#seriously. go punch Nazis. go punch them so hard until they stop being fucking nazis.

[jodjuya]

[quakerjoe]

NO MORE: A CUPPA JOE FOR FRIDAY 13 MARCH 2020

I think if Biden's "it", I'm going to abstain.

I'm tired of the Dems doing nothing.

I'm tired of them forcing me to decide between two evils.

I'm not willing to surrender my minute, little slice of political power because of it.

I'll vote downballot and try to replace the old guard who are feckless and ineffective.

I'm tired of their propaganda shows, playing on their fame and reputation while answering to money, not us.

I'm tired of them NOT moving to get rid of the Electoral College.

I'm tired of them NOT moving to attack gerrymandering.

I'm tired of their inability to stand up to a party rife with the actual 'deep state' rich fucks, the nazis, and the kkk.

I'm tired of them playing gambling games with our lives instead of being a force to be reckoned with.

I'm tired of them being decades behind the times.

I'm going to have the balls to abstain.

I'm going to shoot a message into the wall for all to see...

"NO MORE"

Lining me up to vote for a lesser of two evils- the promise of PLUTOCRACY under Biden OR the threat of FASCISM under trump- seriously? I can't see myself attaching my name to that. NO MORE.

Screaming at me because I'm a Sanders supporter and then accusing me of being some fuckwit "Bernie Bro" because I disagree with you? NO MORE.

Here's the thing- WHEN the DNC fronts Biden, and you KNOW they will, we'll see 2016 all over again. When Biden loses, and you KNOW he will, all of these chicken-shit "Vote Blue No Matter Who" cucks will blame ME and those like me, the Progressives, for the defeat SOMEHOW. They always do. NOBODY was willing to own up to HRC's defeat in 2016; what should have been the EASIEST victory in political history.

Oh, and SPARE ME this horse shit about 'electibility' too. Stop sucking corporate media dick for a change. Do you think trump was or even IS "electable"? Let's be clear- BOTH trump AND Biden are all about sucking Wall St ass. BOTH want to give the super rich all the breaks and leave YOU with the bill. BOTH will shitcan Social Security AND Medicare/Medicaid. BOTH.

While Sanders is trying to get us on board with a health care system to literally save us ALL during a pandemic, Biden said, on live telly, that he'd veto the bill if it came to his desk because suddenly, despite voting FOR war with Iraq, NOW he's wanting to know where the money will come from.

So no, I won't be voting for Biden. The country is sick as fuck, and the DNC snake oil solution hasn't worked yet and it never will. The time for massive change is in the air, and that scares Americans because they're terrified of EVERYTHING. This is NOT the "home of the brave". If you couldn't stomach backing Sanders, then I say to you- YOU are a COWARD. As for me- NO MORE!

Right up until recently I was all "Vote Blue No Matter Who" just because I was against trump, and let's be clear- I AM. But using trump's shittiness as leverage for the Dems to allow another version of him who said "nothing's going to change much" to be their candidate is them force-feeding us all a steaming plate of shit. They expect us to eat it. Most of you will. I won't anymore. NO MORE.

Neither Biden or trump ca form coherent sentences or string a thought or two together. And while some of you are out there cavalierly throwing around the "You're a Bernie Bro!" card, your boy Joe is actually verbally abusing and threatening to fight voters, LIVE on camera! So take the Bernie Bro shit and cram it up your ass. You get to play that card NO MORE.

I highly doubt my abstaining from voting for Biden if/when he's the nominee will put a dent in history. I highly doubt this post will start a rally with congrats being thrown my way for having the stones to finally tell the DNC to go fuck themselves. I suspect that more angry responses will fly at me, accusing me of only helping trump. To be clear, I'm helping NEITHER. If anything, I have a better understanding of those who wouldn't vote blue no matter who in 2016. Perhaps I'm just late catching on, but I get it now.

America is ill. Corporate media is ass-fucking you ALL. Progressives get ZERO media coverage, and the GOP-DNC alliance is still conning you into choosing between High Grade Fuckery with GOP politicians of Diet Fuckery with Democrats. MY precious, singular, little vote is my ONLY true weapon, and I hold it dearly. For my own conscience, dignity, and self respect, it must be earned and not surrendered just because I don't like trump. EITHER WAY we're voting for pretty much the same fuckwad only one has an (R) on the ballot, the other a (D).

Perhaps the only way things will TRULY get better is if things proceed to get worse. Perhaps we're simply not "woke" enough yet. Perhaps we really DO want more trump, otherwise the DNC would have told Joe to sit down and shut the fuck up ages ago. Perhaps Warren would have got off her ass and endorsed her "fellow" Progressive immediately in 2016 or, this time around, dropped out before Super Tuesday and, along with Yang, and the "anti-Biden" hypocrite-turncoats like Booker and "I was that girl" Kamala Harris. No, these bullshit artists showed us their true colors and backed Biden. The jig is up. We watched them SELL US ALL OUT, instead of backing the candidate that better and more closely represented their own agendas, or so they claimed once upon a time.

This gaggle of liars and hypocrites will NOT get my vote. NO MORE.

In their actions, the Dems have made it clear. In Biden's own words they seem to want us to 'vote for the other guy'. Well, I choose to vote for neither. NO MORE.

 If you want to keep empowering the Democratic Party to keep making feckless choices, displaying cowardice, and serving us hot bowls of filth to ear, that’s on you. I won’t be doing it anymore. I’ll vote for what I WANT, not for what I’m willing to settle for. This country has moved so goddamned far to the right that sanity and conventional ‘leftism’ is now considered evil and unspeakable.

Why is it a bad thing to want good things for ALL of us? Why are so many people so stoked to keep throwing all of our hard-earned cash to the rich instead of seeing our tax dollars make “We the People” safer, healthier, better educated, and worth being called “the land of the free and the home of the brave”? We throw away our rights, kill our economy, destroy the planet- let’s call it what it is, shall we? We totally shit where we eat and them blame the poor and powerless for the mess. We ALWAYS punch down in this nation instead of going after those doing the real harm. Frankly, I’m sick of the stupidity and ignorance the Democrats have displayed and I will support them NO MORE.

~Quaker Joe

[coll2mitts]

#88 Tommy (1975)

The Who’s well-loved 1969 rock opera album Tommy has been adapted for the screen, and is almost the furthest thing from a feel-good picture that you can get.  Who knew that the sound of childhood trauma could be so goddamn catchy?

When I was a young girl, my father would play the album Tommy, he really liked the band.  Tommy was one of those albums I played on repeat when I was elementary school-aged.  My dad had copied the album to a cassette, and me and my yellow Walkman would head to the bus stop every morning blasting “The Acid Queen”.  I’ve mentioned before I was an obnoxious kid, and one memory that has unfortunately stuck with me for like 25 years is this guy on the bus asking my sister to tell me to stop singing out loud to “Pinball Wizard” because it was annoying.  I sunk into my seat as if he had punched me straight in the gut.

Being young, my understanding of the plot was pretty basic, and oh boy, the movie translation of this was um... I was not prepared for the ride I had boarded.   Even as someone who is unbelievably familiar with the source material, this was a rough watch.

Tommy begins during World War 2, and England is getting bombed by Nazis.  Tommy’s mom and dad are on their honeymoon, and when they return, Tommy’s father is sent off to war and is presumably killed in action.  Tommy is born on V.E. Day and never knows his biological father.  His mother (Ann-Margret) hooks up with a dude she met on vacation, Uncle Frank, and when Tommy’s father returns unannounced 6 years later, her lover kills him by hitting him with a lamp.  Dude lived through a plane crash, and its the bedside lamp that finally gets him.  Tommy witnesses the murder, and Uncle Frank and his mom plead with him not to tell anybody.  The trauma of this event triggers psychosomatic deafness and blindness in Tommy.  His parents are understandably concerned about him, even though they are the whole reason this happened in the first place.

His mom is weirdly fixated with his salvation, and takes Tommy to church to see if a supremely uncharismatic Eric Clapton and statue of Marilyn Monroe can heal him.  The congregation, in a very classy move that is not at all disparaging to Marilyn Monroe’s legacy, downs alcohol and prescription medication as communion.  The healing goes about as well as expected.

After this, his Uncle Frank takes Tommy to a prostitute, who drugs and presumably rapes him, thinking it might snap him out of it.  When that doesn’t work, his parents then leave him with one babysitter that beats and tortures him, and another that sexually molests him, so... fun times.  My notes perfectly illustrate how glad I was to watch this series of events unfold.

Realizing Tommy can entertain himself just by looking in a mirror, his parents get loaded on the couch, leaving him alone to wander out of the house.  He stumbles upon a pinball machine in a junkyard.  His parents discover he’s really fucking good at it, and introduce him into the very financially lucrative world of pinball competitions.

My favorite scene in this movie is watching Elton John play a keyboard attached to a pinball machine while wearing the largest shoes I’ve ever seen on a human.  They hinder his movement so much he can only point with his left arm over and over again to show his enthusiasm.  When Tommy wins the Pinball championship, a pack of Waldos haul away Elton’s defeated body.

Now that Tommy’s family is rolling in dough, his parents buy a mansion and a yacht, and Ann-Margret tries to bury her guilt surrounding Tommy’s condition through retail therapy, and literally smothering her grief with chocolate pudding.

I swear to god, Ann-Margret is the only person who actually knew what kind of movie she was filming.  She’s crazed, dramatic, and her voice is so fucking awesome (unlike some of the other actors they cast...).  Still, the disservice of making her swim in a sea of baked beans... which, FUN FACT: sent her into the ER because part of the broken champagne bottle rocketed out of the television when they were pelting bubbles at her and cut her hand large enough that she needed 27 stitches to close it.  She came back to film the next day because she is a fucking queen.

Tommy’s parents take him to Jack Nicholson putting on an haughty accent to see if he can fix Tommy, and all he succeeds in doing is putting the moves on Ann-Margret.  She takes Tommy back to the house and dances him into the mirror, which sets him free to swim and run shirtless across the country without shoes on.

It’s around this point of the movie that I realize Ann-Margret and I have *a thing* for young Roger Daltrey, and I don’t know what to do with this knowledge.

Seriously, she’s only like 3 years older than him and she’s supposed to be playing his mother.  The film industry is so fucked up.

Tommy tells his mother than she needs to relinquish all her material possessions, baptizes her in the ocean, and forms his own pinball-based religion.  His followers treat him like a messiah, looking for him to provide the path to salvation.  He invites them onto his compound, puts his child molester Uncle Ernie in charge of a bunch of children, and Uncle Frank in charge of recruitment and merchandising. 

His campers are fairly pissed they’re being milked for every dime they have, but Tommy is all, “I haven’t handed out my syllabus yet, wait until you hear what the curriculum is going to be!”  When they discover it’s about turning off all distractions and only playing pinball, his congregation are all like, “Fuck that!” and riot, murdering both of Tommy’s parents.  Now that his oppressors are dead, Tommy is truly free.  He runs through literal fire, jumps into a lake in jeans, and climbs a slippery waterfall AND a mountain in bare feet, making me wonder what kind of insurance they had on this picture that they allowed Roger Daltrey to do all of that and hang glide into a sea of bikers. The 1970s were an unencumbered time.

I watched several interviews with Peter Townshend to understand where the idea of this rock opera came about, and holy shit, this story is just based in his own traumatic childhood experiences.  From his perspective, after WW2, the people in England who had lived with the constant fear of sudden death internalized all of their associated trauma.  They had children they weren’t emotionally equip to parent, leaving them to be vulnerable to people who wanted to exploit them.

Tommy’s constant plea in the movie was to be seen and heard by those who were supposed to protect and care for him, only for them to be ignorant to the affect their negligence was having on him.  Tommy tries to save other broken people who need to feel safe, only for them to revolt, take the only family he’s ever known away from him, and abandon him.  This is an unbelievably depressing movie, and the fact it resonated with so many people, I just... I don’t know how to process that, because it’s heartbreaking.

So, yeah, this movie is weird as shit, but it does try to impart that people who are exposed to repeated stressful events will only hurt themselves and those around them if they try to repress those experiences.  I’m not sure the movie effectively communicated what The Who was trying to convey in the original album, however.  I think the message is overshadowed by the strong aesthetic.  

I suffered with intense anxiety as a child (still do, although I have mechanisms now as an adult to help manage it) and my parents didn’t know what the fuck to do with me.  I would say 90% of the time they’d treat my anxiety like I was personally trying to inconvenience them, and the other 10% they’d make fun of me for it.  So there I’d be, trying to hide my anxiety attacks and feeling like I was going to die (or if I was lucky, just vomit) because they’d get angry or tell me to suck it up if they knew what was going on.  I did not have a happy childhood.  I, like Tommy, just wanted them to understand me and show any amount of compassion.  However, watching this movie, I somehow did not find myself relating to his story at all.  I was too distracted by Marilyn Monroe-dressed nuns, a 2-story tall Elton John, child abuse and molestation played off as a joke, and Ann-Margret drowning in bean syrup that I completely missed the intention.  I also think 1970s religious movements had a tendency to be rather exploitative, and I have listened to far too many My Favorite Murders to not see Tommy’s fans and think, “You’re in a cult, call your dad.”  It’s hard to be automatically empathetic to the abused when they lead others to be victimized by their abusers.

I would 1000% recommend Tommy the album.  This movie is worth a watch if you like The Who, but even as someone who loves the original music, I’m probably not going to put it in my constant rotation.

That concludes rock band movie musical week!  The orchestra nerd inside of me is excited to move on to Carmen Jones next.

[tessatechaitea]

Dark Knight Returns: The Golden Child

Darkseid pees out of his eyes.

"It's 2020 and Frank Miller is still doing 'Not' jokes" is the only review of this comic book you probably need.

The Joker and Darkseid are cumming in their pants over the engagement in the election cycle. I guess people who want to stop terrible politicians from making the country a living hell for a vast number of the population are simply falling into their trap! Stupid people who want a better world! Can't they see that the only way to defeat The Joker and Darkseid is to disengage from the circus of election cycles and simply live their own life without any concern for others? Doesn't the electorate know the best life to live is the life that leads to Ayn Randian defenses of their own selfish needs? Just shut up and take what they give you, you dumb fucks. I should probably finish reading this story before I continue to jump from conclusion to conclusion about Frank Miller's point. His ultimate point might simply be that the children will save us all! Or that it doesn't matter if the children change the world or not because the adults will all be dead by then so who fucking cares? Supergirl Lara confronts Darkseid by blasting him with her heat vision. He dies multiple times or something but doesn't somehow. He applauds her rage the way bad guys always do and then calmly sits down to tell all of the children a story. He's going to be sensible and rational which means it will be the truth, I think. Obviously if you have any emotional attachment to your beliefs, they're garbage beliefs. Until you can squeeze all of the humanity out of yourself, the things you believe won't hold up in rational debate! So divest yourself of your rage, children! It will only make you more logical and intellectually stronger! But also divest yourself of your joy and your despair and your other emotions I can't think of! There must be more, right? While Darkseid is distracted regaling everybody with his tale of the anti-life equation, Superboy sneaks up behind him and takes over his Omega Effect. He turns it back on Darkseid and Darkseid disintegrates into non-existence. Unless he was transported back in time. I don't really know how his eyeball lasers work. Darkseid doesn't stay dead for long. He returns as the Omega God, as the end of everything, as the final death of everything on Earth.

But maybe later, I guess?

Batwoman beats up some Jokers and shuts down Trump's ability to broadcast to Gotham. It makes Darkseid angry enough to return for some reason. Probably a metaphorical reason. Or an analogical reason. I think maybe my attention span is seriously slipping! And right when I'm getting to the part that's probably going to explain what the fuck is going on in this comic book. Superboy destroys Darkseid by calling him an old fart. Also maybe a little bit by blasting him with a new super power: neutron vision! Darkseid has now had his powers stripped so far back that a human bouncing a rock off of his head makes him bleed. But still he thinks, "I will manipulate these fools with my lofty words!" But then Greta Thunberg clenches her fist at him and Batwoman says, "You have no power here! We're thinking for ourselves now!" And then that's the end somehow. Dark Knight Returns: The Golden Child Rating: I can't comprehend what I just read. Maybe the point was that we shouldn't comprehend what other people want us to comprehend? Maybe it was an anti-propaganda story? Maybe it was just terrible writing pretending to be art? It's so hard to tell because it's trying so hard to be complex! Is it's complexity real or a facade? I can't tell! Maybe I should stick to easier things to understand, like James Joyce's Finnegans Wake or Alan Moore's 1300 page novel, Jerusalem, which I finished. Maybe that's Frank Miller's problem. Maybe he just didn't have enough pages to really get to the point he was trying to make. But then if he did have more pages, how many would he waste by simply repeating the same things over and over again? For those of you who haven't read this (or Superman: Year One), he does that a lot. Not in the good way that Tom King and Gertrude Stein repeat themselves. Just in a way that makes you think, "I got it! Superboy is right in Darkseid's brain." Maybe that's a poor example from this comic book because repeating that over and over works to show how painful Superboy's presence in Darkseid's brain is. But I assure you there were many other examples that I can't make excuses for. I just can't be bothered to dig back through the comic book to find them.

[adolphuslongestaffe]

Like it Always Should Have Been

How do you tell your best friend you’re in love with him? The answer, of course, is you don’t. Because in real life, people don’t fall in love with their best friend and hide it for years and let it fester like an infected tooth until every smile hurts so bad they give up and confess just to be rid of the ache. If they do, it doesn’t end in a nice way. Friends don’t tend to respond well to, “I’ve been secretly in love with you all these years when you thought I was your best friend. Surprise!” Because that’s creepy as fuck.

But what if you really were his best friend and you loved him like a brother, and those other feelings were something that grew out of that. Slowly, over long years of seeing each other through trial and hardship, sticking together through thick and thin, and by the time you even admitted it to yourself, you were too far gone to do anything about it. And what if you felt like a piece of shit for letting him think he was still just a pal to you, so you decided to tell him, no matter how he might react, because you had to get it off your chest.

And what if you kept meaning to tell him, but every time you were just getting up enough courage to do it, a war happened. Or you were kidnapped by Nazis. Or you fell off a train and sort of but not really died and then came back brainwashed seventy-odd years later and tried really hard to kill him. Like, seriously, you shot him a bunch of times, then beat the living shit out of him with your cybernetic arm. You did drag his heavy ass out of that river, though. Hypothetically.

The point is, people don’t secretly fall in love with their best friend, wait seven decades to tell him, do all that shit with the Nazis and kind of dying and coming back and shooting and punching, and then confess their love and expect to get back a “holy shit I love you too” and live happily ever after. It doesn’t happen. It especially doesn’t happen when your best friend is Captain fucking America, and you’ve been sleeping on his pull-out sofa for three months because, technically, you’re a dead Soviet assassin with no credit score or bank account, and that doesn’t look great on a rental application.

This was absolutely not the situation James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes, formerly-deceased war hero and currently-unemployed ex-assassin found himself in. Even if he had found himself in such a hypothetical conundrum, he would never have dreamed of admitting it to said hypothetical best friend, because, as previously stated, that doesn’t get you a happy ending in real life.

In real life, you shut the fuck up, be grateful you’re not locked up in a steel box for the safety of your fellow man, and try not to stare at Steve’s perfect ass while he’s cooking steak and eggs. Again. It’s like he doesn’t eat anything else. Hypothetically.

Bucky, being the pragmatic, real-life type of man, swallowed his excellent black coffee and Steve’s passable steak—and godawful scrambled eggs—and kept his feelings and his eyes to himself. Just like his dad taught him. In 1935. Because that’s what real men do. Or, they did in the 1930s. He’s seen an awful lot of men crying and talking about their feelings since he woke up out of that fucking nightmare.

“Hm?” he said, emerging from his reverie just in time to realize he was being spoken to, and hadn’t heard a word of it. “Sorry, what’d you say? My mind was…wandering.”

“You’re getting senile, old man,” Steve said, waving the cast-iron pan at him. “I asked if you want some more eggs. I made plenty.”

“Oh, no thanks. I’m watching my figure, you know?”

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, Buck,” Steve admonished, with that mixture of paternal firmness and youthful buoyancy that only he seemed capable of. He walked over to the table and scraped another helping onto Bucky’s plate anyway. “Your body is an engine and if you don’t fuel it properly, it won’t keep running. Now eat your eggs.”

Steve sat down and dug into his breakfast with hearty enthusiasm, while Bucky took up his fork and poked at the yellowish pile on his plate. He’d just gotten up enough resolve to shove a rubbery wad into his mouth and start chewing through them, when Steve burst out laughing.

“What?” Bucky frowned. “What’s the joke, wise guy?”

“Buck, why don’t you just admit you hate the eggs?”

Bucky blinked. “Why don’t I—wait, you knew?”

“Yeah,” Steve said, though his laughter. “I’ve been watching you struggling to choke them down for three months.”

“Oh, I am going to kick your ass to the moon, Rogers, you rotten little sneak! Why didn’t you say something before?”

“I wanted to see how long you’d keep it up, but it’s just getting mean at this point. Why didn’t you say something?”

“I was being polite!” Bucky exclaimed, throwing his hands up in exasperation.

“Your face wasn’t. You’re not very hard to read, for a spy. Everything in there is all out here,” Steve replied, gesturing toward Bucky’s cranium and face respectively.

Bucky’s traitorous face, of course, flushed with heat at the idea that what was going on in his head was so plainly visible to Steve, which made his war buddy and best friend laugh even harder.

“I wasn’t a spy, I was an assassin,” he grumbled into his mug. “You don’t have to hide your feelings from people you’re gonna kill anyway. Sorry about the eggs. I didn’t want to offend you.”

“It’s just eggs, why would I be offended?” Steve said, hopping up to clear the dishes. “You have to learn to say what you’re thinking, though, Buck. That’s how people are nowadays. They expect you to be a lot more forward than the way we were taught. Otherwise, they won’t know what you really want.”

Bucky decided he’d best disregard this advice for the moment, since what he really wanted was for Steve to stop talking and put his mouth on his mouth, and there was no way he’d ever heard of to say that kind of thing to another man without getting socked for it. He turned to look out the window, lest his apparently legible face divulge this tidbit to his friend, and sipped morosely at his coffee.

“How you doing?” Steve asked, as he reseated himself at the table with a glass of milk, which he still insisted upon drinking with every meal. “You feeling up to this thing tonight?”

From anyone else, this kind of treatment would’ve made Bucky’s stomach turn. Steve, however, had more than earned the right to frankly address his condition, and his particular brand of steady, tenacious concern didn’t carry the same sting as would the saccharine sympathy of others.

“I’m doing as well as usual,” Bucky answered stiffly, pre-WWII habits regarding talking about feelings being hard to break. “I’m not sure about the thing tonight, though. Dr. Barenbaum thinks I need to try some low pressure social situations before I jump headfirst into trying to make friends.”

“That’s why it’s perfect,” Steve smiled. “It’s just a casual get-together. They do this kind of thing all the time.”

“I don’t know if hanging out with the Avengers in Stark Tower counts as low pressure. Maybe for you, but you’re Captain America. I’m just…the guy who tried to kill Captain America.”

“No, you’re my best friend, a war hero, and an original Howling Commando. There wouldn’t even be an Avengers without you guys and every one of them knows it.”

“That’s not true,” Bucky said, wavering.

“Come on, Buck, you have to come,” Steve cajoled, amping up the intensity of his already devastating smile. “I told them you’d be there. Besides, I need another old guy around to not get anyone’s references with me.”

“Ugh…alright, fine. But I’m gonna sit in the corner and look really dark and broody the whole time.”

“You will if you want me to entertain everyone with stories about you from when we were kids. I think they’d enjoy hearing about the time you threw up on the Cyclone at Coney Island.”

Bucky narrowed his eyes. “You wouldn’t.”

“Oh, I would.”

“You’re a real hardass, Rogers, you know that?”

“That’s what they tell me,” Steve said, looking eminently pleased with himself.

Bucky raised a doubtful eyebrow “Do they really?”

“Well…no. But they would if I weren’t so intimidating. I am their boss, you know.”

“Yeah, you keep saying.”

“And you keep not being impressed by it. Would it kill you to fake a little starstruck giddiness?”

“I think it might.”

“Ok, but you have to at least act like you think I’m cool at the party.”

“Nope,” Bucky said, getting up to carry his mug to the sink. “They’ll see right through that.”

“I changed my mind,” Steve called after him. “You’re uninvited.”

“Well, now I’m definitely coming.”

    Several hours later, just after sunset, Bucky found himself standing before the entrance to the massively ostentatious Stark Tower, wrought in glittering steel and glass, and erected in the heart of most famous city in the world, a monument to technological superiority (not to mention its owner’s titanic ego). He followed Steve across the palatial lobby to the bank of elevators, and they began their ascent.

As they drew nearer the stratosphere, he found his courage swiftly waning. He had tried to kill a lot of these people, and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect some of them to be harboring some negative feelings about that. To add to this, was his difficulty with anxiety and hypervigilance, especially in crowds, since the Soviet sickos torn his brain apart and rebuilt him as a killing machine.

“I don’t think I can do this,” he said, halting abruptly as they stepped off the elevator. “It seemed like an ok idea before we got here, but I’m, uh…kind of panicking.”

Steve smiled encouragingly, laying a hand on his shoulder. “It’ll be alright, I promise. If it’s not, just tell me and we’ll get out of here, ok? I’m not trying to torture you.”

Compelled by Steve’s charismatic sanguinity, Bucky reluctantly allowed himself to be led through the marble-floored foyer into a rather large, posh lounge. The place was already fairly full, mostly with people he didn’t recognize at all, sitting at tables and on couches, or standing about in groups and pairs, laughing and chatting energetically. There was jazzy piano music coming from somewhere, and the wall on the far end was basically a huge window, with doors that opened on a wide patio.

“Hey old timers,” a smooth, smoky voice said beside them. “Glad you could make it.”

Bucky turned to see a beautiful, auburn-haired woman in a tight, black cocktail dress, smiling up at Steve.

“Hey, Nat, you look lovely this evening,” Steve said, leaning down to kiss her cheek. “You remember Bucky.”

“I do.” Natasha turned her big, green eyes on him. “Nice to see you again, Bucky.”

“Likewise,” Bucky said awkwardly. “I’m, uh…sorry I shot you.”

“Well, I’d say I’m sorry I tried to strangle you with piano wire, but I’m doing a new thing where I don’t lie unless I have to for work.” Natasha said, with a sly twinkle in her eye. She held out her hand. “Let’s call it even?”

“Deal,” Bucky laughed, shaking her proffered hand.

“So, there are a lot of people here you guys don’t know, but they’re not that important,” she said, getting right to business. “The team is scattered around. Sam and Clint are at the bar arguing about whether pinball is a legitimate e-sport, Thor’s over there by the fireplace, Wanda is smoking on the patio, and Tony is late.”

“Tony is not late because this is Tony’s party,” Tony’s voice cut in. The three turned to see him strolling up behind them. “Hey look, it’s the Captain and Tennille!”

Steve and Bucky stared blankly at him.

“The Captain and Tennille,” he repeated.

Steve cocked his head perplexedly. “Um. He’s Bucky.”

“Come on, that was funny,” Tony sighed. “Nat, tell them how funny that was.”

“Eh,” Natasha shrugged.

“Traitor. Am I allowed to fire you?”

“Nope,” she grinned. “And Steve knows exactly who the Captain and Tennille are. He was fucking with you. Which actually was pretty funny.”

“Thank you, Nat,” Steve beamed.

“I really don’t know who they are,” Bucky offered. “Are they Avengers?”

“Musicians,” Tony corrected. “Well. Sort of.”

“Hey Nat, who’s that guy talking to Thor?” Steve asked, indicating to the fireplace a few yards away, where the god of thunder was engaged in conversation with another tall, blonde, athletic-looking man. “He looks familiar.”

“Oh, that’s the unhinged psychopath Nat keeps letting into my house,” Tony answered for her. “What is he doing here, Nat?”

“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Natasha said. “You don’t want him here, go tell his Asgardian boyfriend yourself.”

Tony made a sour face. “Boyfriend, huh? Great. Thor has bad taste in men, so now we’re stuck with him and the alien tapeworm.”

“I thought Thor liked women,” Steve said, frowning thoughtfully.

“He does,” Natasha laughed. “People can be bisexual, Steve.”

“Bisexual?” Steve and Bucky asked in unison.

“And that’s my cue,” Tony interjected. “Enjoy your sex-ed talk, have some free booze, and try not to break anything too expensive. Oh, and don’t kill anyone. It’s a nightmare for the PR department.”

“Later, Tony,” Natasha called after him, as he retreated into the crowd. She turned back to Steve and Bucky, who were still peering curiously at Thor and his male companion. “Hey grandpas, I don’t really have to explain to you what bisexual means, do I?”

“Of course not!” Steve said, crossing his arms on his chest. “We are adults.”

“Yeah, adults who totally know what that means,” Bucky agreed, adopting a similar posture.

“Even if we didn’t, we could figure it out from context clues,” Steve continued staunchly.

“But we definitely did,” Bucky added.

Natasha rolled her eyes. “If you two get any more adorable, I might actually puke. I’m going to go check on Wanda. I’ll catch up with you in a little while, ok?”

“Ok, Nat. See ya,” Steve said cheerfully.

“It means liking men and women, right?” Bucky asked, once she was out of earshot. “I’ve actually never heard that before.”

“Neither have I. I mean, I knew that was a thing, but I didn’t know there was word for it.” Steve’s blue eyes flickered over Bucky’s face, then quickly away. “Let’s go get a drink, huh?”

Bucky felt an odd little wrench in his gut at this, and he cast an apprehensive glance at his friend as he followed him to the bar. What was that look about? Did Steve suspect something about him? As his anxiety spiked, of course, his dull, reticent demeanor returned. Fortunately, Sam and Clint spotted Steve and waved them over as soon as they had ordered.

“Hey, Cap,” Clint said, as they approached with their drinks. “Tell me you’re not actually drinking an old fashioned.”

“That’s right,” Steve said, with mock sternness. “What about you? Do they make a drink called a mouthy punk?”

“You’re pretty sharp, old man,” Sam laughed, as both men shook hands with Steve. “Hey, Buck, how you doing? Keeping this guy out of trouble?”

“I try, but he’s a real pain in the ass,” Bucky said. “I’m thinking about putting him in a home.”

Sam and Clint voiced hearty approval of this idea, and the ice thus broken, quickly drew Steve into their lively conversation. Bucky was more than happy with this arrangement, since it meant he didn’t have to do much, aside from hide in his drink and make sure to smile when everyone else did.

Things proceeded comfortably enough for a while, but he found that his energy was so engaged in not whipping his head around to investigate every flash of movement in his peripheral vision, he didn’t have any to expend in blocking out the din of voices and laughter, punctuated incessantly by the clinking of glassware. His head began to swim, and his jacket suddenly felt overly warm and constricting. He couldn’t take it off without exposing his very noticeable metallic arm, however, so he persevered as long as he could.

Finally, beads of sweat broke out on his forehead. He nudged Steve and said he was going out to get some fresh air, then escaped to the patio as quickly as he could without attracting attention. Steve looked after him, but let him go, understanding his need for a moment alone to decompress.

Once out of the stifling atmosphere of lights and motion and noise, the tight feeling in Bucky’s chest eased somewhat. He chose a spot well away from the few other people who were outside, and leaned on the patio railing, letting the cool night air wash over his clammy skin.

Calling to the mind a coping technique his doctor—or therapist or whatever they were calling headshrinkers these days—had been teaching him, he took some deep, meditative breaths, and concentrated on being aware of each part of his body, one by one. Gradually, the vague nausea dissipated, and his hands stopped shaking. The human one did, at least. The cybernetic prosthesis was always steady as stone.

He’d trained himself many years ago to stop reaching up reflexively to clutch his shoulder every time he thought of the thing, but that didn’t stop the mangled nerve fibers from making their displeasure known, with hot, itching little needles of pain. He sighed and stretched the arm out to the side, then across his chest, then dropped it and shook it out, till the nerves calmed down and returned to proper operation.

His enhanced hearing made him aware of a purposeful step headed in his direction, well before its owner got near him. He leaned on the railing again, body relaxed, pretending not to notice. It’s not an enemy, here. No need to wind up your muscles for a fight. No need to brace your pain receptors against the slip of a hidden blade.

The steps halted a few feet back and Steve’s voice said, “Hey, Buck,” before he came closer. A habit developed through years of familiarity with soldiers who’d seen heavy combat, and a wise procedure for approaching jumpy PTSD cases possessed of superhuman strength and speed, and trained to kill without thinking.

“Hey,” Bucky said, keeping his eyes on the city lights, twinkling far below like a chaos of multicolored stars.

Steve leaned on the railing beside him. “This city’s gotten so big since we were kids. I hardly recognize it.”

“I don’t think I’d recognize it from up here anyway. Even if my memory of it wasn’t buried under a hundred layers of coordinates and terrain maps and blueprints of every manmade structure from here to New Rochelle.”

“They did that? Put all that stuff in your head?”

“Yep. Every major city in the world. Sort of takes the thrill out of exploring new places.”

“At least you’ll never have to worry about getting lost,” Steve said, with a resigned sigh.

Bucky cast a sidelong glance at him. “I’m ok on my own, you know. You should be inside with your friends.”

Steve shook his head. “They’re not my friends. They’re my team.”

“Oh, give it a rest. Your team are your friends. You’re the one who always says the best teams are the ones that bond.”

“The best teams are the ones who do their jobs. A leader who lets emotional attachments affect his judgement is not doing his job.”

Bucky bridled at this, detecting something personal in it. “So, you weren’t doing your job when you risked your life to pull me out of that Nazi prison camp?”

“That was different. I didn’t put anyone in danger but myself.”

“What about on the helicarrier? Millions of lives were in danger, then. So why didn’t you just kill me?”

Steve gave him a look, then turned back to stare out at the city, his jaw muscles visibly working beneath his skin.

“Exactly,” Bucky persisted. “You didn’t do it because we were friends. Because you cared about me.”

“We are still friends and I still care about you. I don’t regret it,” Steve replied flatly. “But it was extremely reckless, you’re right. Thank you for reminding me.”

“Don’t fucking do that!” Bucky said, with sudden heat. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean, Buck?” Steve asked, turning to face him again. “Please tell me, because I’m honestly at a loss.”

“I mean that I’m stronger than you and faster than you—I’m a literal combat machine—but I could never be Captain fucking America, and do you know why? Because I’m not a leader. You are. You care about people and it shows in everything you do. That’s why they’re willing to follow you, no matter what. So don’t give me that ‘they’re my team not my friends’ shit. They are your friends, and that’s a good thing.”

Steve gazed at him silently for a long moment. “You know…being an assassin has sure done a number on your language, Sergeant Barnes.”

“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, Rogers,” Bucky retorted. “How about I show you how colorful I can get.”

Steve cocked an eyebrow. “Be my guest. I’ll smack the sass right out of your mouth, soldier.”

“You can try,” Bucky said, with a wicked grin. “Hit me, assho—”

Steve’s fist flew like a shot toward his face, but the blow never connected. Quicker than sight, Bucky’s cybernetic hand caught his wrist and clamped down like a vise. In fractions of a second, he had twisted Steve’s arm behind his back, flipped him around, and pinned him to the balcony railing with his body.

“Come on, Steve,” he laughed, releasing the hold. “You’re not even trying.”

Steve turned around and leaned his back against the railing, chafing the wrist Bucky had twisted with his other hand. “We can’t play-fight like that, Buck. We’re not kids anymore.”

Bucky’s smile dissolved as he studied his friend’s face. Steve kept his eyes fixed on the ground, avoiding his gaze, but his brow was furrowed and there was a flush of color in his angular cheeks. So it was that. It must be. He must have perceived Bucky’s feelings for him, and now things were going to be weird and tense and fucked up between them. Bucky would rather die than have this lifelong friendship disintegrate that way.

“I didn’t mean to—” he began, then immediately realized there was no way to disembark this conversational train except to jump off before a full-on crash. “I’m sorry.”

Steve lifted his head to squint up at him. “What? Why are you sorry?”

“I thought…I hurt you or something,” Bucky said lamely.

“Are you kidding me?” Steve smirked, the spark instantly jumping back into his blue eyes. “Remember when you shot me a bunch of times and I still kicked your ass?”

“I mean, it wasn’t a bunch of times. And I kicked your ass. And you watch your language!”

“You know I just lecture people about swearing because I think it’s funny, right?”

“Yes. I knew that. Obviously.”

“You didn’t.”

“I should have,” Bucky grinned. “You’re still the same sarcastic little shit under all that muscle.”

“I am,” Steve said, in uncharacteristically serious tone. “And you’re still the guy who took care of me after mom died, and made sure I didn’t get killed for shooting my mouth off to the wrong people. Everything has changed but you, Buck. You’re the only one who comes from the world I remember. You’re all I have left.”

Bucky’s voice choked in his throat at this unexpected onslaught, and he could only nod in response.

“I’m sorry I snapped at you when you brought up the helicarrier,” Steve continued. “I was angry because you made me see something I didn’t want to admit. It wasn’t that I endangered lives hoping to get through to you. It was that I wouldn’t have done the same for anyone else. So, maybe those people on my team are my friends, but not like you. There’s no one I care about more than you. I love you.”

“I know,” Bucky said, a bit hoarsely. “There’s no one I care about more than you, either.”

He leaned on the railing beside his friend and clapped him on the shoulder in a companionable fashion, thinking this was the end of the interchange, but Steve went on.

“You know, for all the trouble my mouth got me into, that was the one thing I regretted not saying,” he said, with a sad smile. “Then I thought you died. A couple of times. When you came back…it was like I’d been given another chance. No one gets another chance. I couldn’t risk you dying again without ever knowing what you mean to me. Anyway, thanks for letting me get it off my chest. And for not freaking out.”

“Get what off your chest?” Bucky asked, bewildered. “I don’t—I don’t understand.”

Steve frowned. “I don’t know how much clearer I can be than ‘I love you’, Buck.”

Feeling himself poised on the bleeding edge of something terrifying and spectacular, and finally goaded past the point of caution, Bucky took Steve by both shoulders and looked fiercely into his exasperatingly handsome face.

“Listen to me very carefully, Steve,” he said slowly. “There is a huge difference between ‘I love you’ and ‘I am in love with you.’ Which one are you saying?”

“Ohhhh, got it,” Steve nodded. “I see how that’s confusing now. The second one. I’m in love with you.”

Bucky’s stomach lurched, pulse pounding in his ears, as the concrete patio seemed to tilt beneath his feet. He already had a hold of Steve’s shoulders, or he may have actually lost his balance and fallen. Instead, he let his weight pitch forward into his friend, wrapping his arms tightly around him. Steve’s arms came up to encircle his waist as Bucky’s mouth covered his, devouring it with half-starved desperation.

Steve gasped and groaned in his throat. He’d been entirely unprepared for the intensity of the kiss, and the crushing force of Bucky’s embrace. He probably should have been, having experienced his friend’s power firsthand in a more violent context. In all fairness, though, he’d never been kissed by a man before, let alone a superhuman man with almost a century of stifled desire burning in his body like rocket fuel.

He let go, losing himself entirely in the moment he had longed for since he was a teenaged kid with a crush on his handsome, older best friend, but no words with which to articulate it, even to himself. Strong arms pulling him close, bodies pressed together, breathing the same breath. Holding and touching and tasting him, until he permeated every sense, and there was nothing in the world but them, together. Like it always should have been.

Bucky pulled away at last, leaving him flushed and hazy-eyed, panting through wet, kiss-bruised lips. Intoxicated and reeling himself, he buried his face in the crook of Steve’s neck, inhaling his masculine scent, and feeling the reassuring warmth and solidity of his body. Steve’s arms tightened around him and his chest vibrated with a soft laugh.

“What are you laughing at, you snarky little shit,” Bucky mumbled into his shoulder.

“It’s just that, I’m a hundred years old, I’ve been in love with you since I was sixteen, and I only heard the term bisexual for the first time tonight. That’s pretty funny.”

Bucky lifted his head to look at him. “Is that what you are?”

“I guess so. Is that ok?”

“As long as you’re aware that your ass belongs to me, now.”

“Uh, no, your ass belongs to me,” Steve retorted, sliding his hand down onto the specified area of his friend’s anatomy.

“Hey! Cut that out!” Bucky said, swatting it away. “I’m not that kind of guy, mister.”

Steve raised an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah? What kind are you?”

“Why don’t you take me home and find out.”

Bucky leaned in for another kiss, but at this perhaps belated moment, it occurred to him that the wall dividing the lounge and the very well-lit patio was comprised entirely of glass panels, making it essentially one massive, floor to ceiling window.

“Shit,” he winced. “You don’t think anyone saw us, do you?”

Steve turned to look toward the lounge, where it appeared that nearly every patron was watching through the glass, like he and Bucky were fish in an aquarium. He smiled and gave a sheepish wave, at which point the entire place erupted in thunderous applause, complete with shouts of “get it, Cap!” and “God bless America!” and other expressions of ribald encouragement.

He turned back to Bucky and shook his head. “Nope. I don’t think they did.”

[amarynceus]

Political Blitherings, et c.

Preface 0.1.  Politics, race issues, anger.  Part venting, part thinking. Below the cut.

Questions? Responses?  Acknowledge my right to exist and equal treatment, and I’ll debate almost anything.  There’s an ask button, use it.  Fail to acknowledge that basic point and we are done, full stop.

Preface: NDN = decendant of indigenous peoples of the continents located between Western and Eastern Eurasia, in case you didn’t know.

Second preface; I hope even if you don’t agree with me on very many things, so long as you agree on my basic premiss, that you will read this through if you care about current events.  I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that you already like one or two of the drawings I’ve made, if you’re still watching me at this point.

I’d just like to note that I might be occasionally strident and political from time to time for the next, well, foreseeable future, as long as we have an ACTUAL. FUCKING. TOOL. OF.THE. KREMLIN. IN. WASHINGTON.  I would prefer just to paint sailing ships and stupid pones, but times are what they are and people like me are now under attack from my own fucking government in this climate.  I love the Socialism.  I hate Fascism, Soviet communism, and their various interbred ancestors and descendants, and hate the idea of them growing stronger here.

Creating art is an essentially political act, and don’t let any two-bit neo-nazi pieces of shit tell you otherwise.  What difference it makes is debatable, but what isn’t is that silence is complicity.  Do not be silent.  Do not let others tell you that your fear, that your oppression, that your experience and your identity do not matter.  Do not be gaslighted.  There are four lights, and let no one tell you otherwise.

My first President, and the last I felt any respect for, was Carter.  The first I could vote for was Clinton, and I couldn’t stand him.  The first I could actually vote FOR, rather than against, was Obama, and only the first time around.  I’m an NDN.  I hate the fucking United States, the agent of physical and cultural genocide, that destroyed so much of my people and my culture and my very social fabric.  I hate the flag, I hate the government, I hate every shred of this godsdamn pathetic farce of a Republic that has the balls to call itself a Democracy.  I want to see the US burn, fall, fail harder than Rome ever did.

But.  I still live here. This is my land.  My ancestors’ land, ripped away by the white man’s (and woman’s - the white woman’s complicity in colonial oppression is deep and rarely conveyed) violence and greed.  We have been here, and I mean my cultural group, the NDNs of the Columbian Plateau, TEN THOUSAND years at a BARE MINIMUM -- even white anthropologists and archæologists, some of the most racist academic disciplines, acknowledge this.   When humans in the middle east were first starting to put one sun-fired brick on top of another, we were figuring out how to balance the recources we had and the needs we had.  For thousands of years, my people lived a way that did not degrade the land, and did not require war, or conquest, to maintain that way of life.  What kind of mis-steps led to such a thing, I do not know - I have long assumed that some kind of gross overharvesting/overexploitation of the available resources led to the realization that resources must be managed, and human populations controlled, if there was to be any balance between humans and the landscape that gives us life.

So.  Where am I going?  I don’t know.  I’ve had a cider and just now a beer.  So I’m just expressing at this point, because I’m starting to feel a tiny bit comfortable about my audience here, small (but growing! thank you!) as it is. 

Basically, silence is no longer an option at this point.  Those of you still in your early twenties or so (I don’t want to assume, but demographics say almost half of you are under 24), might not really get what an important place we stand in, right now.  But let me say this directly right now.  Even if you’re well aware of it.

All of our values, and all of the values our founding folks held (regardless of their hypocrisies or defects, etc., etc.) are under attack right now.  The very essence of what is a ‘fact’ is under assault right now.  Science is under assault now.  People who are not white, straight, and devoted to the myth that this is a white, straight nation are under attack right now. 

If you’re white, stop criticising the anger and rage of POC right now.  If you’re male, stop criticising the anger and rage of women right now.  If you’re a Nazi, kindly fuck off and live in the most excruciatingly painful manner possible.  If you see a Nazi get punched in the face and you say ‘well, but...’  fucking ditto, I have no time for your temporizing.  Say ‘well, but...’ one more time, and as a lifelong pacifist who has never yet dirtied their knuckles on anything more offensive than a sheetrock wall, I will happily break your nose and dislocate your testicles, free of charge.

We need to pull together.  I’ll say for one time, and hopefully one time only, I have a hard time with white liberals.  I’ve been betrayed so many times by them.  But we do need you to come to your senses and stop attacking the rest of us who are now genuinely under threat.  Unless you thrust the topic under my nose, I don’t intend to bring it up again (might RB stuff about it tho).  But y’all have had the reins for centuries now, sit down, shut up, and listen.  And that’s the end of that topic.

We all have our own concerns.  I’m not exactly proud, but I have a difficult time in a lot of political debates concerning race, due to the fact that NDNs are consistently shut out.  I try my best to rally myself behind other folks’ suffering, but when it’s usually <this group this group us us us us> or <that group that group me me me me> one gets left on the sidelines sometimes, it is true.  Trumping another victim’s card with your own weighty suit is bullshit, though.  The IDEA of the White Man has fucked us all.

Let me come back to that, because I think it’s important.

THE IDEA OF THE WHITE MAN HAS FUCKED US ALL.

The IDEA of unique importance.  The IDEA of a special place in history and destiny.  The very IDEA of anyone being inferiour.  The IDEA of a mandate over others not of our own people.  The IDEA of absolute rule.  The IDEA of divine right.  The IDEA that being stronger and more violent has anything to do with superiority.

Sadly, all of these are pretty much true of us all, regardless of time or place.  Humans are pretty shitty.  But a certain concatenation of events conspired to place white European males at the temporary top of the heap of worldwide power intrigue, and they went fucking crazy with it.  Crazy in a way that the world has never before seen sort of crazy, setting aside all those cautionary tales of Mu or Atlantea or whatever.  Crazy as in this-single-way-to-live-is-the-only-way-or-else-I’ll-kill-you sort of way (which is, sadly, almost universal).  Whether it be the worship this dead man on a stick or die, or dig gold or die, or slave-in-the-fields-because-you-happen-to-be-darker-than-me-therefore-you-deserve-to-die-horribly-because-this-guy-who-has-the-building-with-the-gold-but-don’t-die-until-I’ve-extracted-every-last-bit-of-labour-I-can-without-expending-any-capital-or-indeed-meaningful-effort-of-my-own.

Again, do I have structure here?  No.  I don’t care about structure.  I’m fed up with being constrained on discourse.  I’m done with letting conventional liberals, white or not, dictate the path and the method by which I expound ideas and express my emotions.  I’ve had a Cider and a Beer, and these days that’s about enough to make it slightly difficult to type straight and copy-edit as I go.  Make that two Beers as I’m half through with the second.  I’m just done with excessive self-restraint in general - though that’s my limit with drinks.

I think that’s my limit on discourse here, though.  I streamed all day, and chatted all day, which was fucking awesome (seriously, you know who you are, I appreciate your support and your interest).  I’m worn out -- by now some of you know fairly well just why that is, and in time all of you who stick around will.  Like so many who differ from the norm, I’m tired of defending the very basics of rational discourse.  I’m tired of Nazis.  I’m tired of Nazi sympathizers.  I’m tired of racists.  I’m tired of those who will ally themselves with racists to further their own worldviews.  I’m tired of White Liberals who try to balance everything because it all comes out of a fucking Textbook and -- well, I’d disgrace myself totally and forfeit any right whatsoever to rational discourse if I posted the clauses I just deleted. D:  Let’s just wrap that up and say I’m tired.  Unless you’ve got a serious legacy of oppression and trauma in your own life as well as your family’s -- this is the time to shut up, sit down, support, and spread your ears wide fucking open.

You might be ‘white’ right now and you might have this shitty legacy of oppression, too.  It’s important to realize that ‘race’ is such an arbitrary constrict -- a good modern starting point is ‘Whiteness of a Different Colour’ (ISBN-13: 978-0674951914) -- and that many of you that might be considered ‘white’ now weren’t ‘white’ a mere century or less ago.  If you’re of Irish, or Scottish, or Italian, or any country with any modicum of Catholicism, or anywhere near Poland at all (for fuck’s sake I want the US to burn but I wish I could apologise for those Polish jokes), I hope you’re nodding right now.  ‘Whiteness’ has always been a fluid definition, subject to the convenience of those who are in power.  Sometimes you’re in, sometimes you’re out.  A lot of people last year were convinced along these lines, alas. Especially white women -- it’s hard to say, but I am deeply disappointed in any gender whose space I drift into regularly --- where’s my fucking third option, thank you very much, please, reality, let LeGuin’s writing instantiate.  The amount of white women who voted for a... thing that despised their very gender was, quite frankly, so astonishing, even disgusting, that it was hard to credit. 

So at this point I think it’s important to distinguish between two groups: those that explicitly benefit form the current regime, and those who don’t.  Establishing the basic premiss that I’m not particularly inclined to either nuance or compromise at this point, I think I can draw the lines thus:

With the Orange one are Nazis (or Neo-Nazis if you want to split hairs, I see zero fucking difference), other forms of White Nationalists, the KKK, Kremlin sympathizers, and a general cadre of the most ignorant and least qualified set of people ever set to take government positions, even factoring in the presidencies of Grant and Hoover.  These people deny science, deny facts, deny the right of people like me to exist.  I don’t believe in anything but the serious danger of absolute belief.  But I do trust and have some shred, some modicum of faith, one might even go so far as to say, in scientific method, rational skepticism, tolerance, and love.

These people that are scrabbling for the levers of power have none of these things.  They want unquestioning obedience, slavish devotion, denial of diversity.  They want us to believe their lies, their ‘alternative facts’ or whatever the shit was that’s so ridiculous my fore-brain refuses to scrabble for the correct terminology.

But this isn’t the 1920s or the 1930s.  Remember that the well-nigh universal lesson from that time regarding Fascism is that people didn’t strike back hard enough, fast enough, strong enough.  Don’t succumb to the idea that it’s worth your while to debate people who don’t accept your simple existence and your equal rights as a basic, fundamental point.  If they don’t, punch them if you can.  Or find a bigger friend to punch them.  Kick them in the balls -- most of these Nazis have balls, I know not how -- or hit them with a bat, or a bat with nails in.

Remember.

If.

They.

Do.

Not.

Unconditionally.

Acknowledge.

Your.

Right.

To.

Exist.

As.

A.

Basic.

Premise.

There.

Is.

No.

Intellectual.

Debate.

Nazis and their ilk don’t want people like me, or many of you, to even exist.  (I look at every follower’s profile, you delightful people and sometimes perverts [me too, no worries - even some aces get saucy every few dozen moons or so!  I love you all, apart from those strange porn blogs, I don’t draw naked anything yet, please go away.])  Even after deflecting myself there, I re-emphasize that:

DEBATE CAN ONLY OCCUR WHEN BOTH PARTIES AGREE TO A CERTAIN SET OF FACTS AND PHILOSOPHICAL PREMISES.  Foremost in 2017 being: an acceptance of the scientific method and of the complexities and conclusions of modern science, an acceptance to the basic freedoms of the press and of political discourse as established from our flawed founding fuckers to the current day, and an acceptance of the basic rights of all human beings irrespective of ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation.

Anyone who can’t agree to this basic, fundamental, and fundamentally inoffensive set of premises is not worth your time or energy.  If they try and throw sand in your face, avert them.  If they put up a mask of civility, state the basics and deflect them.  If they assault or insult you, ignore them, or if appropriate, punch them -- at this point, they deserve it.  As a life-long pacifist -- they so deserve it.

Keep your thumb outside of your fingers, please.  I want you to be able to draw even after you punch Nazis.

Remember:

Anyone who does not acknowledge your right to exist has not established the most fundamental level of Rational Discourse.

I’ll try as best I can to keep this blog to mainly just art, but I refuse and reject all notions that I should keep politics out of my art.  The act of intentionally creating a piece of art is an essentially political act, it always has been, and it always shall be.

On that point, I’ll allow one exchange to give you a chance before I block your arse on whatever platform.  I DGAF about followers, sales, or bottom lines, tiny though they may be. All I want are people who I can have a rational discourse with.

I wish I could say I’m sorry to be so angry. 

I am absolutely not

.  I refuse to let my anger dominate my day to day living, but I also refuse to put it aside, and I think you should too.  Don’t let go of that anger, but don’t let it eat your heart (it will eviscerate you in a breath if you let it.)  Forge it into a sword, into a shield, into a bow and arrows to give cover to your loved ones.  This is not a time for complacency, for conciliation for those who would not have us live at all.  Recognize that there is a point at which rational debate has come to an end, that there are those who want us dead and are not at all joking with all those oven threats. NAZIS FUCKING EXIST RIGHT NOW.  Just as their vile counterparts have existed at so many times throughout history.I could name to you ancestors that were killed, or sent to prison, or locked in mad-houses, or worse, simply because they were NDN and said that we should have rights, that we should be treated like human beings, that we DESERVED to EXIST.  I have zero patience for the establishment or the White Man in Washington.  I have some patience for the White Woman, even though they have often been a worse oppressor than the Man (seriously -- look at the treatment of ‘Natives’ in ‘America’ and Indians in India in the periods when it was just the by far majority male explorers, trappers, traders, etc, compared to when the women come in -- rapid swings between Tolerance and Accomodation, to Prejudice and Exclusion, all overcome with the Sickening Sweet Smell of Straight-Laced Biblical Morality and okay I can’t go on, if you are still reading I haven’t completely offended you and I would honestly not prefer to do so excessively.)  but it’s really hard to trust in straight white women at this point.  So many sold us out to a self-confessed ‘p*ssy grabber’ in November. ANYWAY. Anger blah blah arg razzle frazzle argiuhalsdkfgjalkdfgjh lasidfuyao psidgyoiasdygoi asydfgo iasdygpoiasdo et cetera, et  cetera, et. cetera. yeah. welcome to 2017. Let’s all go punch Nazis.  Or, if we can’t punch Nazis, let’s all support those who do. Because what’s more American than punching a Nazi in his (or her) Godsdamned face.