker protections, environmental protections - are all contingent on a federal government apparatus that actually fucking works. And now that the Republicans can win either by getting what they want OR by yelling "look, this process is clearly broken and doesn't work!", the only way Democrats can make sweeping changes without having to fight tooth and nail every step of the way is to have a majority in both houses of Congress, control the Presidency, and the Supreme Court.

Because again, the reactionary old white men who had just lived through a butt ton of social upheaval wanted to make it hard for one group of (rich white, male enfranchised) people to control another - and they literally at that time could not have envisioned the way the country would grow into both a far more unified AND polarized place that would take these safety rails and exploit them to block every achievement their opponent might make, whether or not it was actually in the best interests of the people they're representing.

(I mean, they should have, political parties and all that toxicity were not new to the British Empire before the colonies even existed, but well, I think we all know by now there's a lot of things they couldn't have imagined. See also: the second amendment)

So here's the deal - if you punish Joe Biden for being a confused corporate-friendly war-hawkish atrocity-enabling weenus - which he totally is sometimes! - you are kneecapping any actually progressive congressional candidates you elect unless you can also deliver 67+ solidly Democrat/Green/whatever the fuck Angus King is votes in the Senate, and 290+ equally staunch Democratic representatives. Because otherwise, that Republican President's just gonna veto everything they legislate that isn't what he wants. And yes, the Senate has to approve any federal judges or Supreme Court justices he wants to appoint - but again, the Republican party sees the federal court system being slow, backed up and impossible to use as a totally acceptable compromise in return for being able to block any significant Democratic legislation from going forward.

Since 1789, do you know how many vetoes have been overridden by supermajority? 109, out of 1,484.

Now, if you could GET that supermajority in the Senate and the House? You could amend the Constitution! You could make mail-in votes mandatory, and/or mandated paid time off for voting. You could mandate ranked-choice voting, so that leftists could vote for the candidate they actually want without splitting up the bloc to the advantage of the fash/fash-adjacent. You could do things like mandate that a Presidential election isn't valid until a minimum threshold number of votes has been achieved that's actual a majority of eligible voters, not just whatever fanatical minority shows up that day, so some asshole who won with 20 percent of eligible voters can't claim to have "a mandate from The People."

BUT WITHOUT THAT SUPERMAJORITY, VOTING TO PUNISH ELECTED OFFICIALS FOR NOT DOING THINGS THEY CANNOT FUCKING DOOOOOO MEANS NOTHING BUT LOSING FOR ALL OF US!

Especially when the other fucking asshole candidate wants to make it legal for the National Guard to LIVE FIRE WITH ACTUAL MILITARY BULLETS ON PROTESTORS, and the Supreme Court has just made it possible for him if elected to order that and have it not be illegal! If he wants to start deporting all Muslim immigrants like he was trying to push for last time he was elected, or round up LGBTQ people and put them in re-education camps, if he gets elected, he could do that now! Because crimes committed as "official acts" are no longer crimes!

So you want to not have to regularly make shitty compromises in the voting booth any more? Great, neither do I. Here are the only ways I see this going forward:

Get 2/3rd of the states of the union to call for an Article V constitutional convention - and be willing to have the process potentially hijacked by fash nutjobs at the state level if those 2/3rds aren't all Democratic-controlled. It's possible - I mean, the system was specifically designed to work that way - but the fact that a) an Article V convention has not successfully been called in the history of the US, and b) the only people advocating for that in the year 2024 are the actual fucking Heritage Foundation of the infamous Project 2025, Ben Shapiro of "but pussy doesn't get wet" fame, Greg "the solution to Uvalde is arming teachers" Abbott and similar nutjobs make me think that's not the safest way to get the outcome we want here.

Hold your noses and get 67 Senators and 290 Representatives elected that are either Democrats or who will reliably caucus with them like Socialists or Greens and have them pass a law to require ranked choice voting for the presidency - there's a chance it'll get a constitutional challenge from the Supreme Court, but there's not a solid precedent either forbidding or encouraging, and by the time it's an issue hopefully we're back in 5/4 liberal court territory if Alito and Thomas either retire or get canned. That will mean a lot of mid corporatist conservative Dems who will make decisions you don't like and don't want to support, but with an endgame of someday getting to stop doing that. This is honestly probably the most achievable, so it is also the one Republicans are fighting against hardest with gerrymandering and voter suppression, and they have banned it on the state level in Florida, Montana, South Dakota, Tennessee and Idaho.

Let Republicans get elected to prove a point. This will result in an unknown but presumably acceptable to you number of deportations, convictions, legal abuse and deaths among people the Trump administration declares undesirable, including Muslims, Palestinians, trans people, anyone working in gender studies or race studies, the unhoused, potential child labor, and people of childbearing potential among others. This is not a threat to get you to fall in line. It is a prediction based on the previous behaviorand stated policy positions of Mr. Trump, the Republican National Convention, and the decision of the Supreme Court allowing his administration to carry out what would otherwise be crimes but for a president are "official actions" now apparently. It will also at the very least make easier the capture of the Supreme Court for another two or three decades during which no effective challenges can be brought for voter suppression, gerrymandering, and violent suppression of protest.

honest question: how, exactly, if it becomes an illegal act to talk about racism, queer liberation or police reform, are you proposing to get your better, more leftist candidates elected? I am so serious right now, why do you think after another four years of Trump provided he doesn't just immediately declare martial law like he already almost did once, do you think people would be willing to stick their necks out to identify themselves as enemies of the state? Think about the stranglehold Joseph McCarthy had on this country from 1947-1957.

[lxrd-ren]

(Fuck me man did I actually crack it-)

Hmm, what if q!Bad being effected by the soul vultures is inherently a good thing?

I mean looking at the wiki for both the soul vulture and the soul stealing potion, it is pretty fucking powerful. I mean you could theoretically suck the life out of someone and use their soul to better yourself. I feel like q!Bad would 100% use this to his advantage

I've headcannoned how q!Bad has very destructive powers to the point where he can't use them cause he'll hurt and destroy everything. Perhaps this whole soul steal potion is his plan to get powerful enough to destroy the federation without hurting anyone else

I've put some thought into it and I think it makes sense

Obviously he found out about these potions from Dapper. But from what we know (and could see) Dapper only ever made the potions by sacrificing his health to the soul vultures

Me thinks the blue spots on q!Bad is from him consuming the soul potion instead of making it. I mean, we didn't see any spots on Dapper right? Meaning the blue spots has to have come from something else. But the blue is so similar, it HAS to have come from the soul vultures in some way. It being a side effect of drinking the potion me thinks is logical enough, and it makes sense that q!Bad is drinking it as he knows from Dappers notes how powerful it is

It also kinda explains the worker in his basement. Sure q!Bad has questioned it and maybe even tortured it, but q!Bad phrased it as an 'investigation' or 'project'. Surely q!Bad knew the worker wouldn't have much information, so why take it in the first place? Well, I think he'd go to these extremes if he had an ulterior motive. Namely, investigating whether the soul steal potion would effect federation employees aka could q!Bad use it against the federation

AND THE TIMING WORKS. When we saw the worker last, it was caged and locked up in q!Bad's basement. Let's say during that time period, he worked out that the worker is indeed effected by the soul stealing potion. And so, seeing this success, q!Bad starts taking the potion. And look at that, the black patches appear the next fucking day. And not 2 DAYS LATER, the blue spots start appearing.

And nearly everyday since, we've seen him either go back to the basement or the soul vultures, presumably to either make the potions or consume it. Oh and look at that, the blue has gotten worse and worse over time, almost as if he's drinking more and more of it

Motherfucker even said at one point:

"All according to plan."

Plus, I remember seeing one post saying how they don't think q!Bad is torturing the worker but rather experimenting on it like Dapper would experiment on shit. I'd say testing if a soul stealing potion would work on the employee is definitely experimenting on it

But I think we should definitely keep in mind the uh, ahem, other side effects.

Such as q!Bad becoming more violent, more hysteric, less empathetic, aka, losing his humanity, almost as if he's losing his own soul by getting hurt by the soul vultures and instead is regaining souls through the soul vulture potion, but ofcourse the souls aren't the same so bit by bit he's becoming more like one such as looking like one (the blue spots all over him), acting more like one (being more violent), sounding more like one.. (those noises we keep hearing at the end + start of stream)

..just saying we might see some soul vulture wings on q!Bad pretty soon..

(K but holy shit imagine the fanart that would look so fucking cool)

[haloberry]

Watching Quackity’s vod, gotta say the fact mfer was struggling in character bc he canonically couldn’t write or read is extremely funny to me, especially when put in the scenario where the only form of communication was too read and write.

But again, love that all the workers seem to be really friendly with one another. Adds depth, ya’know?

But, it pops up more questions..

They all felt like fucking college floor mates that ended up working in the same company as one another. And how silly the B and C tier workers acted? Almost like younger co-workers in a sense, and it was really cute!

And their whole thing with ‘Fred’s’ feelings for Tubbo? Like, it genuinely was so nice to see them all care for, not only the health, but the feelings of each other! They acted professional when needed, but that was it! They were their own person outside of that!

But, tf was Fred’s deal with then? Are tiers of workers based on how much influence the federation has over them? Based on number of years worked for them?

It feels like Fred is the Castiel of the Federation workers. If you understand what I’m saying.

The Federation workers acting like regular people, but Fred being the weird one for being the only one not understanding/knowing of human emotion when clearly the environment shown differently??

Also, I genuinely was getting second hand embarrassment from the acting. Like Quackity was choosing every wrong answer on a true or false quiz type embarrassing. (Even when that happens to me, I mask pretty quickly so it was making me even more embarrassed that bro was not adapting to the environment.)

Ughhh, but why were they calling Cucurucho Cucurucho? Wasn’t it mentioned before that they didn’t know he was called that? I thought they only knew him as the Census Bureau? Or, was Fred the only bitch that didn’t keep up with Island news??

All this shit just made me question Fred’s character like??? It genuinely feels like he’s the Castiel of the Federation workers… where all the others had their own personalities outside of their roles while Fred is like “my role is my personality” even though proof shows he was pretty chill just more workaholic in the sense.

Idk bro, I’m just— idk like Fred is he’s own person but didn’t know that that’s what being human is? If it wasn’t clear, I’m talking about Fred Fred not q!Quackity’s abysmal role play as Fred.

[butch-bakugo]

" kamala was a cop don't ya know? She also supports Israel! Why is genocide not a deal breaker for you??"

Kamala was a DA, a district attorney. The district attorney is the government's lawyer. Cops are the governments body guards and personally killing squad. The person who stands in a court room and makes you pay a fine for graffiting the subway tunnel so the government can keep upkeep and the class traitor gay cop kicking a homeless man to death and setting their tent on fire with them in it is not the same shit. If your shitting on her for working in favor of the government (not even federal, state government), then you should also be shitting on the janitors mopping the floors of town hall. Not all government workers are equal.

As for the second point, call me a selfish asshole, but I would like to continue to be alive. I know, crazy thought, but I'm not willing to throw myself on your pseudo-moralistic holy blade as another point in the trans or gay or disabled or native death percentage so I can maintain that I didn't vote for someone with a slightly favorable leaning generally neutral opinion towards Israel. I can't fight Israel if I'm dead. I can't protect Palestine as a fuckin meat bag. I can't afford to put my rights on the line. I can't live to fight another day when I'm sacrificing myself.

Naw we writing this in the biggest text: I feel like all of you "protesting" voting to slightly improve our chances because you can't stand the thought that a candidate isn't perfect don't understand that voting is not something any sane minority with rights on the line would protest. I'm starting to think you all see voting as a public statement about how moral and pure and progressive you are and not what it actually is, a small act of many you should actively be taking to improve our situation.

I don't think some of you realize that some of the most successful changes in our government were constant and grueling actions taken slowly and by the book to garentee said right. The revolution will not happen over night and your ego is showing if you seriously think 2 terms of a great president will just suddenly get all our rights back and turn America into the progressive and accepting and diverse place it needs to be.

You are too busy fantazing about cutting off Mitch mcturtleforeskin's head when your local community needs you. Your spending too much time and energy posting a million links to gofundmes and never actually donate.

You may dress like an activist, talk like an activist and have amazing ideas like activists but you will never be an activist if you can't even volunteer at your local soup kitchen without agonizing for three weeks cause you have to call to set up your interview for it.

The reason garenteed rights like unions had stayed for so long is because unions organized and fought on the ground at the same time. Your no good to the movement if all you have is fantasies about punching terfs and Nazis and running in streets at protests screaming we will rock you and your not willing to sign up and get to work.

You work for the movement or the movement can't work for you.

[pjohoo-reclists]

Percy Jackson Criminal AU Fic Recs

Request: Looking for Percy Jackson fanfiction with criminal AU and preferably Percabeth.

Here's a few. They're all crossovers, but I don't think you have to know the other fandom to enjoy and understand the fics. At least, I haven't seen Brooklyn Nine Nine TV but I still really enjoyed reading those crossovers. Posted 14/8/23. Enjoy!

act natural by maverickk

G | 900 words | Complete

Percy Jackson & Tony Stark

Crossover (Marvel), Interrogation, Percy Jackson is a little shit

Percy and Tony might be in a little bit of trouble.

i'm an atheist by maverickk

T | 1.6k | Complete

Percy Jackson, Nick Fury

Crossover (Marvel), Interrogation, Sarcastic Percy Jackson, Nick Fury just wants to do his job

Percy finds himself in an interrogation room, and his best bet is to talk his way out of trouble.

Missing, Presumed Dead by Deerlie_03

T | 5.7k | Complete

Percy Jackson/Annabeth Chase, Nico di Angelo/Will Solace

Crossover (Brooklyn Nine-Nine TV), Conspiracy Theories, Humor

Jake Peralta brings the teenager to the precinct on a day that should be like any other. Then he spends the next few years trying to unravel the mystery that is Perseus Jackson. Why exactly does the kid know so many missing people?

Now and Then by Deerlie_03

T | 9.8k+ | Ongoing as of 14/8/23

Percy Jackson/Annabeth Chase

Crossover (Criminal Minds TV), POV Outsider, Aged Up Percy Jackson Characters, Future Fic

“Are we finally finding out about the new recruit?” Prentiss opened her mouth with every intent to continue but was suddenly cut short by a new voice. “Finally? Prentiss, have you been keeping me a secret?” “Nice to see you again, agent Jackson,” Ten years after "Lykaion" (part 1 of this series) Percy reunites with the BAU, this time as a new recruit to the team. This is the story of some of his first cases alongside them as well as the more important moments in-between.

Lykaion by Deerlie_03

T | 20k | Complete

Percy Jackson, Criminal Minds characters

Crossover (Criminal Minds TV), Outsider POV, Case fic

They were used to catching killers in the act, not listening to audiobooks and making strangely coloured cookies wearing gingham aprons but that hardly exonerated the kid. After all, there was a lot about him that just didn't sit right, that seemed far too close to the case to be a coincidence. In which Percy Jackson really isn't a serial killer, he just has terrible luck.

Long Forgotten Enemies by littlebear62007

Not Rated | 52k | Complete

Percy Jackson/Annabeth Chase

Crossover (Criminal Minds TV), Murder Mystery, Police Officer Percy Jackson

The BAU is called in when teenagers across New York City are found dead and tortured. Joining the investigation late, after being held up by another case, the team is immediately overwhelmed by the unusual nature of the case. Both the families of the victims and the lead Detective Jackson seem to be hiding something. Why would these families keep critical information from federal agents just trying to find and rescue their children? Percy Jackson has been working for the NYPD, happy to live a normal life after years of war. When demigod children begin turning up dead throughout the city, Percy is torn between two worlds. How will he find the person responsible for killing his family while keeping their world a secret for both his fellow officers as well as government agents?

Heroes of the 99 by Dusana

G | 62k | Complete

Annabeth Chase & Jake Peralta, Percy Jackson/Annabeth Chase

Crossover (Brooklyn Nine-Nine TV), POV Outsider, Magic Revealed

After working with the squad of the 99 for almost a year, her colleagues start finding out that Annabeth Chase is more than an ultimate Detective (/Genius). One by one, they come face to face with the supernatural world their co-worker and friend grew up in. And just in time, because a new threat is looming in the distance...

The Wise Detective by Dusana

G | 79k | Complete

Annabeth Chase & Jake Peralta, Percy Jackson/Annabeth Chase

Crossover (Brooklyn Nine-Nine TV), Season/Series 07 Spoilers

A new Detective joins the squad of the 99th precinct. Her name is Annabeth Chase.