#i have a list of priorities

[fishthegenderwitch]

I was playing BG3 after my roommates went to sleep and just finished sorting every party member's inventory, evenly distributed potions, scrolls, and elixirs, cleared out the vendor trash to get better armor, when my lights flickered

Everything shut off but the PS5 for a second so I was like OH SHIT and hit Quick Save

10 seconds later, massive power outage hit my area of London, more than 500 homes without power

But my game saved

[flawlessflesh]

thistle got tired of craning his neck to talk to laios. can you really treat the king this way, though...?

[otaku553]

Thoughts on being aroace

[bixels]

I hate how ADHD has made just the act of eating difficult. My psychiatrist and doctors have told me that eating food is none-negotiable and a part of my medication, but it’s still hard to self-motivate. I have to struggle every day not to purposely starve myself. It’s gotten to the point where I won’t eat anything for a whole day and will feel fine and that’s bad. Or stomach growling feels good.

[anghraine]

I'm trying to redirect my political thoughts from my fandom escape blog again, but I found something interesting enough that I thought I'd talk a little about it.

Occasionally I choose suffering (looking at the more granular 2024 exit poll breakdowns rather than the summaries that I mostly don't trust much at this point). Anyway, I did find something intriguing, if not particularly surprising, in the CNN exit polls, which were done in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin with a sample size of 22,914 voters.

(I mention the specific states forming the sample because this pretty notably excludes any blue states while including some reliably Republican ones.)

Anyway, most exit polls including CNN's let respondents identify their place on the US political spectrum: conservative, moderate, or liberal (reminder that "liberal" in US usage can be a pejorative for "less leftist than me" but also a shorthand for "radical leftist" but also for "anyone who doesn't seek a cishet white Christian ethnostate", but also can be a more neutral synonym for progressives and/or leftists and is often used that way, as here). So you can look at the election results for each of these ideological factions and what share of the overall sample size they represent.

The interesting thing: this "liberal" category accounted for very similar proportions to 2020 of the overall vote in the sample (24% in 2020, 23% in 2024—a difference well within the margin of error of exit polling). There is no need to explain liberals/leftists staying home in 2024: at least in terms of proportions of the overall electorate, they didn't. Just under 1/4 of voters in 2024 were liberals or leftists, just as in 2020.

Okay, if the most leftwards faction of the US political spectrum actually formed a similar proportion of the electorate, then who did they vote for?

Harris. In CNN's own exit polls from 2020, 89% of this faction voted for Biden, and (surprisingly!) a full 10% voted for Trump. God knows what motivated that 10% Trump share after four years of his hellscape of an administration at the height of COVID, but in any case, that support cratered in 2024. 91% of this group voted for Harris and only 4% for Trump. It's an estimate, but it looks like these very peculiar Trump voters had enough of him in 2024 and around half either voted third party this time or for Harris.

So which faction is Trump's victory coming from? Further consolidation of the far right?

In part, yes! 90% of conservatives voted for Trump in 2024, vs 85% in 2020—likely, some conservatives who voted third party or even for Biden in 2020 came "home" this year. However, conservative turnout was actually a little down in 2024, proportionally speaking: conservatives dropped from 38% of the sample in 2020 to 34% in 2024.

But there's one more major faction in all this: "moderates" or centrists. To be clear, we're talking about the US version of centrism, given that this is a US organization polling US voters about US politicians, not "Bernie would be center-right in Denmark" or whatever. This moderate faction jumped from 38% of the overall sample in 2020 to 42% in 2024, and they swung hard towards Trump, though Harris still won a plurality of them. In 2020, 64% of moderates voted for Biden vs 34% for Trump. In 2024, 57% of them voted for Harris vs 40% for Trump—that is, the Democratic lead among centrists dropped precipitously from +30 to +17.

Tl;dr—ideologically speaking, this data suggests that Trump owes his victory to gains among both right-wing and centrist voters rather than some faction of would-be leftists or progressives apathetically staying home or voting third-party or otherwise deserting Democrats (because they're insufficiently radical or for any other reason).

Oh, and if you're curious as to how this compares to CNN's 2016 exit polls, I also checked those! Harris's 84-point lead among the most leftwards faction is a significant improvement from HRC's 74-point lead in 2016. Trump also got 10% of that group in 2016, as in 2020, so it's this campaign—not Hillary's or Biden's—that managed to eat into whatever the hell is going on with that group.

Harris's +17 with moderates is actually a slight improvement on Hillary's +12 in 2016. Biden's jump to a +30 lead among centrists in 2020 represented either a backlash against Trump from centrists, or Biden's own rapport with that group, or some mysterious issue some of those voters had with both HRC and Harris (I wonder what it could be!!), or some combination thereof. Regardless, there are a lot of actual ideologically centrist voters in the USA and not just would-be leftists who haven't heard the good news of Marx yet. And Trump has an iron grip on the right wing at this point: he beat Hillary with conservatives by +65 in 2016, then beat Biden with an even larger margin of +71, then leapt to a 81-point lead over Harris with right-wing voters this year.

[worstloki]

Mu Qing ascending is objectively so funny considering Feng Xin and Xie Lian also do. Out of the people in your kingdom who accomplished immortality there’s this guy who used to be your servant but is now on equal rank to you and he‘s super rude now and also thinks you hate him because he remembers when you were 18 and lacked socioeconomic-interpersonal awareness

[campbyler]

no worries if not! but perchance would we be able to get a wip wednesday?

#enjoy #🔪

[canonkiller]

shan't lie I do miss the DeviantArt Holiday Wishlist era

[essektheylyss]

The Critical Role team dunamantic diviners have spoken!

It is HOT BOI SUMMER 🌂

In honor of the occasion, have a poll, because why not really.

There are no direct quotes from the end of 97 and no 140/141 moments because we'd be here all goddamn day. Also, you can take this old uquiz I made like three years ago if you'd like. :3 And I do in fact want to hear other great Essek moments in the tags!

[sanguinessunflower]

*you and Jason are just hanging around and talking about his life and job as the Red Hood, so he asks you about your work life*

Jason: So what's the worst thing you have done at a job?

Y/N: I stole bears...a lot of bears when I worked at Build-A-Bear. People would want refunds and instead of throwing away the bears, I stole them.

Jason: What?

Y/N: You know the 50th anniversary Build-A-Bear? Had clothes and everything? I stole all of that

Jason: You're horrible, you know that right?

Y/N: I KNOW!! But I mean...*sigh* you gotta do what you gotta do

Jason: NO?! WHAT?!

[transsongtaewon]

It's a beautiful day, warm and sunny, almost perfect if only Yoojin didn't have to work.

At least the kids are having fun, Yoohyun and Yerim fooling around somewhere behind him. Yoojin thinks it's nice they like to play with each other so much. After all, it is very important for young people to have fun and exercise.

And as long as Yoojin is around they don't even cause that much property damage!

He's not exactly supervising them right now, being busy talking to Officer Song, but he's sure his presence is enough to prevent the worst. Yerim's delighted battle cries assure him that everything is fine.

Yoojin is almost done anyway, presently trying to steer the discussion away from boring legal matters towards the dear Officer maybe taking a break sometime? Perhaps even go on vacation?

...and then a spray of water hits Officer Song square in the chest.

It pastes the already flimsy dress shirt tightly against his skin, turning it all but translucent under the onslaught and leaving nothing to the imagination. His chest goes from prominent to omnipresent, the thin fabric revealing two dusky nipples, visibly hardening due to the cold water. The water runs down toward the stomach, leading the eyes to Officer Song's defined eight pack, each muscle easily discernible and glistening in the sun, the shadows cast by the peaks and dips of his stomach writhing tantalizingly with each breath.

"Oh shit Officer Song, that was totally Yoohyun's fault!"

Yoojin cannot tear his gaze away from Officer Song.

He gapes in horror.

The man before him is dangerously dehydrated.

[sonknuxadow]

i keep forgetting the knuckles show exists i was just thinking "ohh ive had so much fun with the year of shadow but it's kind of a shame they're letting it overshadow knuckles' 30th anniversary so much ... so sad that knuckles hasnt gotten much focus this year..." and then i Remembered .

[youling-the-ghost]

Since apparently sfth and Foil Arms and Hog are beefing now, I just want to point out that fa&h actually has their own canon fandom tag.

If they can have one, why can't we :(

[meikofigureoftheday]

5 years ago I was making fun of people who buy expensive figures, now I am saving up for a $400 scarecrow figure. Beautiful how people can change over time and learn to have fun!

Any figures you guys are looking into? I'm curious!

[bonefall]

jayfeather and moleflight toxic yaoi…

Oh wow there's not even anything in the Molejay tag. Is this pair so rare it's not been done yet?

Jayfeather and Moleflight, toxic yaoi, "I named myself after the time I trounced your angelic ass" and "I've personally assigned my entire afterlife to trying to prevent you from causing chaos." They want to kiss each other sooo bad it makes them look stupid. The rituals, they are so intricate.

[the---hermit]

The urge to get a new tattoo is strong tonight