#spend less energy policing your allies

[charyou-tree]

The far-right wants American politics to feel like having an abusive parent.

If you have an abusive Father lets say, you come to learn that you can't reason with him. You don't defy him or he hurts you, and trying to explain your point of view never works, so eventually you give up trying. Your only goal is to manage interactions with him so you don't get hurt.

So instead, when you need something, you go to your Mother instead, because you might actually have a chance of influencing her behavior. So, if she's not able to get you something, say, because Father controls the bank accounts, you might get angry with Mother instead because she chose not to listen to you this time! Father never listens, so you don't even consider that a failure, that's just "normal". That's just how Father is. Mother is usually nice, she just decided to be mean!

This is why republican controlled legislatures don't pass anything except tax cuts for themselves. The whole plan is to prove the idea of "Government Never Helps" by example. Why? To make the party who promised to use the government to help people look bad, so that the people who voted for that party blame them for betraying their voters, instead of blaming the wannabe oligarchs stonewalling progress for the last 40 years. The republican party follows the same playbook every time:

Cut taxes and dump money into your buddy's company

Companies get rich(er) and hire people to expand, unemployment temporarily goes down

Lack of government revenue makes budgets tight, and times seem good so we "have to" cut social services (because raising taxes makes you look like the bad guy, and the democrats already are a minority party)

Massive corporate power results in billions of dollars being taken from working people, resulting in increasing poverty, homelessness, social problems in general, made worse by the lack of social services

"Democrats never deliver on their promises, voting doesn't work, both sides are evil, there's no point in trying to change things"

Young people and leftists stay home, republican majority is elected

goto 1.

The democratic party has held a veto-proof majority exactly once in the last 40 years, for about 8 months during the Obama administration. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_States_Congresses) That was the last-best-chance we had at getting anything useful done, every other time has had one or more republican majorities blocking progress.

It pisses me off so much to see the short-sighted leftists on the internet talking about how "voting doesn't work" and waxing poetic about how we need a revolution that they know damn well isn't coming. You know why voting doesn't seem to work? Because you smug idiots decided you were too good for it and won't do it!

If any of you think that adding yourselves to the "Did Not Vote" category will somehow cause American political leadership to stop flirting with fascism please block me right now. I am disgusted with how many people who bitch and moan about how awful our government is can't be bothered to do the BARE FUCKING MINIMUM about it.

We have a government made of conservative old people because conservatives and old people ALWAYS VOTE.

If y'all don't even vote, you're not fighting a revolution. Grow up.

[daringyounggrayson]

Here’s part 2 for the fic I wrote for @batfam-big-bang! Once again, thank you so much to my amazing betas @huilian, @tintinnabulation-of-the-bells and @yellow-warbler and my incredibly talented artists @annasartverse, @noroomforcream, and @zeribip <3

Summary: The double homicide at Haly’s Circus is not Bruce’s first case involving a child, and while there’s no overt indication that Bruce should react differently to this case, he supposes that his previous cases did not involve the witness known as Dick Grayson. On the surface, the Grayson case seems like any other gang case, but the more time Bruce spends with the boy, the more he begins to doubt his own instincts.

Part 1: AO3 | tumblr

Part 2

For the first time since this whole thing started, Bruce regrets not hacking into the Child Protection and Permanency system and forging a foster license. Sure, it would have raised a few eyebrows, and yes, dealing with the repercussions would have been exhausting. But he could have handled it; he has more than enough money to bribe the right people efficiently, and when required, he can be rather charismatic. As much as he hates to use his influence in that way, it would have been for a good cause. A less than ideal mean for a more than necessary end. And at least then Richard would have been safe.

Batman swoops in through a window, sending pieces of glass shattering around him as he takes down one of the Zucco’s henchmen. Shouting erupts across the room, but Batman’s already taken down another member, securing him with zip ties.  

“Where’s the boy?” he growls into the man’s ear.

“B-basement,” he says, voice garbled through his split lip.

Bruce stands, quickly surveying the room for a door. Spotting one, he runs toward it, flinging the door open and triggering more shouting. He leaps down the stairs, listening as the shouts turn into screams. In another scenario, Bruce would drop a smoke bomb and work in the dark, but they have guns held tightly in their hands and Bruce doesn’t trust them to avoid their hostage. Instead, Bruce takes them down overtly, his work somewhat sloppy as he hurries to disarm and restrain all of them so he can get to Richard as quickly as possible.

“Are you alright?” Bruce asks when he finally makes his way to Richard. He removes the gag gently and then moves behind the boy to cut the overly-complicated restraints.

“I think so—ahh,” he breaks off into a hiss and flexes his hand. When the rope falls, he brings his right wrist in front of himself, hiding it from Bruce’s view.

Bruce moves back to the front of the chair and kneels. “May I?” Richard nods and Bruce takes his right wrist. It’s already swollen, and Bruce is almost positive that it’s broken. Other than a small grimace, Richard remains stoic during the brief examination. “It’s likely broken. Are you hurt anywhere else?” 

Richard shakes his head. 

“Did they hit your head, give you anything?”

“No, just my wrist.”

“Do you remember who did it?” Bruce asks.

“The tall guy with the beard. I think he went back upstairs when they heard you come in,” Richard explains.

“Hnn. Can you walk?”

Richard nods, standing. He braces his right wrist with his left hand, holding it against his chest as Bruce leads him out of the house. “I got out of the ropes when they tied me up the first time,” Richard tells him, a touch of excitement—maybe pride—in his voice. “He grabbed my wrist before I could run away, though. I heard it crack when he twisted it.”

The excitement drops toward the end, but the detail of Richard’s escape attempt explains the complex restraints.

“Bastard,” Bruce says under his breath, but Richard must hear it because a ghost of a grin crosses his face. “You were very brave tonight. I—I’m glad you’re safe, Richard.”

Richard hums. “I’m just glad you showed up when you did.”

Bruce and Richard make their way to the ambulance parked across the street as the police rush into the house that’s now behind them. Gordon meets up with them, telling Richard he’d like to speak with him after he’s been treated.

Gordon glances at Bruce quickly, and before Gordon rushes off to join his officers, they share a moment of relief. Because the thing is, Zucco already tried to kill the boy once, and tonight, they had been expecting to find a dead child at worst and a dying one at best. To see that Richard escaped with only a broken wrist is cause for celebration, but it also begs the question: Why didn’t Zucco have him killed immediately? And what was he planning on doing instead?

Bruce intends to stay with Richard until someone else arrives to ride with him to the hospital. However, those plans are cut short when he sees a familiar shadow leap from a nearby roof.

“Don’t go anywhere without Gordon,” Bruce tells Richard. The boy nods, and when he turns to the paramedic, she nods too.

Bruce runs toward the shadow, but he quickly realizes they’re already too far ahead.

He calls the car and does his best to follow the shadow from the street. They’re moving fast and with a new purpose, one other than avoiding Batman. For a fleeting moment, Bruce wonders if the shadow is leading him to a trap.

The shadow leads Bruce to a familiar area not too far from where Richard was being kept. He’s lost the shadow’s specific location, but he’s confident that he’s caught up with them enough to go on foot. A good decision, too: the sound of shattering glass followed by a scream leads him to a nearby garage.

“Help!” a man yells, followed by another round of breaking glass.

Bruce picks up his pace, sharply turning into the garage only to find the people he’s been looking for for weeks: Tony Zucco and the Shadow. The Shadow is wearing a dark suit with knives across their chest that glisten in the light; their mask covers their entire head, the eye region reminding Bruce of an owl. They’re approaching Zucco in a calculated manner, knife held comfortable in one hand. There are pieces of glass bottles all over the floor, bottles Zucco most likely threw at the Shadow as a form of self-defense. Out of bottles, he’s left to crouch behind a garbage can and yell for the mercy of strangers.

“Batman, help! He’s trying to kill me!”

Zucco’s words are pointless—Bruce is already on top of the Shadow by the time he’s finished saying them.

The Shadow dodges easily with a grace Bruce knows he will never be capable of. The Shadow pushes Bruce aside and aims at Zucco again, but just before they can release the throwing knife, Bruce knocks them off course. Zucco cries out when the knife makes contact with his flesh, but it doesn’t cut his chest—he’ll live.

Bruce waits for the Shadow to make a move, fully anticipating for their spar to continue. The Shadow, however, has other plans.

They turn to Zucco. “This is your only warning: Do not harm the Grayson.” And then they’re gone.

In a matter of seconds, Bruce has Zucco restrained and handcuffed to a shelf, but the Shadow is long gone by the time Bruce chases after them. There is some relief in knowing the Shadow is closer to an ally than another enemy, but Bruce knows nothing about them or what their motives are. All he knows is that they aimed to kill tonight. This Shadow may not see Batman as an enemy, but until proven otherwise, Bruce will have to consider them as a threat.

Bruce returns to the garage, relieved that Zucco is both still there and not dumb enough to remove the knife.

“The police and the paramedics will arrive shortly,” Bruce tells him. “In the meantime, you are going to answer some questions.”

Zucco sneers. “And why would I do that, huh? I’ve done nothing wrong; I’m a victim tonight.”

“Richard Grayson is the victim,” Bruce growls. “His parents are victims. You are a murderer.”

“Says who? Some circus brat?”

Bruce is in Zucco’s face faster than either of them can blink, holding him up by his collar. “Don’t test me. What did you want with Grayson?”

Zucco’s quiet. Bruce shakes him once.

“We were just going to give the kid a scare, alright? No harm done. Just trying to teach him how things work in Gotham,” Zucco says.

“Why?” Bruce presses.

“The kid’s been spreading some nasty rumors; it’s disrespectful.”

“What. Were. You. Planning.”

“Okay, okay,” Zucco says, handcuff clanking against the shelf as he struggles in Bruce’s hold. “We weren’t going to kill the kid, alright? We’re not stupid. We were just going to send him off with a few friends for a while. They would have brought him back in about a week, nothing too bad.”

Bruce has seen the people who take trips after getting in trouble with some of the local gangs, and he wouldn’t describe their experiences as “nothing too bad.”

“Names.”

After Zucco spits out a few names, Bruce moves to a nearby building to wait for the police and paramedics, not able to stand being near Zucco any longer. He’s hoping this is it; that he can tell Richard it’s over.

Just when Bruce can make out the sound of sirens, Alfred informs him of a call from his civilian phone. Bruce takes it.

“Bruce Wayne,” he says in a cheerful voice. “What can I do for you?”

“Hi Mr. Wayne, this is Ms. Briggs with Child Protection and Permanency. Congratulations: You’ve been matched with Richard Grayson.”

oOo

To say Alfred was caught off guard by Bruce’s announcement that a child would be coming to stay with them for an indefinite amount of time would have been an understatement. Still, the older man has grown used to such surprises by now and he handled it well.

“For future reference,” Alfred says, breaking the paradoxically loud silence between the two, “I would appreciate slightly more notice before we have houseguests.”

“Alfred,” Bruce breathes, a hint of pleading in his voice. Alfred has already lectured him, and while he’s sure more lectures will come tomorrow after the man has slept and regained his energy, for now they share a shaky truce. Bruce hopes it can be maintained for the rest of the evening. “I told you as soon as I knew.”

As soon as he hung up with Ms. Briggs, Bruce had gone home and explained everything to Alfred in person. He assured Alfred that he’d had every intention of obtaining the foster license legally, and only then hacking into CPP to match himself with Richard if it became necessary. He told Alfred about Martin, how he must have been responsible for the early foster license, and that matching with Richard must have been a coincidence. Although, had Alfred asked, Bruce would have admitted that after tonight’s events, he’d planned to forgo the legal route and place Richard in his care, effective immediately. Honestly, he would have preferred the latter; now he knows he’ll be receiving a phone call any day from a Mr. Martin Sinclair to cash in on the “favor.”

(Hopefully, a favor is all that will come of this.)

Alfred sniffs. “I believe you have already admitted quite the opposite. Unless you are implying that you have been unaware of your own actions for the past month?”

“I was going to tell you,” Bruce says—again—now referencing the foster license itself and not Richard’s new custody arrangement. “Until tonight, I was starting to think I wouldn’t need it. Richard seemed to be doing well.”

“So you said.”

Bruce sighs, sliding a pillow into its case. An apology readies itself on his tongue, but he’s already given enough for tonight, so he swallows it. “This will be temporary, Alfred. Just until I can find a safe family to adopt Richard.”

“Of course.”

They finish putting the room together in silence. Alfred avoids looking in Bruce’s direction, which only makes Bruce’s guilt grow more. He knows this is the right decision, even if it’s not ideal. Bruce thinks Alfred knows that too, not that it seems to be doing much to smooth things over at the moment.

“I think that’s as best as we can make it with such short notice,” Alfred announces.

“Thank you,” Bruce says. “For your help.”

Alfred looks at him for a few seconds, a soft expression on his face. “Shall we wait downstairs for the lad to arrive?”

oOo

Two hours later, Bruce is pacing in the foyer, still waiting for Richard to arrive. It’s late, so late that it’s almost early.

“I’m sure they’ll be here soon, sir,” Alfred tells him—again. “Be patient.”

Bruce grunts, but he stops his pacing and takes a seat next to Alfred, resting his elbows on his knees and folding his hands under his chin. The more time passes, the more anxious Bruce feels and the more he doubts himself and his capabilities. Capabilities which seem to have dwindled since receiving the phone call.

Alfred rests his hand on Bruce’s shoulder and sighs like he can hear Bruce’s thoughts. Bruce leans into the touch, patiently waiting for Alfred to speak. 

“You have a big heart, Master Bruce, you always have. It’s the trait I am most proud of,” Alfred says. “Deciding to take in Richard, while very characteristic of you, is an enormous responsibility—as I’m sure you are well aware. I believe that you can rise to the challenge and be an outstanding guardian, but for as long as the boy is with us, he will have to be your first priority. Not Gotham.”

“I know, Alfred,” Bruce murmurs.

Alfred hums. “I am willing to assist you as needed, but assisting is all I will do. The boy will be under your care, not mine.”

“I know, Alfred,” Bruce murmurs again. “I . . . Thank you.”

Alfred squeezes Bruce’s shoulder once before letting him go. “Perhaps this will be good for you. Perhaps you two will be able to help each other.”

Bruce doesn’t know what to say, so they slide back into their silence. The silence is no longer loud, however; it’s comfortable, the way it should be.

Not even a minute later, headlights cut through the window. Bruce and Alfred both stand, moving toward the door. Bruce opens it and he and Alfred walk outside, watching from the porch as the car comes to a stop. Ms. Briggs gets out first and moves around to the back, opening the door. Richard steps out of the car, head tilted back and eyes glued to Wayne Manor, taking in its size. Bruce’s eyes, in turn, are glued to the blue cast on the boy’s wrist.

“Ms. Briggs, Richard,” Bruce greets with a warm smile, leaving Alfred on the porch as he approaches the car.

“Hello Mr. Wayne,” Ms. Briggs says, holding out her hand. Bruce takes it, and they shake twice before releasing.

She places a hand on Richard’s shoulder briefly, encouraging him to offer a quiet, “Hello Mr. Wayne.”

“You can call me Bruce if you want,” he says, to which Richard only nods.

“My apologies again for this happening so late,” Ms. Briggs says, “but as I explained on the phone, we have quite a special case here. I have some papers for you to sign.”

Bruce gestures toward the house. “Please, come inside. We can take care of everything there.”

“Perfect. Richard, do you want to grab your stuff from the trunk?” Ms. Briggs asks, pressing a button on her key fob as Richard nods and walks toward the back of the car.

“Here, let me,” Bruce says, following Richard. “I don’t want you to make your wrist worse.”

“Oh. Thanks,” Richard says in a barely audible voice.

Bruce smiles again, a smile Richard doesn’t return. It feels out of character, but the behavior isn’t unexpected; Richard has had what is probably the second-worst night of his life and he’s once again surrounded by strangers.

Upon opening the trunk, a wave of anger runs through Bruce when, instead of luggage or a backpack, he finds a garbage bag.

Bruce looks toward the social worker, who has moved to the porch and is speaking with Alfred. Bruce looks back to the trunk and picks up the bag, closing the trunk before he can give it another thought. “How are you feeling, Richard? I know tonight has been more than difficult.”

“I’m okay,” Richard tells him, still using that quiet, reserved voice.

Bruce hums, leading the two of them into the house. “You’ll feel better after some sleep.”

Richard continues his odd silence for the rest of the meeting. Bruce hands the garbage bag full of Richard’s clothing to Alfred, who takes it up to the room they had prepared. Bruce signs the papers and says goodbye to the social worker in record time, thanking her for everything she had done that evening as she leaves the house.

He turns back to Richard, taking in his empty expression, the bags under his eyes, and the blue cast on his right hand. He thinks of Richard sitting without his parents in a hospital emergency room, how he had been forced to go to his old foster home and pack up his belongings in a garbage bag. This would mark the third time he had been forced to move in with strangers, the third time he had been forced to shove his belongings into a garbage bag.

Bruce kneels in front of Richard, looking him in the eye to try to gain his attention. “Richard?”

Richard blinks, moving his eyes to look at Bruce. “Sorry.”

Bruce shakes his head, dismissing the need for an apology. “Is everything alright?”

“Yeah,” Richard tells him softly, voice hollow. 

“Hn." Bruce thinks, trying to decide if he should push or let it be for now. He looks at Richard—his drawn face and closed posture—and goes with the latter. "Are you hungry?”

Richard shakes his head. “I had some crackers and juice at the hospital.”

“That doesn’t sound like very much to eat,” Bruce says. “How about we go into the kitchen and see if anything sounds good to you?"

“Can . . . can I just go to bed? I’m really tired.”

"Okay." Bruce stands, nodding in resigned agreement. “If you’re sure.”

Bruce takes Richard upstairs, pointing out his own bedroom before going into Richard’s. 

“If you need anything, I’ll be right down there,” Bruce tells him. “You can wake me up for anything, even if you don’t think it qualifies as an emergency.”

“Okay.”

Bruce swallows, then takes them back to Richard’s room. He shows him the ensuite bathroom, pointing out where the extra toiletries are kept as well as the shower covers for his cast. He also shows him how to work the shower, just in case he wants to take one before coming downstairs in the morning.

“Do you need help putting your clothes away?” Bruce asks, not allowing his eyes to linger on the garbage bag Alfred placed near the dresser. 

“No, I can do it.” 

The I can take care of myself echoes in Bruce’s head; Richard had used the phrase directly during one of their early meetings, but now he only implies it.

“If you change your mind,” Bruce says, and Richard nods in understanding. “I’ll let you get some sleep.” Bruce moves to the door, pausing in the doorway and turning to face Richard once more. “Goodnight Richard, I’m glad you’re safe.”

“Yeah.” He pauses. “Goodnight Bruce.”

Bruce hesitates for a moment, then closes the door with a soft click and goes to his room. Once there, he paces, waiting for something to happen. Nothing does.

He pulls out his phone, checking his news alerts to find that Zucco, predictably, hadn’t been taken to the hospital by the police. He had fled the scene, and while there had been a chase, the officers lost him. Bruce groans, running a hand through his hair. With how long it took the social worker to arrive with Richard, Bruce could have stayed to escort Zucco personally. Maybe then—

No. Going to the manor and waiting for Richard had been the right decision. Even if Bruce had stayed with Zucco, that was no guarantee that he wouldn’t have bribed someone to let him go, and with the kidnapping earlier, the station would have been too hectic for Gordon to do much. But Zucco is getting anxious, reckless even; he’ll be easy to find again.

Still, Bruce doesn’t get much sleep that night.

oOo

The first week with Richard is stressful. Bruce doesn’t go into work that entire week, which he’s sure he’ll regret when he’s eventually forced to return and finds a nightmare waiting for him. He spends most of his time trying to find Zucco, either from the cave or in the streets, meaning he hasn’t spent much quality time with Richard. Richard doesn’t seem to mind, preferring to spend most of his time alone even when Bruce is available. Bruce isn’t sure if this is the right thing to do, but he allows it. The boy is adjusting, after all, and Bruce doesn’t want to push him too soon. (Not that he’d know what to say even if he did want to push.)

From what little he’s seen of Richard, he’s learned a few things: the boy is still grieving, badly, and that grief is mixing with trauma. Bruce has awoken to screaming from night terrors on three separate nights in the past week, and he’s sure there have also been plenty of nightmares that Richard hasn’t shared with them. Richard doesn’t seem to get much sleep as a result, and Bruce has found him passed out in random parts of the manor twice.

What Bruce hasn’t learned, he already knew: Richard is very bright and observant. He’s managed to maintain his athletic abilities, and Alfred has told him that the boy wakes up early to exercise each morning. Bruce has asked Richard about his exercises, both out of curiosity and to ensure he wasn’t hurting his wrist. From the sound of it, Richard would enjoy the equipment Bruce keeps downstairs. That’s not possible, of course, so he invites Richard to use the house’s gym and Bruce makes a note to himself to buy some gymnastics equipment.

By the end of the week, Richard seems more comfortable, but he’s still quiet and reserved for the most part. There are glimpses, however, of the enthusiastic boy who would wait up at night to talk with Batman, and also glimpses of a happy boy from an earlier time.

It’s around this point that Richard starts sneaking out again. Bruce has been expecting it, and the alarm system informs him that Richard has departed before Alfred does. Bruce had already left for patrol, but he quickly circles back and is able to meet up with Richard before he’s technically even off the property.

“Now that’s impressive,” Richard says when Batman jumps out of the car and lands in front of him. “How do you keep finding me anyway? Did you put a tracker on me or something?”

“No.” Well, not tonight.

“Are you one of those computer hackers?”

“When it’s necessary.”

“That’s so cool! Could you teach me?” Richard asks, rising up on his toes ever so slightly.

“Hn.”

“I’m going to take that as a maybe,” Richard says, grinning.

“What are you doing out here?” Bruce asks.

Richard shrugs. “Couldn’t sleep.”

They’re in the woods surrounding the manor. When Bruce was Richard’s age, he had been too afraid to go in them alone during the day. It’s definitely not where he would have gone to relax.

“How is your new foster placement?”

“Fine, I guess.” Richard rubs the inside of his elbow. “Do you think when this is over they’ll let me go home?”

As Batman, Bruce had asked Gordon if it would be possible for Richard to be placed in Haly’s care. Someone had reached out, but Haly hadn’t been willing. “I’m sorry Richard, but that doesn’t seem very likely.”

Richard looks away, sniffing. “Figures.”

Bruce kneels down, taking Richard’s cast-free hand in his own.

“I just want to go home.”

“Is that where you were going tonight?” Bruce asks.

Richard shakes his head but says nothing.

“Then where?” Bruce presses.

“I . . . I was going to try to find Zucco,” Richard admits, looking anywhere but Bruce. “I was going to take a bus downtown and ask around; say he was my uncle. I thought that even if I couldn’t find him, he would hear that I was looking for him and come after me again. And then, and then you could arrest him.”

“Richard.” Bruce’s heart is pounding in his chest, eyes wide with fear for this child. “You know how unsafe that is.”

“Like you care!” Richard screams—screams—at him, pulling his hand out of Bruce’s grasp and throwing both of them above his head in anger. “My parents have been gone for two months”—Richard’s small fists land across the bat emblem with no regard for his cast and containing more strength than Bruce expected—“and Zucco is still out there! If you’re not going to do anything, then I will!”

The boy is crying—heavy, angry, hurt tears—and for a moment, all Bruce can do is stare at him, barely breathing as he watches the tears and feels the fists pound against his chest. He thinks this is my fault and he wishes that that thought wasn’t as true as it is.

Bruce grabs Richard’s hands, pulling them back down gently. “I’m sorry. This never should have happened to you. And I’m sorry I haven’t been able to find Zucco yet, but I am looking for him.”

Richard isn’t fighting his hold, but he’s still crying, gasping for breath every few seconds. “You promised! You said you would bring him to justice—that’s what you said!”

“I know. And I promise I’m doing everything I can. This case is my top priority.” And that’s the truth—the rest of the truth is that it’s not his only case. There are several other open cases that have needed his attention, the Shadow that he can sense watching them right now being one of them.

Richard’s lip trembles, but he doesn’t say anything, just stares at Bruce with a look of disappointment and doubt.

Bruce swallows, running the case through his head before calmly presenting it to Richard. “I’ve been collecting evidence and sharing what I know with Gordon. Last month, we found one of the men, Garry Peters, who was responsible for putting the acid on the lines. A warrant was put out for his arrest and he confessed. He’s not currently in custody, but he will be tried in court and he’s been fairly cooperative with the police in exchange for protection. He’s refused to confirm that this was Zucco’s plan, but he’s given other names.”

Richard’s breaths are slowing down, and he’s looking at Bruce eagerly. Richard already knows some of this information—Batman had told him personally—but it’s clear from Richard’s reactions that he had not known all of it.

“Peters shared the name of his two partners that night, Emmanuel Hebert and Rachel Clay. Both of them have been arrested. They also received bail, but they’ll be at the hearing. So far, everyone we’ve spoken to has refused to confirm Zucco’s involvement.”

“But I saw him,” Richard insists.

“I know, Richard. But Zucco is being protected, so even with your testimony, it’s difficult.” Bruce hates everything about this case, and having to explain this to Richard makes it that much worse. “But there was a breakthrough about two weeks ago when someone came forward with evidence that Zucco purchased the type of acid used on the lines. This person also provided more proof that the three people who were arrested worked other jobs for Zucco in the past, as well as circumstantial evidence that Zucco hired them for this job. It was enough for Gordon to get a warrant for Zucco’s arrest. That’s why he went after you last week.”

Richard nods, eyebrows slightly furrowed as he absorbs the information.

“He was spotted near where you were kidnapped but he escaped before an arrest could be made. I’ve been trying to track him down, but I’m also trying to collect all of the evidence I can to ensure that when Zucco goes to court, he won’t be able to walk.” And that Zucco’s charges will reflect what truly happened. Zucco had intended to kill the entire Grayson family that night, and Bruce will see to it personally that that is reflected in Zucco’s charges.

“What if you can’t find him?” Richard asks. “What if he leaves the city, or the country?”

“I will find him.”  

“Let me help,” Richard says. “You could use me as bait, that would—”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I am not putting your life in danger, and it’s completely unnecessary. Zucco is getting nervous; finding him will be much easier now.”

“Can I come with you?” Richard asks. “I’ll stay in the car, like last time.”

“Not tonight.” Bruce pauses. “Will you let me take you back to the house?”

Richard bites his lip. “Are you going to come back here again?”

Bruce looks at Richard, trying to decipher what his question means. “Yes. If you want, I can visit you every night and give you an update on the case until Zucco is found.”

Richard nods. “Then I’ll go back.”

oOo

Every night for the next week, Bruce keeps his promise and shows up at Richard’s window to give him an update as Batman. He tries to keep it as detailed as he can and answer all of Richard’s questions, but there’s often not much to report. Richard enjoys the conversations though, and he often leads them to discuss things other than the case. By the time Bruce leaves, Richard has done most of the talking. Richard, Bruce supposes, is lonely. 

Bruce feels more comfortable talking to the boy as Batman, and he wonders if that’s because Batman is less of a stranger to Richard than Bruce Wayne is, or if it’s because Batman can help the boy in a way Bruce can’t, meaning that there’s less guilt talking to him as the former. There’s also the fact that Bruce is keeping up something close to his public persona at home, ensuring that Richard doesn’t learn his secret. It’s exhausting and likely adding to his problems, but it’s necessary for now.

Bruce’s comfort and exhaustion doesn’t matter, however. The boy is hurting and lonely, and Bruce needs to make more of an effort to help Richard, not just his case. Richard is his priority, and Bruce needs to start acting like it.

“Ah, Master Bruce,” Alfred says when Bruce exits the car. “I would have called, but I thought it best not to worry you unnecessarily.”

Bruce pushes his cowl back. “What happened?”

Richard steps out from behind the car.

Alfred clears his throat. “I found him in the cave. It appears we have taken in another detective, sir.”

oOo

“I could help,” Richard insists for the millionth time this week. “You could train me and I could be your partner.”

“No.”

“I’m already a professional athlete,” Richard points out. “I’d be really easy to train.”

While true, that’s far from the point. “No. I’m not training a child soldier.”

Richard huffs and rolls his eyes. “I wouldn’t be a child soldier; I’d be a hero. Like you.”

Bruce spins his chair to look at Richard for the first time. With a hard glare, he tells him, “No. That’s final.” He spins his chair back around to face his screen once more.

Richard leans against the chair. “Why not? You need someone to watch your back and I’m right here. I could be your lookout, or at least your getaway driver.”

Bruce closes his eyes, exhaling in a slow, controlled matter, pretending he’s calm. “Richard.”

“Just give me a chance,” Richard whines. “I’ll prove that I can be a good partner.”

Bruce stands quickly, sending his chair rolling behind him. Richard takes a step back, but Bruce is too worked up to realize that he’s probably scaring him. He glares down at him, and the boy shrinks under his gaze. “No. This is not up for debate.”

Richard’s face crumples, then turns into a scowl. “You can’t tell me what to do. I bet I could find Zucco faster on my own anyway.”

“You are not to leave this house. Is that clear?”

Richard is silent for a long time. Bruce’s stomach twists, but he can’t give in.

Richard wipes his sleeve across his eyes before dashing back upstairs. Bruce sinks into his chair; he’s clearly not cut out to be anything close to a father.

oOo

A few days later, Batman receives a tip telling him where Zucco is expected to be later that night. Richard has been ignoring him since their fight, and Bruce has been trying his best to give him space.

“Richard?” he calls, knocking on the closed door. There’s no answer. “I have a lead on Zucco. If everything goes as planned, I’ll be taking him in tonight.”

Bruce hears the floors creak, telling him Richard has come closer to the door.

“You can’t come, but if you want, you can sit on the comms with Alfred.”

When there’s no answer after two minutes, Bruce sighs and steps away from the door, wondering how long children can stay mad.

oOo

Bruce has been Batman long enough to be able to look at a criminal and tell how desperate they are. Zucco is incredibly desperate, and when people are that desperate, they do stupid things. Reckless things.

“Put down the gun,” Bruce says firmly, holding back a growl. He quickly ducks as Zucco pulls the trigger, missing Bruce by at least a foot.

“Take me in and that kid will be dead by morning, understand?”

Zucco has a lot to lose by going to prison; there are many who would be happy to see him in a place where they have the upper hand.

“No one else dies.” This time, Bruce doesn’t hold back the growl.

He throws one of his metal discs, taking out Zucco’s gun. The man yells in frustration before taking off, tipping over whatever’s in his path to put something—anything—between himself and The Batman.

Zucco is already at his car and fumbling with the keys by the time Bruce catches up to him. Bruce is fast, but not faster than a car; he raises his hand to call the car just as something swishes past his ear. It lands near Zucco, and he yelps as it makes contact and forces him to drop his keys. Bruce picks up his pace, turning ever so slightly to see who threw the object. He’s expecting to see the Shadow again, but instead he sees a small boy running toward him, dressed in dark green athletic tights, a red leotard, green gloves, and a green mask over his eyes made out of what used to be a beanie.

Despite the attempt at a disguise, Bruce can immediately tell it’s Richard, and for a second, his world freezes over.

But then Richard is passing him, waving and smiling as he goes. He’s chasing after Zucco, who has decided to ditch the car and run toward the pier instead, zig-zagging as he goes.

Bruce presses the button on his belt. “The car will be here shortly,” he hisses at Richard when he catches up to him. “Get inside and stay put until I get back.”

“Make me,” Richard says brightly, speeding up and passing Bruce again. He’s pulling out an object from his pocket, aiming it at Zucco. Bruce recognizes it as his own throwing discs, something the boy must have grabbed from the cave.

He throws it and hits Zucco’s foot, making the man stumble.

Bruce grabs Richard’s left hand, pulling him back. “Car. Now.”

Richard, to Bruce’s surprise, listens. He slows to a stop as Bruce passes him, and Bruce reaches for his restraints as he approaches Zucco.

“You hiring kiddies now, Bats?” Zucco taunts through panting breaths. He’s backed into a corner, and he’s watching Batman with wild eyes. Something glints in the light, and Bruce recognizes it as a knife just before it comes racing toward his shoulder.

Bruce moves swiftly, dodging the blade with practiced ease. Zucco comes at him again, this time going for the restraints. Bruce jumps on top of the railing, careful to maintain his balance as the old wood wobbles under his weight. Zucco kicks at the railing, causing a piece to break off just as Bruce jumps back down to avoid falling over the edge.

He sweeps Zucco’s legs out and is on top of the man as soon as he hits the ground. Zucco swipes at Bruce’s hand with his knife, hitting him for the first time that night and making Bruce lose the restraints as well as a few drops of blood. Bruce disposes of the knife and tries to manually restrain Zucco, but Zucco is throwing punches like his life depends on it and it’s all Bruce can do to block the hits.

“Batman!” Richard yells.

Bruce follows the sound of his voice to see that the boy has found a hiding spot on a nearby roof. He’s pointing in the opposite direction, and Bruce shifts his gaze to see that two men have joined them, both of them armed.

No.

“Shoot!” Zucco yells.

A clink of metal followed by yelling tells Bruce that Richard threw another disc and hit his mark; a gunshot tells him he only hit one gun.

Bruce can’t see for sure, but it doesn’t sound like anyone was hit. The commotion is enough to make Zucco slow down, and Bruce uses that to his advantage and grabs a new pair of restraints from his belt, clapping them on Zucco’s hands. When he has Zucco handcuffed to the pier, he looks for Richard. Bruce sees him climbing down a fire escape, several discs held firmly in his hand like he’s intending to fight the two men by himself.

The men, thank god, are more worried about Batman than the kid and give him their full attention. They’re both holding guns again and they set off another round. Dodging them requires a level of attention and energy Bruce doesn’t quite have, and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t thankful that Richard threw another round of discs, taking out one of the guns and hitting the other gunman in the arm, causing him to miss.

Bruce picks up his speed, jumping as he takes out the still-armed man. He kicks the gun away and throws a bolas at the other man before he can reclaim his own weapon. As he’s tying them up, Richard is running toward them, collecting the guns as he goes.

Both men are tied up by the time Richard is standing next to him, breathing a little fast but not nearly close to being out of breath.

Bruce wordlessly presses the button on his belt to call the car for the final time that night.

“We make a good team,” Richard tells him, a brightness in his voice that Bruce hasn’t heard in days.

“Get. In. The. Car.”

oOo

“What happens now?” Richard asks.

The two of them are sitting on a nearby roof, watching as Zucco and his two henchmen are put into separate squad cars.

“They’ll be taken in for questioning. Gordon has assured me that Zucco won’t qualify for bail, but I can’t speak for the other two. There will be a preliminary hearing, hopefully sometime this week, and depending on what happens there, a court date will be set.”

“Why wouldn’t there be a court date?” Richard asks, eyes never leaving the scene below. “You said there’s enough evidence to convict.”

“There is,” Bruce assures. “Zucco might take a plea deal.”

“Oh.”

They sit in a solemn silence until the squad cars pull away, Gordon riding in the car with Zucco. It isn’t until they can no longer see the cars that the two wordlessly move to their own car and go home.

oOo

Bruce sends Richard to bed without a lecture, deciding it can wait until the morning. Right now, Richard is still ecstatic about his adventure, and with Zucco finally in custody, Bruce is in a forgiving mood and doesn’t feel like crushing Richard’s spirit.

By the time he finishes writing up his report, Alfred has gone to bed and he expects Richard to have done the same. When he passes his room, however, he sees that the light is still on.

He taps on the door. “Richard? Can I come in?”

“Sure,” Richard replies quietly.

Bruce opens the door to find Richard sitting on his bed, still wearing his red leotard and green tights. Bruce crosses the room and takes a seat next to Richard on the bed. He doesn’t know what to say, but his instincts tell him that staying is the right thing to do.

“You can call me Dick, if you want,” Richard—Dick—says, looking up at him with the eyes of someone who’s seen far too much for someone so young. “That’s what everyone back home calls me.”

A smile tugs at Bruce’s lips, and he allows it to rest on his face for a moment. “Alright, Dick.”

Dick smiles too, but it lasts even shorter than Bruce’s.

“How do you feel? Bruce asks.

“I’m . . .” Dick stares at his hands, furrowing his eyebrows. He shakes his head, starting again. “I’m glad Zucco’s in custody, and I know you’re probably mad, but I’m glad I was there. It felt good. But I don’t . . . I don’t think I feel any different.”

Bruce pauses, taking in the statement. “What do you mean?”

“I thought it would be better, once we found him, but it’s not.”

Oh. “The grief, you mean.”

Dick nods and mumbles, “It’s stupid.”

“No.” Bruce wraps his arm around Dick’s shoulders, pulling him into his side. “No, sweetheart, it’s not.”

For the longest time, Bruce had thought that if he could just find his parents’ killer, it would fix everything and he would feel normal again. Maybe not completely, but when you’re hurting that badly, something is better than nothing.

“I miss them,” Dick says, a sob finally running through him and shaking his whole body. “It hurts all the time, Bruce. I just want it to stop.”

“I know.” Bruce rocks Dick back and forth, running a hand through his hair. “Shh, I know.”

Dick cries, and Bruce holds him. It’s not much, but it’s something.

oOo

“Good.”

“Oh, come on, B, that was great!” Dick calls from the mats. “Amazing even.”

Bruce smiles; the tumbling sequence had been impressive. “Hnn. Go again.”

“You said we could spar if I stuck it,” Dick protests.

“Afraid you can’t stick it twice in a row?” In reality, Bruce is trying to test Dick’s stamina, trying to figure out where his limit is and how far they can push it.

Dick rolls his eyes but jogs back to his starting place, takes a breath, and then goes again. Bruce watches as he launches himself into the air and contorts his body into a series of flips, landing briefly on his hands before going right back up. Dick lands for a final time, sticking his landing perfectly and breathing heavy. He lowers his arms and looks at Bruce. “Can we spar now?”

Bruce still struggles to understand how casually Dick can execute those skills like they’re nothing. “Water break. Then we’ll spar.”

“Yes!” Dick runs off to grab his water, and Bruce can’t help but chuckle at the enthusiasm.

Today has been a good day, and Bruce finds himself thinking about how the past two months have gone by in a whirlwind, filled with highs and lows.

The Grayson case has been officially closed. The court date has been set and everything looks like it will go in their favor. Despite the success of the case overall, there are still several loose ends that eat at Bruce on nights when he can’t sleep. The biggest being the Shadow, although that problem has seemingly solved itself. Bruce hasn’t felt the presence in weeks, and he hasn’t found a trace of the possible-vigilante anywhere. He hopes that whoever it was simply retired of their own accord, that something worse hadn’t befallen them. Like Haly’s true involvement with Gotham’s gangs, however, Bruce has been forced to accept that it's a mystery he’ll never truly solve.

More important than the case, Dick has been doing much better. He’s opened up to both Alfred and Bruce now, and he feels comfortable coming to them when he’s struggling. Even better, the night terrors have become less frequent, as have the regular nightmares.

Just as Alfred had predicted, Dick has been good for Bruce, too. He provides a light that Bruce so  desperately needed, and he’s made the manor feel like a home again. Bruce is realizing it’s something he doesn’t want to let go of anytime soon. He’s seriously considering making Dick’s custody arrangement permanent, though he’s still unsure how to broach the topic without making everyone uncomfortable. After all, Bruce still doesn’t feel cut out to be a father most days, and Dick has made it clear he doesn’t want a new one.

Another change since Dick first moved in is that they’ve been spending a lot of time in the cave, training Dick both physically and mentally for vigilantism. The boy hadn’t dropped the topic since he helped take down Zucco, and after only a week of pleading, among other tactics, Bruce had given in. He’s still holding out hope that this will turn out to be a phase, a temporary aspiration, but the further they go, the more certain Dick seems.

Bruce isn’t exactly happy about it, but he knows that Dick will do this with or without him. Bruce’s job is to keep the boy as safe as possible. Happy or not, Bruce can’t deny that Dick is good, extraordinarily talented for someone his age. He has the potential to be better than Bruce could ever dream.

A weight slams down against his back as Dick latches onto him. “Prepare to be defeated!” Dick yells into his ear.

Bruce grabs Dick’s forearms, pulling him off his back and onto the mats. Dick jumps up from his back and lands on his feet, falling into one of the stances Bruce taught him.

“Let’s see you try,” Bruce says, eliciting a smile from Dick, who has gained a mischievous glint in his eyes. “On three. One.”

Dick rises on his toes, preparing to charge.

“Two—”

“Three!” Dick shouts, cutting Bruce off as usual and running toward him.

Yes, Bruce thinks as Dick dodges Bruce’s defensive maneuver with a flip and a laugh, today is a good day.

[gra-sonas]

Howdy... Max?!

f you haven't yet watched the season 2 finale of Roswell, New Mexico, stop reading right now. Go watch it (or hibernate in an alien pod until you can) and then come back here to hear what series star Jeanine Mason (Liz Ortecho) and creator Carina Adly MacKenzie have to say about that shocking final moment.

After a season of heart problems (romantic and literal), threesomes(!), abductions, and plenty of family drama, the second season of the CW extraterrestrial drama came to close on Monday night, sidestepping a literal explosion but still managing to make our minds explode. Yup, in the final moments of the episode, Max (Nathan Dean Parsons), Isobel (Lily Cowles) and Michael (Michael Vlamis) arrived in a cave that housed an extraterrestrial cage containing another alien who looked exactly (plus an impressive beard) like Max! Is it an evil twin? A doppelgänger? A dark part of Max himself?

We asked MacKenzie for the inside scoop and all the other insight on the twists and turns of the final episode. Plus, Mason dishes on Liz's decision to leave Roswell and Max behind.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Let's start at the end. Can you tell us anything at all about Mr. Jones a.k.a Other Max?

CARINA ADLY MACKENZIE: Nathan wasn't working a whole lot at the beginning of this season and we decided we're going to put him to work double next year. I will say, it's been in the works for a while. That scene with his hand on Nora's shoulder was one of the first scenes of the season that we shot and it's one of the last ones that you see, so we've been building to it. I'm excited to tell the story of Mr. Jones next season.

I mean, I'm sure you can't answer but I'm going to ask anyway: Is he a twin? A doppelgänger? Some alien then we haven't heard of yet?

MACKENZIE: Yeah, I'm not going to answer that question. I'm starting a year of my life of trying really hard not to answer that question.

Were you excited at the idea of two Maxes when you first found out, Jeanine?

JEANINE MASON: Yeah, our minds were blown. What I love about the character of Max is he's all things good, decent and righteous and now to turn that on its head and make him all the opposite things... I'm excited for Nathan to have that as an acting exercise and I'm so excited to support him through season 3. Also, for fans, it's going to be really jarring and disorienting, and anything that requires us to watch more attentively and sit on the edge of our seats, and really question the things we know to be true, I think is so smart and exciting and engaging. I'm also interested to see how and when Liz will find out. She's also a prime person to be taken advantage of and duped by it.

"Howdy, partner" was such a great last line for the season. Was that yours, Carina?

MACKENZIE: That was me. I felt like it was the correct mix of amusing and menacing and Mr. Jones is going to be really fun to write because that's sort of where he lives: between amusing and menacing. Nathan loves that beard. He walks differently when he had it. His whole vibe changes. He becomes this like silver, bartender guy, who I don't know.

We saw Liz decided to move to California at the end and Max chose not to follow. Why is their relationship failing right now?

MACKENZIE: Max has had secrets his entire life. He's a very, very, very good liar because his entire life he's had to lie to everyone who loves him and he hasn't yet learned how to be a true partner to Liz. He makes a lot of promises and doesn't follow through. That said, Liz's ambition is overwhelming to her and what she's doing with the alien DNA is unethical. It's not right. In her mind, it's "I'm taking a risk, but I could possibly save so many people." In his mind, the risk is too great. You don't just get to mess with somebody else, even if she's saying it's not hurting anyone. There's this moment in the fight where she says, "I'm not hurting anyone," and he just looks at her with this searing look and it's like, no, she is. They're hurting each other. I think that politically right now, they are on opposite sides of a major issue that affects both of them. We wanted to tell a story in which the conflict in their relationship just comes from the two of them. It's not about Diego. It's not about California. It's about Liz and Max and they're not able to align right now. They love each other so much, but sometimes that's just not enough.

Jeanine, did you feel like Liz was doing the right thing by leaving for now?

MASON: I felt certain that this was what was right for Liz. I was just grateful to our writers that they wrote her in a way that feels, to me, real and mature and actually indicative of a 29-year-old woman who says, right now, this is too much and I need my space. I need to reclaim my agency and I need to go. There's a sense with them and their epic love, the energy of Max and Liz, that probably plays into her being okay with saying, right now is not the right time. I can believe that maybe it will be later because we found each other after ten years before.

Speaking of breakups, Michael and Maria (Heather Hemmens) also ended things in this episode. Can you explain a little more of Maria's thinking there?

MACKENZIE:  I think that Maria's reasoning comes from not wanting to hold anybody back and not wanting to hold herself back. She's made Michael a lot of promises. She's promised that she isn't going to leave him alone and she realizes that she can't keep a promise to herself while also keeping a promise to Michael. In her mind, she's in this difficult situation in which she's watching the man she loves go racing to save someone else that she loves, but then wants her to stay out of the fray. Rather than spend the rest of her life fighting about that, she's just got to let him go. It's kind of heartbreaking. I really loved that scene. Both her actors did a phenomenal job. They both called me and were like, "Wait! Why?" just freaking out. Sometimes I think you have to take a big step back and look at the bigger picture and the bigger implications on your life. We're not telling stories about high school kids. We're telling stories about people that are almost 30 and they're looking for life partners and I think she realizes that he's not hers and she's not his.

I have to ask about Alex's song. Did you write that, Carina?

MACKENZIE: I wrote it with Leslie Powell and Charlie Snyder and I'm super proud of it. My cut of the royalties are going to The Trevor Project, so I'm very excited for people to finally hear it. There's lots of little throwbacks in there.

How has it been having both Shiri Appleby and Jason Behr on set this season?

MASON: I mean, so wonderful. One of the biggest gifts from this job is just how it's a family within a family within a family. That's a really unique experience to get to have and one that's been positively received by the fans, the original fans and fans of the book series. Then also on set, it's fun to see the excitement on our faces of them coming in and joining forces. There's this feeling of disbelief sometimes where I'll look over and I'm just marveling at it. I told Jason like a year ago I was obsessed with Colin Hanks. We'd been joking about it and I was like, "So, now we're at a point where if I saw him at the grocery store, I could tell him we're friends? That could be my intro?" Now he says he's trying to finagle something. I don't know what, but I'm going to die.

The show does so well at being relevant and part of the conversation. Is there one scene, storyline, or interaction your most proud of this season? The scene with Liz and Max in the diner in the penultimate episode where Liz tells Max, “You don’t get this. That’s not your fault it’s just the reality of our experiences,” really stood out to me.

MASON: It's our favorite thing about the show and that we're supported, to be honest, and have our eyes open in that way is such a gift. It's just amazing the timing of last week's episode, alongside these conversations that are happening about Black lives matter and how much they do. It was so powerful. I think that's the kind of stuff that the universe is able to reward you with, when you do something that is right and you're willing to have a conversation that maybe everybody else is dancing around a bit. It was powerful for me to sit there and work on those lines and load them up with all the feelings that I do very much share about, I can love and emphasize with you and you can love and emphasize with me, but you have to understand that it's nothing negative to say that you're not going to ultimately understand. That doesn't mean you can't be an ally.

MACKENZIE: In the current climate, I'm really grateful that we get to ask questions and have tough conversations about race and privilege and misogyny and all of these tough conversations that we're able to reflect on. We just sort of live in that world. Seeing what's been going on in the world lately, I've just been very proud of our show and that no matter what we're going through as a society, I feel like we have been asking relevant questions during our time on Roswell. It makes things feel a little bit less trivial.

Can you tease anything for season 3?

MACKENZIE: The interesting thing is that before we took our extended break, we were planning on a season about racism in the police department. So during the break, we're doing a whole lot of thinking about how we're going to take a look at our plans with new eyes.

~ EW

[medea10]

My Review of Magical Girl Site

How did I get into this anime? I…huh…Good question! I don’t recall. Probably some other anime reviewers mentioned it and I put it on the Amazon/Netflix list hoping I won’t have to watch it any time soon. Two years later and here we are!

Aya Asagiri’s life is a living hell. She is constantly bullied at school and no one does a thing to stop it. Her teachers don’t care about her well-being. Her father barely notices she exists. And to top it off, her brother beats the crap out of her just for him to relieve stress! Is it any wonder that she wants to commit suicide? One night, her computer mysteriously turns on to a website, promoting Aya to become a magical girl. She brushed it off and thought nothing of it…

That is until the next morning when she finds a note and a gun in her shoe locker. After being tortured by her bullies and almost raped, she finds herself at the end of her ropes and pulls out the mysterious gun. When she pulled the trigger, her bullies disappeared. Turns out, the targets are transported to another place. In the case of some of her bullies, they were transported to in front of a moving train.

Karma, bitches!

It’s unknown why Aya was specifically chosen to become a magical girl, but fellow magical girl Yatsumura feels she could use Aya’s magic to combat a looming threat to other magical girls. But they must not overuse their magic, otherwise they will die.

BETWEEN THE SUB AND THE DUB: As of this moment, this anime seems to be in the capable hands of Amazon Prime. And we all know how well they treat animes, right?! Hahaha! Funny! Anyways, don’t expect a dub! The cast seems to be comprised of many female seiyuus I’m not particularly familiar with. I mean with the exception of Aina Suzuki, I hear her sounds every day thanks to the Love Live game apps! Add to that the creepy, raspy voice of Frieza playing the site administrator! One voice actor however I heard the second he let out a creepy, hygena-like laugh, I knew exactly who this crazy bastard was! Nobuhiko Okamoto plays a great psychopath. Here’s what you might recognize these folks from.

*Aya is played by Yuuko Oono

*Yatsumura is played by Himika Akaneya

*Sarina is played by Haruka Yamazaki (known for Ruka on Hayate the Combat Butler, Mero on Monster Musume, Aika on High School DxD, and Natsumi on Danganronpa 3)

*Nijimi is played by Yuu Serizawa (known for Shera on How Not to Summon a Demon Lord)

*Shioi is played by Aina Suzuki (known for Mari on Love Live Sunshine)

AUTOMATICLY THROWN ON DISLIKED LIST: Okay children, who automatically ends up on my hate list for life?

Fuckers who commit rape and fuckers who kill animals for fun!

Damn right! Give this anime some credit for not showing Aya’s bullies throwing a cat in front of a moving train. If this were 10 years ago, they probably would have animated it and I would have been puking afterward. I’m not sure which of Aya’s bullies threw a cat in front of a moving train, but for the time being, I’m throwing them all on the list.

And while I’m here, Sarina! She was like the ring-leader in the bullying of Aya. I’m almost certain she’s the bitch that killed the stray cat but I have no proof of that. With my history with horrible people like that, I have no sympathy for bullies in the slightest and feel she got what was coming to her. Bitch, you got that big, ugly scar on your neck for a reason. You got what was coming!

DEFINITELY BELONGS IN DISLIKE HISTORY: Now that I got the usual gripe off my chest, gotta add Aya’s onii-chan, Kaname! Sweet merciful crap, do I love hearing Nobuhiko Okamoto play a psychopath, but this is going way too far. And Kaname is just irredeemable! He has this complex that makes him think he’s on God-tier and everyone else is beneth him. Now I do have to hate Kaname and Aya’s father for placing this kind of pressure on Kaname and beating the shit out of him if he gets bad grades. But good fuck, this guy just pushes past the line of no return when he tries to manipulate little girls, steal their power, and lose control. And this wasn’t like he had no control over his own body and wants to stop this from happening! Kaname meant every thing he did to his sister and her friends. OH…and that one guy he forced to off himself! I just can’t even with this guy!

SHIPPING: I know a lot of people ship the hell out of Aya and Yatsumura and yeah, I can see that and I would ship them too. But for reals, I just want these two girls to live a life of peace together for as long as they’re around. For fuck’s sake, did you see the shit they put up with in their lives? Aya was bullied relentlessly at home and school. Yatsumura watched her whole family be slaughtered by a creep. These girls deserve some sort of peace! I know this is the shipping category, but I felt the need to say this.

STICKS: Okay anime, what are you doing? Aya uses a magical gun! Sarina uses a magical yo-yo! Nijimi uses magical panties (insert immature laugh here)! Yatsumura uses a magical remote! How hard is it to have them say that! And I probably shouldn’t put blame on the anime and holler at the manga! But calling magical items “Sticks”, that feels…I don’t want to say stupid, but I can’t think of any other word to go along with that. I just feel like the manga was on some deadline and they were frantically finishing what to call their magical items and just went “FUCK IT, IT’S STICKS”.

COULD HAVE FOOLED ME: In the “Could have fooled me” category we have a boy who identifies as a girl magical girl! Man, 2018 definitely was the progressive AF year! I mean, we had Lily from Zombieland Saga, we had the girls who transformed into magical buff men in Magical Girl Ore, and now THIS! So we have Kiyo! An openly transgendered magical girl that’s not a token joke! Okay, well done guys! Pearl points all around!

ENDING: Early in the series, we learned about a moment called “The Tempest”. A catastrophic even set to take place once enough negative energy is caught. There are a lot of Magical Girl Site administrators that take advantage of “POOR UNFORTUNATE SOULS”. They pick the most unfortunate girls as pawns in their game. And once “The Tempest” hits, everyone will die and the world will start over anew. Aya and Yatsumura end up meeting new magical girl allies and even a few that were coersed by different administrators. Not to mention one of Aya’s bullies is a magical girl too with a score to settle! What could be worse?

How about we add Aya’s disgusting brother to this mix?! As I’ve mentioned before, Aya’s brother Kaname would use Aya as a personal punching bag in order to get rid of stress. When Aya became a magical girl, she would spend more time with Yatsumura or the other girls, leaving Kaname to go without slugging his sister. So fuckface over here manipulates another magical girl, Nijimi to do what he says. This leads to him stealing Nijimi’s underwear and gaining her magical power of mind control. I never thought I would have to say a sentence like that, but here we are.

Kaname went out of control with this power as he managed to injure all of the girls and give a fatal blow to Nijimi. But another possible enemy dropped a bomb on us when they kidnapped Kaname. THEN, these girls are targeted at Nijimi’s funeral and they almost died. Add another plot-twist, a police officer that’s been seen from time to time in a lot of the tragedies in the show is in cahoots with one of the magical girl site administrators. This keeps getting fuckier by the minute! Well, the girls felt it was time to take action and try to take out the administrators that screwed them with this doomed fate. But once they took out one of the administrators, they came across an ugly truth.

Sight administrators are magical girls who died previously!

Yeah, not that big of a shock! Madoka Magica gave us magical girls who end up so corrupt that they become witches they’re supposed to fight. While some of the administrators ended up falling to these girls, Nana (the creepy one we’ve been watching since ep 1) is the hardest one to take out. She ends up killing Yatsumura (because she used up too much of her power), but then manipulates her to become an administrator.

Once she manipulated Yatsumura, she ends up going after Aya. And after a lot of back-and-forth between the two girls, Yatsumura was able to snap out of Nana’s control and they managed to take out Nana. And we end the series with a brighter future for Aya and Yatsumura as their lives become a little less unfortunate.

Yeah, few issues here!

1.) There are still a butt-load of site administrators. Isn’t there still a “Tempest” going to happen? 2.) Aya and Yatsumura’s lives aren’t in danger anymore after using fuck-tons of their power? WTF?! 3.) What was the point of Aya shooting herself to get Yatsumura back? I am not following you. Is this some sort of Insception shit?! 4.) That detective! Misumi was his name? Why was he just casually talking to Nana a few episodes back? 5.) Why don’t we see him until the final few moments in the finale? 6.) WHY DID HE RAPE KANAME?! 7.) WHY WAS THIS SCENE A THING? 8.) I don’t want to say Kaname deserved it, buuuuuut… Uuuggghhh…Mumble, mumble. I can’t finish that thought. 9.) These site administrators are probably pissed and are going to want revenge on these magical girls. What’s going on here?

…Let me guess, I need to read the manga to get all my questions answered…

FUCKING FIGURES!

Seriously...what Misumi did. That scene is forever etched in my brain forever. Next to that scene of Kaname wiggling his junk in front of a guy.

This anime was pretty bad. No wait...

This anime was way too edgy for me! Episode 1 was just absolute torture porn involving Aya. The first episode managed to combine the bully scene in Vivid Strike, the puppy killing scene in Elfen Lied, and every bullying episode of Hell Girl all into one single episode. As for the rest of this series, they go above and beyond to grab some of the worst aspects of other animes and implement them here. Aya’s older brother almost has a God-complex that rivals that of Light Yagami of Death Note. Nijimi has a devoted fan that’s almost crossing over from the movie Perfect Blue. Body mutilation scenes on levels not seen since Higurashi! And fill this world up with the worst kinds of humans imaginable like in Elfen Lied! This was just too much hatred! Too much!

Add to that, there’s absolutely no resolution to this story. Yes, Aya and Yatsumura are alive and together. But guys, there are still some other-worldly strong site administrators looming! Tempest is still happening. KANAME IS STILL FUCKING ALIVE…literally and figuratively speaking! And with how much this anime has been panned by anime fans across the board, I doubt if this anime will ever receive a sequel. Guys, if you want a really good 12-episode anime about magical girls with an edge, just watch Madoka Magica. But if you’re a curious idiot like me, whatever, you do you!

As this anime is an Amazon Prime exclusive, I’m afraid that’s the only legal outlet for this.

Now that this is over, my next Amazon/Netflix/Crunchyroll anime is…

Grand Blue!

Oh, it’s set in a cute ocean town. Am I going to enjoy some cute absurdity like I did with Tsuritama?

Sort of!

OH GOOD FUCK, WHAT FRAT HOUSE WAS THIS BIRTHED FROM?!

[madamlaydebug]

The Great Awakening has begun ★

Anger, hatred, aggression and fear are the food source of the Archons

The Mainstream Media is the last bastion of the “Deep State”

The real question is how do we become conscious?

We all are Slaves to the System

We all want to be free, healthy, educated and live in a peaceful society

Mass Awakening is the Cabal’s greatest Fear

The awakening is erupting. Being awake comes with a price. It may have been difficult and painful going through the stages of awakening, but convincing others by challenging circumstances and conditions to open the eyes and minds of others is even more difficult. It has become a struggle against time when awake and one sees all the injustices that could have easily been avoided.

It’s very sad to see unawakened people being tossed to and fro, without having a clue as to what is really going on. But even that is an “engineered” shake-up designed by the Deep State. Nevertheless, that should help every one of us to come to our senses and surpass this false reality. Millions are flocking to alternative news sources to try to make sense of what’s going on, stumbling across realities they never considered possible, or could have ever imagined before.

If the truth be known, the awake are responsible for sharing it ardently, but also for doing it with a passion. Not always pleasant, but a duty that must be done. The hour is late and the timeframe we are living in is terrible, the necessity brings forth optimal awareness and swift action. There’s no alternative left.

The world is bankrupt financially, economically, and morally, but through manipulation and deceit, people are led to believe that all is well. It’s absolutely absurd that all the bubble assets are at such astronomical highs, while wealth-preservation assets like gold and silver have been totally annihilated through manipulation. The elite and the media continuously fool the people regarding the state of the world.

Anger, hatred, aggression and fear are the food source of the Archons

The tactics employed are comprised of manipulating economies, trade and the masses through fear: fear of war, fear of starvation, fear of economic collapse, imprisonment and death. This state of mind has directed and shaped global events for centuries and has become the standard operating procedure. This process of enslaving civilisations is contrary to the survival drive of humanity and suppresses the natural instinct of all humans to do good and be kind to each other.

Do not view all this madness from a foundation of fear; this will just make you angry and aggressive, which in turn will lead to violence and a perpetuation of this madness. It is hard to remain calm when faced with the hard truth, but it’s what must be done, in order to safely get through this. Anger, hatred, aggression and fear are the sort of emotions that have led to this madness and it is the food source of the Archons. Stop feeding them and help to change our world view completely. In this way, we will change everything for the better, by changing our way of thinking.

Bear in mind; the real purpose of government is, always and everywhere, to enable the few to exploit the many. The credit money system is a clever way of doing so. The bureaucracy will continue to churn out laws, statutes, codes and regulations that reinforce its powers and value systems and those of the police state and its corporate allies, rendering the rest of us petty criminals. The average citizen unknowingly commits three felonies a day, thanks to this overabundance of vague laws that render otherwise innocent activity illegal. As an example, small farmers who dare to make unpasteurised goat cheese and share it with members of their community will continue to have their farms raided.

The Mainstream Media, the last bastion of the “Deep State”

The Mainstream Media is the last bastion of the “Deep State” organised crime network that, over the years in the past, has infiltrated and hijacked most, if not all institutions. But, their days are numbered and the ensuing collapse will most likely be violent and shocking to all those unaware of what is unfolding.

The principal source of the Deep State’s power is their control of the process of creating and distributing money, i.e. their ownership of almost all of the world’s central banks, and multinationals. They have used this money-power to bribe, blackmail and assassinate people at top levels of power in order to enforce their control. They also control the corporate media and have been using every propaganda tool at their disposal to rig society and markets where necessary.

Fortunately, trust in the mainstream media has fallen to an all-time low and continues to plummet. Much of this has to do with an increasingly aware and disgruntled public: More and more people are able to discern a mainstream media totally lacking integrity, thanks to the rising popularity of the independent/alternative media, exposing the dishonesty.

People are increasingly seeing right through the various media sources with their dogmatic, unhealthy sceptics, shills, trolls, pseudo-debunkers, controlled opposition agents, biasing, filtering and in-your-face lies; intended to sell us the spin of disinformation to keep people ignorant, deceived and helplessly anaesthetised in the world’s matrix controlling system.

The real question is how do we become conscious?

Our overwhelming, uncontrollable mass awakening is what the world’s ruling elite fear the most. Since we greatly outnumber them and their associates, they wouldn’t know how to deal with our vast numbers, even with their advanced technology. As a result, the real question is how do we become conscious?

Since ancient times, under the ruling thumb of the world’s Black Nobility or dark overlords, humanity has been hacked, stymied, suppressed and coerced into submission through mind controlling, soul destroying atrocities. Those unable to see that just about every matter under the sun is a deception, that their family and friends are affected in every way imaginable; those who don’t yet realise the extent to which the dark overlords have us tightly stitched up, are indeed about to experience the shock of a lifetime when this entire fraudulent system comes crashing down. What they have clung to as a reality will soon sink into the abyss of Grand Deceptions.

Simply, become conscious by choosing it. By acting on those synchronicities better known as meaningful coincidences. By acting on that which calls, moves and inspires us. Taking action through listening to our inner voice, coming from our inner being; paying attention to our gut feelings and basic instincts.

Choosing to become conscious means detaching one’s self from the mind control programming; escaping the effects of the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual prison matrix woven around us by the Globalist’s oppression.

Breaking free from the mind programming and the imposition of others, with multidimensional consciousness, escaping the dualistic confinements of matter, energy and space-time, anything is possible, and the Truth will be revealed. Creating a driving desire to find out more about the truth regarding what is going on in our world. Seeing that the world is in a mess and we are all plodding along, business as usual, expecting someone else to sort it all out. Most of us are too busy earning money and surviving, as surviving, by design, takes up all our time. Most people cannot seem to see beyond that and that is why we are in this mess in the first place.

We have all been manipulated and played. We have all been mesmerised, hypnotised and turned into consumer-driven slaves. Making money for the large corporations and the 0.1% rich of the world is the name of the game, or so we have been programmed. Each day they get richer and richer, finding new ways, like global warming and CO2 emission taxes, to force us to part with our hard-earned money; they are very clever at it. They know how to manipulate the human mind, they know how to get us to spend our money and we don’t even realise it is happening.

Governments extract far too much money from us, and we use almost all of our time on Earth working for this money. They leave every family with a small amount to spare, while the really wealthy manage to avoid paying their taxes through carefully engineered loopholes.

The real purpose of government is, always and everywhere, to enable the few to exploit the many. The money system is a clever way of doing so.

We all are Slaves to the System

The modern world of industry, commerce, and investment works on win-win software. Only governments with their conflicts, wars, taxes, tariffs, ‘do-this laws’, and ‘don’t-do-that prohibitions’, continue to operate on pre-civilised programming. It is a relic, an institution with a ‘grab whatever we can grab’ mentality.

A trade war is just as phony as a war on drugs, a war on crime, or a war on terror. None are worth fighting for. And none are winnable. It is meant to reward the elite at others’ expense. Nothing more, nothing less. Think of it, we are all, quite simply, slaves to the system! The people at the bottom are paying for the people at the top to keep their lavish life styles. We pay our taxes and any money that is left over is coveted by major corporations.

We are bombarded with adverts continuously, telling us to buy more stuff we don’t need. We are encouraged to spend, spend and then spend some more. We replace everything, even when it doesn’t need replacing. We need to get out of this mentality.

We need to re-cycle, re-use and make do with what we have. We have all been brainwashed into this consumerism insanity. It’s all been smoke and mirrors, mind-games, played out on the world stage, aiming to keep us all in a state of awe and fear.

We all want to be free, healthy, educated, and live in a peaceful society

Our subconscious minds have been conditioned to see only what differentiates us, rather the things that bind us. Believe it or not, we’re extremely similar in all aspects.

We may come from different backgrounds or different cultures, but we all have the same basic values in life. We all want to be free, healthy, educated, to live in a peaceful society and to have access to the basic necessities for survival. That’s about it. Wherever we live in the world. Basically, all we really want is to be happy and healthy.

Instead, we have wars, hunger, insecurity, homelessness, and many around the world don’t have access to clean water and food. And it’s all by design because, people who are constantly “on the edge” don’t have time for self-education, introspection and eventually spiritual awakening.

We all are the victims of mass propaganda and brainwashing. It has reached the point where families choose to believe the media and the governments of the world, rather than members of their own family and friends who have woken up to the truth and are attempting to warn them and awaken them.

The truth can be frightening and that is why people want to avoid it. They would rather stick their heads in the sand like an ostrich, believing that as long as they choose not to look at it, it will not exist. Unfortunately for them, Truth has a way of existing, even in the face of ridicule and denial. It does not need the approval of a counterparty to become legitimate. Truth simply Is. Once you know the truth, you can never go back, even if you want to. The truth cannot be unseen; once seen, the truth stays with you forever. In any event, be assured, the truth will come out in the end, as it always does.

The truth comes at a cost – it will end all the lies and the illusions that people previously based their entire lives on. And that is an on-going process. – Many feel lost and afraid right now all across the spectrum of humanity. This deliberate creation of chaos is designed to do just that. However, parallel and simultaneous to their psychotic designs, a massive arousal of the human spirit is occurring, spurred on by an arising of conscious awareness and a deep sense of growing personal realisation and empowerment.

Most may not recognise these rising, seemingly confusing energetic changes, as being the creative process at work, but it is, THE GREAT AWAKENING. First, preceding this creativity is a destructive process, eliminating everything that is unreal and inhibitive of personal development and progress. These two dynamics work alongside each other.

The Elite see us as their slaves, our sole purpose being to provide them with our energy money, so that they can follow their master plan, bringing about the New World Order.

We have procreated very well and are now, in their view, overrunning the planet, so they now want to cull a large number of us. Hence GMO’s, fluoride, chemtrails, vaccinations and the endless wars; all these things lower our immunity for whatever they have planned for us.

They want us to be in a state of eternal slumber, hypnotised and brainwashed by their omnipresent propaganda and most of us have unwittingly complied with their wishes. But, we are more powerful than them and they know it, which is why they have been so patient. Humanity is waking up, slowly but surely.

One of the reasons humanity cannot grasp what is going on, is because these creatures are so evil, that it’s hard to believe just how vile they are. And people are actually right in their disbelief of these atrocities: human beings cannot be this cruel!

Humans are not at the pinnacle of this diabolical plan, it is a Reptilian agenda, and Reptilians cannot experience positive emotions. They are simply unable to care for others or to experience noble emotions, such as love or empathy. They are driven by fear, hate, rivalry and competition. The truth is far stranger and more incredible than we can imagine, say whistle-blowers like Corey Goode.

Will our mass awakening to the deception produce a turnaround, into a world that makes a difference for everyone? A world where there are no predators, no controlling hierarchy, no blood-sucking vampires, slave-drivers at the top, ruling the enslaved at the bottom. No more fighting for self-sufficiency, because we will achieve everything in the communities we live in.

It is up to all of us to contribute our part.

Source: Final Wakeup Call

LOVE; ONE Inner Light & a New Earth to EveryONE ★

[thebigpapilio]

An Eminent Dethroning: A Persona 5/Persona Q2 Fic!

SPOILERS FOR PERSONA 5 & PERSONA Q2: NEW CINEMA LABYRINTH!

My inspiration was a post from @write-it-motherfuckers. Give me a bit to find it!

AO3 Link

Featured Ships: Ann x Shiho, later Ann x Shiho x Ryuji, 

Minor Ships: Makoto x Haru, Yusuke x Futaba

"The greatest heroes are those who do their duty in the daily grind of domestic affairs whilst the world whirls as a maddening dreidel. " -Florence Nightingale

________________________________________________________________

The trouble had started when Ann’s best friend had been caught up in a battle between Kamoshidaman, his sidekick Inazuma, and the villain Akuyaku. She was an innocent bystander, and a blow from the “hero” sent the criminal flying right into Shiho from outside the building. Ann’s best friend was sent through the window with the criminal, and while both of them landed on a nearby building, the far less durable girl barely survived.

Weeks passed, and Ann did not learn of any sign of Kamoshidaman apologizing. It seemed like life went on as usual, as if Shiho’s hospitalization didn’t matter anymore.

Sure, Shiho had eventually returned to consciousness about half a month ago, but the scars of the event would stay for the rest of her life.

Ann felt powerless every time she stared at Shiho or the so-called hero of Kamo City. She wanted to confront Kamoshidaman, but what was anyone supposed to do against the superhuman superstar?

She knew that if she worked upfront against Kamoshidaman he would shut her down easily; all he had to do was frame her as a villain and in less than a week, she would be driven out of the city at best.

That was when Carmen came to her. Her fury had been sensed by the powerful spirit, and she had been henceforth blessed with the ability to turn into a superpowered form of her own - not in the same way that Kamoshida did.

With the dancer spirit on her side, she now had the power to do something.

________________________________________________________________

Kamoshida had heard about a bank robbery ongoing a while away from where he was. Transforming into his alter ego, he flew off into the night in preparation for a brawl.

When he got there, though, he found the police taking the already defeated criminals into custody.

Flying down, he asked the officers how they had stopped the criminal scum before he even got there. Nobody could give him a good answer, but they all agreed that it had started with a lean red figure bursting into the bank in the middle of a stand-down between the officers and the offenders. Like a firecracker whizzing through the air, all the would-be robbers suddenly had their guns knocked out of their hands, followed by attacks that knocked them unconscious. Other than that, no one could give him good enough details, and the security feeds had been taken out by the robbers earlier, making them obsolete.

After ensuring everything was settled, a disgruntled Kamoshidaman left back for his house. A few days later, he and his sidekick Inazuma were battling a villainess called Lilen, a woman with the power to grow plants anywhere. It had culminated when after Inazuma had been swatted away from the battle and knocked unconscious, Kamoshida had been snatched and held by all four limbs by her monstrous “Plutonian Death Trap,” most likely with intentions of ripping him apart limb by limb. Lilen’s command to do so, however, was interrupted by the giant plant releasing an ear-shattering squeal in pain as some of its other leafy appendages had suddenly been caught ablaze. Confused as he was, Kamoshidaman took the opportunity and knocked out Lilen while she tried to put out the flames. This time, though, Kamoshidaman noticed something left at the remains of the fallen plant.

Upon further inspection, it appeared to be a card. It stated:

“To Kamoshidaman, the so-called protector of Kamo City,

I know the evils you have committed. You hold this place under your thumb, and if anyone so much as slightly displeases you , they are branded evil by you, and the rest of Kamo City follows suit like lemmings off a cliff.

I will not fight you, you monster. Instead, I will steal all that you truly desire from your heroic actions – your glory and your power.

Yours truly,

Panther & Carmen”

Kamoshidaman took it to the police, in the hopes they might track the writer down. Oddly enough, the police saw no problem with it, for when it was returned to Kamoshidaman, not only was the signature missing but also the text had changed entirely into words of adoration and gratitude from a fan called Tomo P.

Infuriated, Kamoshidaman took his frustration out on “Inazuma” that night. That punk was the only one who knew his identity, and after being beaten down despite the electrokinetic powers he’d mysteriously acquired, the little hooligan had been given an option; join him against evil at his beck and call, or have him and his family driven out of the city… if not worse .

Storming off, Kamoshida did not think that the abuse would be the last straw for Ryuji. He had heard about the card from the perverted powerhouse, so he decided that the mysterious saviors and this Tomo P. from the last two moments of crime needed to be looked into.

________________________________________________________________

Time passed, as it always does, but now, results were slowly starting to show up. As soon as the story of Panther and Carmen had reached the public, Kamoshidaman began to fade into obscurity.

The older and more experienced superhero always seemed to be too slow to get to minor battles, and for major villains and villainesses it was presumed that if Panther showed up, it was only to save Kamoshidaman at the last moment. The protector of Kamo City would have been spending more time looking for the mysterious person, but Inazuma had offered to do all the research in exchange for less actual fighting.

Other than that, he was considering something to himself. Once I’ve found and beaten Panther and her ally senseless, he would ponder, should I give them a second chance like I’ve graciously done for that brat or just brand them villains and kick them out of my place ? After all, this was his city - he and only he was supposed to have true power and authority, and no one was going to challenge that!

Ryuji Sakamoto, despite his intense hatred of the leverage-holding loser, really was doing some looking for the elusive figure. However, he had been keeping info from his barbaric boss; the giant-jawed jerk thought he was a lot further away from the truth then he actually was.

In fact, he was pretty sure he at least had a theory to the answer. Soon, he was going to go and find out for himself.

By now, Ann had long graduated high school, and would soon be a freshman in college. Shiho had fully healed from the incident, and knew about her acts as Panther. Her best friend kept it secret, but the civilian had asked her to ensure that she would kill none of the bad guys during her “extracurricular activities.”

Shiho had not needed to ask Ann the question - such was the plan, anyway - but she assured Shiho that would happen. Sadly, there were those public executions that Kamoshidaman held, but those were only for the people he managed to catch, and considering that crime rates dropped like a blimp filled with iron since Panther showed up, the executions almost never happened. Things were slowly looking up.

But because the world takes a pleasure sicker and more twisted than Kamoshidaman himself in hurting others, it was about then when Inazuma showed up at her apartment.

She had been sitting on the rooftops as Panther when he arrived. It was clear he had been looking for something, but she didn’t know if the villain’s sidekick was looking for her . Honestly, he always looked uncomfortable when no one else was looking, he would always leave the scene as quickly as he could, and she was quite sure that not all the marks she saw him with were from superpowered evildoers. With all the famous superheroes in Kamo City, attackers didn’t show up often enough for Inazuma to get as many scars and whatnot as he had.

If someone were to fashion the energy from such a staredown into a blade, chances are it could cleave Kamoshidaman in two.

“... I’m guessing you’re Panther?” Kamoshidaman’s electrokinetic colleague asked her.

She didn’t respond, but that was all Inazuma needed to know.

“Listen,” he asked, “I’ll keep this secret-”

“But what?” Panther spoke, breaking her silence and releasing the pent-up fury she had held for… what now, five years? “I have to stop taking that jerk’s spotlight? I have to idolize him no matter what he does?”

Raising his arms in mock surrender, the sidekick nervously replied, “Cool it, Catgirl! I don’t have any blackmail-based intentions!”

At Panther’s shocked silence, Inazuma continued. “If anything, I want your help in something instead.”

________________________________________________________________

After Inazuma explained the abuse and blackmail Kamoshidaman held over him, and Ann explained the story of Shiho’s hospitalization and forward, the two had jokingly reintroduced themselves. As it turned out, Ann and Inazuma - whom she now knew as Ryuji Sakamoto - went to the same university. Sure, Ryuji was on the path to being a physical therapist - where was this guy about five years ago, Ann would lament - and she was looking towards the path of acting, but they were still close enough to see each other often.

One of the first things Ann did was introduce Ryuji to Shiho and explain everything. It was better now than for the more “normal” one of the three to discover this suddenly close relationship and grow suspicious on her own. Thankfully, Shiho agreed to keep his secret too - but for whatever reason, there was teasing about her liking him.

The whole world seemed to think the same thing about their heroic forms.  One of the first things Ryuji did upon settling into his work with Ann was to get the one who gave him his power - a pirate spirit called Captain Kidd - to give him a new look when he fought with Panther so Kamoshidaman couldn't figure out he was betraying him.

He had renamed himself Skull in this form, and anyone who asked him why would hear that he and his feline-themed counterpart planned to “get this city to stop running around like headless idiots.”

Skull was the one who made public appearances, but Panther still kept herself hidden. There was still plenty of clamor about the two, and what was even more awkward for them was that many people for whatever reason shipped them.

Some people had written fanfics about the duo. Most of them featured something called a “Love Square,” featuring made-up versions of their civilian identities. Ryuji was usually portrayed as either a try-hard kid trying to be a thug or a wealthy and debonair yet unhappily restrained young man, while Ann was either portrayed as the type who was completely “normal” outwardly but incredibly odd as Panther or the class clown who turned into an incredibly aloof superheroine in secret. No fanfic was even close to the truth. Shiho had written a fic once that was quite inaccurate but still closer than anything she had read. She didn’t post it on any websites, of course, but she did safely send it to Ryuji and Ann in the hopes of teasing them.

Kamoshidaman, through all of the popularity given to the supposed trio of upstarts, was practically old news, and he was livid about it. As the amount of attention the public paid to Panther slowly grew, his fury did the same, and while it took a boost with the appearance of Skull, it was only on the day that in a passing discussion he overheard someone forget who Kamoshidaman was - even though they remembered a second later - that he lost the last of his patience for the hidden heroine.

________________________________________________________________

The tension between the heroes and the “hero” peaked almost 6.5 years after Panther beat Kamoshidaman to that bank, and at some point, she had obtained a nasty crush on her filter-less friend and partner Skull. She and Shiho had been dating for about 3-4 months after Shiho’s release from the hospital, and many a time they had talked about adding the “boneheaded” boy to their relationship. The agreement that they would both be okay with it was unanimous, but they both had yet to ask him as of then.

It seemed as if the universe itself was waiting on them to start dating, and to push them along, it sent them other spirit-powered heroes that would also aid them in battle on occasion.

They had made a group from all the heroes in their team, although the others were seldom brought in unless needed for backup and/or against specific villains. Consisting of the artistic yet socially awkward Fox, the antihero-turned-villain-turned-fully-hero Crow, the slowly less antisocial tech expert Oracle (who was most commonly asked for due to her ability with both technology and battle), and the deadly duo of the brutal yet kind Queen & the cordial yet intimidating Noir (the two of which had started dating after meeting up one battle), the heroes nicknamed the Spirit Guardians were feared and loved by Kamo City depending on who you would be to them.

One fateful day, it was both Kamoshidaman and not Kamoshidaman who took action. He knew that he no longer had the power to brand the Spirit Guardians as villains and let the city do the work for him, so he decided to take more dramatic measures.

Dākumasuku K immediately threw Kamo City into panic, the reportedly-possessed superhero demanding a battle between both him and the duo of Panther and Carmen, claiming only those two could save him by breaking the dark mask he wore. A date was set, and if they would not show up and fight him in person, he would destroy something or someone every day they didn’t appear.

Inazuma had overheard this plan from him, and Skull sent it to the woman in charge. Sadly, it was only Panther and Skull in town, as the other Spirit Guardians either lived in other areas and had been nearby during their appearances or would not be able to make it without arousing suspicion as to their identities. They had been planning this final attack on not only Kamoshidaman but also his reputation almost since their partnership began, and now they could use it!

Kamoshidaman had hurt many people, and there were many who had plenty of negative things to say about him but did not on fear of ostracism, banishment, execution, or some combination of the three. Silently, they went around and collected those people’s stories, stating that when the information was broadcasted it would be unclear who each story was from.

________________________________________________________________

Panther really hated Kamoshidaman, but she hated the idea of people getting hurt even more, so for the first time known to Kamo City, she showed up in broad daylight on her lonesome. Dākumasuku K had been waiting for her, and when asked where the person known as Carmen was, she claimed that Carmen was nonexistent, having merely been a red herring of sorts. Dākumasuku K growled, and the battle began.

When the smoke cleared, things darkened as a well-weakened Dākumasuku K stood over the beaten superheroine, with his mask broken but still on.

“You’re supposed to be freed!” Panther barely cried out, gasping and gaping at the supervillain.

Leaning in, Kamoshidaman whispered to her, “I was free to do as I pleased, you *****. You, however, are about to lose your freedom for attempting to shackle my justice.”

At her angered scowl, Kamoshidaman laughed to himself. Turning away from the platinum blonde, he snarked, “Never meet your heroes, kid. Now stay there while I-”

“It’s funny how you talked about meeting heroes…”

Kamoshidaman whipped around to stare at the superheroine, who was slowly getting up from the ground.

“All the superpowered people in this city that I know of are either me, the Spirit Guardians, or supervillains. You aren’t me, and you sure as **** aren’t joining the team, so by process of elimination…”

“Bold words for someone not entirely off the ground, you stupid girl.” Kamoshidaman grated, his voice like a rubber band stretched to its limits, as if Panther pushing him any further would send him rocketing away.

Knowing she had him angry, the feline-themed superheroine smirked. “Bolder words for someone who’s about to be floored .”

Now that she was standing - albeit barely - she suddenly let out a shrill whistle, and almost right after, every big screen and TV in the city shut off for a few seconds. When they returned, a singular video played on all of them.

It was an elegant reading by a robotic voice, detailing each and every one of the offenses that all of the interviewees had given to the true heroes. As promised, not one of the victims were named or recorded - their words had been written down instead, so Kamoshidaman wouldn’t know who to track down, as all the victims picked out were all innocent bystanders that the anti-villain had ignored while trampling on his climb to fame and power. Kamoshidaman simultaneously turned white as an albino cat and red as a ladybug as he watched his cruel actions be exposed to the entirety of Kamo City.

Even if people were unsure of whom to trust then, the last reading and only named victim would still have set Kamo City into an outrage.

Inazuma , who had been unseen since the last fight against Crow during his villainous days as The Prince, was shown at the end, looking like a husk of what the world had seen the brash but quiet sidekick to be. He revealed all the pain Kamoshida had brought upon him, and at the end of his statements, he began with some information that closed the casket on not only any possible remains of Kamoshidaman’s respect but those of his civilian identity.

“You’re a special kind of ******, you know? Most evildoers have the decency to appear as good people outside of the mask. You were abusive to me as a ‘hero’ and as my former sports teacher. People of Kamo City, if you want to take your anger out on this guy, you’ll find him at…”

Inazuma proceeded to blab the information of the high school where the one named Kamoshida (who other than Inazuma had never been figured out despite both of his names being horrifyingly similar) worked and any other way to reach him, Inazuma ended the video with the nastiest scowl anyone had seen and a goodbye. You could tell he wanted to give Kamoshida the middle finger and say certain words following that goodbye, but Panther had decided that it would not be a good idea to show that stuff on live TV broadcasted to the whole city.

As it turned out, Kamoshidaman was literally empowered by the people. The more that trusted him, the more that bowed to his power and authority, the more powerful he would be. Even as Kamoshida, he’d been abusing some of his students and offering rewards for others in exchange for… favors . Ugh.

That was in the past, thankfully; as of the aftermath, the vexing villain was barely stronger than his normal self, and although he tried to escape after the video ended, it turned out Skull and the other heroes had been waiting for him, all of them but Oracle (who had no weapon) complete with painful surprises. Despite many of the public’s opinion that Kamoshida should be publicly executed like he had done to some decent people, Kamo City and its true heroes refused, pointing out that doing that was stooping to the worst of Kamoshida’s levels. Instead, they decided to give him a choice on his fate based on his “nicer punishments.”

Option 1 was simple – he could stay in the city, but he would be rotting in their prisons for the rest of his days, forced to move prisons every few years in order to keep him from plotting with others. Option 2 was more complicated – he would leave the city and never come back, and if he tried to begin superhero work once more somewhere else, no matter how well he meant, he would be tracked, struck down, dragged back to Kamo City (who despite the surprising lack of link to its former “protector” was in dire need of a new name) and would be forced into taking Option 1 from there.

He chose Option 2 – he still believed he had done no wrong, but he was smart enough to not go against those who were once his power source. Kamoshida was kicked out of the city, and other than his worst fans - who either left as well or became quickly evicted supervillains - that was the last anyone wanted to see of him. Every other city they could access was warned about him, and those cities forwarded the information until the rest of the world knew not to trust Kamoshidaman.

________________________________________________________________

A few nights after Kamoshida’s banishment, Ann and Shiho confessed to Ryuji, and the morning after the three woke up as a happy triad.

Soon after, they and the other Spirit Guardians - who revealed themselves to each other soon after the initial victory – pooled their money with the cash reward for their work and bought a big house for their leisure.

Queen and Noir, who were revealed as two girls named Makoto and Haru (and the only ones who knew another Spirit Guardian’s identity other than Ann & Ryuji, who had however intentionally initiated the awakening of the others’ powers and therefore knew everyone’s identities from the start) married about 1.75 years later, and not too long after that they were finalizing adoption papers. The twin brothers named Akira & Ren were so similar in both personality and looks you could easily get which was which wrong all day if they were clothed the same.

Fox and Oracle – who were revealed to be named Yusuke and Futaba - started dating after even more dancing than Ann and Shiho had done with Ryuji, and the only ones who did not know both of them planned to propose soon were each other.

Crow, who they learned had the name of Goro, was aro ace, but unless he trusted you with the truth, it was believed he had a fake relationship with two girls called Caroline & Justine. In the meantime, he spent his days rehabilitating ex-criminals with an old friend who apparently responded to the name Morgana.

After the Spirit Guardians’ hiatus grew long enough, Kamoshidaman eventually grew stupid enough to try pretending to be a hero again. By then, however, he was also much too old and far weaker than he was to have much success; coupled with the fact that everyone knew better than to trust him, the now-rabbit themed “superhero” King Hare was taken down as soon as folks figured out it was him. With the help of some of the Spirit Guardians, three new heroes calling themselves the Phantom Hearts – two near-lookalike young gents called Joker & Wildcard and their sneaky scout Mona – ensured that Kamoshidaman finally made #1.

Sadly for him, that #1 was the number of the path he now takes. At last, Kamoshida finally achieved absolute justice.

[mushroomqueendom]

I did Nazi see that coming. Well, I did, but it's still disappointing.

So I watched the recent Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, and I have…questions.

Like why do we, smart people that we are, keep falling for such a silly trope as “fight hate with love”?

One, what does that even mean? And two, WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN

If you’re not familiar with the term “white liberalism” (aka “white liberal racism”), please read up or watch up or better yet both. A hallmark of white liberalism is the profound graciousness it affords to the least gracious among us. It redefines bigotry in terms of unneeded nuance…and then it dares insist that people of color do the same.

I am particularly disappointed with this particular strain of uninformed white-centric liberalism – a liberalism that purports to want to fight racism, but then approaches it in the meekest voice possible.

“Err, um, excuse me, um, sir…Could you please maybe… not…like…advocate….for…like…. GENOCIDE…or something…..if that’s okay….I’m-not-mad-at-you-we’re-still-friends-right?” Not ok.

In the week’s White Liberal Olympics, Sam Bee executes a perfect white liberal triple backflip and sticks the landing. In the segment in question, Sam Bee interviews a “recovering” white supremacist and asks his opinion on how to fight white supremacy.

HOLD UP.

You’re asking former white supremacists how to fight white supremacy? That might almost seem like logic, if 1) there were any such thing as a former white supremacist and 2) there were any consideration at all given to the protection of people of color and the victims/targets of white supremacy. As expected, the former white supremacist advises that Love, not punches, will conquer all. As expected, the former white supremacist, and Sam Bee by extension, exalt the comfort of self-proclaimed racists over the emotional security of people of color. As. Expected. 

Sigh.

So.

Why are so many white liberals this concerned with staying on racists’ good side?

Well, it’s all about who you empathize with. And much as I’ve enjoyed her show in the past, this segment on Sam Bee’s show is another example that for even the most well-meaning of well-meaning-est liberals, empathy with whiteness continues to trump solidarity with blackness. Put another way, it’s assumed the audience will more easily associate themselves (or maybe a brother or sister, aunt or uncle) with the person who makes the racial gaffe than the person who is a victimof it. And so goes the endorsement of empathy for Mr. Literal White Supremacist. I guess respectability politics are for everyone.

Xxxxxxxxx

Continuing through the segment, Sam Bee invites in Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, whose reinforcing banter culminates in the directive to “hug a white supremacist.” Now this, of course and presumably, is said with some jest, but let’s take a step back, shall we?

The situations they’re describing, in which one might be pressed to confront a former-friend/now-bigot, are not easy things to do. These are hard conversations and not ones that we should ever seek to approach without empathy…but as with all things, even empathy has limits. And those limits come waaaaay before you get to literal “hug a white supremacist” territory.

A couple rules of thumb, primarily for those for which white supremacy is a new concept: – If your empathy has extended to the point wherein you are literally hugging a nazi, nope, nope, stop. That’s not helpful, no matter what late night talk show hosts seem to be selling these days. If your empathy has extended to the point wherein you’re advocating for others to hug nazis instead of doing something, oh I don’t know, actually useful, then I think you don’t understand what empathy is.

“Hug a white supremacist.” Literal words. Spoken out loud. By “allies.” Terrible allies, some might say. All I can say is smdh.

But let’s take a deeeeep breath, and just tease all this apart for a sec. Questions. Who was the audience for this message? What does “hug a white supremacist/nazi/bigot” mean in actual practice? How does “hugging” work with people who are advocating for continued oppression and genocide? Is it just like hugging a cactus, or…? Also, how is this different from doing nothing? How is this different from the ‘ignore racism and it’ll go away’ crowd? What does one hope to gain (or maintain) from empathizing with white supremacists? Has anyone on this show ever read Letter from a Birmingham Jail? (Contrary to not-so-popular belief, not a letter penned by an anthropomorphic jail cell.)

And lastly, do the writers of this segment understand why the work of anti-racism is meaningful? I mean, if we can at least agree the loose goals of anti-racist work are to protect the marginalized while breaking the vicious cycle system of white supremacy, doesn’t empathizing so deeply with nazis and white supremacists actually serve another master? Doesn’t that recast oppressor as oppressed? Nazis as someone to be pitied and hugged for the struggle of maintaining their minority beliefs? That’s…a dangerous narrative. That’s advocacy of non-racism over anti-racism, and spoiler alert, non-racism is weak, it’s toothless, and it’s intensely supportive of the status quo.

So this hug-a-white-supremacist junk doesn’t serve our stated goal, that is unless our stated goal conflicts with our unstatedgoals (of virtue signaling and the like, cuz it’s not like this whole american apartheid system is worth losing any friends over, amirite?).

In which case, I see you. And gross.

Real talk. You gotta know that confronting white supremacy in a real and impactful way is gonna hurt feelings and end friendships. At a minimum. It was the wrongheaded belief that one could somehow challenge bigotry while still hanging out with bigots that has led us down this crooked cobblestone path, wherein some white liberals regard Naziism as just a “conflicting viewpoint” instead of a “murderous worldview that led to the literal extermination of millions.”

Once again, Why are you spending so much time/effort/energy nuancing Nazis, y'all? I’m asking. Again.

But where Sam Bee and that hug-a-Nazi segment failed the most disappointingly was on two fronts: 1. Failing to tailor a message for her entire audience.  Which until last week, one might assume includes black people and brown people and all shades of non-white people in addition to the white people she seemed to be talking to. Sam. Hug a white supremacist? Who should hug a white supremacist? Me? I should hug a white supremacist? WHY. WOULD. YOU. ASK. ME. THAT. SAM. BEE.? Inevitable comparisons: Would you ask Jewish people to hug Nazis? Women to hug MRAs? Hillary to hug Trumpf? Ok, I know I’m getting snarky, but the question remains. Imploring your audience, which includes people of color, to hug a white suprema-nazi is asking us to exercise super-human levels of empathy. Why would you ask us to take on even more emotional labor, to suppress righteous rage for the sake of Nazi feels? Or even for the sake of a played out joke?

Sidenote: Asking black people, who’ve literally laid down our lives for the cause of civil rights to abandon our methods and adopt those endorsed by their oppressors is just so so tone-deaf it’s *mwah* peak white liberal.

2. Failing to advocate for actual scalable change. And make no mistake, scalable change is legislative change. This is the one thing I always return to that leads this nonsensical fight-hate-with-love-hug-a-nazi biz to an early and inevitable grave. It’s not a serious proposition. It can’t be. Because it’s not remotely scaleable. Hugging a Nazi, engaging a Nazi, having an hours-long reasoned debate with a Nazi accomplishes less than you’d think. Even if you change one Nazi mind, understand that Nazis are not engaging in recruitment only with one-on-one methods. While you spend the better part of your weekend reasoning out why blacks are not a mongrel race with your good friend Chad (who’s kinda cool, except kinda a Nazi), white supremacists are going for SCALE. Gutting the Voting Rights Act. Gerrymandering like madmen. Arming police with military grade weapons. And legalizing vehicular homicide against peaceful protesters. While many white liberals look back at the 50s and 60s and think that the most powerful thing to come out of the Civil Rights Era was integrated lunch counters and better bus etiquette and non-violent protest, black folk know that what integrated those counters and etiquetted those buses were the legislative victories that made public exercise of prejudice less germane. And as for non-violence, the CR era was puh-lenty violent. Violence and non-violence are both tools, necessary and employed…but that’s a whole ‘nother discussion we’ll get into someday. So. Why was there not a single mention of legislative push in any of last week’s episode? No “call your congressman,” no “ballot measure up,“ no “VOTE”? No, just a “send these guys some money,” and also “don’t punch Nazis” cuz every Nazi is somebody’s ma or pa, right?

Why is racism different? Sam Bee famously rips apart bigots, misogynists, and liars and lays them all bare with a weekly roundup of political absurdity. Why is racism exempt from the typical and powerful entreaties to support legislature? Why is there all the empathy for bigots, but none for their victims?

Maybe the problem is that liberals think punching a Nazi is the only way we want to engage them. It’s not. Punching a Nazi is a merely one of a myriad of approaches, tools in the toolbox, as one might say. Punching a Nazi is not always the best approach, it’s true, but that doesn’t mean it’s not an approach.

But I digress, because the fact that so many liberals are spending so much time equivocating about the morality of punching Nazis instead of the morality of Naziism gets to the root of the problem: that maybe we don’t think white supremacy/Naziism/racism is all that bad. They’re not big enough evils. Certainly not as bad as punching someone in the jaw — the very act of doing so makes one as bad as a Nazi, I hear. Or maybe it’s because there’s a lax understanding of the violence of words. Words can be violence. And the use of violence to prevent violence does not “make you as bad as them.” If it did, we wouldn’t have laws or enforcement.

My dad used to offer this counsel back in the day, when I was coming of age, just starting to see the world as how it really is. I’ll take some liberty for sake of making a point, but he’d say something like, “Don’t argue with assholes. It empowers them.” True then. True now. Today’s liberal seems content on battling violent rhetoric with only academic bravado. However. Proving you’re “intellectually superior” to a Nazi does nothingto stop said Nazi from causing harm. In fact, the very act of you exerting your awesome brain against his far-less-learned one puts harm into the immediate universe. It actively protects exactly no one. You don’t fight Nazis by proving you’re smarter than them. You don’t fight hate with love. You fight Nazis by FIGHTING NAZIS. You fight hate by PASSING LEGISLATION. You fight hate by CRUSHING THEIR FACIST POLITICAL AGENDA and making bigots and monsters afraid to advocate for death and oppression. You fight. FIGHT is the operative word here. You fight.

So Sam Bee, and white liberal, pleeeease confront the empathy elephant in the room. Please don’t spend or loan any more emotional currency belonging to people of color you purport to protect. Stop being terrible allies. Stop defending Nazi jaws. And also go read Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Go ahead. You need it. We will wait.

MQ

[nebris]

Gun Violence Isn’t a Problem—it’s actually 5 Problems, with Different Solutions

Thom Dunn Nov 8, 2018 

Naming something gives you power over it.

That’s the basic idea behind all the magic in every folktale dating back for centuries, from “Rumpelstiltskin” to the Rolling Stones’ “Hope you guessed my name.” Ancient shamans didn’t practice “magic”; they just had knowledge, and names for things like “eye of newt” that no one else could understand. To name something is to know it, and knowledge is power. Think about the relationship between “spelling” and “spells” and you won’t be so surprised that Harry Potter has been all over the gun violence conversations lately, on both the Left and the Right—which makes sense, considering that they have a word you memorize and practice reciting in order to kill people.

But when we talk about gun violence—or gun control, or gun reform, et cetera et cetera ad nauseam—we’re all too busy tripping over words to see the problems that we’re trying to address. And no, I’m not talking about “gunsplaining,” or even about the eye-roll-inducing “assault weapon” terminology (which is a distinction that I have come to understand and appreciate, and also a debate that is nothing but distracting on every single side of it). It’s hard to deny that gun violence is a problem in the United States of America, but it’s in our attempts to name that problem where we start to lose our footing, and thus, our focus (and I know a thing or two about focus). Perhaps if we learned to name the individual issues of gun violence that need to change, then we can start to identify specific solutions — one at a time, without infringing on civil rights or liberties. Then maybe then we could have some real conversations about how to make our society safer.

Instead of seeing at gun violence at One Big All-Encompassing Monolithic Problem, let’s look at the isolated areas where gun violence needs to be addressed: Domestic Violence, Suicides, Mass Shootings, Gang Violence, and State Violence.

1. Domestic Violence

An existing history of violence against family or loved ones is the greatest indicator of a person’s penchant for gun violence. An American woman is shot and killed by her partner every 16 hours, according to the Trace, and more male shooters attack their own families than schools or public places. In terms of the sheer number of deaths, the money we spend on terrorism would be better focused on the threat of husbands.

Perhaps none of this is surprising—but for some reason, we still don’t do anything about it. While the NRA loves to whinge on about self-defense, they ignore the fact that abused women are five times more likely to be killed by partners who own firearms, and 90% of women imprisoned for killing men had previously been abused by those same men.

That’s what I mean when I say “We have a problem.”

Felony offenses for domestic violence are supposed to mean that an American loses their right to gun ownership. But this requires the person to willingly turn their private property over to the government, or for the ATF to actively pursue civil asset forfeiture on those guns—neither of which is a very practical solution.

So what can we do? Legally, it’s complicated. But states like Rhode Island, California, Washington, and New York have recently enacted laws to prevent guns from even failing into the hands of misdemeanor* domestic abusers, and quite frankly, I don’t see a reason why that can’t be enacted everywhere. It’ll save lives, and it won’t infringe on the rights and freedoms of law-abiding gun-owners, or people at greater risk of being victims of violence. We can also improve the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (which even the NRA has mockingly acknowledged to be flawed) by standardizing the information that states and military are required to submit, under threat of financial penalty.

(*The one caveat I will acknowledge: this requires people to actually press charges. And that’s easier said than done, for a number of social reasons that are difficult to legislate.)

2. Suicides

According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, nearly two-thirds of all gun deaths are suicides, and almost half of all suicides are gun deaths. The majority of those victims are men, often with military backgrounds, and mostly over the age of 45.

This is the one place where mental health really enters the gun reform debate, and it has nothing to do with a risk of physical harm to others.

Suicides of all kinds are unfortunately difficult to prevent. But most attempts are impulsive, and 70% of people who survive an attempt won’t try again. Unfortunately, only about 10% of people survive a suicide attempt by gun — which means the trick is in screening those deadly impulse buys.

Some gun sellers in America have already started taking the initiative to spot suicide warning signs in customers, using grassroots activism to empower more community intervention. And in fact, when Australia enacted its gun ban, the country saw a drastic drop in suicides as well. If we want to focus our energies on saving lives, that might be a place to start. (Of course, this will also require investing more money in community resources and social work, too — but I think the return on investment is worth it, ya know?)

3. Mass Shootings

Mass shootings get the most attention, because they’re massive and tragic. More often than not, the circumstances around them are almost too absurd to wrap out heads around, so we search for scapegoats such as “mental illness.” But mass shootings account for less than 1% of firearm deaths—which unfortunately makes them kind of hard to plan for and around to base legislation upon.

Now, to be fair: mental illnesses do figure out one-quarter to one-half of mass shootings. But anyone who knows anything about data will tell you 1/2 of 1% is not really a good indicator of anything, especially when about 20% of the population has a mental disorder, and those people are still significantly more likely to be victims rather than perpetrators of violence. It’s also important to point out that, while gun violence in general is on the decline, mass shootings are becoming deadly—but not necessarily more frequent.

Now that all that data is out of the way, we still need to talk about the fact that mass shootings—especially in schools—are a problem. Given that small statistical sample, however, it’s harder to find solutions that will be applicable in enough situations to make a difference. This is about more than “walking up” and bullying initiatives. Because the most bullied people are LGBTQ+, or Muslim, or poor, or physically unattractive, while most school shooters are white men. But you know where we can start? Increase funding and training for social work, especially at schools, and give people the tools they need to express their frustrations.

See that? None of it will infringe on civil rights and civil liberties. It will infringe upon the people who don’t want to pay taxes and/or want to harm social services and public education. Poverty, opportunity, and violence go hand-in-hand, and they all require some financial investment to upend.

4. So-called “Gang-Related” Violence

This one is particularly frustrating, because it’s often racially charged — and thus, often used as a racist deflection (STOP👏BRINGING👏UP👏CHICAGO👏 ). Even without the racialized aspect, it’s still quite complicated.

Unfortunately, it’s also true that 80 percent of gun homicides (but not all gun deaths) are gang-related killings, which affect mostly young men. And while there is a racial element, it has more to do with the survival tactics that people are forced to go through in order to survive in a racist society.

If you ask me, much of this connects back to the same problems of toxic masculinity that lead to domestic violence. Even financial struggles or other markers of “manliness” can drive men to violence, lashing out at the world for their own perceived failures. Simply put, violence is a byproduct of anger, not of general mental health. That alone is not a legislative solution, but perhaps it can serve as a guide for the ways in which we cultivate our culture with compassion, empathy, and understanding—oh, and not automatically treating teens who misbehave like they’re already criminals, damned for life, as often happens in our racist education and justice systems.

Luckily, there are already educators and social workers trying to address these problems. Perhaps we should consider increasing their support and resources; after all, it’s better to address a problem before it starts than to spend all your money trying to clean-up the mess after the fact. But it has to start within the communities first. They know what’s best for them more than any government or police interference could help—they just need allies and support to make it happen.

[My one comment here: the vast majority of this violence can also be laid at the door of the failed War on Drugs. End that and much of this particular form of gun violence will abate. Nebris]

5. State Violence

Neither the military nor the police should be excused from unnecessary acts of violence. History has shown time and time again that the use of violence as a tool of persuasion only engenders more fear and anger among the general public, and that in turn leads to more violence every time. The state should not have a monopoly on violence, and violence committed at the hands of the government is just as bad or worse than violence between civilians. This harkens back to the original intentions of the 2nd Amendment, too—to defend against a tyrannical government, a.k.a., state-sponsored violence.

Militarized policing, for example, is known to harm both police reputations, and community stability, without actually make anyone safer. The FBI has been watching and warning of an increase in violent white supremacists infiltrating police departments for years, and nothing’s happened to stop it.

Or consider the fact that 40% of police officer families experience domestic violence, according to the National Center for Women and Policing. And yet, the Blue Fraternity all but ensures that charges are never brought against the officers involved, even though it’s been established that patterns of violent behavior almost always lead to more violent behavior. The same goes for the rising problem of police brutality (or as the passive-voiced PR prefers, “officer-involved shootings,” a phrasing that’s intentionally designed to absolve the officers of any responsibility). Thanks to police union laws, officers who do commit excessive and unnecessary acts of violence are often transferred to or hired by another nearby department, with little to no consequences for their actions—despite the fact that they are likely to repeat them.

We should not excuse these acts of violence simply because they are committed by police officers. By doing so, we just enable more violence—which empowers more cops to act with extreme prejudice, which leads to more violence, which is met by more violence.

Much of this goes back to mental health as well, and the way we treat our veterans after subjecting them to the horrors of war. If a history of violence is the best indicator of future acts of violence, then training our soldiers to commit acts of violence—with little support for the PTSD they endure when they come home—is simply setting them up for more violence. That’s why veterans tend to be more susceptible to joining the ranks of white supremacists, or committing acts of domestic violence: it’s an outlet for the violence that we inflicted upon them by sending them to war in the first place.

(This especially true of men who receive other than honorable or bad conduct discharges. The military has their reasoning for their categories, which don’t impact a discharged veterans ability to purchase a gun in the future, even if the reason for their discharge had to do with violence. An improved FBI background check system would find a way to address this loophole, too.)

Unfortunately, this makes it easier for those same veterans to seek out the camaraderie and power of the military by joining extremist militias, or to seek solace in suicide, as mentioned above. Our society (rightly) likes to talk big of honoring our veterans, but there’s nothing honorable about subjecting them to these horrible fates.

We can’t find common ground unless we can actually identify the problem to solve—and we can’t see the problem if we don’t share the same words to describe it. That’s the source of our gun debate.

Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, I hope that we can all agree that reducing death and violence is a good thing for everyone. But we can’t just throw our arms and shrug after every awful shooting tragedy; nor can we throw our arms up and scream about every single death like they’re all the same.

Sometimes, the best way to tackle a larger problem is to break it down into smaller ones, and to make sure that everyone’s using the same words to refer to all the same things. If we’re ever going to deal with our gun violence epidemic, then I think this could be a good place to start.

I’ve written extensively on gun violence, spoken on international TV and radio on the subject, and even pursued a gun license in the strictest city of one of the strictest states in the country. Despite my first-hand experience, the most ardent defenders of the Second Amendment will still tell me things like, “We don’t need more laws! We need to enforce the laws on the books!” or “We can’t stop every shooting because that’s just the price of freedom.” However, those #2A Avengers will still acknowledge that yeah, okay, maybe NICS has some problems, or maybe those Parkland cops should have done something earlier — that is, until they swiftly retreat back into the same tribalistic mindsets that always prevent human progress. But I wrote this, because I truly think that maybe—just maybe—we can find more common ground.

https://medium.com/@thomdunn/gun-violence-isnt-a-problem-it-s-actually-five-problems-with-different-solutions-63f58e93da08

[thebigpapilio]

The Koopa, The Dad, & The Better

This writing is inspired from/based on “https://duckapus.tumblr.com/post/184704406530/i-want-bowser-to-punch-gabriel-agreste-in-the-face by @duckapus​“. It’s also a not-exactly-sequel to my post “https://thebigpapilio.tumblr.com/post/175002411360/mario-fans-heres-a-thought”.

Bowser had been monstrous, forceful, and many other things he would spend his life atoning for, but he was by no means a bad father. The Koopalings - quite young at the time - were entrusted to him by their blood father should they fall in battle. The previous Boom Boom had been loyal and a great ally of the Koopa royal lineage, so when the sad day came that he fell - thankfully long before Mario, or things would be a lot worse between the plumber and his adopted kids - Bowser was more than willing to take the mantle. Bowser took as good care of them as he could, and Kamek helped him through the whole family’s issues. Even when Junior was born, Kamek was there for all of them.

Bowser had been angry his father magically forced Kamek to hide the truth of the racism that started the generational war between the Koopa & Mushroom Kingdoms with a silencing spell, he knew it was not Kamek’s fault and forgave him. After learning the truth, Bowser swore to fix his father’s mistakes, and it was not much later that a peace treaty resumed, complete with Peach’s also-restricted memories being restored.

It also helped him move on from the then-princess, which was good, because when he had arrived to offer peace, he’d just missed Mario proposing.

After fixing up everything, Peach saw fit for Bowser to be invited to the wedding, though Mario had still been suspicious of him.

Nevertheless, despite Bowser’s newly-attained and seemingly-infinite patience, there had been - and there still would be - plenty of times in Bowser’s life when he became especially angry.

When he was taken away from his childhood best friend Peach? Mostly confused, but still angry.

When he first lost to Mario, followed by an uncounted amount of repeated results? He’d been furious, and with each time he returned from a fight in great pain, he found less and less things more aggravating than so much as the thought of that provocative plumber.

When memories of his father and why he “hated” the Mushroom Kingdom returned to him? Bowser thought he couldn’t be angrier.

But after he stepped into that portal disguised as a human, Bowser found himself to be wrong.

It had started when he’d saved the kid from collateral damage caused by one of those… what was it, akumas? To his horror, he learned this was a regular occurrence in the city from the boy (Adrien, Bowser, his name is Adrien) in a tone more surprised that he didn’t know. That was fair, but the tone should have been a red flag that something was wrong. Later, he watched the boy’s ride show up at his school while walking by, and his heart broke watching how fast Adrien’s face fell.

It got worse when he started sending in spies. They returned with information of his dad and secretary being incredibly inconsiderate of Adrien and what he wanted, telling him what he was going to do as if he had no choice, and even when he did them, he was treated like a rebellious teen. Apparently, it was so bad the kid had fought to go to the public school. Junior didn’t mind being tutored, but Bowser still knew that even if his kids hadn’t wanted to do evil like they had done, the Koopa King would still be supportive of him and his siblings.

Bowser had been about to lose his temper for the first time in what may have been a record-breaking drought when a Paratroopa returned with urgent news. When Bowser learned about the correlation behind the two pitiful excuses for “adults” and the reason behind the villains, he knew something had to be done.

He couldn’t do it alone, however - he had to do things more quietly than an invasion could, and while he was incredibly strong, he would be outnumbered, and he was especially bad against smaller & faster opponents, if Mario and Luigi (he’d finally remembered to not address the younger hero as Green 'Stache) were anything to go by. Plus, he was mad right n-

The Mario Brothers.

Bowser couldn’t think of anyone better to help him then the newly-dubbed Mushroom King and his brother. Luigi and Bowser were on decent terms, but that didn’t seem to be enough for his bro - even when Bowser helped find a way back to the brothers’ home world, Mario still seemed to not trust Bowser, however quiet or loud he was about it. The Koopa King wondered if this plan he was forming would get Mario to fully trust him.

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Mario and Luigi had been suspicious at first at a request for help - as much as Bowser had changed, the Koopa King seldom asked for help, certainly not in the desperate fashion that he had. But Luigi convinced at least get Mario to hear the Koopa King out, and looking back, Mario thought it was a good idea - when Bowser explained the situation, the Mario Brothers would have agreed instantly had Bowser not wanted to explain how bad it was.

Mario had mostly been on guard due to their wedding; he wasn’t exactly of noble stock, and if he were to let his Queen be taken by someone they had known was not always trustworthy, he didn’t know what anyone - least of all him - would think of the new King. But Peach seemed to trust the former enemy after missing memories returned, and Bowser had looked like a husk of himself on that day, so Mario had been too shocked by this new information to really do much at the time.

With the peace between the two Kingdoms, Mario had seldom needed to do any hero work with the Koopa army practically handling all defensive matters for him, so if nothing else, this was an excuse to get some exercise and do good for someone.

Besides, this was a human from a parallel world to he and his brother’s, right? The Mushroom World had ultimately changed their lives for the better, and if this Adrien kid needed it, they would do the same for him.

After conferring with Peach and making a plan, the three fighters were ready to go. Going through the portal made things a bit awkward given the wait and Bowser’s human disguise, but Mario finally started to feel that Bowser was becoming better.

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Just our luck that there’s an akuma attack going on, Bowser mused.

Looking further at the situation, there appeared were multiple akumas and two new creatures that Bowser assumed to be sentimonsters - Hawkmoth had decided to try Heroes’ Day again, it appeared, but this time he was nowhere to be found, a young, brown-haired girl in the villain’s costume.

In a hidden spot near the battlefield, Bowser murmured to Mario and Luigi to go and help the heroes, saying he needed to save Adrien first. They all wore communicators - Bowser’s on an arm bracer, and the Mario Brothers under their hats. Nodding, they went off to go help, a well-placed fireball knocking Befana off her motorcycle and ultimately ending up purified in Luigi’s arms. Chat Noir - the kid was there, which made Bowser’s job a lot easier - and his friends were caught off guard, but when the brothers started to keep pace, they relaxed and returned to fighting the akumas once more.

Bowser would have loved to join them, but he had bigger fish to fry. Transforming back into his true form, he took off for Gabriel’s mansion.

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Hawkmoth and Mayura were a bit worried when new heroes stepped in. It was already a taller order than last time due to the reactivated Monkey, Snake, & Horse joining the original five, but they had saved up enough energy to be at least on par with that. When the dynamic duo showed up, however, the villains started to become quite uncomfortable.

On the battlefield, Luigi’s hammer smashed the last akumatized item - Volpina’s necklace. This Lila girl had turned out to be willingly akumatized and working with the villains, and she was promptly taken to the police by an infuriated Carapace and Rena Rouge while the other heroes celebrated.

The brothers’ communicators came on then, their draconid ally’s voice arriving right on time.

“You guys cleaned up yet?”

“Perfect timing, big guy!” Mario said, the two brothers watching as Carapace and Rena Rouge returned.

“Good. Now, tell them to follow you to the big bads’ place, got it?”

With all the up-close fights Bowser and the brothers had, they still forgot sometimes that in the end, he was a born leader and knew how to give commands without being angry. Walking over to the heroes, they introduced themselves as “Fireball” and “Green Thunder,” and told the heroes not only that that they’d been doing detective work about Hawkmoth’s identity but that they’d tracked him down, with someone holding personal quarrel with the villain already confronting him.

Ladybug would have spoken first, but she was interrupted by the sound of glass shattering from a while away.

“That’s our cue, then…” Green Thunder smiled. Gesturing in the direction of the sound, he continued, “...care to follow us there?”

You would have thought their heads would fly off their necks with how fast they nodded.

Meanwhile, Hawkmoth and Mayura caught their breaths after dodging the shards of glass sent their way. When they looked up, their breaths were caught once more as they took in the appearance of the cross-looking creature whose glare that screamed you are in for the beatdown of your life. Fortunately for Mayura, she could see that the glare was mostly trained on her boss. Unfortunately for her, it was only mostly.

“Hawkmoth and Nathalie Sancoeur,” he uttered, and the two in question froze up in not only shock at this creature’s ability to speak so clearly and the fact he appeared to know Mayura’s identity but confusion, because this beast referred to Gabriel as Hawkmoth, even though at this point there was no conceivable reason this monster did not know that Gabriel was Hawkmoth.

“I have some words for you.”

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“You may never have heard of me, given the differences of our origins, so let me tell you just who you’re messing with.”

Slowly stomping towards them, he proceeded to do just so. “I am King Bowser Koopa, ruler of Dark Land and former villain. I’m the ex-scourge of the Mushroom Kingdom and the first of the Seven Star Children. I was known as the Final Boss, the Destroyer of the Dark Star, and old enemies-turned-friends once called me la tartaruga mortale - the death turtle."

To himself, Bowser thanked Luigi and Mario for teaching him Italian, because someone needed to know it other than those two if the brothers went evil.

"I did a lot of evil things in my career as a villain - I’ve conquered galaxies simply because they stood in my way.”

“I could raze you and this whole mansion to the ground right now if I wanted,” he roared, clearly putting fear into the two villains, “but I won’t. You wanna know why?”

At their somewhat-frantic nods, any amusement on his face said goodbye.

“Because there’s a kid in this place.”

At their slight confusion, he scowled. At this point he stood over the floored duo.

“The title I hold more dearly to me than any of the ones I just named is Dad. I have eight wonderful children, and every day of my life I do my best to make sure they want for nothing, least of all my attention. ”

At that point he snatched Mayura’s brooch faster than either of them could react, leaving a stunned Nathalie Sancoeur in her place. Looking back for a second, he noticed the other heroes had arrived - Red & Green with them. Grinning, he returned to Hawkmoth’s fearful gaze.

“Now I’m not perfect, true, but at least I try. I support my kids, I take time to understand them and their interests, I teach them as best as I can, and even if they hadn’t wanted to follow in my villainous footsteps during that time, I like to think I would have respected that and continued to love them nonetheless.”

His glare hardened even further.

“Too tall an order for you, huh? If you can pretend to be the fashion mogul known as Gabriel Agreste, I think you could easily take time to be a parent to your kid.”

“Why do you keep saying he’s not Hawkmoth?” Chat Noir spoke up from Roi Singe & Ladybug’s grips.

“For what I know, Gabriel Agreste was a kind, caring, and patient guy who liked to do good for others simply for the sake of it. This guy doesn’t fit the description, so he can’t be Hawkmoth, right?”

It was clear that Bowser knew Gabriel was Hawkmoth, but the message he was conveying was clearer - Gabriel had changed, and not for the better.

“You’re using your grief as an excuse to hold your son at arms’ length, but you only take control of him when it’s convenient. If I asked you about his favorite color, or his friends’, or what he wants to do with his life if he could choose, or even what he thinks of the “designer clothes” you stick him in, how much could you really tell me?”

At this, Hawkmoth was silent. Bowser let out an angry snort, then finished his tirade.

“I’m not gonna go too far on your failing attempts at villainy. You’re a faulty & foolish failure as a villain and a parent, and as I said earlier, if it wasn’t for the kid, you’d be burned to a crisp and stomped into a paste - not to mention scum like you aren’t worth the effort.”

He picked up the main villain, dropped him on his two feet, and with a growl of “Get bent.” he walloped him into the wall with a single punch.

Hawkmoth would wake up after about a week and a half in the hospital, having changed from purple to white. A change to orange would follow soon after.

But for now, Bowser would turn around to face the other heroes. He would help get the detransformed shell of Gabriel to the police and hospital, and after taking the Black Cat wielder aside, he gave him a small remote-like item he’d packed that let him and anyone he wanted - other than Hawkmoth and Nathalie - come to the Koopa Kingdom if he wanted or needed to.

Bowser sometimes felt the repercussions of his past villainy too strongly. But whenever he remembered that day - especially punching Hawkmoth in the face - he felt a lot better about himself.

[optimysticall]

This may start an argument, but I don't think that white people wearing locks matters at all, as long as they do it responsibly. Like I think it's a waste of energy to try to police how other people do their hair when that energy could be directed towards convincing society to accept black/curly hair in ALL it's forms.

First, I think that the instance where it is wrong is if you're copying afro-centric styles to make money (think Gwen Stefani's music video where she depicts herself with braids and grills, or how Justin Beiber got famous singing in a style for which black boys would have been ignored), but if you think it's cute, lock your hair, braid your hair. Make it acceptable. Tell people, "You should be no less accepting of black people with this hair style than you are of me." Fight legislature that states that it's okay to discriminate against hair styles. I don't think you should be able to put my culture on when it's cute and then wipe your hands of it when it's convenient. Be an ally.

Second, I think that the lack of acceptance of black people's hair is so much more harmful. I remember I wore my hair curly for a couple of weeks and then one day I decided to straighten it. When I went into work, my boss told me, "Thank goodness. You finally fixed your hair. Thank you. It looks so much better," and he sighed and walked away. My hair, in his eyes, was a problem to be "fixed" and that meant getting rid of my natural texture. I stopped straightening my hair after that. That is the mentality that endangers black women and keeps them poor. It strips them of their power. Harmful stereotypes are placed on me based on the way I do my hair, and I'm forced to spend hours damaging it to make it acceptable to society. A court recently ruled that it is okay to discriminate against women with dread locks. Locks on a white person don't harm me. That harms me. That's where I would want energy directed.

PSA

White people with dreadlocks who scream “the Celts had locks” every time you get called out. Stop. Just stop.

I’m mixed race and a Celt so here I am to tell you that Celtic people do not traditionally wear locks. Any Celt in the Isles today could tell you that. Most Celts living in North America could tell you that. Most Creole people who are Celtic could tell you that. 

Observe. 

See this? This is called plaiting. It’s a type of braiding. THIS is the Celtic and Nordic style that ancient Romans mistook for dreadlocks because they were Colonial Imperialists who didn’t see or care about the differences between the cultures they were “conquering.”

If you are Celtic, Nordic or trying to emulate Celtic culture (which is a discussion for another day) and you have dreadlocks all that says to me is that you don’t care about or respect those differences either.

I apologize on behalf of Celts with locks and random white people with locks who try to make this excuse. I can only hope correcting them might make a bit of a difference.

[berniesrevolution]

FULL Justice Democrats Platform

It’s time to face the facts: the Democratic Party is broken and the corporate, establishment wing of the party is responsible. Republicans now hold most state legislatures, most governorships, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the presidency. So in 2018, hundreds of Justice Democrats will run a unified campaign to replace every corporate-backed member of Congress and rebuild the party from scratch. This is our plan.

Pass a constitutional amendment to put an end to Washington corruption and bring about election reform. Super PACs should be banned, private donations to politicians and campaigns should be banned, and a clean public financing system should be implemented to end the takeover of our government by corporations and billionaires. Americans deserve free and fair elections — free from the corruption of big money donors. The Supreme Court has effectively legalized bribery. It’s time for an Article 5 convention to take our Democracy back from the brink of Oligarchy. Prior to passing this amendment, all Justice Democrats should reject billionaire and corporate donations when running for office to show the American people we don’t just talk the talk, we walk the walk. Ranked choice voting should also be implemented to make smaller parties a viable option. All provisions of the voting rights act should be reinstated, and gerrymandering for partisan gain should be eliminated.

Re-regulate Wall Street and hold white-collar criminals accountable. Despite engaging in systemic fraud and causing a subprime mortgage meltdown and the great recession, you can count the people from Wall Street who are in prison for their crimes on one hand. It’s time to prosecute the criminals, bring back Glass-Steagall, and re-regulate Wall Street to prevent another crash. Prison is not just for the poor and the middle class anymore. We will have cops on Wall Street, not just Main Street.

End billionaire and corporate tax dodging, fix the system to benefit middle-class and poor people. Corporations dodge $450 billion a year in taxes by using offshore tax havens. We should end this injustice, as well as chain the capital gains tax to the income tax, increase the estate tax, and implement the buffet rule so that no millionaire CEO pays less in taxes than his or her secretary. It’s time for a tax system that benefits the middle-class and the poor, and makes the top 1% and multinational corporations pay their fair share.

Defend Free speech and expression. We support the right to express unpopular opinions without fear of censorship. We support free speech on college campuses. The marketplace of ideas should be embraced. A vibrant debate is healthy for democracy, and we should cherish our first amendment. We also support net neutrality for a free and open internet.

Oppose bigotry. We must speak out against racism, sexism, xenophobia, and all forms of bigotry. Non-discrimination protections that currently apply to race, religion, and gender should be expanded to include the LGBTQ community and the atheist community. Making all Americans equal is not asking for special privileges, it’s asking for the rule of law — justice and equality for all as outlined in the United States Constitution.

Make the minimum wage a living wage and tie it to inflation. This is about justice and basic human decency. If you work hard and you work full time you shouldn’t live in poverty.

Ensure universal healthcare as a right. The United States should catch up to every other modern nation and implement a single-payer, medicare-for-all system. There’s no reason we can’t be #1 in the world instead of #37. It’s time to end the destruction of American healthcare by rapacious, price gouging, for-profit, private health insurance middlemen.

Ensure Universal education as a right. Educating the citizenry of a nation pays dividends in the long run, with the economy getting back much more than is initially put in. Crushing student debt for higher education would no longer burden young men and women trying to improve their lives through hard work. We should strive to have the best education system in the world.

End unnecessary wars and nation building. The United States maintains 800 military bases worldwide at a cost of $100 billion a year, this is money that can be spent at home creating jobs, rebuilding infrastructure, and investing in the future of the people. The disastrous war in Iraq cost trillions, the war in Afghanistan is 15 years in with no end in sight, and we’re currently bombing 7 different countries. We spend more on our military than the next 8 countries combined. Despite countless lives lost and destroyed, terrorism has only gotten worse. It’s time to end the wars and the perverse monetary-incentive structure that makes politicians flippant about sending young men and women to die. Unilateral U.S. military force should only be used as a last resort to defend the nation. The current budget could be cut drastically if we used our department of defense for what it was intended — defending us, instead of waging interventionist wars.

End the failed war on drugs. The goal is legalization, taxation, and regulation. Prohibition only makes drug cartels more powerful, increases crime, and makes drugs more dangerous due to lack of enforced safety standards. What you put in your body is your own business, and your right. A free society should allow individuals to make their own choices about their bodies. While most users are recreational and moderate, rehabilitation and treatment should be provided for people struggling with addiction. Additionally, those serving time for non-violent drug offenses should be pardoned.

Create the new New Deal. Our infrastructure gets a grade of D from the Society of Civil Engineers. The government should invest billions in rebuilding our crumbling roads, bridges, schools, levees, airports etc. There’s no reason why we can’t have the world’s #1 infrastructure.

Create the renewable energy revolution. Scientists are sounding the alarm on climate change. In order to avoid the worst case scenario and a dystopian future we need a massive green revolution. It’s time to drastically and immediately move away from fossil fuels and develop the technologies of the future. This will be a giant boon to both the private and public sector, as well as a necessary response to a global crisis. We can and we must be #1 in sustainable energy production in the world.

Block the TPP and all outsourcing deals that will further damage the middle-class. As a result of NAFTA, CAFTA, PNTR with China and the WTO, Americans have lost millions of decent paying jobs. It’s time to end the race to the bottom and renegotiate these rigged deals that only benefit elites. We should not sacrifice our sovereignty, the only people who are allowed to make laws for the United States should be the American people, not multinational corporations.

End Constitutional overreaches. Ban the NSA from bulk data-collection and warrantless spying. Shut down Guantanamo Bay and all extrajudicial prisons. Prosecute torturers and those who violated the Geneva Conventions, Nuremberg Tribunal, International law and US law. Return habeas corpus and due process. Pardon whistleblowers like Edward Snowden. We shouldn’t be leading from behind on human rights, we must be the home of liberty. We should practice the values we preach.

Ban arming human rights violators. We recently gave Saudi Arabia billions in weapons and watched the civilian death toll in their vicious bombing campaign in Yemen tick up. We continue sending Egypt arms as they violently crack down on peaceful protesters. Israel received $38 billion in aid and promptly announced new settlements. The first step to peace is not enabling nations who regularly violate international law. We must be bold enough to stand up to human rights violators who aren’t just our enemies, but our allies. We don’t weaken our allies by holding them accountable, we strengthen them.

Enact common-sense gun regulation. 92% of Americans want expanded background checks, 54% want a ban on assault weapons, and 54% want a ban on high-capacity magazines. This should be implemented along with a federal gun buyback program to cut down on the 300+ million firearms in circulation. Over 30,000 Americans die every year from gun violence, including over 10,000 homicides. The time to act is now to address this public health crisis.

Ensure paid vacation time, sick time, maternity leave, childcare. The United States is one of just three countries in the world that doesn’t offer paid maternity leave, the others being Oman and Papua New Guinea. We are the only industrialized nation that doesn’t offer paid vacation time. This should be changed immediately.

Abolish the death penalty. Humans are fallible, we’ll never get the right answer 100% of the time. 4% of the people on death row are not guilty of a crime and have been wrongly convicted. A system that puts innocent people to death is indefensible and should be reformed. We want justice for the American people but killing innocent people on death row is the exact opposite.

Defend and protect women’s rights. We support the Paycheck Fairness Act. We oppose Republican cuts to Planned Parenthood and women’s health clinics all across the country. In 2016 alone, 60 TRAP laws targeting abortion were passed in 19 states. We will vigorously oppose all efforts to dismantle reproductive rights.

Enact police reform. We believe in the core idea of policing — to serve and protect the community. Police are a vital part of American society and that is why it’s so important to reform the system to make it serve all Americans. For-profit policing should be abolished, police training should be retooled to emphasize de-escalation tactics, and body cameras should be mandatory on all officers. Furthermore, community oversight boards should be created and broken windows policing should be eliminated. Stop & frisk — which disproportionately targets blacks and latinos 87% of the time — has a 97% failure rate. On top of being discriminatory and ineffective, it’s also unconstitutional and should be ended. Special prosecutors must also be appointed to hold police accountable.

JusticeDemocrats.com

[jmrphy]

Two cultures of radical politics

While many people on the left still pretend that “free speech” and “political correctness” are fake right-wing concepts, a number of us are beginning to realize the profound mistake of dismissive moral posturing. Get your popcorn ready now, because it’s going to be a fascinating mess as more and more people on the left begin to realize that the cultural politics of policing moral symbols has been fully exhausted and defeated.

The collective-emancipatory gains of genuine truth-seeking are now so massive compared to the rapidly diminishing marginal returns to the moral model, that there is no reason to spend much effort trying to convince the remaining moralists. First, If I am right that the truth-seeking model is better, then it will win because it is better, whether I convince anyone in a blog post or not. Second, I am practicing it, so if I am right then by simply thinking and doing what I am thinking and doing, you’ll see how it works in practice. If I’m wrong, my ideas will fizzle out and I’ll go away. In any event, what I would like to do here is simply unpack some of the notions I have been referring to in not-fully-explained shorthand. To begin, what do I mean when I refer to the “moral model” and the “truth-seeking” model?

The moral model vs. the truth-seeking model of radical politics

By “left moralism” or any of the other cognate phrases I sometimes use to this effect, I am referring to the model of political activism that seeks to change society by enforcing moral prohibitions. I think this is far and away the most widely held mental model of how progressive social change can and should be achieved, in moderate as well as radical circles. Make a list of words and ideas and types of behavior that are good, and try to get people to identify with them, talk about them, and go to meetings around them. Sometimes these words seem very concrete and action-oriented (such as “strike”) but nonetheless, if you observe like an anthropologist would, you find that an overwhelming portion of the energy is organized around identification with certain words and ideas believed to be in some sense normatively good or desirable. Always curiously lacking is impartial assessment of effects. Also, make a list of words and ideas and types of behavior that are bad and politics means discouraging these by whatever means necessary. Radical politics means really strongly discouraging these things. An important feature of this model is that what, exactly, should be on the list of bad things is a question that is not in principle open to question or debate. It is a characteristic of the moralist model that questioning its basic premises is itself one of the bad things to be discouraged; “good politics” means granting the goodness of the list and it’s enforcement, simply because that’s the moral thing to do. In practice, today, what’s actually on the list of bad things is generally determined through reverse dominance hierarchy in which deference is given to the most institutionally dominated individuals and groups you happen to be around. To be clear, I don’t think this is a totally unreasonable model. It kind of makes sense: society oppresses people unequally so give some priority to oppressed people in defining what is bad and everyone try to stop the occurrence of those bad things from happening. Not necessarily perfect but fair enough.

I use the phrase “truth-seeking” as an informal and intuitive name for what I could just as well call “scientific method.” The problem with “scientific method” is that for a lot of people this will sound too grandiose for thinking and acting around everyday cultural questions. Not to mention a lot of people think “scientific method” applied to social questions is impossible or harmful to begin with (it’s not, it’s just harder to apply to social questions than to something like physical objects). But most people agree that our ideas about the world around us can be more or less accurate, more or less consistent with how things actually work outside of us, and most people can admit they have an inner sense of when their ideas are proven true by reality (something works as you expect it to), and when their ideas are proven false by reality (something you are doing produces unexpected, undesirable outcomes).

So when I talk about “truth-seeking,” all I mean is informally but seriously subjecting all of one’s beliefs, opinions, and mental models of the world to the basic guidelines of scientific method in an everday, intuitive fashion. Basically: everything you think is just a theory, and everything you observe at all times is data you compare to what your theory would have predicted; you need to actively consider all plausible alternative theories and you update your mental models of the world accordingly. You can, and should, have unique background experiences and feelings and creative quirks; scientific method in no way discourages or disqualifies any of that, as it is popular for naïve humanists to suggest. Indeed, truth-seeking is actually the only way to remain loyal to your unique experiences and quirks: the scientific method provides the key for translating your unique data into power over your unique environment, by subjecting your thoughts to objective rules that are guaranteed to give you the best possible command of your unique situation. So this isn’t just an academic protocol; it’s the only way to live a basically honest and mature life, and I would argue it’s a basic pre-requisite for anyone who would hope to contribute to the elimination of oppression by complex social structures.

So the “truth-seeking” model of radical politics is fundamentally opposed to the moral model. The moral model says to begin with what is currently defined as morally bad (typically through reverse dominance hierarchies), and devote yourself to discouraging and generally reducing the prevalence of those things. The moral model requires specifically that nobody question the fundamental goodness of that model, or the wisdom of certain items being placed on the list of prohibitions, because the whole strategy is based precisely on forcing conformity to Goodness. The truth-seeking model’s only rule is that you must be honest about your data and how you’re making inferences from that data, but otherwise everyone should just do their best trying to understand how oppressive structures function and how to think/speak/act with others in the precise ways that will predictably overthrow those structures in favor of equality and liberation. The moral model’s final endgame is a world in which all badness goes away through mass conformity with moral criteria. The truth-seeking model’s final endgame is, through diverse and totally free experimentation, we collectively unlock our true functional relationships to oppressive social machinery while immanently rewiring them into correctly-functioning liberation machines.

Why the moral model will not go down without a fight

The reason the opening of a free-speech cleavage on the left is going to be really messy is that a large number of people have so long schooled themselves in the cultural politics of moralism, and have for so long avoided the very different protocols of truth-seeking (i.e. scientific method), that such a paradigm shift will understandably be experienced as a mortal threat to their identity. And we know that human beings will sooner go to war than reasonably reflect on anything that threatens fundamental dimensions of their identity. People have staked years of effort and many of their social relationships on a model that is suddenly obsolete, so it’s reasonable for such people to be confused and fearful about their place in the future of radical politics, let alone society. Fortunately, scientific method has an extraordinary egalitarian feature that goes woefully under-celebrated in radical circles: it’s equally demonstrable (ultimately) to anyone who is willing to work at understanding it.

The whole politics of left-moralism is actively anti-egalitarian because it’s logic is not readily and equally available to all interested parties. There are many social and economic factors that make access to scientific method unequally distributed, of course, but it has the uniquely egalitarian-emancipatory feature of at least being intelligible and employable by all who can find their way to it. The protocols of the left-moral model are not only beset by the same basic problems of unequal access (this is why educational privilege is curiously the single non-demonized privilege in left-moral culture), but the protocols of how to think and act politically on the left-moral model are not available to all in principle. They are unequally accessible by definition, so even if they start out noble and true, there is no way for large groups of humans to hold each other accountable to them in a fashion equally consistent with their truth. The magical techniques of being an ideal ally in the moral war—in which, one day certain words are declared good and the next day they are designated impermissible, according to a logic that does not exist out of the declarations of those groups and individuals who happen to be at the top of constantly shifting reverse dominance hierarchies—is therefore inegalitarian in principle. This is not to cry woe for the exclusion of white men from power (as will be the immediate rejoinder to my point here), it is to cry woe for anyone anywhere who might like to enter revolutionary movements for liberation from diverse starting points. The left-moral model is inherently illegible for anyone who is not able to go through narrow, fickle, local person-driven power dynamics to receive the day’s edicts on what is good and bad. Scientific method, while beset by problems of unequal access as with everything under capitalism, at least has the egalitarian virtue of being written down, basically unchanging, and citable to all.

The two models represent two different bio-chemical equilibria

I think a lot of smart and genuinely good people on the left operate on this model simply because, as a really-existing cultural structure, it can always inflict very real punishments they are not personally able to risk at the moment (ostracism) and it really delivers rewards they are not personally able to forego at the moment (social stability, standing and status in the in-group, efficacy, purity, etc.)

But the whole point of being a radical or revolutionary is to actively cultivate a higher tolerance for social punishment than bourgeois normies, and less reliance on the everyday psychological payoffs that bourgeois normies require to make their sad lives livable.

The revolutionary life, the life that genuinely risks itself in the name of what it believes, operates on a totally different equilibrium. Through cultivated attitude and iterating behavioral practice, we push our social punishment tolerance to the human maximum (but no more), our reliance on disingenous bourgeois psychological tricks to the human minimum (but no less), but we set our truth-seeking and truth-speaking/behaving high enough that it becomes a unique and inviolable source of two key resources. First, it provides motivation/energy replacing that which is lost by foregoing the convential bourgeois channels, because any genuine process of truth-seeking is by definition interesting, inspiring, and endless. Second, it provides actual power, for oneself and for whoever you wish to share it with, insofar as increasing your understanding over the social average unlocks concrete pathways to change the world around you despite that most people are content to leave the world as it is. Read the biography of any well-known revolutionary in history (anyone whose life itself participated in world-historical effects), whether it be a political revolutionary or creative/cultural revolutionary, and you will find they are not just different or more extreme than their contemporaries. You will find they organized their life on this fundamentally different equilibrium, a qualitatively different organization of energy inputs and ouputs, which provide the sustainable bio-chemical basis necessary for producing systemically transformative truths despite extreme social punishment and very little bourgeois subjectivity-maintenance.

Conclusion

The left-moralist model will protest the new school loudly and insistently until one day you just don’t hear from it anymore. This day is probably much sooner than most people think. Very soon the whole fashion of generalized moral condemnation will be so fully outed as an intellectually disingenuous and practically conservative tendency, that everyone will soon be pretending they never engaged in that embarrasing old fad. And the new cool kids on the block will be all those who are currently risking themselves on truth-seeking, those who were willing to take a little bit of heat from sad moralists in favor of seeking what really works for producing large-scale liberation dynamics. The reason I know this is not because I’m special; quite the contrary, it is because some version of this pattern characterizes all epochal transformations. A scientific outlook makes you larger by making you smaller, for it allows you to find a humble but real role in a set of infinitely larger objective processes.

from Justin Murphy http://ift.tt/2pISIls

[everyoneisgay]

“I am queer and Muslim, and I am overwhelmed by how to move forward, especially right now, days before our presidential inauguration. I am scared, and I don't know how to help myself, and how to help my communities.”

- Question submitted by Anonymous & answered by Aaminah Khan

Aaminah Says:

I, too, am queer and Muslim, which is another way of saying that there aren’t many places where I feel like I belong. The US, and especially the deep South, had already felt hostile to me pre-election. In the state of Louisiana, where I lived for two and a half years, police were still arresting people under our (unconstitutional) anti-sodomy laws as recently as 2014. I’m out online and almost everywhere else - but while I lived in the US, I wasn’t out at work, because I lived in one of 28 US states that still allow employers to fire people for being gay. The local attitude toward Muslims was similarly horrifying; anti-Muslim rhetoric played on FOX News everywhere from hospital waiting rooms to chain restaurants. Pre-election, I had already felt an overwhelming pressure to try to hide the aspects of my identity that might get me fired, ostracised or worse; I didn’t talk about my religion or cultural heritage often, and I kept any relationships I had with people other than men quiet. I thought that by doing this, I could keep myself safe, even if it did make me feel like a coward a lot of time.

Post-election, even that didn’t feel like enough to keep me safe any more.

The reports of hate crimes had already started filtering in on social media as I got to work the morning after the election. Many of my students were from the Middle East, and I wondered how many of them would have to bear the brunt of this newly-validated bigotry in the coming weeks. I had flashbacks to my own experiences after 9/11, when people had screamed obscenities at my family and me from their cars, thrown things at our house and vandalised the local mosque - but this time would be worse, because not only did people feel like they had an excuse to attack anyone who looked sufficiently foreign, they had a President-Elect who would and did back them up when they did. It was difficult to look my students in the eye and tell them everything was going to be all right when I didn’t believe it myself, so I didn’t. Instead, I told them to be safe, and prayed that they would be. I felt powerless to do anything else.

I didn’t voice my other fears to them - that this would mean the end for marriage equality, for LGBT workforce protections, that this would mean that people I knew and loved would be hurt, even killed, by people who now felt like they had a presidential mandate to rid the country of queer and trans people. I kept quiet because I knew that while my students - just like many people of colour around the country - feared for their futures in Trump’s America, a lot of them were also conservatives who didn’t particularly like queer or trans people any more than Trump voters did. It felt like even more cowardice, but as I’ve told many young LGBT people of faith in the past, being out and proud should never come before one’s personal safety and security. Choosing when and where to be out, just like choosing when and where to be openly religious, is part of the series of tough personal decisions we have to make in order to ensure our continued survival.

Navigating the dual identities of religiousness and queerness often feels like walking a tightrope. How much do you tell your family about your sexuality? How much do you tell your friends about your religion? It’s a precarious balancing act, and post-election, the wind is picking up and someone’s started shaking the rope; keeping that balance is getting harder and harder. Do I seek comfort in my faith, knowing that many members of my community couldn’t care less if trans people are denied healthcare or gay people are denied inheritance and marriage rights, or do I organise more actively with my fellow queer and trans people, knowing that they see my religious identity as an offensive eccentricity at best and a harmful liability at worst? Neither community feels like home, because both of them implicitly reject or disapprove of at least one part of me - and what is home, if not a place where all of you belongs?

Internally, I am entirely at peace with being both queer and Muslim, and I am lucky enough to know a small community of similar LGBT people of faith around the world on whom I can rely for comfort and support. But there are too few of us, and we are spread very, very thin - and sometimes, talking to friends on the other side of the world doesn’t feel like enough. I want to be able to share in the grief, mourning and consolation happening in the communities around me - want to be at the mosque, at the gay bar, offering strength and support of my own to people I love, people like me. But I don’t know how to without compromising at least one part of myself, and every time I have to do that - every time I have to hide my relationships with women or pretend I’m not really that religious - it hurts, both because I feel like I’m being forced to lie to people I love, and because I feel like I’m lying to myself. I don’t think there’s any easy solution to that problem.

So here’s what I suggest to young queer and trans people of faith who write to me for advice: be out where you can, find allies where you can, do the work you feel capable of doing - but most of all, don’t be ashamed to put your safety first. These days, I try not to beat myself up too much for needing to compromise, for not talking about girls with my mother’s friends and not praying audibly in public. When I have the energy for it, I try to do work that bridges the gulf between LGBT and faith communities - writing pieces like this one, participating in workshops and dialogues about the intersections between queerness and religion, talking about LGBT issues with my students - but sometimes I don’t have the energy, and I’m slowly learning that that’s okay. No one person can do it all at once. Sometimes I need to retreat and lick my wounds for a while, and sometimes I need to bite my tongue to ensure my personal safety. I won’t pretend it feels good, but it keeps me alive to fight another day.

The good news is that we’re not in this fight alone. Around the world, LGBT people of faith are making strides bringing their communities together, and each time an imam comes out or a priest speaks up for marriage equality, it makes it easier for us to start having those conversations with our loved ones. When I feel particularly alone in this struggle, I think of my friends and loved ones around the world who are doing this work with me - speaking in mosques; starting interfaith and LGBT dialogues; writing radical and inclusive reinterpretations of faith; attending pride marches in their hijabs, unapologetic. They are sources of strength and encouragement both at the times when I feel capable of confronting community prejudices head-on and the times when I know I need to stay silent. They provide a framework for having tough conversations with loved ones as well as a reminder that the conversations are worth having.

I don’t spend every moment of every day working or fighting because that’s not sustainable, but when I do, it’s with the knowledge that I am part of a new kind of community, one that is global and growing, a community with whom I can stand in proud solidarity. In short, by working to navigate the spaces between queerness and faith, I have finally found the place where I belong.

-- Learn more about Aaminah Khan here on our contributors page, and follow her on Twitter! So much gratitude to Arlan Hamilton, who sponsored this post as a part of our ongoing POC Writers' Fund initiative.