#they’re in power and their entire voting party is screaming at them to stop letting Israel genocide

[transpanda-1]

🎹again, we know Trump is objectively worse than Biden in every way. It’s j-just… if they lose then I have to blame the Democratic Party for being such mask off fascists with Palestine th-that people en masse no longer feel confident voting for them. W-we have these arguments every time when the situation can be summed up by how they’re simply a terrible group to be confident in.

[fumingspice]

andante

Pairing: Cordelia Goode x Reader

Prompt: oK so how about like?? Delia x reader and they're both in love af but they think the other has no feelings for them so they're both tripping over themselves to make the other love them and then madison comes in and she's just like 'stop being dumb' and they finally realise how much the other loves them.

I’m sorry but my ed crept back in and im not horny enough to put more thought into writing so just ignore the massive time skip at “---”. enjoy, you strange people xo

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*(*❦ω❦)*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

It's crazy. Falling. You see? We don't say "rising into love". There is in it, the idea of the fall. And it goes back to extremely fundamental things. That there is always a curious tie at some point between the fall and the creation. Taking this ghastly risk is the condition of there being life. You see, for all life is an act of faith and an act of gamble...

Between Cordelia Goode's ears were pretty brown eyes and a mind full of thoughts. Brown eyes were never really your favourite until you saw them on her. You knew yourself that somehow, over the years you got to know Cordelia; working with her, befriending her, carrying her home from the bar one night when she got far too drunk, letting her cry into your shoulder when her job became too real and she could feel her mother's words hanging over her head.

When you started falling for the woman with those beautiful brown eyes.

Somehow, her eyes were now your favourite colour.

Not brown- brown wasn't simply the word for the colour. Cordelia's eyes were the colour of aged whiskey. Sometimes they were the only two safe shots of tequila that you could see. Sometimes they were a beautiful milk chocolate dotted with exposed honeycomb. Once when she had asked you to help her decorate the garden for the Summer Equinox- she had given Zoe enough money to take the girls on a field trip for the day so she could give the girls a little party. You stood watching her in her denim shorts and her white button up. When she had stepped back and put her arm around you to admire both of your handy work you could have sworn her eyes were glowing like fresh magma.

Her hand lay on your waist a split second too long.

You had fallen in love with the Supreme.

"Yo, bitch!" Madison Montgomery's usual entrance phrase disturbed you from your imagination. You raised your brow and smirked.

"Yes, Madison?"

The blonde took her sunglasses off her face and closed them with a slight snap. "The girls want to know if you wanna come to play Pysch! with us," she said. Her lips were curled in what could almost be described as a friendly smile. You were one of the few honoured to know that under Madison's bitchy white girl facade there was actually a very sweet someone lurking under there.

You thought for a moment and put your pen down. "I won't be long- I just have to log these last few names and I'll be there," you tell her. Madison rolled her eyes and waved her hand, the pen lifted itself and wrote the last thirteen names within seconds. "You're done. Let's go, Y/N."

Madison didn't even give you a minute to say anything before she walked out of the room. "Come on, bitch. Don't make me use my powers!" she called from the hallway, finally motivating you to move.

The girls sat in a circle in Zoe's bedroom. Lights off. Candles lit.

Zoe, Queenie, Mallory, and Coco were indulged in their phones for the game. Madison turned to you and held up her phone to show you the question. "What is Zoe's deepest, darkest secret?" she read. "You gotta answer it and the person with the most votes wins. It lasts for ten rounds and it can be fucking hilarious."

Zoe's face was red with laughter at the answers. "She's not actually a witch- that's not even funny," she gasped through cackles. She then sobered slightly. "She likes to watch Danny Devito movies while masturbating and screaming 'I am a dirty man'."

Madison was the only one who chortled at that.

You joined the game and got your best answers ready in your head. "If Madison got arrested tomorrow what would it be for?"

Madison rolled her eyes and muttered something about knowing exactly what everyone was about to answer. You smirked slightly, sensing her slight apprehension.

Prostitution.

Murder. Third-degree.

Fucking up the brakes on a bus full of frat boys.

Public Nudity.

"Gosh, you're so original," she muttered, glaring right at Zoe, who just shrugged.

"It's the rules of the game, bitch. Go all in, don't get offended," she replied.

The game pinged for the next question.

"What is on Y/N's mind right now?"

Coco gave a loud "Ha!" and typed quickly, along with the other girls who were all typing as quickly as possible to get their answers in first.

A quiet knock came from the other side of the door and Cordelia poked her head around. "Sorry to interrupt, girls. Y/N, could I borrow you for a moment?" she asked, voice sweet and angelic. You bounced up as soon as she finished the sentence and obliged straight away. You were met with a sweet smile.

Madison flicked her brows. "Speak of the devil," she muttered, winking at Delia's slightly confused face. As you left, your phone pinged to announce the results just before you left the game.

Cordelia 🥵🥵🥵

Delia. I ship it <3

Getting knuckle deep finger fucked by the HWIC

French fries

You quickly shut off your phone screen before Cordelia could see.

"What's the matter, Delia?" You asked, practically skipping alongside her. There was a vibrant air of satisfaction between you.

Cordelia shook her head, her blonde hair bobbing with her movements. “I just wanted to know if you’d like to go out.”

You felt your heart stop. “Go out?”

Cordelia looked hurt by the confusion on your face.

“Yes. Would you like to join me in the garden?”

“Oh,” you realised, slightly disappointed. “I would love to.”

---

"For the love of Hades. Right, I don’t mean to sound rude or anything because I have some understanding that lesbians are fucking useless because of the fear of appearing to be predatory because the media is an asshole,” Madison continued. “But I don’t really think any of us can eat at this table anymore without choking on the fucking sexual tension between the both of you.”

Cordelia looked shocked. “It’s not that-”

“I’m a fucking mindreader! You do get that I can fucking hear the things that you say in your head about what you want to do to Y/N? I’m one gutter minded bitch and not even I’m creative enough to come up with that shit while I’m eating my fucking apple turnover!”

You blushed hard and chuckled.

Madison’s neck snapped towards you. “Oh, and don’t getting me fucking started on you! Do you know how fucking unsanitary it would be to carry out your little fantasies of fucking Cordy on the kitchen counter? Not even for us but the amount of fucking crumbs that would work into your nooks and crannies would be like trying to spring clean Myrtle's fucking hair! "

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Cordelia chuckled nervously. Her face turning a shade of red. “I’m sure Y/N’s got plenty of better options.”

Madison dropped her face in her hands and rubbed her temples. “God, you bitches are going to put fucking years on my skin.”

“Oh, give me a break, Madison.”

Cordelia stumbled foward slightly, having been tripped up by some unseeable force and sending her tumbling into you. Her hands lay against your chest for that split second too long once more.

Your lips parted for a moment and your breath hitched as you both watched Madison smirk and leave the room. It felt like your heart was beating at a thousand miles an hour. You surroundings were unnoticable to you now; replaced by unidentifiable whirls of colour and light. Your hand rested flat on Cordelia’s cheek. It was different this time. Not the spark, that had been there every time you touched. It was the fact that you were both too slow to ignore the ignition that started in your chests. 

You saw her eyebrows falter from their previously confident expression, like all of her preparation and barriers and walls had fallen down and she was too slow to replace them. Cordelia pursed her lips, presumably trying to figure out what she should say to you. Again, she was too slow as you inhaled sharply and thrust yourself forward to catch her lips.

Delia was quick to mould herself to the curves of your front, hands falling to the small of your back on a collision course as she backed you into the dining room table. You smoothed your hands over the contours of her jaw, her collar bones, breasts, hips like you were a master pianist playing a brilliant concerto. Her body was the only instrument you longed to play; her moans the only melody that you longed to draw from her.

As her lips glided across your own, everything came together like pieces into place. You thought back one of those late nights in the kitchen. The way Delia’s fingers had so enthusiastically laced through yours during the late night in the kitchen when you had both stayed up until the wee hours of the morning talking about life. How the witch had turned the radio on and taken your hand while you danced to some song by REO Speedwagon. Twirling you through the night. “Can’t fight this feeling” was the song. Ironic, now that you thought about it. It seemed as though fighting her feelings was what she had been doing the entire time.

She twirled you around in the light of the dim television and the refrigerator when the songs were upbeat, even going as far as dipping you and pulling you up again. Bare thighs against your own in her shorts and oversized shirt. When the songs that were played were slower, she was more gentle. Until eventually you swayed in a slow two-step, your head against her chest, and hers against yours. The air was thick with something pure. Something untouched. 

You had no idea why you ever just thought this was something two best friends did. More so, you had no idea why you didn’t lean back and dip into her lips and allow your souls to dance the waltz that they were so clearly destined for. 

Cordelia’s thumb and finger lay on either side of your jaw as she continued to kiss you as if her soul depended on it. Her fingers interlocked with yours against the table.

She broke away, tears had fallen down her cheeks and made your heart melt. “Oh-ho,” you chuckled, mouth agape at her sight. “Why the tears, my love?”

Cordelia laughed, wiping away her tears. “I’ve longed to do that for so long,” she replied. “So, so long.”

You chuckled at her sweetness and the display of pure love that you were so unaccustomed to.

“I fell in love with you, Y/N. I don’t think I will ever stop falling in love with you. You’ve created this storm of beautiful chaos in me,” she continued. “Do you remember that night where I was really sleepy, so you let me just stay in your room? How I had fallen asleep on top of you by accident and you wrapped your arms around me and hummed a lullaby?”

You nodded, remember the feeling of waking up with the Supreme in your arms.

“I was wide awake,” she told you. A delicate smile arose.

You chuckled into her touch.

“Oh, sweetheart,” you replied, drawing her closer, her blonde hair twirled in your fingers. “I know you were.”

[thanksjro]

More Than Meets the Eye #29 - The One Where Everyone Gets Super Shiny

Our issue opens up with Swerve laying down the Story So Far in the Exposition Dimension.

Fantastic, you funky little man.

If Swerve looks like he’s been tossed through the car wash a few dozen times, it’s because this is where our new colorist comes in! Everyone, please say hello to Joana Lafuente- known for her love of gradients and attention to light sources, this actually isn’t the first time we’ve run into her. Lafuente worked on colors for several issues of The Transformers (2009), Last Stand of the Wreckers #3, and a few issues of MTMTE Season 1. However, she was matching the styles of her co-colorists on a majority of these, so we haven’t seen her style properly until now.

Getting into the story proper, Cyclonus is busying himself with staring out the window at a PNG of space, as he is wont to do, when he hears the tell-tale sound of tires squealing down the hall towards his room. Oh, goodness, whoever could that be?

Nearly forgot about him, didn’t you? Yeah, it’s a little difficult to follow up on things like a character’s recovery from a horrific disease when you’ve got comic event contract obligations to deal with.

After getting tackled by Tailgate, who reminds us all about the time he stuck his dirty little fingers into a dude’s brain meat, Cyclonus takes the little nerd on a walk through the ship.

You’re not going to convince me to reread “Dark Cybertron”. I don’t care how much of a marshmallow you are, it’s not happening.

They’re passed by Megatron and a bunch of crew members carrying that coffin we saw at the end of last issue down the corridor, Tailgate has a moment, and we get a taste of Cyclonus’ distaste for the Autobots as a whole. Tailgate is mildly offended by this, as he gropes his chest in distain, showing off his shiny new Autobot badge- a gift for not dying a terrible, gruesome death.

Good job, Tailgate. Proud of you.

They’re also passed by an absolutely blitzed Jackpot and Mainframe, the former singing Tailgate’s Tyrest-stopping praises as the latter carts him over to the Medibay to deal with the almost alcohol poisoning he’s got going on. Cyclonus remarks that Tailgate was missed, though Tailgate can’t help but wonder if that’s really true.

Y’all like slowburn romance, right? Because these two dumbasses have been roommates for two years, and we’ve just gotten to the point where physical contact can happen without one of them needing to be dying.

Anyway, it’s been a good day for Tailgate so far. Let’s hope it stays that way for the little dude.

...And that’s a series wrap on Tailgate! Let’s give him a hand, folks!

Hopping back in time to Megatron’s trial, things get underway, as Optimus Prime takes a nap in the judge’s bench as Gripper- whose name you don’t need to remember, as he’s not actually important- tells everyone about how brutal the Decepticon Justice Division is, even to Autobots. Which isn’t really supposed to be their deal, given their, y’know, name, but I suppose nobody’s perfect.

Up in the stands, in an… opera box, I guess? Rodimus is watching the proceedings, when Atomizer walks in. Which I guess you can just do in a Cybertronian court case. Sure.

Atomizer, in case you forgot, is the dude who has a bow and arrow, and used to be an interior designer.

Say, didn’t Whirl has a bow and arrow in the last issue when he attacked Megatron? Mighty curious, that.

Rodimus and Atomizer briefly reflect on the DJD, recalling the horror that was Vos- not that Vos, the other one. Rodimus would really just rather this all be over with so the Lost Light can get back to finding the Knights of Cybertron, and it’s at this point that Atomizer breaks out a thing he really ought not have- the count for the vote on whether or not Rodimus should stay on as captain. Rodimus doesn’t want to look at it, because it was supposed to be anonymous for a reason, and tells Atomizer to destroy the list entirely.

Hm, that’s not a terribly determined face there, Rodimus.

Back in the present, specifically in Swerve’s, Groove is threatening to break Streetwise’s arm, as we get the downlow on just what exactly our Legislator buddy’s deal is. Turn’s out, Swerve got one of the things reprogrammed, so that he follows not the Autobot Code, but something else entirely.

Hey, Swerve?

I don’t expect you to know this, because I don’t think you were present when they revealed this information to the readers, but… your new bouncer is made of people. He’s a dude made of other dudes, namely the Circle of Light. There’s a chance that you reprogrammed a sentient being, my good bitch.

Anyway, Swerve’s in a fucking mood because his shoulder hurts, someone’s stealing his shit, and Megatron has joined the narrative. Over at a nearby table, Skids, Nautica, and Riptide take a gander at the tabloids. Trailcutter, who is positively smashed, to the point where he’s just leaking booze out of his face like it’s his job, isn’t terribly interested in that, however.

What an astute observation, Riptide. And people say you’re stupid!

Trailcutter wants to drink some more, because it’s very likely he’s got a problem, but the mention of “Megatron’s super fuel” makes him feel like it’s time to stop hounding Swerve and start performing crimes.

Back during the trial, we get to Starscream’s testimony. He’s wearing his crown. He’s acting like a self-righteous asshole, as he defends Megatron.

Well, “defend” in the technical, legal sense, I suppose.

But really it’s more about him insulting Megatron’s intelligence, strength, and courage, in front of a LOT of people, while also trying to make himself look better in the war crime department. Megatron doesn’t appreciate this very much, if his murder-face is anything to go by.

Megatron lets Ultra Magnus (his defender, if you’ll recall) know that he wants a private word, and court goes into a brief recess.

Back in the present, Nightbeat’s busy looking at a pin-up of Rung’s alt-mode, when someone knocks on his door. That someone is Chromedome, who’s trying to solve the mystery of The Missing Declaration of Love. Not that he says that specifically out loud.

You two were married, why- okay. No point in yelling at this digital copy of a comic book.

Anyway.

So, the whole screaming thing only happened the one time, and everything was back to normal on subsequent plays of Rewind’s message. Nightbeat seems to be leaning towards the depressive isolating getting to Chromedome, which Chromedome responds to by telling him to get the fuck out. Alas, someone’s blocking the door!

YO WHAT THE FUCK-

Back with Trailcutter’s subplot, our drunken friend is in the middle of breaking into the Medibay. Our trio of cool-colored pals watch him from back at the bar, by way of a laptop that looks like it was built the same year I was born.

As Trailcutter attempts to commit a crime, Megatron, Ultra Magnus, and Ratchet pass by, trying to figure out how to handle the whole coffin situation. Trailcutter’s about to punch the locks off a door, and Nautica decides that this is where she’s going to draw the line today, leaving the gaggle of fools to their shenanigans. Then Tailgate glomps Skids, throwing the computer to the ground and breaking it, as Trailcutter finds the door to the Medibay magically open.

If you don’t know what glomping is, there’s a 60% chance that you’re not old enough to vote in the US.

Trailcutter sneaks into the Medibay, we get a reminder that Ambulon is super dead, and Trailcutter commits theft from a food bank. What a guy.

This is the point where security shows up, armed with a great deal of guns, one of which is Megatron himself. Trailcutter, instead of feeling super powerful, actually feels positively awful after consuming Megatron’s rations of “super fuel”. Because he, as an Autobot, doesn’t want to be within 50 yards of Megatron, Trailcutter breaks out the forcefields the moment the guy approaches him. And oh, what a doozy this one is.

Trailcutter’s gotten himself a fancy new trick- this forcefield he’s broken out lasts for a solid half-hour, and he can’t turn it off. I’m sure that won’t bite him in the ass at any point in the near future, no-siree!

Back in the past, Rattrap is commending Starscream on playing the field and getting the public slightly more on his side, but Starscream’s too busy patting himself on the back to really pay attention. He knew damn well that Megatron wouldn’t like what he had to say on the stand, and now things are finally looking up for ol’ Screamer.

Over with Optimus Prime, Slamdance is showing off how the general public is really into this whole “folks being held accountable for their actions” thing.

In the present, Chromedome and Nightbeat seem to have remembered they have alt-modes and are driving down the hall back to Nightbeat’s room- wonder what the speed limit for the Lost Light is?- and discuss just what the hell happened. The current theory is that the Rewind they saw was a Data Ghost- a collection of information so dense, it had a not-quite-physical presence that wasn’t 100% removed when he died.

Which is a little fucked up, but let’s see where this goes.

Nightbeat undoes the 40,000 locks on his door while Chromedome bleeds guilt all over the shag carpet over the fact that he hasn’t been looking for Dominus Ambus like he said he would.

C’mon James, gimme that Chromedominus endgame.

Nightbeat finally opens the door to find a small problem.

Hm. That’s… not normal.

Over in the Medibay, Trailcutter’s bubble has burst, allowing Megatron to slap him in the back of the head. This head-slapping induces his FIM chip permanently, making it so that he can never get drunk again.

Weird party trick, Megatron. Kinda shitty, really.

Megatron then gives Trailcutter the job of director of security, because he needs direction in his life. Trailcutter just sort of takes what he’s given, because I suppose you can’t really argue with a guy who can literally slap you sober, and also threatens to destroy you if you fuck up even once. Nice, Megs. Nice.

MEGATRON THAT’S BEEN SITTING LIKE THAT FOR OVER HALF AN HOUR YOU FUCKING WET NOODLE

So, since there’s mystery juice all over the floor and no one’s died, Megatron assumes that the coffin ought to be fine to crack open.

Please note that Megatron is not a medical professional, and his views are now peer reviewed by medical professionals. Megatron is in no way endorsed by the WHO.

Anyway, Rodimus is in there.

Pretty fucked up.

Back in the past, recess is over, and Ultra Magnus comes bearing bad news- Megatron wants to change his plea to “innocent.” This gets about the reaction one would expect from just about anyone.

Well, except Rodimus, who’s too busy reading that list that he wanted destroyed. He’s very sad about it.

I know, what a bummer!

[phroyd]

Joe Biden is going to be the next president of the United States. He will be inaugurated on January 20 and take power at noon that day. There is nothing, legally, that Trump can do to stop that.

What Trump and his feckless Republican Party might do illegally to try to overturn the results of the election and prevent Biden from taking power is a different matter. Trump has evidently intimidated the administrator of the General Services Administration into refusing to acknowledge Biden’s victory and thus prevent his team from starting the transition process. Only a smattering of Republicans have acknowledged that Biden won, and most of those who have, like George W. Bush, no longer hold any political power. Trump has already filed a raft of baseless lawsuits. His people are drumming up talk of some kind of Electoral College devilry to overthrow the popular will. And Trump fired the secretary of defense, Mike Esper, yesterday, which seems like the kind of thing one does before launching a coup d’état.

Years of watching Democrats snatch defeat from the jaws of victory gives many the sinking feeling that “it’s happening, again.” But rational thought tells us that these Trump gambits, all of them, are pointless. Biden won and his ascension to power is now inevitable, whether Trump accedes to that reality or not. As a wise man once sang: Gravity always wins.

Still, we’ve all seen Trump wriggle out of approximately a billion other defeats and scandals. He’s exposed the weakness of our democratic institutions, revealing just how useless they are in the face of his norm-breaking assaults. So it feels somehow naive to believe that his loss at the ballot box will translate into his loss of an actual job. It feels smart to consider that he might have a secret plan to retain that job, despite being voted out of it. Trump is the Michael Myers of our politics: He can’t be defeated, because the horror movie franchise makes too much money to ever end.

And yet, despite all this, I have gone to bed every night since Friday confident that President-elect Biden will become President Biden. I’ve come to this peace over the objection of my amygdala, which is the part of the brain that screams in fear and anxiety and tries to overpower rational thought. Here’s what I tell myself in order to help me sleep at night. Perhaps these are conversations others can have to achieve my level of forced serenity. (Amygdala in bold italics.)

Who won the election?

Joe Biden.

Who won the election if we only count legal votes?

Only legal votes are being counted. Joe Biden won those.

What about the possibility of a recount in swing states like Michigan or Pennsylvania?

Recounts traditionally do not change more than a thousand votes. Even if we’ve gone completely through the looking glass and this recount changes an unprecedented number of votes, like 5,000, which is completely unheard of, Biden’s margin of victory is too great to overcome. A recount would not change the result in states like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin. If Trump wants to lose twice, that’s up to him.

What about all the lawsuits, especially the ones they keep filing in Arizona and Pennsylvania?

Trump’s election lawsuits fall, broadly, into three categories: lawsuits alleging poll watchers were too far away, lawsuits complaining about the established rules for submitting mail-in ballots, and lawsuits alleging Trump voters were denied their vote because of some kind of ballot machine malfunction.

None of these lawsuits provide evidence of massive voter fraud. None of the lawsuits provide evidence of voter fraud at all. Some of the lawsuits allege some accidents, but the remedy for those accidents is counting more votes, not fewer. Trump’s claims that his poll watchers were not allowed to watch the counting of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania is flatly untrue, and his lawyers have had to admit in court that they were allowed in the room. They’ve been reduced to arguing that their poll watchers were not close enough, which, whatever. The remedy for that is to move them closer, not throw out tens of thousands of votes.

In fact, none of the Trump lawsuits allege anything that can be used to throw out tens of thousands of votes. Throwing out votes that have already been counted is not something that courts do. We can recount votes, this time with Trump watchers breathing down the necks of ballot counters and giving them Covid-19, but again, recounts don’t usually change the balance of votes by all that much.

The important thing to ask with each new Trump lawsuit is this: What is the remedy? If the remedy is “throw away tens of thousands of votes from people whose votes were clear in their choice and timely in their submission,” then that lawsuit is going nowhere. And if the remedy is not throwing out those entirely timely and legal votes, then the lawsuit will not change the results of the election.

Why would the Trump people be pushing these lawsuits if there was no chance for them to change the outcome?

Because Trump people are dumb? Hanlon’s Razor tells us: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

Joking aside, there might be many malicious reasons for the Trump campaign to be pushing lawsuits they know are destined to fail. Stirring up doubt in Biden’s victory is a prelude to refusing to acknowledge his authority as president. Trump, or one of his kids, or somebody “Trump-approved” is surely going to run for president in 2024, and making Trump’s rabid, white-supremacist base feel like the election was “stolen” from them has a political upside as they fight for their new “Lost Cause.”

And, there’s also the grift. Trump’s campaign is broke. They’ve literally written checks they can’t cash. Trump doesn’t like spending his own money on these things (to the extent he actually has any). These lawsuits purportedly challenging the election are a huge money-making opportunity for the Trump campaign. If you read the fine print on the new fundraising e-mails Trump’s campaign is sending out to supporters, they say that “60 percent of contributions” will go toward retiring campaign debt.

Would the Trump campaign put America through 70 days of trauma to make a buck? You better believe it. The whole Trump presidency is a guerrilla marketing campaign for the Trump brand that went too far.

But the Republican Senate is going along. This is just like impeachment. Republicans wouldn’t remove Trump then and they won’t now.

Well, it’s not up to Republicans to remove Trump from office. The Constitution does all that work on January 20. Joe Biden is the president on that day whether Republicans acknowledge it or not.

But now Bill Barr has gotten in on the game, and he is the worst of Trump’s henchman.

Yes.

He’s given federal prosecutors the green light to open up investigations into possible voter fraud.

So?

SO?

There wasn’t election fraud. Trump’s legal team has no evidence of election fraud and has no money to investigate to find such evidence, so they’re using the taxpayers’ money to look for it. But Barr’s prosecutors won’t find anything because there’s nothing there. This is going to turn out the same way it did when Barr investigated but didn’t arrest Hunter or Joe Biden.

The head of the Election Crimes Branch, Richard Pilger, resigned. That should tell us how wrong this is. But Barr is not going to succeeded. It’s just another thing to remember in 70 days when Barr is out of a job. We should arrest him and charge him with abuse of power.

What if Trump refuses to leave the White House?

Biden can be president from Delaware until the White House runs out of cheeseburgers. He’ll come out of hiding eventually.

But what if Republicans never acknowledged that Biden is the president?

How’s that different from the way they treated Barack Obama?

Good point, but what about a re-vote? I’ve seen MAGA people online calling for a re-vote.

Re-voting is not a thing. There is no statutory or constitutional language that can compel a nationwide re-vote. States will certify the results of their elections in the coming weeks. And then the Electoral College will meet on December 14 in a pro-forma session to…

WHAT ABOUT THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE?

Damn it.

Can Republican state legislatures put forward a slate of electors who will vote for Trump even though Biden won those states?

Let’s be very clear: The states get to choose how they will determine their own electors, but that determination has to be made before the election. A state with a Republican legislature—let’s say, Pennsylvania—could have decided to choose electors based on a simple vote of the legislature. In fact, Republican legislators contemplated doing such a thing. But they didn’t. Instead they decided, like every other state, to let the popular will in their state determine the slate of electors.

They can’t change the method of picking electors after the election has taken place. Remember, when voters showed up to vote, they technically weren’t voting for “Joe Biden” or “Donald Trump” but for a slate of electors who would vote for Biden or Trump. If Pennsylvania wanted to change those rules, it would have had to tell its voters before they voted. It can’t run a bait-and-switch on an election. It can’t say that a vote for Biden’s electors was actually a vote for the Pennsylvania legislature to choose the electors. This is an election, not a Groupon.

The only legal recourse, which some Republicans are arguing for, is to determine that the voters “failed to make a choice” on which slate of electors to nominate, or that the results of that choice are somehow unclear. But the results will be clear once Pennsylvania certifies its election results (and, in this case, the governor and secretary of state, who certifies the results, are Democrats). It will be a close election, but voters made a choice and that choice will be clear upon certification.

States have until December 8 to certify the results of their elections.

But what if Pennsylvania’s Republican legislators insist that the results weren’t clear? Would the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority allow the state’s Republican legislature to choose a Republican slate of electors, even though it’s unconstitutional?

Maybe? Conservatives on the Supreme Court act in bad faith all the time. But consider that Biden has likely won this election with 306 electoral votes. For this gambit to work, legislatures in Pennsylvania and at least two of the other states Biden won would have to submit a slate of Trump electors. The Supreme Court would have to OK this upending of the popular will three times in total. That’s incredibly unlikely and would spark almost immediate civil unrest directed right at the Supreme Court, which has no army to enforce its rulings.

Well, what’s our plan for that?

My dude, I don’t have a plan for “nothing matters anymore.” The end of democratic self-government is not a thing one has a legal plan for. That’s like asking what my plan is for closing a demonic hell mouth that opens in my backyard. Die. My plan would be to die. I’m not Keanu Reeves.

What if Trump fires FBI Director Chris Wray and CIA Director Gina Haspel and gets the “deep state” to keep him in power indefinitely?

I’m not Kiefer Sutherland either. I cannot find the mole.

What if Trump launches a full-scale coup d’état and uses the military to keep him in power?

Then we’re at war. Honestly, what do you want from me? Yes, there is a non-zero chance that Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the election leads to a civil war and, in such a conflict, Abigail Spanberger forms a Vichy government to “compromise” with Trump supporters, and I have to pilot a jet carrying Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez off of Naboo in hopes of finding friendly Jedis willing to fight for our cause.

But there is no legitimate way for Trump to stay in power now. There’s no peaceful way for Trump to stay in power. Either he’s gone on January 20 or he remains atop a military junta willing to use violence to enforce his will.

This makes you feel better?

I find it comforting that a full-scale military takeover is now the only way for Trump to stay in power. Because if there’s one thing I know about Trump, it’s that he is a coward. President Bone Spurs is not the guy to cross the Rubicon.

I look at it this way: Captain von Trapp hiked his enormous family over the Alps to get away; all I have to do is drive my people to the Thousand Islands Bridge while we all sing “Edelweiss.” Thinking much beyond that is pointless.

Well, you could get your lazy ass on the elliptical trainer in case you’re needed to fight.

Don’t start this with me again. Goodbye.

Phroyd

[idairsauthor]

This Fcking Trial, Episode 2: Being Alive

CONN: Senator Collins just announced that she was going to vote to call witnesses.

PLAIDDER: That’s still only 48 people IF Manchin doesn’t do his fucking Manchin thing. Go away.

ETHIR: Don’t talk to him that way.

PLAIDDER: It gets worse!

ETHIR: I have a question and I really need to know the answer right now.

PLAIDDER: I guess in cyberspace it’s always time for freagair.

ETHIR: Who in the green earth or under it is Alan Dershowitz?

PLAIDDER: Ethir. This is unworthy of you. The night before all hope is lost, you come into my house and you ask me to dredge up from the cesspool into which they have subsided my totally 80s memories of celebrity lawyer, self-appointed gadfly, and massive narcissist Alan Dershowitz?!

ETHIR: I do.

PLAIDDER: Ethir, last night I saw Just Mercy, a film based on a real-life case in which a young lawyer named Bryan Stevenson devoted years of his life to obtaining a new trial for an innocent man who was framed by corrupt racist cops for a crime he didn’t commit, prosecuted for that crime by a corrupt racist DA, and given a bonus death sentence by a corrupt racist judge. Unlike most real-life stories in which underfunded young lawyers take on entire power structures, this one actually has a happy ending, and an innocent man who’s spent six years on death row for no good reason is eventually returned to his family. I think you should get a bucket of popcorn and some caffeine-free soda and go watch this movie. You will enjoy it.

ETHIR: But--

PLAIDDER:  I want you to go watch that movie, and then I want you to come back here. And then, when I tell you that Alan Dershowitz got famous in the 1980s for finding a way to get the conviction of a European billionaire who most likely murdered his diabetic wife thrown out and get him a new trial at which he was acquitted based on problems with handling of the evidence, and then gave a dinner party to celebrate which Alan Dershowitz attended and wrote about in his book Reversal Of Fortune which by the way was made into a TV movie in 1990 which I actually to my everlasting shame saw--when I tell you all this, and then tell you that Alan Dershowitz thinks that makes him Bryan fucking Stevenson, you will fully understand my rage. 

ETHIR: All right.

PLAIDDER: In the meantime, can we not talk about how Alan Dershowitz’s narcissism has set fire to the last shreds of our Constitution?

CONN: But that’s exactly what I’m most hopeful about.

PLAIDDER: That...BLOWHARD forgot that he’s not in a damn trial court where the worst he could do to the world is set one rich and guilty asshole free. To satisfy his insatiable fucking ego, that man just burned down the rule of law.

CONN: No, he didn’t. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. He’s actually made things better.

PLAIDDER: This oughta be good.

CONN: All along we’ve been talking about that moment when everyone stops pretending. The moment when people just drop the mask for good and all and they just stop caring about whether people see their atrocities or not. We talked about that in July when that Congressional delegation went to see the detention camps at the border. You must have a clip of that somewhere.

PLAIDDER: OK, I found it:

CONN: Their lack of fear, that’s the worst sign. The fact that they don’t fear exposure. The fact that they’re not worried about the rest of the world finding out what they’ve done. Because that tells you that they know they’re protected. And that means they have no reason to stop. Not just that. They have no reason not to make it worse. No reason not to invent new indignities. No reason not to entertain themselves with making more misery.

PLAIDDER: That’s something I’ve always been afraid of. The moment when the state decides it doesn’t have to pretend any more. Theamh is afraid of that moment too–you know–on the magical side. That’s why that battle at Slieve was so important. It forced the corrupt government to go on pretending for a while. As long as they were pretending, there were certain limits to what they were able to do. Theamh and everyone else worked so hard to keep those limits in place.

CONN: You’re right to be afraid of that moment.  

CONN: And you’re afraid that this moment has now come.

PLAIDDER: It has. This is it. 53 Republican Senators--

CONN: Fifty-two--

PLAIDDER: Conn, you are on my LAST NERVE tonight. Fifty-two Republican Senators are about to vote to endorse the idea that the President can rig an election and nobody can do a thing about it.

CONN: No. They won’t be. Because Dershowitz and friends have already retracted that argument.

PLAIDDER: They can’t retract it now. Fox News has a hold of it. The Republican Senators have a hold of it. It’s out there and it’s going to become the new normal.

CONN: You’re not listening to me. THEY WALKED IT BACK. They realized they HAD to walk it back. Because 53 Republican Senators are not ready for this moment.

PLAIDDER: I bet 51 of them are.

CONN: No. That...circus act...that your President calls a legal team has withdrawn that defense because they now realize that these Republican Senators still want to pretend. And where there’s pretense, there’s hope.

PLAIDDER: Yeah, well I just refreshed the WaPo page and we lost Lamar Alexander, so I’m gonna go scream into the night now.

CONN: There’s still--

PLAIDDER: Don’t you get it? These assholes have got together and worked out exactly how it’s going to go down and what will happen is that they will let Collins, Murkowski and Romney vote for witnesses so there’s a 50-50 tie and then Roberts will refuse to cast the tiebreaking vote and there will be no witnesses and the whole thing will be over tomorrow. These people are not taking a stand, they are saving face in the most weaselly way possible. 

CONN: But surely you realize that it doesn’t matter any more whether they call witnesses or not.

PLAIDDER: I DO NOT realize that.

CONN: They don’t have to make Bolton testify. As soon as Alan Dershowitz made that argument, he admitted that your President has done everything he’s been accused of. Everyone saw that, everyone knows that. Anyone who will ever be willing to vote for removal will vote for removal now. And the people who will never be willing to vote for removal will never be convinced no matter how many witnesses you call.

PLAIDDER: So this is it. He gets acquitted. And I SWEAR TO GOD if you say “not yet” ONE MORE TIME--

CONN: All right, I won’t say it.

PLAIDDER: You won’t?

CONN: No. I won’t. Acquittal is what you always expected. That’s is what you always knew was probably going to happen.

PLAIDDER: BUT YOU TOLD ME NOT YET!!!

CONN: MAKE UP YOUR MIND! Or let me go back into the void! I never asked to be dragged out here to this horrible place.

PLAIDDER: Yeah, I’m not gonna watch any more of my favorite characters go through the door to oblivion tonight, friend.

CONN: 67 votes for removal was always an unrealistic threshold. It’s never been done before, I understand.

PLAIDDER: No.

CONN: Trust me when I say this, friend. They overreached. That always has consequences.

PLAIDDER: How can they overreach when they are about to take a vote that will ensure that their party will always have unlimited power?

CONN: That’s not what that vote is going to ensure.

PLAIDDER: Then what will it ensure?

CONN: That your president never gets a second term. And neither will many of them. 

PLAIDDER: Why should I believe you?

CONN: Look at what the Democrats in Congress have been able to do. They dragged that mac na mhada to the brink of removal. Where is your appreciation for Adam Schiff, who got up there day after day and told the actual truth?

PLAIDDER: You mean the “you know you can’t” speech.

CONN: Yes. That and many others. Because the thing is: they DO know they can’t. They definitely know that now. 

PLAIDDER: What does it matter? They will never cross him.

ETHIR: Hey, I’m back.

PLAIDDER: So you see what I mean about Alan Dershowitz.

ETHIR: Actually I saw something totally different.

PLAIDDER: What?

ETHIR: You know that scene where Ralph Myers takes the stand at that hearing and he tells everyone that he lied at that first trial?

PLAIDDER: Yes.

ETHIR: And he’s scared to do it. But once he does it, you can see the whole man come back to life. He’s told the truth and now no matter what happens to him, he doesn’t care, because he’s alive now. I mean you wrote our story but you spend all your time on the shriias, you’ve never really thought about how ordinary people experience the truth. I will tell you, I’ve seen a lot of people lie in court and I’ve seen a lot of people tell the truth and there is no comparison. Telling the truth is magic for us too. It’s...it’s being alive.

PLAIDDER: Anthony Scaramucci, of all people, has said as much.

ETHIR: I wish Theamh could have seen Slythe during the trial. She would have been so proud of her. Still an ordinary woman, but once she caught a hold of the truth again she never let it go. She understood it better than I can explain it. You could see it when you looked at her. I think she knew there was a good chance they would kill her. But it was worth it to her, just for that feeling of being alive. Humans are humans. They need joy. They need to feel alive. 

PLAIDDER: How are you making me cry when I don’t believe EITHER of you?

CONN: It’s like your Nancy Pelosi always says. Patience and time.

PLAIDDER: That was Kutuzov in War and Peace.

CONN: Well she doesn’t say it. But she knows it. She dragged this process out as long as she could safely drag it and what can be exposed has been exposed. Whatever happens tomorrow, you got more out of this than anyone expected. Be mindful of that. And just...be all right. All right?

PLAIDDER: All right. I guess this will be our last episode.

CONN: Maybe not y--

PLAIDDER: THANK YOU AND GOODNIGHT.

[argylemikewheeler]

ghosts are always dead.

|| Anon Prompt: the last now-memory that Will got from the Mindflayer was an image of Mike and his friends watching the tunnels burn, watching HIM burn and that sticks with him, even once he’s no longer possessed. Maybe he is subconsciously resentful towards them? Maybe he’s somewhat afraid of them? Maybe he knows why, or maybe not. But something’s changed and it seems like he’s beginning to withdraw from the Party. ft. established sweet byeler ||

The Now-Memory had been completely repressed until a sweltering August day in 1986.

The Party was sitting in Mike’s basement– to absolutely no one’s surprise– and trying to wait out the sun to go night swimming. There was very little entertainment to speak of, except to be absolutely destroyed by El in a game of Monopoly. She’d not only caught up on knowledge of American currency, she got very good at gambling. Dustin claimed she had gained extra mind reading powers, but Will knew she was just great at statistics. He saw her math tests on the fridge every morning.

It was Lucas’ turn to roll when Max purposefully poked his sides playfully and got him to overshoot the table. The two dice flew off the table and under the couch. At that exact moment, like the haunting echo a ghostly sweet memory, the lights switched off. The quiet hum of the fans dipped down into slow, paced silence as the panels spun to a stop.

Something inside of Will felt like it had been pricked, his whole body recoiling and trying to anchor himself the table. But he wasn’t going anywhere.

“It’s just Ted.” Mike said, waving at the ceiling flippantly. “He’s trying to fix the TV but keeps throwing the breaker.”

“Why don’t you help him?” Dustin asked.

“Oh, that’s his problem.” Mike said, shaking his head and laughing. “This is day three of power failure. Day five is when I’ll just do it while he’s sleeping.”

“Everyone okay down here?” Mrs. Wheeler said, poking her head into the basement.

“Could probably use some light.” Mike said, leaning his chair back. He gripped the table, not as harshly as Will though. His fingers poked against Will’s fingers gently.

“I want to save the flashlight batteries. Do you mind using the candles down there, Mike?”

“Sure.” Mike let his chair fall and rest upright. “They’re in the closet, I’ll get it– and no body say to get myself while I’m in there.” He pointed at the rest of the group, cracking a slow smile. The rest of the group pretended to not know what he was talking about.

Will was still waiting for the lights to start flickering. The walls to start bending. The floor to creak by a set of feet not accounted for. He stayed perfectly still and breathed slowly-- quietly. It couldn’t find him, it couldn’t find it, it wouldn’t find him. Not again.

Mike stood from his chair and passed behind Will, placing his hand on his shoulder. His fingers ran across his back before sliding off, Mike turning his head to cast a quick look at Will’s face. Mike’s own was furrowed in quiet concern: Will’s back was completely rigid.

“You okay, Will?”

“Yeah. Yeah, just, uh, the dark. The lights… Took me back.” Will had had his first nightmare in two years just three nights prior. It was nothing, really. Will had experienced worse– although, truthfully, there was something horrific about watching Mike scream “it’s a trap! it’s a trap!” through fogged and paralyzed eyes.

“Oh. Well, I’m going to get some lights for us. And they won’t go out with Ted’s stupidity.” Mike said. He crouched down and dug through the bottom bin under the shelves. He hoisted out– with a quiet swear and grunt– a box of candles. He shuffled it over to his chair and dropped it down gracelessly, all the glass containers clanging together.

“Dustin, you still carry Steve’s old lighter?” Mike held his hand out without looking.

“Of course I do.” Dustin dug into his inside vest pocket and produced Steve’s old cigarette lighter– at least before they all got him to quit.

“Alright, Party. What do we elect should be the smell of the afternoon? I’ve got… Honeydew Melon… Evergreen something or other… Sugar cookie!” As he named them, he popped the lids and began placing them around the table. Apparently he voted them all.

Will didn’t care. It was still too dark, and as much as Mike was trying to be funny and helpful, he was taking too long.

“Do you want me to do it?” Will offered, finally lifting his hands from the table. His nails left an impression in the wood surface. He moved his paper money over it, hoping Mike wouldn’t notice.

“No, I’ve got it, Plum.”

Mike cupped his hand around the closest candle– Something Sunshine– and clicked the lighter. It didn’t spark at first, Mike muttering and readjusting his fingers. Finally, nearly as Mike’s hand slipped, the lighter caught and held a flame.

Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

The heat from the flame was barely noticeable– Will knew that– but his fingers began to feel white hot, like the ends were wicks ready to be scorched. His entire body began to flush-- but also run cold, staring at Mike as he lit every candle. The glow of the flame flickered shadows up onto his face– all of their faces.

They upset me. They want to hurt us. They want you dead.

The room shrank away from Will, the colorful table and board game blurring into the lapping flames torching His Body. Every breath felt like he was inhaling smoke all over again– back when he was being burned alive; his body convulsing and mind trying to do the same. He remembered the story of the strategy: the Party driving a beaten Steve Harrington to the Tunnels to try and attract every demodog away from the Gate to allow a clear path for El.

Will never asked for much detail or clarification of the take down plan. He was just glad to have an uninterrupted, individual thought. There was no secondary voice, no challenge to his autonomy. Will never asked who lit the flame, who even volunteered the idea, or who was the last to turn away. It didn’t matter all that much– Will had a clear enough vision of it all then, sitting in the basement.

Eyes, ten of them, locked onto Will– or what Will thought was himself at the time– engulfed in bright, white-hot, growing flames. The very last shred of Will that was clinging on, following the sound of the five voices he knew. He thrashed and screamed against a phantom pain he’d never learn to be real, but never be able to forget. Those five voices– their owners rather– stood before the fire, watching it try to eat Will alive. They caused that pain, like it wasn’t going to leave an impression on Will. Like it would all just turn to ash.

Clearer than all the others, Will could now remember being shown Mike, standing just behind Steve. His face was covered by most of his protective gear, but even Will’s past Now-Memory knew who it was. No reiteration of Will could ever forget his Mike. The Mike that visited him frequently in the hospital for the week after his possession. The Mike that helped him catch up on his schoolwork and not fall back a year. The Mike that Will learned was being more than friendly for a reason, and that Will was finally allowed to admit his own feelings about his best friend. The Mike that was Will’s hidden partner to every event and good night call via SuperCom.

But that Mike wasn’t exactly this Mike. This Mike was unafraid, standing over Will’s boiling corpse, only moving away when Dustin started shoving everyone back. He was going to watch Will die. They all were.

Before Will truly noticed, he had stood from their game table and was going for the door. Typically, Will always left out the front door, making sure he’d say goodbye to Mrs. Wheeler. In his distanced state, Will went for the backdoor just across the room. His trembling hands fiddled with the lock before yanking it open and stepping outside. The sun had begun to set. The sky was melting before Will’s very eyes into threatening, bleeding red clouds.

They want you dead.

“Will? Hey, Will! What’s wrong?” Mike was running after him. He didn’t even know he was walking that fast. The rest of the Party hung back by the door, gripping the frame to pack into the tight space.

“I have to go home.” Will didn’t stop. He wasn’t too sure who or what had control of his legs.

“I thought we were going to go swimming.”

“I want to go home.”

“Okay, that’s– Will, would you please stop!” Mike sprinted ahead with a last heave and stopped in front of Will. Will skidded to a halt to avoid collision. He looked at Will again, this time the burning red was behind Mike’s face instead of between them. “What’s the problem?”

“I… I just really don’t feel well and I want to lay down for a while. Maybe take a warm bath or something.” Will would later sit in the bathtub, skin so hot and aching, he’d be sure nothing had survived his first burn. He’d still be alone.

“Oh, okay.” Mike didn’t disagree. “Call me when you get home?”

“Sure.” Will nodded despite having no intention of speaking to anyone else that day.

“Okay.” Mike stepped forward, hand extended as if to touch Will’s hand. Will recoiled, holding them against his chest. Mike blinked, looking at his own hand again in confusion. “Okay.” He said again. “I’ll see you later, Will. Take care of yourself and call if you need anything.”

“I will.” Will lied.

“One two three.” Mike smiled, hands at his sides. Their goodbye was a subtle, coded way of counting the three words they were never comfortable saying to each other in case anyone heard. Will had never been more thankful for the secrecy; he didn’t think he could stand hearing Mike say those words when he could still feel the heat of the fire against his skin.

“One two three.” Will repeated, although he just meant the numbers then. Just then. Only then. Will knew he loved Mike, his vision just seemed to refuse to show him any Mike that he did love. He kept seeing blue goggles. Ten eyes. One glinting lighter. Not one endearing, protective boyfriend.

The walk home was nearly an hour. Every step felt like a mile, but Will had barely lifted his shoes off the ground. As he walked in his front door, the sun had completely set, but he was still soaked in sweat from the unrelenting humidity. Hopper and Joyce were eating at the table, laughing just as Will interrupted.

“Hey! You’re home really early.” Joyce said, placing her fork down. “What’s wrong, baby?”

“I thought you were at Wheeler’s place.” Hopper said. “That’s where I took El.”

“We all were. I just wanted to come home… I’m exhausted.” Will shuffled inside and kicked off his shoes. “I’m going to bed, don’t worry. Keep eating.”

“You look terrible, Will. Did you two have a fight or something?” Joyce stood and met Will at the door.

“No. We didn’t.” Will hadn’t even known about Mike’s actions to begin arguing with him. He was learning about all of it through a less present Now-Memory. “We’re fine.”

“Are you sure, baby, you–”

“Joyce, let him go. He’s probably got a lot on his mind.” Hopper said, balancing his firmness with a gentle wave back over to the table. “We’ll talk later, alright kiddo?”

“Sure.” Will sulked off without even looking Hopper in the eye. He didn’t want any more than ten fixated on him.

As Will flopped on the bed, one steady thought cut through the overwhelming return of a memory fostering just under his consciousness: there were ten eyes– five people– and no one moved to save him. They wanted to let Will die, whether they knew who it was in those flames or not. They wanted to kill you–

Will turned over harshly in his bed and tried to silence the familiar but finally articulated feelings pulsing through him. His friends were burning something– one thing– to save everyone else. They were being noble and brave and smart, and definitely were not trying to harm Will. Not Will himself. Not their Will.

Will wondered if he was still the same one they were trying to save.

—

Mike called three times. In two hours.

Eventually, Hopper took the phone out of the wall to plug it in on Will’s side table. He told Will to answer the phone-- answer his boy-- or he’d drive Mike over to their house himself. By the fifth call, Will reached over and grabbed the phone, holding the receiver to his ear not covered by his pillow.

“Hello?” Will’s voice cracked. It was the first time he’d spoken since coming home from Mike’s the day before. He hadn’t even verbally greeted El when she came home, poking her head in with a smile.

“Will! Hey, how are you feeling?” Mike sounded absolutely thrilled to not be ignored.

“I’m okay.”

“Still feel sick? Can I get you anything?”

“No.”

“No what? Do you feel sick still? Or do you not need anything?” Mike asked. He was patient and it was more than Will thought he deserved at the time. He was being completely unreasonable, right? Mike was his boyfriend– the literal love of his life at sixteen– and Will didn’t want to share more than thirty words with him.

There was still a loitering image of Mike– the only image he could seem to conjure when thinking of him– standing in the tunnels again. Unlike most other things in Will’s childhood, this one wouldn’t go away. It refused to be swallowed or pushed down to his feet. Will was walking on the anxiety of high school and fidgeting habits of having an abusive father, why wouldn’t this Now-Memory join them? Watching his own boyfriend wish he’d just burn already was just as terrible. Will wanted some peace and quiet. Just a little.

“I don’t want to see anyone today.” Will said flatly.

“Oh.” Mike said, pausing. “Is there something wrong?”

“No.”

“Will, I’m not really convinced, I have to say.”

“I just don’t okay?” Will snapped. He hadn’t done it in years. He barely remembered how to yell. “I–I just, don’t want to see anyone right now, okay. I’m sorry, Mike. I’m tired today.”

“Will, I’m starting to worry.” The other line muffled, like Mike was moving. Oh great, you’ve summoned the smart one, Will’s mind quipped instinctively. It had said the same thing before when Mike began connecting dots just in Will’s earshot. “I’m coming over– is anyone else home to let me in? I’m assuming you’re in bed… Someone moved the phone, right?” Will blinked, taken aback. This was still his Mike. The Now-Memory had it all wrong.

“Michael,”

“Hey.” Mike said somewhat firmly. “I’m going to be over in like, ten minutes whether you want me to be or not. I’m bringing soup.” Soup on a hot day sounded like a recipe for Will to sweat through his clothes.

For some reason, a deep part of Will’s brain took it as a threat.

“… Okay.” Will bent immediately to the promise. Mike The Friend had set him on fire, watching him burn through a scarf and goggles. Mike The Boyfriend was newer, had far less history and knew far less about Will. Maybe this one would stir up less intense feelings of impending death and unrequited revenge.

Maybe he doesn’t know your weaknesses.

The voice spoke again. This time, it was an echo of what it had thought moments after it forced Will to recognize “his friend. Mike”. The smile and the wave from Mike made all the difference to Will, but all that was much worse to the monster darting around under the town, swelling and trying to drag Will down with him.

“One, two, three. Be there soon.” Mike said, quickly hanging up.

Will tried to repeat after Mike, but found his tongue too heavy. Maybe when he saw Mike– had him staring at the real Will in present day– Will would feel different. He’d see there was no hatred in Mike’s eyes, no desire to end his life. Will could clear the name of his whole friend group by being seeing Mike, however it is he showed up.

Will had short ten minutes to try and push down the unrelenting notion that something was wrong, that Will was supposed to be fighting against something or pushing them away, rather than the memory. Will turned over on his bed, trying to find a different position. One that would let him feel like he was truly alone again. Not silently festering sudden and unidentifiable emotions that were not his own and quietly taking over his current consciousness–

“Will?” Mike called in the house, interrupting Will’s panicking process. “Plum? You here?” Will was home by himself. There was no one to direct Mike around, but he laid under his covers and waited for Mike to locate him on instinct alone. “There you are!” His messy hair-- Will’s favorite hair-- bounced as he swung around the corner into his room.

“Hi.” Will couldn’t match Mike’s level of enthusiasm.

“What’s going on in here?” Mike dropped his bag by the door and started toeing off his shoes. “I’ve got a thermos of soup with your name on it whenever you’re hungry.”

“Not now. Can’t stomach anything, I don’t think.” Will pulled the blankets up under his chin. It was another hot day in August, but Will still hesitated giving himself even a breath of reprieve– maybe letting the monster win again.

“Okay, whenever you want.” Mike said, placing his knee down and climbing onto the bed. He maneuvered his way to lay beside Will, bracing his head up on his arm as he faced Will. “Mind if I cuddle in? You said you were feeling weird. I wanna help.”

“No, Mike, you don’t have to–” Will almost didn’t want him to.

Trying to cover up the dead stare haunting Will’s mind with the sweet loving one in front of him seemed like a ploy. A tactic. A way to smooth over Will’s own deserved rage, hidden just beneath a history he never knew until the day before. What if all of it– everything between them– was a test? A way to know if Mike really got away with nearly trying to kill Will a few years ago and–

“Hey, I want to. I want to.” Mike laughed, and pushed Will’s bang back. He felt his forehead. “You feel feverish? Or is it just a general kind of yuck feeling today?” Will couldn’t respond; his jaw was clenched far too tightly. “Will? Talk to me. What’s going on? Why… Why do you look mad?”

Hearing it aloud struck Will out of his fog– back into a vague sense of self-awareness. Will was furious at his friends, at Mike for nothing. Well, nothing Mike was even aware of. It was unfair, it was selfish and crazy and–

“Will? Sugar Plum, talk to me.” Mike was just below pleading, placing his hand on Will’s chest, pulling the blankets up higher. “I don’t like when you’re quiet… That’s never good.”

Will relaxed his jaw, letting the words form on his tongue. “I remember you… in the tunnels.”

Mike blinked. “...back in eighth grade? That?”

“I remember it. Steve. The lighter. Everything. Everyone.” Will muttered. He finally felt overheated, but it seemed to start only on his chest and run up to his face.

“How? You weren’t there, Will.”

“He saw you.” Will said. “He showed me. Yesterday.”

Mike leaned back, his eyebrows furrowing together slowly. “What?”

“I saw you, all of you, when you lit the tunnels on fire. You were watching me burn.” Will couldn’t see Mike clearly in front of him anymore. It was only the distant memory. His repressed Now-Memory was trying to layer that stranger over Will’s boyfriend. The image was inconsistent and was jarringly unclear.

“Will, that wasn’t you. That was never you. That was the Mind Flayer.” Mike said softly, shaking his head. “We wanted to watch that monster that had you go up in flames and–”

“But it still had me!”

“…Did you feel it?” Mike reached out to touch Will’s shoulder. His hands were far softer than the flames trying to flicker behind Will’s eyes.

“Did you want me to?” Will had a lasting strike of anger that escaped before he could control it. Mike blinked at Will, tears suddenly pooling in his eyes. His hands dropped from Will and rested over his own chest-- his own breaking heart.

"You don’t think we actually wanted to hurt you... do you?”

"...What I saw... You were so determined. All of you were so willing to douse me, head to toe--”

“Will, none of that was you. We were trying to hurt the tunnels- the monster.”

“Same thing!” Will cried, pushing himself to sit up. “It was the same thing for a while... For a moment, when you had me tied up, I remember everything turning cold. My vision went all white and I... I couldn’t feel anyone anymore. For a second, I lost my grip and it had me, Mike. We were the same.”

Mike scrambled to sit up, moving to sit on the end of Will’s bed. His hands rested on Will’s ankles, gentle but distant. “You are not the monster, Will. Having a memory of His doesn’t mean that you two are the same--”

“Then what does it mean? That I get to just... remember feeling all this anger toward the people I love? I get to just have that forever.” Will had remembered how to yell. “I didn’t remember the Tunnels until today! Who’s to say that I won’t remember another one when we’re... all at graduation or going to college or going to Lucas and Max’s wedding or--” Will refused to have any positive moment of his life haunted by hearing Mike exclaimed that he had killed those soldiers and he’d kill them too. Those were traumatic and hopeless moments Will had cut out of himself and pushed aside. He couldn’t deal if there were more, cropping up out of no where.

“Then we’ll take that on together. All of us. We’ll remind you who you are-- and who you never were.” Mike slid his hands up, leaning in closer to Will. “We wanted to save you, Will. All we wanted to do was save you.”

The evidence was there to argue with Mike. Will had the vision and the fear to convince Mike that no, he had felt that sinking realization of death. Although he hadn’t remembered it initially, Will now got to carry that feeling with him going forward. And he had his friends to thank--

No. It wasn’t his friends, it was the monster. Will wasn’t being hunted by the friends around him, he was being haunted long after he thought he’d healed.

"It feels so real.” Will muttered, reaching for Mike’s hands. “But I have to remember: you are too.”

“We’re all real. We’re here for you-- what you saw is all in the past. It’s a ghost, Will. Ghosts are always dead.” Mike squeezed Will’s hands tightly. “He can’t hurt you anymore-- and we never will.”

There he was. Will’s Mike. The one that who had written a whole speech before asking if he could kiss Will for the first time. The one that made Will feel safe and protected. The one that kept his promises-- and this Mike was no different.

“I’m sorry I put His words in your mouth.” Will shuddered out a slow sigh. That was his Mike, and he’d betrayed him.

“Hey- no no. It’s alright. You don’t have to apologize. I can’t ask you to just forget what happened to you.” Mike said, moving closer. Will moved the blanket apart, letting Mike kneel between his feet. “I just wish I knew how to help, how to get all that out of your head.”

“... Sometimes I’m afraid it’ll be there forever.” Will hung his head, afraid to admit to Mike he hadn’t yet pushed everything down. He wasn’t as good as he should have been.

“It won’t be, Plum. We’ll work on it. I’ll take care of you.” Mike reached forward and took Will’s head in his hands, pulling him to his chest. Will let himself sigh and relax against Mike’s chest.

“I know you will.” Will laughed, gently petting Mike’s thigh. “You brought soup and everything.”

Mike hiccuped a giggle, wrapping both arms around Will’s shoulders. “Yeah. Soup really cures nightmares, haven’t you heard?”

“The hospital did mention something, now that you bring it up...” Will teased, closing his eyes and letting his full weight rest against Mike’s chest. Mike placed his chin on the top of Will’s head, breathing slowly.

“You’ll tell me the next time things get bad, right?”

“I will.” He promised.

“Thank you.” Mike kissed Will’s head. “I love you.”

There was no one around to hear it but them; Mike’s words weren’t hidden or masked by fear-- and neither was Will’s view of Mike. It was really him, and it was really love. Out loud, out spoken, and out in the open. The Now-Memory still felt fresh, like prickly heat forming just across the back of Will’s neck, but it wasn’t able to hurt him anymore. It was pushed aside by the undeniable affection he felt for Mike. It was the best defense against the twisting torment of false resentment: how could Will ever hate the boy that was openly loving every bit of him-- even the darkest parts that seemed to survive without any light.

The fire had burned Will free from the monster, and offered a chance to put light in those dark, hidden corners. This was Mike, this was his Mike. And he was Mike’s Will. The monster could never take his place. After all, hearing in the distance-- ringing true and with painful desperation-- “the best thing I’ve ever done” brought Will back when he thought he’d lost all hope. Not persistence, not anger, not fear, but love.

Love survived darkness, fight, and flame. Always had.

“I love you, Michael.”

ao3

[ryouverua]

Trial 6 - Ghost in the Machine (8)

Please clap.

(LET 👏 US 👏 (NOT) 👏 VOTE)

Trial: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7

Whoa, she’s seriously, truly not happy about this at all! This is… really, really scary? Like, I’m kinda finding her more terrifying that Junko right now…

!!! I - I didn’t even notice that? But she’s right - so that’s Tsumugi’s tell?!

Shouldn’t you be happy about that?! Isn’t that an acceptable ending? Or is it because it’ll just be a boring ‘default’ to it - so if they’d all submitted to despair it would be okay, but still not ideal -

I LOVE THAT THEY USED MAD-EYED!KOMAEDA SPRITE FOR HOPE

- quote from K1-b0, also known as ‘kibou’, self-proclaimed Ultimate Hope Robot.

“I literally just don’t give a shit anymore.”

ultimate tsun strikes again

I would have laughed if that had triggered the voting time screen??? But alas, the only student with that power other than the masterminds themselves has been Kokichi -

.... Wait, Kaito, technically.

Kaito if only you had realized you had such power in you this whole time - !

This is.... really weird music for a debate lol. But I like how they give you a ‘continue the game’ bullet! And of course, since the lying function turns it around...

I MEAN HE LITERALLY TOLD YOU THAT THEY WERE DONE -

Aaah, I see how this is going to go. Alright, I got the message loud and clear. I got your back, Sweetcheeks!

I just love how the music keeps stopping when Shuichi talks.

.... And of course, starts up again when Tsumugi responds.

And yeah, now that Maki pointed it out, she’s right??? She really is changing much less than before???

oh now you give me a normal answer for hangman’s gambit

Well since I’m chilling here anyway for the next 30 seconds.... eh, the music in this minigame isn’t bad, but it’s definitely not my favourite or particularly memorable -

FFGH the screen scared me and I thought I might have actually done something wrong?? But that’s the point, isn’t it. To make you feel like you’re making the wrong choice - !

Oh shit are we actually going to rotate through all the games?

.....

WAIT HAVE YOU GUYS BEEN ABLE TO SEE SHUICHI DOING THESE THIS WHOLE TIME?!?! WHAT?!

THIS HAS SOME REALLY WILD IMPLICATIONS -

THIS music is a jam though. Oh, they’ve definitely shortened the playtime for this! Probably good, tbh. Wasn’t the normal time limit at least 5 minutes, maybe even more?

n oooOOo I’M TRYING NOT TO GET ANY BUT I CAN’T STOP THE CAR ENTIRELY FUFUFUUUU

M... Monokuma, that’s.... literally the point....

OH MY GOD HOW DEEP DOES THIS MINIGAME RABBIT HOLE GO

YOU HAVE THIS MUCH CONTROL -d

Yo he is yelling straight past Tsumugi and Monokuma and right at the audience lmao

TSUMUGI SAVE YOUR SELF-ESTEEM AND DON’T READ THE LIVE COMMENTS

Holy crap they’re being so brutal to Shuichi et al., though? Look, I get we all have the people we wanted to survive but -

Anyway Tsumugi definitely has the face of a woman who went against all reason and logic and read the comments anyway. You are definitely a denizen of the internet! You should know better than this!

He is straight up wailing on them I am LIVING for this

Ooof those comments though, honestly - Shuichi is definitely riding high on spite, because I think he’d crumble otherwise. ... Probably being extremely sleep-deprived helps. I also get salty when I’m tired

Tsumugi they are literally going to sit here and complain if you don’t move forward, which is not very entertaining either. 8′D

Ah, but it’s great that they’re a united front. makes it easy to forget this is basically a suicide pact but, uh, let’s try to stay positive -

Oh she’s going for the softest target. But... I don’t think he can be swayed anymore. Even if he was the one fighting hardest for hope.

HUH -

HEY

HEY

HEY WHAT THE FUCK -

WHAT

WHAT JUST HAPPENED

WHAT DID YOU DO -

TSUMUGI WHAT DID YOU DO?!?!!!

guys

I........ I ......

..... I

I thought we were..... at the finish line

what.... this is.... this isn’t good.... wkajfsd;

i’M SCREAMING WHAT THE HELL

WHAT DID THEY DO?!?!?!

THIS IS SABOTAGE! YOU CAN’T JUST HIJACK HIM -

This is also literally K1-b0′s worst nightmare??? As a robot who wanted to be a human??? Oh there are so many layers of unfair to this -

the COMMENTS OH GOD

CTRL+ALT+KEEBO I am mad at how clever this is

dangit grandpas I cannot believe

Life ends in a flash LOL yeah the audience is completely desensitized huh

Is this really okay? .... or maybe not all of them

look at all this salt

shoot for the hope ending

Obviously, they’d be erased.

100% out of 100?

question taaaaaimu!

couldn’t read all of them but yeah

Whoa that reverberation on his voice...

AAAH THEY’RE SO WORRIED ABOUT HIM D: (Maki too, she just seems to react to this in different places for whatever reason.)

AND THEY SHORT-CIRCUITED HIM?! HARD RESET HIM OR SOMETHING?! HE’S A SURVIVOR TOO DAMN IT YOU CAN’T JUST DO THAT -

FFFFFFUFFUFFUUUUUUUUUU

They.... they bloody killed someone.... in the middle of a trial....

And hell, how could the audience have the ability to make that choice??? Who gave them that option?

That means... That definitely means there’s someone that had the ability to create that question for the audience to vote on, someone outside of her... right? Or could that be done via Monokuma? Via that staff she was talking about.... there was definitely a third party that created that option for them, right? As a way to salvage this situation for them.

Are they that depraved?! Do they really feel no attachment to the character they travelled with this whole time?! That’s.... actually really terrible?! I get that there’s a whole genre dedicated to living out your own fantasy through a character you can project yourself on, and K1-b0 served that function in a sense, but he still .... had his own.... character.......

LITERALLY DOES NOT DESERVE THIS

IF THEY TOLD YOU TO JUMP OFF A BRIDGE, WOULD YOU -

Wait actually don’t answer that -

WHY

WHY DID THE VOICE SHE JUST PUT ON MAKE ME LAUGH

FHGSDLKFJ

DAMN YOU TSUMUGI SOMETHING TERRIBLE HAS HAPPENED I FEEL TERRIBLE FOR LAUGHING AT SUCH A CRITICAL JUNCTURE

And now they have their hope vote.... fffgh

AAAAH HE’S BACK HE’S FIGHTING IT

Wow you’re really going to pull the ‘good put-upon white-haired boy gets controlled against his will but struggles against the inner voice in his head in order to help his friends’ thing on me now, huh

....

well it’s working damn it i am not okay

also kokichi will you respect him now that he can theoretically be interpreted as a YGO reference or -

THEY’RE ALL SO WORRIED FOR HIM

god why did it take so long for this

why did it have to be at the very end that they finally banded together with K1-b0

it’s so far too late for that now

K1-b0..............

ME FUCKING TOO SHUICHI FJSKLDFJSDFL;ASDJK

you don’t, uh, look sad like... at all

On that note - she was so pissed at him pre-trial? I’m sure that’s contributing to her feelings right now. And I swear she barely interacted with him in the previous chapters.... in fact, didn’t she dump on him in Ch 4 or 5 about being too sensitive about robophobia? About his ‘persecution complex’? Hot and cold, man...

WE WON’T LET THIS HAVE HAPPENED IN VAIN LET’S FUCKING DO THIS SWEETCHEEKS

UNHOLY SCREECHING AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

I WEEP!!! I WEEP!!!!

that is also the noise I made wow I can’t believe we are in sync in this small incremental moment in time

This is the chance they worked so hard to give us!!!

I mean, there it was right there - him using that line that Kaito used to try and inspire them the entire game. He already died, but his love for Shuichi and Maki is present and here right now.

If all of them knew what was happening... I don’t think they would be upset at all. Hell, Kaede walked into that first trial knowing that it was going to be her last day, and Gonta, Kokichi and Kaito all basically used their lives as weapons to try and get the ending that they thought was the best for everyone - and that didn’t even always involve the class’s survival! We were practically primed for an ending where ‘dying is for the greater good‘ from the beginning!  So you know, he’s not... wrong. He’s just following in his classmates’ footsteps.

okay this is slightly cheesy but I’m still with you and more importantly I am always about tearing the wall down between the metaworld and the prime world via the power of love oh wait wrong series...

Would it be presumptuous to say that this is him now using Kokichi’s love for his classmates, right here? After all those things he said about the power of lies, and how lies could be kind, and that final sacrifice... is it okay to say that?

Honestly, Shuichi learned so damn much from the last trial. It’s so great to see it finally come together here.

ghgjgkhdkfh

Oh -

oh no, are we about to do what I think we’re going to do?

Oh no -

isn’t him being chained up a little on the noSE OH GOD OKAY HERE WE GO -

also does that mean this is the one minigame Tsumugi et al have no control over or -

THESE COMMENTS ARE INSANE

AND THE WAY HE’S STRAINING AT THE CHAINS AAAAAH -

oh god he’s screaming they’re all screaming I-I know she said he’s been erased but this isn’t his fault it’s not fair to him -

THIS IS SCARING THE SHIT OUT OF ME G O D

slkdfj the whole globe is blocking me I cannot believe

They’re calling it preachy, they’re talking about it being too meta, they don’t like these twists, hope, despair, hope, despair, give me the happy ending I want, kiibou-da, zetsubou-da, kiibou-da, zetsubou-da, they want closure, it’s all just about entertainment but -

IT’S HAPPENING -

That’s.... it........... -

CAN SOMEONE PLEASE CATCH K1-B0 OH MY GOD HE’S FALLING SO FAR -

I choose to believe that Shuichi spent the last five or so minutes screaming at K1-b0 zooming around the ceiling while the others watched

.... and Tsumugi just let him do that

I JUST SAID SHUICHI SPENT THE LAST FIVE MINUTES SCREAMING AT K1-B0 WHO WAS JUST FLYING AROUND THE CEILING BLASTING INTERNET COMMENTS FROM THE LOUD SPEAKERS MIU INSTALLED ALL OVER HIS BODY -

Logically, I know this must have gone through to them. There’s no way this hasn’t. My heart hasn’t caught up quiet yet, though - I am... cautiously optimistic, but also with that edge of nervous and tentativeness. We’ve gotten through... we most certainly have gotten through...

Why.... Why are you monologuing. You must realize. You’re setting yourself up. You’re setting yourself up, you’re supposed to be the genre-aware one -

Shuichi knows. Shuichi.... knows.

Doesn’t that??? Sound terrible??? And so contrived??? Monokuma, this is why it’s getting stale! It’s the same thing, every time! Honestly Shuichi is doing you a damn favour -

Famous last words, my girl. Famous last words.

It’s been a long time coming, but... we’re finally bringing it home, Kaede.

But, y’know - it just didn’t seem appropriate to end it all looking at her. So, Sweetcheeks? To the end?

.... We did our best. You did good, kid.

Yes!!! You were so strong throughout this whole thing, Himiko! This couldn’t have been an easy decision for you, after pushing yourself so hard to live for Tenko and Angie!

I think... we’re safe on that front at least.

‘And you totally screwed yourself over Imeanwhat-’

I have to wonder then what she would have done if the ending really was looking like it was going to be despair. Would she have allowed that to happen?

y-you can’t say that and ‘puhuhu’ in the same sentence -

You just said kiibou was the winner no need to be redundant okay that was bad I’m sorry

What a terrible ending. Hope at any cost... And here I thought Komaeda was the natural extreme/twisted version of ‘anything for hope’. One game later and we have a mastermind whose end goal was hope winning???

With a new personality, a new script.... and no memories of anything that happened here. Of the people he met, and lost, along the way. That’s so sad.

Wow I don’t know why but I really like that it’s Maki coming to K1-b0′s defense right now???

Her idea of fiction is actually pretty screwed up??? I mean, so much of fiction and writing prides itself on flowing smoothly, and people talking about things ‘being forced’ in a story is generally a bad thing???

Then again, she was perfectly happy to LITERALLY let K1-b0′s 'characterization’ be destroyed in order to brute-force the happy ending she/they wanted...

…. Just like Junko. But…

dude I know it’s a bit very super super super late to ask this but uh, do you need... to talk to someone? Maybe a therapist? I... I don’t think this excessive attachment is healthy....

No dude that’s cheesy af. What - what do those words even mean together? Grasp true hope - like, what?

NO IT’S SO AWFUL AND VAGUE THE ONLY THING INTERESTING ABOUT IT IS K1-B0 BEING THE LONE SURVIVOR AND THEN WHAT? AND THEN WHAT? YOU’VE GOT NO HOOK YOU’VE GOT NOTHING -

maki you sound like me tf

That smile - oh, he knows. Shuichi knows.

TSUMUGI I AM TELLING YOU, YOU ARE FALLING VICTIM TO ALL OF THE CLASSIC VILLAIN TROPES AND ‘DEFEAT DEATH FLAGS’ -

Here we go.....................................

!!

[ddaenghoney]

SERIES: HALLOWEEN BETWEEN MIDNIGHTS

Chapter 23

On October 1st, you attend a Halloween party in an abandoned house rented by some friends. As scary as the idea of cult owners is, nothing could have prepared you and BTS(regular people) for the mayhem and terror that follows until October 31st.

This is an INTERACTIVE fic. At the end of each part, readers will be able to vote to decide what happens next. Analyze everything(except the time) carefully. Choices decide romance, friendship, and deaths; and yes, ANYONE can die.

In other words, please read at your own risk; anything goes in this story.

Start here | Previous part | Next part 

tw; please read at your own risk

“We need to stop them now-” Jeongguk’s body jerked back as Namjoon stopped him from descending around the corner of the hallway.

“Can you think rationally, please,” He mumbled quickly, eyes glaring at the avoiding stare of Jeongguk whose legs itched to go and help Taehyung away from the two guys and they’re ridiculous pet owl, “That owl came out of the fucking wall, and you want to just jump out at them and try to beat them up?”

Jeongguk’s nose scrunched from a building of frustration. Watching his friend collapse to the ground, Jeongguk was hunched around this corner stagnant, quietly observing without a way to do anything that wouldn’t compromise all of their safety. At this point, he couldn’t see a reason to care about it anymore. “Jimin and Yoongi are taking too long, we need to go-”

“I know, Guk, but we don’t know what we’re going to get into. It’s two against two and that,” Namjoon stuttered thinking of a proper description for the creature that clearly defied physical reason. “Owl-thing. We don’t know if they’ll hurt Taehyung or Y/N, either.”

“So we wait until they start screaming about having their lives sucked out of them?” He turned to push away the hand Namjoon still gripped his arm with. “They’ll be fucking dead before we move-”

“Taehyung!”

Jeongguk’s head snapped back to peek around the corner, Namjoon’s own joining as well. “That was Y/N.” He acknowledged to himself aloud, feeling his chest shake in dismay at not knowing what was going on in that room. Her voice seemed to be calling out, trying to get Taehyung to notice her, despite all of them being in the same room by now. If she was able to still speak freely, then why was she still in there? Was she constrained? Hurt? “Namjoon, I’m serious, we need to figure something out now-”

“I know, I know.” His hand shook against the cement wall, glancing across the bare spaces, and the only thing around being a long run extending down the length of the hall. Nothing to swing, or throw. Running in with nothing was getting to be the only thing close to a logical solution. Your voice repeated calling Taehyung once more, then twice in a row. Namjoon bit his lip,

“Namjoon, before they start-”  Another sentence was cut into from the sound of a long scream, somewhere far behind Jeongguk and Namjoon. They turned towards the flight of stairs leading back up, knowing entirely that the only source of the voice could be from Yoongi or Jimin.

“Taehyun-” Your lips reconnected with each other in a forced submission. Eyes following Taehyung as he strode monotonously to the opposite point of the diagram from you-- the same spot as the seance a month ago. His eyes were devoid of focus, more closely resembling a puppet with no control over himself. Your heart raced.

This couldn’t have been what he meant when he said he’d handle it. There was no way he intended to simply offer up both of you. His lack of control over his body was to blame. If you were made to walk around like a zombie in the middle of the night then surely that is what happened to him as well.

You should’ve helped him earlier. You shouldn’t have left him on his own, calling it his way of coping. Those texts where he snapped at you, and his avoidance of Jeongguk, and when you felt yourself drifting from them-- you should’ve dragged the three of you back together. Somehow get the two of you to talk to each other or someone-- helped.

Your nerves shook from the regret and also because you couldn’t change it now. You couldn’t move, much less speak anymore, and because of what? A demon that you allowed to control your emotions up until this point. If you had acknowledged the divide between your instincts and compromised contemplation then maybe you would’ve had more power now. More ability to speak instead of having your mouth jammed shut by means of an owl’s glowering eyes.

You groaned, eliciting a snarl from the very same bird that flapped its wings to remove from Hoseok’s shoulders.

You keep moving. Be still.

“You don’t get to control me,” You could only feel your hands constricting together, and the throb building in the left shoulder that hurt enough to make you wince loudly. Verbally. “This is done. I’m stronger than a stupid bird-” Your eyes caught the sway of Taehyung’s body. Still unconscious, yet not stoic. “Taehyung!”

“He doesn’t hear you.” The guy snarled, while Hoseok’s body reached to rub his temples, lowly muttering incoherent profanity. “If you just shut up it’ll all be over soon-” Your eyes widened hearing a scream far off. Your head turned to look, shoulders stiff in place. Just as the sound bounced in a blur around the room did it become overshadows by the owl’s screech.

You tried moving your arms to cover your ears as the high-pitched note strained through your head, piercing. Through squinting eyes you found Hoseok’s body nearly collapsing to the floor, only maintaining some composure by drawing a hand against the floor.

Go to my chamber, now! Your eyes narrowed as the beak of the owl eventually shut. Immovable, you simply tried to grasp an understanding over the command it sent out to you, until you watched the plain-looking guy begin to run past you, out of your peripheral vision in a second. You heard a loud curse and then the sound of a collision somewhere just out of the room.

Another sharp screech let the owl’s beak before it shifted into another shadow on the ground, escaping the room within the blink of an eye.

The screaming from far away continued in short bursts and long wails. Your throat chopped up in wonder of who it belonged to. With worried heat finding the corners of your eyes you just tried again, “Taehyung! Taehyung, snap out of it, please!”

Jeongguk’s eyes widened only for a short moment as he followed Namjoon’s quick race around his body to tug at the rug on the hall floor. With a giant yank, he pulled it hard enough to stumble the figure of the man running from the seance room, successfully causing him to crash into the wall and then the ground. Before thinking, Jeongguk simply ran, arms grabbing around the lanky stunned figure, “Jeongguk, don’t let him go!”

Namjoon gripped as much of the long fabric as he was able to, wrapping it quickly before the struggling ensued. His release startled as a long shadow sped along the ground passed them, towards the staircase. It couldn’t be stopped. “The fuck was that!” Jeongguk groaned, tightening his grip on the legs of the man while Namjoon cut off the movement in the arms with the rub binding strongly around the guy’s upper body.

“I don’t know, but I think it’s going to find Yoongi and Jimin.” He muttered, hastily trying to figure out a way to ensure the movement of the guy stays put, “Go make sure they’re okay, I’ll watch him-”

“What!”

“Jeongguk, don’t fight me on this, just fucking go!” Namjoon snarled, a glare fixated on the man’s wiggling body. “Hurry!” Eyes shifted to Jeongguk, who glanced uneasily to the guy, then the room before he groaned and started off to go follow the shadow,

“Be careful, Namjoon!” Namjoon sighed shakily, resisting the sarcastic laughter that wanted to escape him, before he wrapped his arm around the guy’s neck,

“Can’t be easy, can any of this-” His eyes shut, biting on his lip. The chin of the guy tried digging into his elbow as it constrained tightly. Namjoon kept it steady, ignoring the knot in his stomach and just focused on the flailing growing slower, then limp. “Can’t be easy-”

Yoongi had watched with frowning eyes as Jimin entered into the room. The door opened wide, and Yoongi followed only far enough to step into the frame, his arm extended to place his hand against the wood, just in case. The atmosphere felt cold-- Yoongi wasn’t sure what Jimin meant in calling it hot and heavy. It just felt uninviting. Yoongi’s lungs were thick, but that was from the memory playing over and over in his head of you struggling on the ground, wailing in pain from something he couldn’t see and couldn’t help.

Cautiously stepping, Jimin glanced around at the insignia on the ground. The geometric figure looked similar to pictures on the internet, but unlike anything in particular he had seen. He sighed, stepping a foot into it and feeling nothing. Nothing more than the extra gravity that seemed to be forcing against him from every angle since he entered in. It wasn’t that he was worried of a particular stone releasing traps, but he still didn’t like the feeling. There was clearly something different.

But he found himself on the opposing wall in a few seconds of walking. The book was just on the floor, face-up. Simply positioned. He sighed. You had used it before-- touched it. It had to be okay.

Yoongi’s neck craned, watching in anticipation as Jimin crouched to pick up the book. Something about this room was wrong. When Yoongi first wandered them into it, it was to prove to his mind that he had been in the house before. But when they went in and became trapped by seemingly nothing, then of course he wouldn’t consider the space normal. Not that anything in the property was normal to begin with. But that book in particular-

Jimin’s fingers wrapped around the spine.

Yoongi didn’t like what the words in that book could do-

Unable to react, the door slammed shut, shoving Yoongi outside of the room. A thud against the ground made him wince. “Jimin!”

“Yoongi,” Jimin’s body tensed, the book clutching tighter in his hands as he looked back at the closed door. He had no doubt it wouldn’t open if either of them tried, “I’ll put the book-” In that instant the room itself seemed to change, becoming nothing put a void of darkness. Before being able to comprehend the appearance, Jimin’s throat wailed out as he felt his chest be crushed by nothing visible.

You had no permission.

He couldn’t register the direction of a voice, only that it drifted through his ears like a growl. Releasing the book, Jimin hunched onto the abyss of a floor, screaming louder as his arms felt like they were being dragged down away from him. Yoongi’s voice calling his name sounded so much more distant than a second ago.

My domain, you’re trespassing.

Jimin’s throat felt like nails dragged along the inside, his hands flailing senselessly as they were still being pulled further and further, but still attached to him. You’re interrupting. The voice felt closer. The presence on his body was thicker, constraining tighter and tighter until it felt like air was being vacuumed out of his lungs. My book alone.

But that book was important. Jimin tried to wail around his legs, find a way to remove himself up. He couldn’t lift up. He knew that the book needed to get out of here. This reaction proved it. He had been right. His leg felt like it snapped, eliciting the closest thing to a sound his straining lungs could make. Jimin wanted to desperately move his arms and read something out of there, or just light that stupid book on fire, but the energy in his mind felt like it was dissipating.

“Jimin!” Jimin barely heard Yoongi as it felt like his ears had liquid in them, straining their ability to function. He couldn’t scream anymore, his chest resisted heaving in air. The darkness surrounding him continued with his eyes shutting, body trembling from the constriction on every side, but unable to wail about the pain. He wasn’t sure if he was still moving when he stopped thinking.

Yoongi’s fists pounded against the door, cursing senselessly about needing to get inside, and regretting not being the one in there with him. Together, or by himself, but Jimin shouldn't’ have gone alone. Maybe this could have been prevented as a pair. Yoongi should’ve considered how the room’s air didn’t shove him down like Jimin claimed it had. He pounded again, feeling splinters dig beneath his skin.

“Jimin, talk!” His voice was hoarse, calling out. Labored breaths fell, like the heated tears dripping from his eyes. It shouldn’t have gone this way. He should’ve known better than to let him go in alone. He gripped down on the knob, twisting senselessly in each direction. It didn’t budge. Neither did it with Yoongi’s shoulder ramming against the wood. “Open!” His shoulder hit again, “Fucking open!” He twisted the knob with his shove. The door released open with ease. Colliding with the wall attached to it, the door slammed on its revolution into the wall.

Yoongi’s mouth snapped into a tight line, his hand covering his neck as his eyes found Jimin’s body limp on the floor. His head faced towards the back wall, arms stretched to either of his sides. No movement.

Shaking muscles guided him forward, inching slowly. He tensed into a freeze as a shadow traveled out from beneath Jimin’s body and onto the back wall, appearing like a human in form.

Leave.

Yoongi’s chest felt like it stopped beating. He looked back to Jimin’s frame-- the lack of a lift from breaths. Yoongi’s lips parted, eyes narrowing on the book left on the floor beside his hand.

That thing was what Jimin had been after. Yoongi looked back up to the shadow, transfixed against the wall. Leave. An empty-threat? It would’ve hurt him too had he entered, right?

They needed that book.

Please feel free to send thoughts, predictions, interpretations; they really help me to know how to word the story so that everyone successfully understands the plot points I’m trying to get across ! More than happy to answer questions you may have !

[badgop]

This current shitshow is brought to you by Roger Ailes.

When I was growing up in the 80s, politics was more like a thing that came up a few months before a presidential election, and people would talk about who they might vote for and why, and you would freely choose whichever candidate you liked best. Totally dullsville. Not like now, where who you think you are as a person determines your vote.

Way back in the late 80s, a guy named Morton Downey Jr had a hit talk show. The format was, Downey was an abrasive chain-smoking loudmouth asshole who'd invite people from two opposing sides of a story to talk it out. He'd pick a side and verbally abuse them and get the audience all riled up with outrage on his side. Outrage! This was the key component, the sense of you or someone like you getting screwed and there's the guy doing the screwing, it's one of our most powerful emotions.

Cue Roger Ailes. He clocked Downey's shtick, put it in a suit and tie and sat it behind a desk in a room with bookcases and flags and called it Rush Limbaugh. Of course it was a smash hit. With Limbaugh, Ailes used outrage to manipulate his audience with what appeared to be a respectable format. In reality it was as absurd a cartoon spectacle as Downey or pro wrestling or televangelism. But say what you want, they made politics a lot less boring.

Five days a week, people would flock to "Rush Rooms" at bars and cafes to listen to his radio show, and/or tune into his TV program at night. The secret to its success was that, finally, there was a person to blame for all your troubles, and it was the Liberal. Outrage! The Liberal was out to destroy your entire way of life!

Ailes used the astonishing success of Limbaugh to start Fox News, where he cultivated an entire stable of Limbaugh clones, all working the same shtick. It, too, was a tremendous success.

Working closely with the Republican party and Rupert Murdoch, they transformed the entire political narrative. Outrage sold like gangbusters, so much more than boring old serious policy discussions. No longer did you need to have a coherent plan for anything in government - to win, all you needed was an identifiable enemy for every occasion. Who's to blame for what ails you? Who's trying to destroy your way of life? It's always going to be the blacks, the Mexicans, LGBT, Muslims, immigrants, terrorists, atheists, abortion doctors, big-city elites, Obama, Hillary, college professors, college students, Hollywood, the French, etc etc etc, but one way or another all jammed under the big umbrella of Liberal. Not the Asians because that's the "good" ethnic stereotype you can use, and never the military or the Jews if you want to stay in prime time, but pretty much any group who's not white, straight, Christian and rural, they could use to work their audience into a sweet, profitable lather.

That's why Republicans don't really have any substantive policies to implement now, even when they control the whole works. They don't have any ideas to actually do anything, all they know after 25 years of this is how to generate outrage.

Now the biggest problem with hammering on this outrage for so long is, people take it real seriously. It becomes part of their identity. It's like you root for the sports team from the area you live in. You don't choose that team because you carefully analyzed all the available teams in a big spreadsheet, it's just fun to feel like part of a tribe with your neighbors. And you've heard all these terrible stories over and over and over about all the terrible Liberals out there, so you, along with your neighbors, are simply not the kind of person who would have any truck with people like Those People. It's got nothing seriously to do with sitting down and analyzing political policies and the best way to run things, it's just sports and identity.

So keep turning the screws on that concept bit by bit for 25 years, and where we are now was always inevitable. Trump says he could shoot people and not lose his base. Just today, 60% of Trump voters still say there's nothing that could ever ever never ever turn them against Trump. Well of course. It doesn't matter to them what he actually does or doesn't do because it was never about that in the first place. It was only ever about sticking it to whoever caused all this outrage that day - because if Those Terrible Liberal People are all up in arms screaming about what a scumbag Trump is, he must be doing something right, right?

And on the far side of that envelope, there's the fascists. Implicit in the nature of authoritarianism is the use of or at least the credible threat of violence. The far right, personified by Trump, is the father archetype: what he says goes, or else. The nazis marching in the street these days are the "or else."

People like to bitch about PC SJWs and whatever, but let's face facts, we just don't like being lectured about not saying "retard" anymore. Nobody's going to come to your house and burn a cross in the yard if you keep saying it, though. At least I hope not, for my own sake. There's not a lot of vegans shooting up churches and mosques or shooting people at protests or stabbing people to death on trains or running people over with cars. At least not yet. It's almost sure to happen sooner or later. But Antifa, as the name clearly states, is only a reactionary movement against the spread of violent fascism given increasing signal boost in recent years.

But this is the most important and least-discussed principle behind the whole shebang: in the post-Ailes world, liberals are not just people with different ideas about what's best for the community or country, they're dirty dirty Liberals who want to destroy your way of life. Keep drilling that into peoples' heads for long enough, and a few of them will start to act on it. And then those dirty liberals will start to fight back. And then the nutjobs will say, we gotta stop these dirty liberals, now they're getting violent, and the Outrage Machine will eat that story up from both sides.

Presto, now you've got a low-level civil conflict simmering to open warfare. Who's got the power to dial it back? Doesn't seem like anyone can at this point. The power of the state can at least keep it somewhat in check... but funny enough, the current president is doing everything possible to undermine the authority of the state, so how much longer will that hold? It's notable that Glenn Beck had a change of heart and tried to pull back from the precipice, and what happened? His fans bid him the fuck goodbye and found themselves another outrage supplier.

It's possible this all bottoms out and people demand pulling back on the controls and getting out of the civil war death spiral. I mean, it doesn't take much to look around and realize how few people anywhere in the world have ever said, "gosh, sure am glad we had that civil war." But as long as outrage sells, it will... and it only takes a handful of people captive to their chosen media who spin out sideways on it and do a bunch of damage, so... good luck with all that, America.

Ironic thing is, the Outrage Machine could be turned around and used for good. Be outraged at the rich who actually are taking all your wealth and jetting off to their bunkers leaving you behind to die in the wasteland they created, for example. Be outraged at a system that led us straight into extinction. Imagine the possibilities, instead of this weapon being used against each other. It's a damn shame.

Now what this means for collapse... well, I don't think civil war's ever been kind to a nation's infrastructure and development, and if we're sliding into the peak oil climate change economic collapse future at the same time, it's just that much more reason to be pessimistic. Although on the other hand, should the state weaken sufficiently, civil conflict may provide opportunity for more self-governing enclaves, some of which might be dedicated to surviving into the future. That may be the most optimistic scenario, really. Even if we could pull back to the pre-civil conflict status quo, our systems will come unglued some other way anyway.

[politicsiscomplicated]

Instead of Punching Nazis, Steal Their Target Audience From Them

If America today is analogous to Nazi Germany, the people I'm arguing against act like we're in 1938, with annexations of our neighbors and Kristallnacht looming near.  We're not.  We're not even in 1933 at the beginning of the dictatorship yet.  We're still somewhere in the 20s.  The Nazis are clearly, obviously evil, going around attacking people and screaming about how the Jews/liberals/non-whites/foreigners/etc. are ruining the country, and even have some friends in high places.  But most of the country still isn't willing to vote for them.  We the enemies of Naziism, all of us from ultra-conservatives like Orrin Hatch all the way to leftists and progressives like many of you my friends are, aren't in the place of some underground resistance movement fighting a guerrilla campaign against the omnipresent Nazi menace.  We are right now all in the place of the other political parties that fucking failed to fix Germany by peaceful means after WW1.  And there are a lot of disgruntled but politically detached people out there who aren't Nazis but might be persuaded to vote for Nazis if we don't get to them first with better ideas.

We saw this last year when millions of disgruntled former Obama voters and millions of voters who said they normally don't vote at all came out to support a notoriously incompetent asshole who stumbled into being the first major presidential candidate since Wilson to receive the endorsement of the Klan and not disavow it.  Never forget that Hitler didn't gain power through coercion like Mussolini or revolution like Franco.  He was the leader of a major political party, elected partially because of terrorism, but also largely because his party was able to convince the public that they could solve their problems.  The Nazis and their ideological cousins in the alt-right are competing with us now to win over the people who are, frankly, ignorant of or disinterested in politics and therefore vulnerable to Nazis winning them over by presenting their mix of paranoia and outright lies nicely.

The people we are competing with them over, or ought to be, are the people I've heard ranting my entire life — and I know, any of you New Englanders, that you have heard them too, and are probably related to some of them — about "reverse racism" and "handouts", and how the Clintons are secret murderers, and so on blah blah blah.  They're wrong, and they don't understand what we're talking about.  But that's not how we respond to them.  Instead, we respond to them by writing them off as unfixably hateful and accuse them of lying rather than not understanding.  We push them away into the waiting hands of Nazi propagandists.  Nazis, like the toxic right-wing talkshow media, respond to them by egging them on to embrace and use their anger, Emperor Palpatine-style.  Any chance we give the Nazis to portray themselves as the victim of leftist aggression is another voter who, when it is time for our equivalent of the 1932 elections, will go to the polls and support the Nazis even though they may not personally be a Nazi.

But the propaganda is out there, and the rallies are happening, and they have an audience.  Clearly something must be done.  So what is to be done about the Nazis themselves?  How can we possibly avoid seeming to engaging them as equals, which would give them the same false balance legitimacy currently enjoyed by creationists and anti-vaxers and climate change deniers?  Not through preemptive violence.  We should certainly be willing to fight in self-defense, or in the defense of another we can help, but remember, there is already a narrative out there of "violent leftists" who need "law and order" brought down upon them.  The president himself buys into and spreads this.  We need to make him look ridiculous.

When the NAACP took up the case of Rosa Parks, rather than any of the other people who defied bus segregation before her, it was because they and Parks understood how easily-swayed people are by victim-blaming.  When a bad thing happens to someone, it seems to be a baked-in human instinct to examine the victim to see why they "provoked" something bad, rather than examining what's wrong with the offender to make them think victimizing someone could possibly be okay.  They sought out a person about whom the fewest negative things could be said.  This is an effective tactic.  It anticipates and shuts down the stupid but popular arguments people are drawn to.  By showcasing the most clear-cut, inarguable cases of injustice, that bulk of disengaged public sees that a system they were previously indifferent to ought to be actively changed or destroyed.  By fighting only defensively, I believe we can preempt any attempt by the Nazis to use that tactic on us.  Make it clear that the victim of an act of racist or other bigoted violence did nothing to provoke it, and you turn the public's outrage on the offender, and maybe even on the ideology that encouraged the violence.

It is also worth remembering at this point that, as Jon Stewart put it, the bias of the mainstream media is towards sensationalism, conflict, and laziness.  They want someone to get pundits enraged at because enraged pundits get them viewers or listeners or readers, and viewers or listeners or readers get them ad revenue.  Let someone make a heinous speech and the news cycle will be about what a fucking piece of shit that person is.  Punch someone making a heinous speech, and the news cycle will be fake-balance arguments about how there's "anger on both sides".

So what about "fighting" metaphorically, by disrupting the lives of Nazis (or Nazi-allies)?  Public shame will do something, right?  Well, maybe, if you get the right person.  A friend did a back-of-the-envelope-type estimate using some demographic data about this.  If we assume for the sake of argument that every alt-rightist is a white American man, distributed randomly among all white American men in general appearance, and we have pictures of every single alt-rightist based on estimates of how many of them there are, and we only make mistakes 1% of the time in matching the alt-rightists' faces to the faces of all white American men, the number of innocent people we falsely identified as alt-rightists would be over 24 times the number of correctly-identified alt-rightists.  Indeed, we've already seen some false identifications based on pictures of people from the "Unite the Right" rally.  (And just a few years ago, internet vigilantes also came to confidently wrong conclusions about the identities of the Boston Marathon bombers in exactly the same way, by poring over mediocre-to-poor-quality photos of the event, although thankfully police realized quickly these were incorrect.)

And even if you do get the right person, are you sure you want to actively encourage managers to fire people for their activities outside of work?  Remember those people I mentioned earlier who are outraged about "reverse racism" and so on?  Some of those people are managers.  Some managers will fire Nazis because, quite accurately, they understand that Nazis are bad.  But other managers will, based on the same encouragement, fire Black Lives Matter protestors.  It's not hard to find examples of political commentators or even politicians calling BLM black supremacists or even terrorists.  Because you know what?  People don't make rational decisions based on what is actually true.  Ever.  About anything.  They make vaguely-approaching-rational decisions based on what feels true.

You may trust yourself, or a really good boss you have, to make this sort of decision.  I may even agree with those judgements.  But recall the worst boss you've had, or the worst boss someone you know has had.  Someone obnoxious, petty, ignorant, mean, or clearly looking for an excuse, any excuse, to fire someone.  Now imagine how they'd react if you said "you should fire people for being hateful outside of work".  They might fire a Nazi, but I'd place my bet on them firing a BLM supporter, or someone with a different religion than them (because, of course, disagreeing with someone's religion is blasphemy, and blasphemy is hate speech!), or someone who is very much not a Nazi but the manager falsely thinks they are because they just read a wrongheaded book or blog post that argues that some group of people actual Nazis hate, like gay people, or completely mainstream moderates, are the "real" Nazis.

If you really feel compelled to take matters into your own hands, proceed with the extremest of extreme caution, understand your own ignorance and failures and biases, admit to and suffer the consequences of your mistakes if you harm the innocent, and absolutely do not fire unless fired upon.

The last several days of arguments I've seen, and occasionally participated in, online have just gotten nasty and frustrating.  So this post is all I intend to say on the topic.  I am sick of being misconstrued by people I would otherwise firmly agree with.  I would just like to remind them that I understand exactly what is on the line if the Nazis actually win; just off the top of my head, there are at least three, maybe seven if you really reach, reasons I will be sent to a concentration camp if America truly follows the trajectory of Nazi Germany.  That's why I am so emphatic that we must head off the Nazis.  We must stop them from using the media to their favor, and we must win over their target audience of people who are vaguely upset and frustrated but do not know at whom their frustration should be directed.  We must reach out to the angry but not very politically engaged public and do a decent job of explaining ourselves to them and debunking Nazi paranoia and lies before the Nazis have the chance to suck them in first.

[fapangel]

Tell me, anon, how do you feel about going to Mars - to stay?// You do know that NASA got a half a million applications to do just that? Look, I think that anon attempted to point out that the Left is so far gone, that yes, they would allow a Carrier to go down just to take a swing at Trump. After the shooting that the baseball game, I just can't put it past them.

… okay, bruh, I get where you’re coming from, but I’m going to tell you the same thing I tell every fuckhead who says “Obama is a Muslim:” that doesn’t give you free license to sling the same breathtaking, demonizing slanders the Left does. And that includes not slandering everyone on The Other Side by the actions and words of their most violent and insane members.

Listen, Obama was a shitshow. He was a narcissistic asshole who had his dick sucked so much from Day One that he came to believe he really was infallible, a narcissist that indulged his own whims to the detriment of long-standing alliances from day one, when one of his first acts in office was to exile the Winston Churchill bust from his office in favor of an MLK one. If you think that’s not important, I’ll let you read between the lines of this CNN shill piece trying to defend it and decide for yourself, given the British reaction and the history of the gesture, what the message that sent was. Also consider this:

 Winston S. Churchill is the only U.S. Navy vessel to have a Royal Navy Officer permanently assigned to the ship’s company (usually a Navigation Officer).[3] The U.S. Navy had a permanent U.S. Navy Officer on the Royal Navy ship, HMS Marlborough, until its decommission on 8 July 2005.

Moving that bust out of the Oval Office mattered. And while the impact of that at the beginning of Obama’s reign was minor, what he did at the end of it was not - the man with essentially anti-colonialist views ended up lecturing Duterte, the democratically-elected President of a sovereign nation, as if the Philippines was still our fucking colonial lapdog. He managed to damage one of our most important regional alliances and open the door to a China eager to capitalize on it at the worst possible goddamned time. He’s a prick, who’s full of himself: 

This is precisely why his Big Legacy, Obamacare, is a fucking dumpster fire - because it was forced through the Senate without a proper vote, using the Slaughter Rule, without fuck one being given for the fact that the people who’s co-operation they’d need to make Obamacare work - i.e., state governments - were the same ones they completely blew off when crafting it. Even if you think that Obamacare was totally fine and only those evil conservative states refusing to “pay their fair share” sabotaged it, you can’t deny that the Democrats - led by Obama - are the ones that rammed it down their throats while screaming “EAT IT, BITCH!” Politically, it was built to fail. 

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. What about Obama politicizing the executive branch to an unheard of degree? Examples? Using the IRS against his political opponents, for one. Or the time when twenty-six states sued to stop (another) of Obama’s executive actions on immigration policy, and his Justice Department responded by willful and active obstruction of the legal process so severe that the Federal Judge called it out as deliberate deception, and ordered every single one of the government lawyers to take remedial ethics classes. This is also the same Justice Department, under that fuck Eric Holder, that presided over the “Fast and Furious” gun-walking “sting” op that deliberately let American guns get smuggled to Mexico - ignoring multiple tips and reports from other gun dealers/FFL holders who knew who the smugglers were and how shady they were. Not only did the “sting” operation utterly fucking fail, but a US Border Patrol agent was killed by one of the weapons. And he wasn’t the only one - check out this NBC report that didn’t age so well, full of horror and so aghast at how American guns are fueling that awful Mexican drug war. Fuckin NRA, amirite? This is what Obama did for brown people - he killed a lot of them. Oh, he also killed two fucking pipelines - Keystone XL and in his last days in office put a pause on the Dakota Access - because fuck energy independence, oil is evil, Elon Musk is building those nifty electric cars, just pony up $100,000 like all the rich Sillicon Valley cunts do! Oh, he also killed Yucca Mountain, because FUCK nuclear power! And fuck the tons, literally TONS of already generated nuclear waste sitting in aging, cracking containment pools at shut-down decommissioned power plants across America - nuclear power is bad, and he cares about the environment, just not all the environments near those shut-down plants. 

Are you getting the picture? I could keep going all fucking night. I hate Obama. I hate the motherfucker. They have literally written BOOKS about all the horrible, stupid, and downright criminal shit the son of a bitch did - oh, how about the deliberate spreading and down-classifying of information and the “unmasking” of people in domestic intelligence reports for political purposes? See, I’m still going! 

So if you’re a conservative, and you know all this shit, why are you standing there comparing him to leftists? Because this is how the real radical leftists see him:

I could write you a book just about how badly Obama fucked up everything he did on the War on Terror, but you cannot deny that he did fight the War on Terror. For fucks sake, he even used the troop surge in Afghanistan that McCain said he wouldn’t - even if his pulling troops out of Iraq, despite all indications that they weren’t ready for it, created the power vacuum that allowed ISIS to rise. He’s a squeamish little bitch constantly trying to pick up a turd by the clean end, and that cost him time and time again (like the time he tried to be all taciturn and circumspect over having Osama killed, then bragged about killing Osama during his midterm election campaign.) But he’s not a radical leftist, because he killed brown people, and they just ain’t down with that, bro. He also deported more immigrants than any other US President in history. If you think leftists didn’t scream about that, just look at the WaPo trying their damndest to soften the blow. Or hell, just look at what the actual radical insane leftists say themselves: “The idea of white countries having borders is inherently racist.” Yes. Borders. Inherently racist. But only for whites. Brown people can kick us the fuck out - or murder Otto Warmbier - because of our fucking privilege, man. They need their safe spaces, even if that’s an entire country, so just deal, man, just deal!

You, as an alleged conservative, know all these things. You know the length and breadth of Obama’s fuckups and outright crimes. So why the hell do you start hurling demented slanders like a lunatic leftist, instead of making actual arguments, like a rational human being? Obama is many things, mostly bad, but he is not bug-fuck insane. He’s not calling for violence, the suppression of free speech with violence, or characterizing American sovereignty as inherently racist. So when someone stands there and says Obama would “murder an entire battle fleet just to fuck Trump,” it is exactly, exactly, the same kind of gibbering fucking lunacy exhibited by the left wing, like Phil Montag screaming that he wished Scalice had died in the shooting because those fuckin Republicans are takin our healthcare, man, so he deserves to be murdered. 

Listen to the video. LISTEN to the end of it, where another Democratic Party official tells him, to his face, that he recorded the whole thing and that he’s going to release it. There are still liberals and sane people in the Democratic Party who have not surrendered to the militant Left, and they do not approve or condone the lunatics calling for violence and murder.

But if they cross the aisle and all they meet are people screaming that Obama is a fucking nigger, Obama is a fucking Muslim, Obama wants to murder American soldiers and sailors and rape your daughter and burn your house down and turn America into a caliphate, they’re going to step back and decide that their own side is the lesser evil. Do you understand what I’m saying? The way the Left is right now - a bunch of screaming fucking lunatics powered by blind hate, driven by their conviction that everyone that doesn’t agree with them is an evil, racist Nazi bigot - that’s exactly what you look like to the sane liberals across the aisle when you conflate every Democrat with the insane, violent leftists. And a lot of the people in the Republican party who do this, do it because they’re not much better than leftists themselves - dogmatic assholes, idiots, the usual wastes of carbon that’d probably be screaming FUCK TRUMP #RESIST right now if they’d grown up with parents that voted Democrat instead of Republican. 

We are better than the Left for three reasons: one, we are actually in touch with reality, rather than basing our worldview on blind, fervent and zealous hatred of anyone espousing doctrine that goes against our Holy Writ. Two, we make arguments, and judge by arguments, because we give a fuck about the truth, instead of claiming that our feelz and idealz and burning Brooklyn Rage give us the right to have it all our way, and Three - and this is the big one - we are not dogmatic, tribal fucks who will tolerate any lying, thieving, raping monster in our midst just because he’s on “our side.” 

We police our own. 

Consider this policing.