#it'll be hillarious

[psydelta]

Imagine this: Bruce doesn't understand the concept of death.

He has pretty developed abstract thinking but this concept just. Evades him. He simply doesn't understand and has no intention to. Death is a social construct, and Bruce refuses to follow it.

It has so much crack potential but I'd like to see some DRAMA. Like, when his parents are shot in front of him, Bruce goes "nope, I refuse" and simply drives the whole concept of death out of his head. Instead he tells himself that "they'll be taken to the hospital and be fine". He anchors down with them, holds their hands and waits for help. Imagine Joe Chills terror when this child looks at him with horrified expression and goes "That must really hurt! Why did you do this?" and takes bloody hands of his dead parents muttering reassuring things and constant stream of you'll be okays and this will heals.

After Alfred takes Bruce home, he tries to explain that his parents are dead. But Bruce just looks at him with big eyes and says: "But they're in the hospital, and doctors will help them, right?" Alfred tries again and again, and eventually Bruce goes into full-blown tantrum and refuses to listen, covers his ears and goes hiding. Alfred doesn't have a heart to try this again.

And after days, then weeks, Bruce starts asking about his parents. Shouldn't he and Alfred go check on them? Why aren't they home already? What's happening? Where are they? And Alfred explains again: "They are dead, Master Bruce. They'll never come back, they are dead". But Bruce doesn't hear "dead" . He nods as if he totally and completely understands and hears "abandoned you" instead. Because being alive and abandoning him is better than being dead.

He lives with this. With the thought that his parents couldn't put up with him - put up with Gotham - anymore. He imagines their new life and shows hand-drawn pictures of them - alive and happy and in the midst of craziest adventures 10-year-old can come up with - and Alfred excuses himself after to cry alone every time.

Bruce forsed into therapy. It's not healthy to just forget about death; it's not healthy to live in such complete denial. And he goes, willingly, without complaints. He talks about problems at school, about his fears and anxieties that had gotten worse after his parents left him. He talks about them at length - mother's kindness and warmth, father's guidance and patience - and cries. And every time his therapists try to tell him: "But they're dead, Bruce", he gets this blank look in his eyes for a second and goes quiet and still. His sessions last for three years; Alfred thinks about fourth and does nothing.

After that it is still the same path - Bruce decides that he must help Gotham, seeks training, becomes Batman, all that drill. He fosters Dick - and loves him with all his heart. They fight, Dick leaves, and Bruce thinks that maybe it's not Gotham - maybe it's just him.

He finds Jason - hungry and miserable and too angry to be alone. He takes him under his wing, and makes him Robin, and everything is not fine - Dick still doesn't come home but at least he picks up the phone - but it's good. Bruce is good. He content with his life.

And then Jason dies.

It uproots everything. Dick comes home to scream at Bruce about his dead- something, they wasn't brothers truly, but Dick started to accept Jason as his successor. He screams himself to exhaustion. He turns to leave again. And then Bruce pulls down his cowl and says: "I understand that you are upset. It's my fault that Jason is in this condition. It'll take a lot of time to heal but hell be fine, Dick. I promise."

Dick is frozen. He stands with his mouth open, unable to form one coherent thought, until Alfred guides him away with a gentle touch on the elbow and explains Bruce's inability to understand death in hushed voice. Dick doesn't believe him. Not at first. Not until he sees Bruce talking at Jason's corpse with almost serene smile on his face and then Dick out of the cave to promptly retch into the nearest toilet. It's too much.

It's too much for Alfred too. He doesn't know what Bruce sees inside his mind, when the are at the wake and coffin is lowered into open maw of the grave. But Bruce talks to Jason - and Alfred doesn't listen after "I'll wait for you, son, as long as I need".

And the worst part? Jason does come back.

[bluerasbunny]

my work from this weeks magma! (and the reveals of radio host moon and sun!)

im not including the assageddon /j /pos

[majorbaby]

i think we may have to admit to ourselves that we enjoy misogyny and leveraging it against an "acceptable" target. i can draw a straight line between 2000s dane cook-ian style "women, right?" comedy and the way people so confidently, dump on hillary clinton in public. you don't have to like clinton or think she's a great politican or even a moral one to not make shit up about her.

even if she really did feel any spite or malice towards harris' shot at the presidency, clinton would never let that on. you'd never get such a thing out of her, she is far too strategic. clinton will support the democratic candidate no matter who it is, and i can say that because she did that in 2008 when she lost the nomination to obama. why would she be anything but thrilled and relieved if harris wins the election? why do you need to make up some misogynistic caricature of hillary clinton crying herself to sleep or asking to see the manager in your head to motivate yourself to vote for harris? surely there's a more viable organizing strategy than this?

[shimo-shenanigans]

TOMORROW!!

Tomorrow (Tuesday July 16) around 8ish PST (aka whenever Shimo runs home and finishes making din din) the Sith Inquisitor Dice Roll adventure begins live! :'D ...gods help me I'm gonna regret letting y'all vote on that! Be there to watch me suffer in the most comical way imaginable!

[dedalvs]

I was a student at UC Berkeley during the 2000 presidential election. The propaganda at that time was that Al Gore and George W. Bush were exactly the same candidate wearing different ties. There was no difference between them, so you should vote for Ralph Nader.

In 2016 the propaganda was Bernie Bros—and going both ways ("Hillary is an establishment candidate! You're not a real liberal if you don't vote for Bernie!" and also "Bernie will never win! If you EVER supported Bernie you're not a real liberal!").

This time the propaganda was Gaza. "How can you vote for a candidate that is a part of an administration responsible for GENOCIDE?!"

The thing with propaganda is it's always true—kind of. You can go right down the list and see the truth in all of these things:

Both Al Gore and George W. Bush were establishment candidates. Al Gore was the sitting vice president and a career politician and George W. Bush was the son of former president and vice president George Bush, who himself was vice president to Ronald Reagan.

HIllary Clinton was an establishment politican, the wife of a former president, and the sitting secretary of state. Bernie Sanders didn't have the party support to become the Democratic Party candidate on account of his history of independence.

Biden and Harris were in office during the Hamas attack on October 7th, 2023, and the US government has offered continued support to Israel in its couteroffensive.

Those things are true. But the true things were being used to distract the distractible from other arguably more important true things, e.g. that Al Gore's actual policies were more liberal than George W. Bush's; Hillary Clinton's policies were more liberal than Donald Trump's; and a Kamala Harris-led government was going to be better for Palestine than a Donald Trump-led government.

The goal with the propaganda each time was exaclty the same. It wasn't to get votes for a third party candidate or change policy or help Gaza.

The goal was to get liberals not to vote.

And it worked. Every time.

It'll work again, too, if we don't teach voters how to recognize this. It's pretty obvious though. If it's near an election and it's a wedge issue between liberal voters and ultra-liberal voters, that's the propaganda.

And it is 100% active and alive here on Tumblr.

[batboyblog]

Strange feeling,

9 years ago I started knocking doors with two goals in mind. I wanted to elect America's first woman President, a candidate I believed in deeply who inspired me and who was amazingly qualified to take on the hardest most complex job in the world. The other goal was equally clear, our future and our progress was at risk if a Republican took office, the Supreme Court was on the line, Republican Party was fixated on getting rid of Obamacare, attacking Social Security and Medicare, rolling back our new wins for LGBT rights, and of course banning abortion. In the Summer and Fall of 2015 it became more and more clear that the Republicans would pick Donald Trump and so the goal became even more clear and important, Stop Trump.

9 years of knocking doors across 5 elections I've come right back to where I started, the doors are different, I'm older, grayer, this Election Day I was not up at 5am doing lit drops (and god bless all the early birds who did that today). But I'm again voting for, and supporting an amazing, smart, qualified woman candidate who inspires me, and I'm voting to Stop Trump.

9 long years ends today, Today we finally finally FINALLY get to turn the page and put an end to Trump. How good will it feel to go weeks, even months, and years, without having to think about Donald Trump, talk about Donald Trump? 9 years is a long time to be stuck in a national abusive relationship, and no it won't fix everything, but damn it'll feel good.

9 years ago, one of the things that inspired me to work as hard as I did for Hillary Clinton was my grandma. She turned 90 in 2015, and would have turned 99 a few days ago. She was whip smart, with a razor wit, she read two books a week every week. She was a feminist before it was cool, always had her own job and her own money and her own car, in the 1950s when married mothers weren't supposed to do any of that. She seemed like she'd go on forever but I was realistic, I knew 2016 could be her last Presidential election, and I wanted her to see a woman President before the end. She passed away in 2019, and I miss her a great deal. She used to refer to Trump as "That shit" the final word said in a hiss of disgust. So I'm carrying her with me as I head to vote, and I'm voting for every tough, smart, witty woman who never got a shot because they were born in the wrong time, and for every little girl who's ever been told "no that's a boy job!" I've fought for 9 goddamn years to break this highest and hardest of glass ceilings and today is the fucking day.

[raptorific]

I saw your post re: the silver lining to Biden stepping down. I felt relieved to remember that Trump is now the only incoherent old guy in the race. However, the relief quickly subsided when I remembered that Hillary was very well-spoken and polished, if not quite as young as Harris.

Harris fortunately doesn't have quite the same baggage as Hillary, so I'm hoping that will make the difference. What do you think?

*I realize this could sound like I'm trying to agitate, and I'm not, so no need to post if you don't want to.

So, apologies in advance, because I foresee a lot of Words happening in my response here. It's worth getting into because I feel like a lot of what you're bringing up are legitimate fears but also coming more from a place of Anxiety than from an actual pattern forming

First things first, to be clear, my post about Biden stepping aside did not highlight a silver lining in otherwise bad news. Biden stepping aside has been an objective boon to our chances of securing the White House in November. I wasn't saying "this is bad news, but look on the bright side," I was saying "that dread you're feeling is misguided, because this is, in its entirety, good news."

To your point about Hillary Clinton being well-spoken and polished: that's true! She very much was! However, crucially, the 2016 election was not one characterized by a debate over how polished or articulate the candidates were. The reason this can be considered a "shit the bed" moment for Trump is because of a factor that is present in this election, that was not present against Hillary Clinton: in this election, he spent all his time and energy selling himself as the younger, healthier, less senile of the two candidates, and now he's without his primary selling point in the eyes of this election cycle's electorate.

Now, Trump is actually showing signs of severe mental decline while Biden only shows signs of "a speech impediment" and "being over 80" and on a physical level Biden is very obviously much more healthy than him, but nonetheless, through a series of lucky breaks and crafty rhetoric, he was able to sell the public on the idea of Biden being some sort of Corpse Puppet. The reason why that matters is because he successfully sold voters on the concept "someone who is old, who can't get through a sentence, is not fit to be president." That narrative wasn't a factor in 2016, and it is in 2024.

The other important factor to remember about 2016 is the context in which that election happened, and why the dirty tricks and bigotry leveled at Hillary by the right actually worked on the public. Specifically, at the time, we were coming off eight years of a black president, a historic first, who the republicans had spent years and years trying to oust or otherwise discredit, and who was poised to come out of office as a fairly well-respected figure.

Voters have a tendency to view white men as, for lack of a better term, "Default" or "Normal" with no modifiers. Many of the people who voted for Trump were people who had, in reality, no specific problem with a black president, but felt that after eight years it was time to get back to "Normal." They saw Clinton, another huge Historic First as the would-be First Female President, and a lot of them said "no thanks, we just had a president who's African-American, we don't want to switch to one who's Woman-American, let's reset back to a Normal-American (read: White Man) before we do any more Progress, otherwise it'll feel like the world is changing too fast."

There's obviously other factors at play. I'm not denying Clinton had other problems as a candidate, but an overwhelming amount of why she lost was rooted in the electorate's misogyny, and their desire to return to a status quo of a white man-- almost any white man-- with no other Identity Categories, as president. It's why I do think Joe Biden would've handily won the 2016 election, had he chosen to run, but I'm not here to play the what-if game.

It's also worth mentioning, at this stage, that most of the country actually was okay with having a Woman President, and, specifically, with having Hillary Clinton be that woman president-- she received more votes than Trump by the millions-- it was only due to the system-rigging done hundreds of years ago by slavers that he was allowed to become president despite the will of the voters.

So, the reason why this matters: voters tend to like a change, to a certain extent. Barack Obama was largely able to win election in 2008 specifically because he was a young, handsome, charismatic black candidate, who stood in stark contrast to his opponent, an older white guy who just kinda seemed like a redux of the bumbling old white guy everyone already hated as President at the time. Trump won largely because of a pendulum swing away from Historic First Barack Obama being the status quo.

Right now, we've been governed by two Old White Guys for the past eight years, one from each major party. In the 2016 climate, a Historic First, electing a Something-American, was scary and intimidating to a lot of voters. This year, in 2024, we're playing a different ball game: Donald Trump is selling More Of The Same (old white guys who've been in all the elections for the past eight years and who both come across somewhat bumbling) while Kamala Harris is selling a refreshing change of pace (a younger Black and Indian woman who is visibly competent, intelligent, charismatic, and let's not downplay the effect this has on the electorate, attractive).

I maintain that running a female candidate in 2016 was, unfortunately, a political miscalculation. I think that if it had been two straight, christian white guys, the election would've been made about the issues and it would've gone to the democrats. Novelty was a liability for a candidate in 2016. In 2024, "more of the same" is a liability, and novelty could prove the greatest blessing.

Hell, look at how excited people got when Biden dropped out, and suddenly people had something election-related to pay attention to other than "BREAKING NEWS: ELECTION STILL COMING IN NOVEMBER, PROBABLY WILL GO BAD."

To your point about the baggage with Clinton: an important thing to understand is that the Republicans identified her political ambitions as early as the 1980s, and started drafting their "Running against her for President" playbook as soon as Bill was president. They were ready to take her down in 2000 when they worried she'd run, and in 2008 when she was a frontrunner for the nomination, and then finally managed to use it in 2016 when she actually was the nominee. Trump lucked into a showdown with, to re-use a recent analogy, an enemy whose Kryptonite he happened to have inherited.

The misogynist attacks on Hillary Clinton largely worked because they had been thoroughly seeded over the preceding 30 years. Many people, even democrats, really didn't like Hillary, for reasons both Fair and Unfair, and a lot of the people who voted for her were, as the cliche goes, holding their nose and voting blue. A lot of the median swing voters fell hook, line, and sinker for the GOP attacks on her, and either stayed home or voted for the other guy.

As I mentioned in my previous post, they don't have much of a playbook for Kamala Harris. They've done zero preparation for the possibility of her presidential run because they thought they wouldn't have to worry about her until 2028, if at all. They've tried "she laughs weird" but it doesn't really work because people are finding it endearing and because their guy does everything weird. They've tried "she's a childless cat lady" and that offended everyone's casually conservative step-parents and lost them a bunch of support. Trump's campaign has been tripling down on bolstering support of their small but vocal Base, by hammering down on the idea that she's a "far-left radical" but that's just a page out of the playbook they use for everybody, and doesn't really play with anybody who isn't already voting for them.

And, I already hear people typing to remind me not to forget this, they have tried the racist angle, painting her as a "DEI hire" and an "affirmative action vice president," or even claiming she's ineligible to serve because her parents were immigrants. Firstly, again, they're borrowing a failed page from their anti-Obama playbook for that last one, and second, the actually competent republican strategists have been begging the public-facing parts of the party to please stop attacking her on the basis of race and gender, for one simple reason:

Mask-off racism loses you votes. It's why Trump always has to pretend like he cares about "black jobs" and that his problem with immigration is that "Mexico is sending us all their bad hombres" rather than admitting that his problem is just that the people immigrating are Mexican at all. It's why top Republicans spent the past 16 years talking about birth certificates and constitutional eligibility for Obama, instead of just calling him slurs.

You can win voters by saying "we're okay with a black president, but the Democrats are breaking the rules by letting this guy in particular be president, it's not about him being black, it's about him being ineligible." You don't win voters by saying "keep the white house white." The people who that second thing would work on? Already voting republican 100% of the time.

Which is another important reason to have hope here: in 2016, the Republicans were still maintaining the (objectively false) pretense of not being racist. I don't think anything's changed about the Republican party between the Nixon era and today except that now, they say the quiet part loud. They've spent the past eight years systematically eliminating the power-players who maintain the Not Racist masquerade and replacing them with people who will actively say overtly, unabashedly racist shit without pretending it's about something else. It's why the republican strategists keep begging people not to attack her on the grounds of race: it will lose them voters.

That's more or less the short version of my summary of why I think 2024 will go differently than 2016. I hope I'm right. I'm right about a lot more stuff than I'm wrong about, but I'm also wrong about a lot of stuff, so I might not be. Nothing's over until it's over. If you don't want to see a repeat of 2016, go make sure you're registered to vote, and then on Election Day, go vote for Kamala Harris. Either she, or Donald Trump, will become the president at the end of this year. There is no third option that is mathematically capable of happening. If you are legally eligible to vote and physically capable of doing so, voting for Kamala Harris is the only action you can take (including inaction) that can prevent Donald Trump from taking over the country and doing away with any semblance of US Democracy altogether.

We can win this. With all of our help, we will win this. Doomerism on the left benefits nobody but the right. People being genuinely excited from now until November might actually translate into electoral victory.

[triviallytrue]

in a just world Hillary Clinton's legacy would be the horrific US interventions she oversaw as secretary of state but it's a pretty funny consolation prize that it'll actually be losing the most winnable election in US history

[rollerska8er]

there's a clear delineation between the liberal "left" which had convinced itself there would be an era of peace and plenty after harris inevitably won (which she didn't) and the left which had from the outset acknowledged harris's status as a class enemy who had a pretty even chance of losing (which she did).

i'm not saying this to finger wag per se, i'm just pointing out that all the mistakes of 2016 are already being repeated and people are pointing the finger at the left for somehow causing the democrats to catastrophically haemorrhage eight million of the votes they got in 2020 instead of admitting that their candidate adopted essentially hillary clinton's political aesthetic with an obama finish and lost badly because of it.

had she won, very little would materially have changed and voters could see that; trump was the change candidate and promised a better deal for people struggling to afford groceries. his policies will almost certainly fuck the US economy even more (to say nothing of the global economy) but the democrats ran on high-minded and uninspiring ideals rather than the nitty-gritty stuff the left has been BEGGING them to run on for almost a decade now.

america probably doesn't want trump on the whole - the dude's approval ratings are still dogshit - but they didn't want kamala either. the lesson to take from this, of course, is that maybe the opposition party should embrace the left since it's already being attacked as the party of creeping socialism.

unfortunately, i imagine that in 2028 it'll be someone like Josh Shapiro or, fuck it, why not Harris again, who runs and they'll lose again, because the democratic party is committed to never learning from its failures, and the crowing liberal pundits currently blaming the 0.4% of people who voted Green Party for this loss are just as committed to never considering their own ideology maybe doesn't work that well.

(of course, more broadly, electoral politics are terrible and the american system of democracy is a fucking joke but i don't have the time or patience to get into proportional representation and direct democracy with people who earnestly believe green party voters are Nazis right now)

[antiyourwokehomophobia2]

"Vote for Kamala Harris because it'll piss Hillary off" "Vote for Kamala Harris because imagine how Hillary will feel if she wins?"

Um. How about vote for Harris because it'll piss trump off? How about vote for Harris because of how Trump will feel if she wins? You know, the person Harris is ACTUALLY competing against? What kind of person is more motivated by the thought of Hillary's hurt feelings over that of Trump's hurt feelings if Harris wins? Who says to themselves "man, my hatred for Trump and the thought of his reaction to Harris winning isn't enough of a motivator for me to vote for her... But I will absolutely vote for Harris if it means Hillary will be hurt over it"

Like. That is straight up misogyny. If the thought of Trump, an evil and dangerous man, winning the election is not enough of a motivator to get off your ass and vote but the thought of hurting Hillary---who may also be a bad person but CERTAINLY not as bad as Trump---is, I'm sorry to say that you're just straight up a misogynist

[onnahu]

So like Bruce/Batman is super overdramatic. Like we know it. Reather than going to therapy he decided to dress up as a bat and beat up criminals so that they go into coma. And beside, I know that him taking on a bat fursona is because of his fear of them or whatever, but he could be effective with a demon mask or something. But no! He has to be dramatic, and take on that cute-ass animal and make it feard by everyone, because if he's scared of bats, than everybody else have to too.

And they're so cute!

But. The thing is, vigilatism, heroism, villainism, it's all a bit overdramatic. So all of his gaggle of children are dramatic too. But like, it's an unnecessary flip there, and insulting criminals by puns there, not going all emo and 'I am vengance, I am justice yada yada'.

Also, how he's just always towards the JL. He won't tell them anything, he's gonna keep his cards close and let them have the littlest he can. And like he'll make everything as dramatic as it can be. Like there was that scene in the JL cartoon if I remember correctly, where GL was irritating him (as per usual), and Batman, instead of talking back or ignoring him, stole his rong and was like 'at least i can do shit without a piece of alien jewlery'. It's dramatic as fuck! Like, you didn't had to do that, man!

And that way, I came to Jason freaking Todd, who looked at that man and said 'I can do everything he did better'. So he went on his little 'RH is better Batman than Batman ever was yada yada' rampage, and then made Bruce's overdramaticness look like a preeschoolers tantrum. He went all in.

His name? Red Hood? It may look unoriginal, taking the same method to choosing name as Bruce, but it's just perfect dramatic irony. Bruce don't know how Jason chose his name, but he does and it's all for shit and giggles, so that he'll havea breakdown when he'll find out RH's identity.

And if we're on it. His whole identity reveal, confrontation with Joker shit? It was planned. He was practicing his monologue for a moth every night before bed.

And the Titans Tower. Like, I don't really like that, but that horryfyingly-hillarious image of Jayson in Robin suit? It's priceless. I've seen those posts where people were like 'did he buy it on etsy? Sex shop? Or maybe he did it with his own two hands for three months straight so it'll look perfect?', and it's always so funny.

He decided that he's gonna outrun Bruce in every category there is, and he almost succeed. He failed, bc he doesn't have a gaggle of children running after him. (Unless you count Generation Outlaw when he had his little team to train and it was super cool. Maybe he did beat Bruce at it. They went on their own at least and aren't that traumatised by him as every batkid is by Bruce, so...)

[mariacallous]

I hate the strain of thinking thats like "Trump should be easy to beat!" there for if we don't beat him or are struggling its a sign there's a problem with us and if we just dump Hillary or dump Biden and pick literally any one else it'll magically be easy

no guys 45% of the country wants fascism and there's at least 4% who are willing to support it with not much convincing

no matter who, they'll have a hard time because of that.

I think it's more that 45% of the country would be okay with fascism, but otherwise yes.

[jeannereames]

Really useful summary. Posting mostly for the second part, where she talks about the time-honored trick of pitting women against each other. The "Queen Bee" syndrome as it's sometimes referred to. "There can be only one...and it'll be me." As if women in office or any high position must come in limited quantities, so we fight each other for that limited space.

Reminds me of RBG being asked once (paraphrased), "How many women on the Supreme Court will be enough?" Her reply? "When there are nine." Because that completely other-foots the blind assumption that it's not somehow astonishing or noteworthy if there are nine men.

So yes. I agree with her: the fact women are mostly getting in line to support Kamala (as a woman), and not taking pot-shots at her (as I heard MANY women do with Hillary, then excuse it with, 'But she's just not likeable').... It IS huge.

The other side thought they could do with Kamala what they did to Hillary: 'But she's divisive.' 'But she's not likeable.' 'But she's SHRILL, and that cackle....'

It's backfiring. In a big way.

Maybe, my sisters, we're starting to learn.

Yes, I'll take one of those bumper-stickers, "Cat ladies for Kamala."

They make them for dog ladies, too. And horse girls.

[kepler-station]

౨ৎ.𖥔˚ 'pretty girls don't do drama, 'less we wanna!' — bestie shenanigans feat. (FEM.) you and white lily cookie

— 𝜗𝜚 'this that pretty-girls mantra, they that stunna, everyone know that 'they' are us!' ; or sometimes girls just gotta have fun. today's mantra — you and your pretty girl best friend, the IT girl duo of earthbread. ain't no one gonna dim your good light, this the words y'all live by!

— the irony of that title. lol.

— this one isn't a ship nor does it contain any ships, because pretty girls don't need love to slay. it's just you and lily being the it girls of earthbread, slaying the enemies (and generally slaying) along the way.

— reader was inspired by an irl friend. i love her sm, she's so girlboss it's hillarious the way she always has comebacks.

𔓕 ⸝⸝ ꒱ sumi radio ; mantra by JENNIE

ᡣ𐭩 .𖥔˚ heads up ! — FEM!READER. crack-fluff-angst. reader is rich in self love, and it infected white lily bcuz they're always duo-ing. reader has their own soul jam; the light of dignity. reader is always on lily's side even if she's wrong bcuz you bestie-d too hard. reader is a girlboss. frequent use of 'mantra' lyrics, sorry 😓.

the it girls of earthbread, you were just students in blueberry yogurt academy. white lily was the pretty & popular girl, known for being the girl everyone idolized throughout the grades. the quiet but smart girl that was always top 1. you were the local girlboss who defended cookies from nasty bullies, always honest, opinion laid out on a silver platter no matter if it's negative or positive. you weren't like those other girls at all. perhaps you were always hitting high honors, or perhaps you were THE popular girl in blueberry yogurt academy. but certainly no one expected you and her to click so fast.

you and her met during a class you shared once, the timid and smart girl who worked behind the scenes while you reported about everything, being the public speaker of the group (also because white lily didn't show up). and there it was, the most powerful duo of blueberry yogurt academy was born.

when you two worked on it, you used your charms to get white lily to open up, and surprisingly it worked.

fast forward to a few days, white lily was your new best friend. over time as you two spent more time around one another, your mannerisms started to rub off on her, which you snickered at, finding the way she seemed more confident in herself, "oh, pretty girls don't do this, pretty girls don't do that."

the way everyone's jaws went falling when your pretty girl best friend called a strict teacher everyone hated a jerk to their face infront of the entire class. you watched, legs up on your table, lollipop in mouth as you smirked and snickered at the situation, holding up a thumbs-up at lily's statement.

"I THOUGHT YOU SAID PRETTY GIRLS DON'T DO DRAMA.", the teacher inquired with a harsh tone in an attempt to save themselves from the situation, but you came in clutch, seeing the way white lily shook silently. of course, that was way out of her comfort zone, but it was comforting that white lily was willing to do that when you knew she would never. "pretty girls don't do drama unless we wanna, it'll be depending on the date."

when the teacher left, the deafening silence of you and her peers quickly turned into applause as shocked smiles appeared on their faces. white lily sat down, blushing in a mix of embarrassment and the fact that she knew from your face that you knew that she did that for you. perhaps you and her were too attached. (and yes, you and lily sit next to one another.)

"i'm so proud of you, lovey.", you applauded her quietly with a hand on her shoulder and a reassuring smile. she gave you a soft smile in return, looking away while she blushed and giggled when you noted how she definitely got that from you. "they totally deserved that, and from you nonetheless... wow, no words."

throughout the years, your friendship stood strong even after you and her became two of the ancient heroes of earthbread. the light of freedom and the light of dignity, in a sense they both fit hand in hand. having a sense of dignity within yourself, being confident in one's self frees you from the burdens of insecurity (not that there's anything too wrong with being insecure), giving you freedom that you're able to do what you please because you love yourself earnestly.

and you weren't wrong for being in love with yourself either, because everyone was just as in love with you as you were. after all, pretty girls always win. you were confident, sassy and reliable. you didn't let that dignity get to your head, you were a good person who fought for what was right. but you also knew you were pretty and you played that card to charm enemies sometimes. you were smart, sly and sometimes witty and petty. don't worry, they all loved you for it.

in your group of friends, you were practically the glue of the group. something always felt missing when you weren't around, that blunt comedy you brought with you everywhere just lit up the scenery with humor everytime. despite that, you knew when things got personal and never overstepped boundaries (except for first times).

and finally, the universe decided to give you a test of trust and friendship when the council of heroes came around. you escorted yourself to the crème republic and reunited with three of your six friends, namely pure vanilla, hollyberry and dark cacao. it was certainly nice to have some company after the years of [your lore], but you still felt rather lonely. after all, white lily cookie wasn't here. in her absence, pure vanilla cookie stood next to you and despite your little disagreements about your behavior every once in a while, this meant you and pure vanilla were able to get closer while your girl lily was... not there.

so imagine the look on your face, the way you felt when that suspicious consul from the crème republic informed you all that white lily cookie was dark enchantress cookie.

no. no, no, no, no,... there was no way... white lily cookie, your pretty girl best friend, the person whom you've stuck next to (almost) your entire life couldn't possibly be...

"but pretty girls—" "pretty girls do cause drama.—" and he went on about white lily and her transformation into becoming dark enchantress.

perhaps you ran out crying right then and there, or maybe your eyes turned empty with disappointment, not only in white lily but yourself, that you were unable to forsee everything. the hints and clues were all there...

but it didn't matter. yes, you were disappointed. in yourself and your "best friend" white lily cookie. but honestly is was jarring, how far your loyalty to her went.

you can only hope dark encantress cookie would welcome you into her team up until you find the proper resources to bake back the white lily cookie you knew and loved before. you stuck next to her for so long, you must've observed and remembered some things about baking cookies.

pretty girls never leave the other hanging.

[chemicalarospec]

I'm thinking about how the first time voters this year, the people between one year younger and two years older than me -- we are the little girls who reached teenhood under the shadow of Hillary Clinton's defeat. We were the little girls told it was finally happening, the little girls everybody made a point to tell how exciting the election was, and we were the little girls she addressed in her concession speech, and we are the little girls whose childhood ended too soon. We grew up (and a lot of us transitioned) and we voted this year. The former little girls who watched Hillary Clinton lose to a misogynist cast their first presidential votes for a woman. And it didn't change a goddamn thing.

Our lives are haunted by this repeating history, milestones of disappointment. Our teen years bookended by national denials of our human worth. and maybe next time it'll be different, or maybe for the girls in 5th grade now, the result of their first votes 8 years from now will be all too much the same. Or maybe they'll never be able to vote at all. I really hope they will.

I'm struggling to write a positive ending to this post because this is the world I have been presented with, the place I have grown up in, and no part of it is happy, but: I'm going to get out there and try to preserve something for the people who are little girls today. I'm going to keep hoping.

My first grade teacher was 40 when she said, "By the time you're my age, I'm sure there will have been a woman president." I've still got 20 years to go; 20 years to make it happen. Fuck this whole wide world, but it's GOTTA change one day, because it HAS in the past.

One day, there will be a generation of little girls who will watch the acceptance speech of Madam President.

[dhaaruni]

Im also seeing polls where he's up nationally and up with older voters - i think it would be a breath of fresh air if he stepped aside but i dont know what the kamala coalition looks like that could beat trump bc i think she'll lose even more of the no college young men across race and region

Listen, I've been telling people this and maybe I'm being stupidly optimistic but I don't think the media and Republicans will be able to Hillary Kamala. They had 40 YEARS to kill Hillary's reputation, they did everything they could to ruin her, and even then, she got within 80k votes of becoming president. They have 4 months to ruin Kamala Harris, and I've been wrong before but I don't think they can do it.

Harris can run on "Convicted felon Donald Trump killed Roe and wants your varsity volleyball playing daughter to have her rapist's baby" and as a female career prosecutor who put away violent criminals, she's got an angle Biden doesn't.

Obviously, it'll be a major uphill slog and she'll need Biden's help with older white voters in particular, but if the entire Democratic Party bands together, from the progressives to the centrists, I really think we can do it. Bring in the big guns, send the Obamas to the Rust Belt and the Clintons to the Sunbelt (Hillary got the best Latino numbers of any Democrat in recent history!) and if we're lucky, we'll have our first female president come January (a half Tamil Brahmin like me!).