#trump will get to act like the good guy

[demonic-shadowlucifer]

If there's one thing the internet has taught me this week, it's that it's apparently perfectly okay to trash talk an athlete underneath news posts of them suffering a season ending injury... but god FUCKING forbid that someone criticizes their favorite celebrity who can do no wrong 🥺🥺🥺🥺

[californiaquail]

was hanging out with someone today and she was talking about how she would shoot the hawks and eagles if they went after her indoor/outdoor cat and i had to struggle to keep a straight face. there is an EASY fucking solution to this problem that doesn't involve killing federally protected wildlife OR your poor damn cat. who got in a fight last night and left fur all over the place.

[dreamteamemojis]

.

[hareofhrair]

Gonna need yall to stop putting Biden is Just As Bad propaganda on my dash. Had to unfollow someone because I don’t want to a start a fight with them over it, but I’m about to bite the next person who puts that shit in front of me.

If you don’t like Biden, vote in your god damn local and mid term elections for third party or further left candidates so that we get better democratic candidates for future elections. But this one is already fucking decided, and I’m NOT ending up under a Trump led dictatorship because yall value protecting your personal sense of moral purity over the collective good. Whether it offends your personal morals to vote for Biden is IRRELEVANT in the face of the alternative.

This isn’t a lesser of two evils situation. One guy sucks. The other guy is LITERALLY PLANNING TO OVERTHROW OUR DEMOCRACY AND INSTALL HIMSELF AS A PUTIN STYLE DICTATOR.

PLEASE look up Project 2025 and stop acting like abstaining is some kind of personal ethical decision!

[potofsoup]

i love your fourth of july comics every year but this years feels extremely optimistic about biden’s abilities in the face of him letting roe get overturned and funding a gen*cide at worst or letting it happen at best by taking the bare minimum of regulatory action… i mean can he really be trusted at all anymore to do the right thing or act in line with the people’s demands? and how do we know the people behind project 2025 won’t just rig the election again to get in under false pretenses?

Hihi! Thank you for reading and enjoying my July 4th comics every year! I am in a non-US airport en route to a month-long trip in a place with sketchy internet, so sorry in advance for sloppiness in my response (and potentially going radio silent).

But:

I don't think he "let" Roe get overturned, since that was the Supreme Court's overwhelming conservative majority, which really started with Mitch McConnell refusing to approve Obama's appointee and forcing it into a 2016 election issue. The fact that Trump got to appoint 3 Supreme Court Justices is what got us here.

Re: Biden and the Israel/Hamas war ... on the one hand, there's definitely more that he could have done, but on the other hand, they are a whole other country over there. It's Hamas that initiated the Oct 7 attacks and took the hostages. It's Netanyahu and his right-wing government who decided to retaliate to such extreme extent. Biden can talk about how he would really like Netanyahu to stop fighting and step down, but at the end of the day that's not his call, any more than he can stop the Sudan fighting that is near-genocidal either.

So, to come to your question #1: "Can he really be trusted at all anymore to do the right thing or act in line with the people’s demands"?

For me, it's a resounding YES. Guyz, he has passed so much good domestic policies. My spouse works in green energy and the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act halved his anxiety and gave him legitimate hope. The tumblr post I linked to in my comic has links to many of the other great things that Biden has done. Tbh I voted for him in 2020 because "a moldy onion is still better than Trump", and I've been pleasantly surprised. Like how he tried to cancel student loans, the Supreme Court overturned it, and then he came back 6 months later with a different way to do it that didn't lead to a court challenge.

Is he perfect? Hell no. There's tons of stuff that I wish he did more about, or he went further on, but also he's just one guy heading one branch of government who is heading into an election year. (Just like FDR promising not joining WWII, while behind the scenes doing all the Lend-Lease Act stuff). And "the people" have lots of demands, many of them conflicting.

I'd also like to push at the unspoken part of your question... "Can he really be trusted to do the right thing..." compared to whom? Because right now the answer is "compared to Trump." And compared to Trump... I don't even trust Trump to respect the results of a legitimate election. Heck, he might just take his favorite state secrets, sell them to the highest bidder (or just show them off to someone for funzies), and then claim Presidential immunity. A decent Democrat who got stuff done vs someone who probably wants to pardon himself and all his friends and do Project 2025 stuff is not even on the same level. (Do I wish that there was a viable Democratic alternative to Biden? Sure! But who?) Heck, at this point -- imagine if it's Kamala Harris vs. Trump. Who would you vote for?

As for your question #2: "How do we know the people behind project 2025 won’t just rig the election again to get in under false pretenses?"

We don't. But also what can we do besides showing up to vote?

Actually, I need bullet points for this:

The 2022 midterm elections brought in fewer-than-expected election-deniers into crucial electoral offices at the state level, which means that hopefully most state electoral boards will continue to have integrity

Yes, voting is harder but at least we can still vote. So it's about getting out there and getting your vote counted. For some states, it involves waiting in 8 hour lines. For some states, it involves bringing 2 forms of ID. Document. Track. Make sure it's dropped off in a real ballot box and not a fake one. Don't believe messaging that the voting is happening on a different day or location, etc.

A 50.1% majority is easily challenged. A 55% majority, less so. Which means getting people out to vote.

The more people know about and think about the reality of a second Trump term (versus being disappointed by a Biden term), the more they will be motivated to vote against Trump.

Finally, let's be real here: I'm braced for a 2nd Trump term. That said:

I'm still going to go and vote for Biden, because the only way to prevent a 2nd Trump term is to vote.

A Trump term where either the House or Senate is controlled by the Democrats will be *very* different from a clean Republican sweep.

Even with a clean Republican sweep on the federal level, States have so much more power now, and voting the state level stuff will help shore up Democratic goals for the future. States get to draw voting districts however they want. States get to decide on abortion policies. If you live in a deep Red state, there still might be things to vote for that make it easier to live in now, and turn it purple a few elections down the line.

So at the end of the day, it's "Vote AND". Vote and keep living your best life. Vote and tell others about Project 2025. Vote and have hope. Even if Trump wins, at least you'll have voted against him. Vote and stay to build up a progressive wave for the next election.

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

My thoughts about the Trump assassination attempt

After having a few hours to process this whole thing and see reactions from across the political spectrum, I'm having some thoughts and some feelings.

First off, as I said earlier, Trump is a fucking boss. Take anyone who ran for president in the last 20 years, put them in that exact situation, and I don't think a single one responds by raising his fist and snarling in defiance and righteous anger. They run. They cry. They keep their heads down and the first statement you h ear from them is hours later filtered through 20 different speech writers. Today proved to me that, whatever else he may be, Trump is a genuine bad ass. He's exactly the person I want at the end of a sword pointed the United States. Because he's going to have a sword of his own pointed right back, and he's not going to run and hide when it comes time to use it.

Second, the modern left is full of monsters. The amount of people screaming and crying because this assassination attempt failed actually sickens me. It's one thing to have fantasies about easy solutions to the things that scare you. Hell, I'm not innocent. I've thought about how much better things might be if this politician was no longer around or this activist group got axed. But one of the things I did today was think about how I would feel if the assassin succeeded. And then I thought about how I'd feel if someone took a shot at Biden and he didn't survive. Neither thought gave me any good feelings. Obviously I'd be more upset if Trump died, but today showed me that I don't want us to start down the path of shooting political leaders. But too many people on the left, people who should know better, at least enough to hide their true feelings, have no problem publicly wishing Trump was dead right now. That assassinating presidential candidates was a legitimate tactic--but only against the politicians they don't like, of course.

Fuck that.

Fuck them.

America is better than that. Americans are better than that. We're not some third world shithole like Mexico. We're the greatest country in the world. We're the last bastion of representative government. The last place in the world where freedom exists. And it's time we started acting like it.

Third, I ain't got no time for conspiracy theories. Sorry guys, but this wasn't staged and this wasn't a CIA hitman. Unless real, hard evidence comes out otherwise, you won't ever get me to believe any of the nonsense I've seen floated around. Don't be so lost in the true things the media has dismissed as "conspiracy theories" that you immediately jump to the most conspiratorial explanations first for everything that happens. It's lame and cringe and a lot of people I've seen seriously putting these theories forward should know better. I know we're in our emotions right now, but keep your heads.

Fourth, my heart breaks for the families of the people who were hit with the bullets meant for President Trump. But that's the kind of evil we're facing. Whoever did this decided that the idea of a Trump presidency was so awful that they were okay with shooting innocent people just to stop him. And this is after he was already president and none of the things the media is fear mongering about happened during his first term. Those people just wanted to see a man speak. To have some hope for the future. And some piece of shit shot them because he didn't like a presidential candidate. Or worse, because the TV made him scared.

Fifth, fuck the media. You think you hate them enough, but you don't. The media is the driving force behind our enemies, and there's no such thing as a good journopig. They're all lying propagandists. We just like some of them because their propaganda occasionally hits on the truth.

And that's all I got. None of this is organized, none of this is proofread. These are just the thoughts I've been wrestling with for the past few hours. This is the only place I can get them all down without being interrupted or feeling like I need to censor myself. Do with them what you will.

[booasaur]

Remember during the 2016 elections, we were so scared of what Trump might do? How afraid we were for Roe but were told by so many people, pro-choice people even, that it was such settled law and it would be such a flashpoint, they'd never touch it. Don't overreact, you sound hysterical, this fearmongering is ruining your credibility. Hell, maybe worry for gay marriage, but abortion? No chance.

We watched Kavanaugh and ACB confirmed with increasing trepidation and STILL there was so much shock when the Dobbs leak happened.

Remember that feeling of knowing what was going to happen, because of your experience and knowledge, and nobody believing you till it was too late? And the very people who smugly shut you up pivoting and continuing to act like the authority, that, ah, yes, now was the time to worry?

This guy above represents the mainstream Western narrative since Israel killed the World Central Kitchen aid workers.

Somehow, after everything we've already seen, Israel was still getting the benefit of the doubt. After killing hundreds of aid workers already, mostly Palestinian, after killing more than 15,000 children, after killing multiple people waving white flags. After literally a scenario where a Red Crescent ambulance arranged safe passage with the IDF--just as this WCKitchen convoy had--to rescue a 6 year old child and ending up bombed.

Why didn't the world listen before? Israel didn't suddenly change, only perceptions have. They're the same now as they were three days ago, as they have been for the last months, years, decades. This wasn't an escalation, it was an inevitability.

Chef José Andrés, who runs the WCKitchen, and recently a vocal critic of Israel, was actually strongly defending them earlier. I saw someone call that Western naivety, but... is it simply being too naive, too trusting, when your good faith is only extended to one side? Isn't that just bias? Now Pelosi is signing a letter to stop weapon transfers to Russia when she was accusing protesters of being paid by Russia? Now, Western governments are saying this is too much?

I'll take any help we can get in stopping this onslaught, but these recent shifts came too late to save so many, including the WCKitchen workers. What changed for so many people now? We can't ignore why THIS was so many people's red line when tens of thousands of Palestinians weren't. Not only would it be an injustice to them but until this bias is interrogated how are we going to stop this or from repeating if the same wrong ass people are making the same decisions with the same worldview?

[norrizzandpia]

Masterlist 2

Lando Norris:

It’s Your Birthday. Of Course, I’m Here

It’s Lando’s birthday and Y/n can’t make it. Or so he thinks.

A Sign Of My Love

In which Lando chooses the most obvious way to declare his love for his best friend and she is the only one who doesn’t get it.

All He Needed Was Her

Following the Vegas ‘23 crash, Y/n and Adam find Lando in his hospital bed, yearning for the comfort of his girlfriend’s touch.

A Second Chance

Secrets are a hard thing to live with, they always come out in the end. When it comes to Y/n and Lando, their loved ones struggle to understand what occurred between the two when both of them refuse to discuss it. What happened that night that warranted two people so in love to separate? What triggered Lando to become so violent, so hostile? Why is there a lone engagement ring lingering in Lando’s apartment when it’s meant to rest on Y/n’s finger? What’s happened?

You Were Never What I Wanted, Pt. 2

Lando and Y/n have never liked each other and it’s only the distaste the world has for them when McLaren forces them to “put on a show for the public”. At first, a few hand holds and light, quick kisses seem to be tolerable, yet feather light touches turn into longing stares and, suddenly, they’re falling in love. Although, hatred is a powerful emotion. Can love really trump it?

Ski Trips and Smiles

A proposal on a snowy ski trip.

Showing You My Love

McLaren’s forced Lando into a PR stunt of a relationship and his girlfriend, Y/n, back into hiding just when she was ready to go public.

One-Sided Fake Dating Pt. 2

When Y/n has continuously been used for the image that has pristinely been constructed for her and the connections she has through relation to her parents, she has cultivated a dark image on the world, especially on love. However, when Lando comes into her life and shows her what it’s like to be wanted for who you are and not what you can provide, she begins to open up and she begins to explore what it’s like to be loved and to love. Although, nothing is permanent and what happens when the man she had thought to be better than everyone who had previously screwed her over turns out to be worse?

Love You the Way I Do

When Y/n starts to pull back, Lando knows exactly what to do.

When?

Apparently, to Lando, it is not a question of if he will marry Y/n, it is when.

Safe With Me, Love

When a man at a club makes Y/n uncomfortable, touching her, grabbing her, Lando’s the first to stop it.

The First Time

In the midst of the dirtiest act, Lando’s loose lips stall his impending orgasm.

Let Me Be Happy. Don’t Be Mean.

Y/n is not experienced in the realm of dating. For years, she has convinced herself that no man sees her as lovable. So, when a guy steps into the picture who checks off all the boxes, making her feel secure in his feelings towards her, she’s elated. However, when she goes to share in the excitement with her best friend, he ruins it all, along with it her happiness, by uttering three small words.

My Coat, Your Coat

Y/n is freezing. Lando is her boyfriend. There’s only one remedy.

Whatcha Readin’?

It was a good story, that was her only argument.

Look How Amazing You Are

After Lando’s disastrous qualifying in Qatar and redeeming podium just hours later, Y/n is there to remind Lando of where his worth truly lies.

Sparkling Eyes

When Y/n is distracted, Lando usually takes the opportunity to admire her. Although, this time, he has an audience.

She Calls Me Daddy Too

When Y/n and Lando are having dinner at her house with her parents, Y/n asks her father to pass the salt. Too bad she didn’t specify which one she was referring to.

His

When a fun pool party turns into a hurtful disaster, the only good thing to come from it is two confessions.

I’ve Got You

In the midst of the FIA determining whether his lap times will be deleted, Y/n finds her boyfriend sitting in front of multiple cameras, but that doesn’t matter, he’s upset and she’s got him.

Lala

When Y/n meets Lando’s family for the first time, Lando warns her about his niece who glues to his side whenever he’s around. What she isn’t expecting, however, is the heart melting nicknames he has been given. It prompts some interesting confessions.

My Name

Y/n and Lando have a painful past together. When they go their separate ways and are left to pick up the pieces, Lando realizes he can no longer hear the woman he loved’s name without feeling deeply ashamed.

We Can Be Kids For Right Now

When her week has tried to suffocate her, Lando turns up at her door and forces her to remember just how worthy she truly is.

Wrong Number, Right Person

A wrong number leads Lando right to Y/n, but even the beautiful love they find together struggles to stand a chance against Lando’s lie of identity.

HE WON! LAN WON!

A long awaited win warrants a shouting Y/n, the proud girlfriend of Lando Norris, 2024 Miami Grand Prix Race Winner. Not only that, but also a smiling Lando now ready for questions about their future.

Olive

After a massive loss, Lando and Y/n find themselves losing sight of the love they once shared. A ghost town in a house they once imprinted their love in is riddled in pain and grief. Right at the edge of the cliff, ready to give up and part ways, an anniversary pulls them back together and reunites them in what they once had.

What Died Didn’t Stay Dead

Y/n’s close to fatal car crash and the epiphanies that followed.

Can You See Me Using Everything To Hold Back

Lando and Y/n have always been as close as can be, but unresolved and disregarded feelings threaten everything they thought they once knew.

Oscar Piastri:

British v. American

In which Oscar tries to teach his girlfriend how to drive in England. The only catch? She’s never driven on the other side of the road. Oh, and she’s never driven anywhere else except for California.

Don’t Worry Everyone. I’m Alive.

The fans love her, so when they hear their favorite driver, her boyfriend, killed her, they aren’t happy.

Sleeping Buddies or Dating?

Oscar and Y/n love to sleep next to each other. They don’t love each other. That’s it.

Storms

Where Y/n hates thunder storms and Oscar’s the only person who can calm her down.

Let’s Have A Baby, Baby

There is nothing Oscar wants more than for Y/n to get pregnant with his kid, and everyone knows it.

When’s It My Turn

When Oscar can’t find Y/n and realizes she’s off with Logan, he gets possessive over how much time his girlfriend has to give.

Chuck a Uey

Blurb when Non-Australian!Reader misses a turn and Oscar tells her to “chuck a uey”. Long story short, she has absolutely no clue what that means.

To Be Loved Is To Be Seen

Oscar knows his girlfriend well and it’s obvious to him when she starts breaking down. He’s happy to help or, more specifically, remind her how worth it she is.

Just Benefits Right Now

It’s common knowledge they love each other. Just not to them - even when they’re sleeping together.

Y/n and the Piastri Sisters, the Piastri Sisters and Y/n

Oscar knew that Y/n and his sisters were close, but to wake up on a Saturday morning to find all of them gone, he wonders if he really underestimated how much the girls loved each other’s company.

[decolonize-the-everything]

what do you realistically believe will happen if those on the left wing do not vote for democrats? do you believe that will single handedly reform the system? or do you believe trump will win and ruin the lives of millions of americans who would have been okay under the democrats?

Y'all tried to threaten us in 2016 and how did that turn out for you?

I'm native. I'm not voting for a genocidal Democrat. For a genocidal anyone for that matter. Y'all are lucky I vote at all, I have no fucking business participating in the genocidal colonial-settler project that killed my family and decimated my people and hundreds of other tribes.

"how are you gonna reform the system if you dont-"

Shut up. You literally won't refuse to even entertain the idea of voting for someone who's clearly stated goals are to reform the system just because they're a 3rd party.

Again, y'all are lucky I'm willing to vote at all. The person I vote for sure as hell won't be someone who's actively taken steps to repeat America's first mistake.

"how will we ever reform"

It's been 500 years and youre STILL justifying a genocide and convinced you're the fucking good guys. You won't. This country will never reform because even it's fucking liberals dont think a genocide is worth a threat to the status quo.

Die mad with Trump as your president and know it's people like YOU who literally fight progressives and activists that let it happen.

You are settling for fascism not me

"how will we reform"

Give me a fucking break and ask the white people that have had power from day 1 and to this day continue to vote in their own interest.

You want reform? Take it up with the people who Don't want reform at all instead of me. I'm giving you my vote, you don't get to tell who to vote for.

That'd be fascism. And if your country falls apart without fascism to make it function, good. Fascist countries don't deserve to exist.

"what do you think will happen to the people-"

Idk maybe Biden should've actually codified something instead of just promising to do it after his presidential elections or after Dems won mid terms like he said he would or trying to maybe even back when he was a vp or-

You don't get to hold me accountable for the way your party has chosen to actively fail everyone alive right now.

I'm not a politician. Natives couldn't even vote everywhere until the 70's!!! You can't be serious with this victim blaming nonsense and blame shifting.

If you message me then get rid of that cognitive dissonance you have.

"ruin the lives of millions of americans-"

Which lives aren't already ruined? If you are marginalized or someone who experiences intersecting marginalizations then you must've already been making donation posts on Tumblr and Twitter. And that's those of us who can post.

So who's life are you thinking of?

Your party is a party upholding white supremacists values and that's why they're so okay with xenophobia and genocide overseas but want to increase racist police budgets despite the war crimes being committed by police against Black people and protesters on the daily. And if you think American lives are more important than anyone else's in general (you're the one that told me to consider the lives of Americans while several genocides are happening), that's nationalism! The first step to straight up white nationalism and white supremacy. And you're acting like its rational in my asks on behalf of your party!!!

Don't be shy. Let's think critically here. What does that mean about who's lives you consider valuable and worth saving? Who is it? Who. Tell me. Go on.

Hope this helps ;3

[yeonjuns-beanie]

Blasphemous Rumours

Warnings: 18+, smut, hierophilia, sacrilegious acts, priest kink, fucking on an altar, suggestive themes in a confessional, riding a rosary(?...), hair pulling, biting, light blood play, exhibitionism, suggestive themes during mass, probably smth else but i don’t remember. nothing too crazy🧌. im debating on linking the playlist i wrote this to, but it would kinda get rid of the anonymity of this account…. ~nero :)

Father Paul Hill x female!reader

Word Count: 6.3k

You hated this fuckin ferry. 

You loved your family but you never understood why they never left that island. When you found your way out you left without a second thought. Vowing to never settle here again but that didn’t mean you’d never visit your family. Usually for the holidays you made your way back out here, but this time you just had a break in your schedule and wanted to visit. Wanting to visit didn’t trump the hatred you had for riding this fucking ferry though. 

To be completely honest you didn’t hate the ride itself but rather how the journey made you smell like a feeding bucket at Seaworld. The evening sun was gracing you with its last bit of warmth as it began to tuck itself behind the horizon. Against the cool mist of the water for a split moment, you almost understood the appeal of this lifestyle.

Almost. 

The ferry pulled up to the dock and your eyes fell on the shoreline meeting some abandoned nets and dried out seaweed. The seagulls' mews echoed as you exited the boat. Grabbing your bags you took a deep breath as your feet hit the sand and you began the trek up to your family home. 

Nothings changed. 

It’s been years and everything still looked the same. The houses, the people, hell even the smells were the same. It was uncanny. You saw the church in the distance and were relieved knowing that you could finally lay your bags down soon. As you passed the church your eyes landed on a relatively young man standing outside, a warm smile welcoming anyone that passed by. Styx-colored locks, a slender frame, and a face that looked ever so familiar. Pressing your lips together in a close-lipped smile and waved at him making a mental note to speak to him later. 

Your family’s house was only two doors down from the church and you’d be lying if you said you weren’t excited to see them. Knocking on the front door you eagerly waited to see who would see your face first. 

“Coming!” 

You heard faintly from the other side and you were greeted by the face of your mother. 

“Y/n! Oh, honey, it’s so good to see you!” 

She embraced you immediately, nearly squeezing the life out of you. 

“Hi, Mom.” You chuckled 

Over her shoulder, you saw your little sister, Briar, smirking at you trying her best not to laugh at your current situation. Your mom pulled you into the house motioning for you to come eat dinner as you arrived just in time. 

“Please, come eat. We’ll worry about your bags later. You came just in time to go to mass with us after.”

Mass? Why so late?

“Mass? Did you guys miss it this morning or something?” 

Washing your hands you turned around to face your family as you dried them. Before you sat down at the table your dad came from around the corner physically interjecting himself into the conversation as your mom spoke. 

“No, they happen—hi dear, they happen in the evening now. A new priest has been filling in for the Monsignor. Apparently, while he left for his trip to Jerusalem he fell terribly ill. Such a shame. But Father Paul is phenomenal! I think you’ll like him.”

Your mom looked at you with a knowing smile and you knew exactly what she was teasing you about. You rolled your lips around your teeth and began to eat, swallowing a sly comment. 

After you guys finished dinner, you fixed yourself for mass. Although you weren’t religious on your own time, you did it for your family while you were here. Plus, it allowed you time to wrestle with your feelings with Christ to see if it really wasn’t for you. Your relationship with God or whoever was out there was complicated. Wildly complicated. You knew in your heart that you were a formal sinner yet you lacked the guilt that should’ve come with that. 

If anything, you relished in it. You loved being entangled with the feeling of sin, it made you feel alive. You felt so strangled as a kid with religion, as if every move you made was under scrutiny so when you found the courage to separate yourself, you may have overindulged in things that were impious in nature. 

Just as you were this evening, clad in a low-cut tank top, a hoodie, jeans, and slip-on Vans. If you felt you didn’t belong in Crockett before, you definitely visually fit the part now. Looking like a complete foreigner in comparison to everyone else. You screamed city. From your clothes, and makeup, even down to the way you spoke. You tried your best to eradicate every trace of Crockett when you left but there was one thing you couldn’t scrub away. 

God. 

God always found a way to squirm His way around your brain and tether you to this island. 

“Y/n! You ready, honey?” 

“Yeah!”

Spraying yourself with a light perfume you walked out into the front room where your family was waiting for you. Filing out the door, the walk to the church was quick which was something you despised as a kid and you could feel those same feelings bubbling up as you neared its entrance. It was as if God was mocking you, knowing that you had such an internal feud with whether or not you believed, what was right and wrong, and if you even had a sliver of faith left within you. 

Sitting down in the pews next to your family, you felt at home once the incense filled your nose. The strange feeling of comfort washing over you as memories of your childhood flashed in front of you. The tottering organ that was moments away from wood decay, the massive crucifix in the center arch of the back of the church, and the haunting glow from the warm ambient lighting had you questioning yourself once again. You swallowed the thought, deciding that nostalgic comfort was weighing out your need for logic. 

You were pulled from your thoughts as everyone around you rose to your feet and the chimes of the bell echoed through the building. It was at this point that you realized how many people were stuffed into the pews. Mass was never like this as a kid. 

He’s either the hottest thing known to man or he’s sent from God himself. 

Anticipation settled in your stomach and you fought the smile that was begging to stretch your lips. You needed to know what it was. Maybe he was just a really good preacher, and you were being facetious–or maybe you just walked into the next Jim Jones story. Either way, your eyes were glued to the hallway counting the seconds to the procession. 

As everyone around you opened their book of hymns you were fixated on the white robe that exited the side door.  You didn’t recognize either of the altar boys and for a brief moment, you wondered where the last two poor bastards ran off to. But then your eyes fell on his. His stark black hair wasn’t as neat as it was earlier today when you were walking through town. A few pieces in the front dangled over his right eyebrow and his head was bowed slightly as he walked through the pews. 

Your mind was pulled away from fully taking in the man as you were distracted by how full the church sounded. When you were younger the hymns always sounded so hollow and weak, but tonight it resembled a traditional mass. Savoring the moment of repose you felt, you found it within you to appreciate the music resonating through the building finding it somewhat odd that they were singing a hymn that sounded so haunting. 

At His feet the six-winged seraph, cherubim with sleepless eye~

Your attention drifted back to the priest where he kneeled at the steps and then bowed his head at the altar. When his head raised to stare out across the pews you felt your eyes widen slightly at the sight of him. Your mom nudged your side, smirking when you turned to look at her. 

“Told you.”

You shoved your tongue in your cheek, swiping it across your teeth as you sat back down. Mass went by in a blink considering you were completely engrossed in the man in front of you rather than his preaching. At some point, you completely tuned out his biblical orations and resorted to the simple pleasures of imagining him and yourself in various scenarios in the church. 

In the pews, across the altar, across the altar with the front door open waiting for Beverly to waltz through, in the confessio-

“Honey, come. I want you to meet Father Paul.”

Your mom tapped you on your shoulder pushing you out of your trance of thoughts. Standing up, you smoothed out your top and took a deep breath in an attempt to shake out the tension in your shoulders you most certainly built up during your daydreaming. Walking out of the church you wondered why you were leaving if she wanted you to meet the man. You turned around and noticed that he was no longer at the altar either. Stepping out to the front, your questions were soon answered as a smooth voice sounded from behind you. 

“I see we have a new face in town.” 

Your mother butt in before you had a chance to speak for yourself. Laying her hand across the small of your back introducing you to the man you just spent the better half of an hour fantasizing about. 

“For a little bit, we do, yes! This is my daughter, y/n. She usually comes around for the holidays but we got lucky this time around. This used to be her home until about two years ago.”

You stuck your hand out, Father Paul grabbing yours with a firm grip and you couldn’t help the compulsion to stare at his hand for a moment before quickly finding your mind and smiling at him.

“Nice of you to step in for the Monsignor. My mom told me you’re his stand-in for the time being.” 

“Yes. I apologize seeing as I’m not who you expected, but I assure you he’s on the road to recovery.” 

As Father Paul spoke, you couldn’t quite place why he looked and felt so familiar. You were running through files of how you could’ve possibly known him but nothing was coming out concrete. 

“Oh! No need to apologize. I quite enjoyed your sermon, it was very similar to what I was used to growing up here. It’s as if he never left.” 

You chuckled out your last sentence and suddenly nerves found themselves coursing through your body as you maintained eye contact. You were committing his face to memory. Whether it be for personal reasons in the dead of night or to try and figure out where you knew him from. You’d wrestle with that later. Right now, you were just hoping that you weren’t being painfully obvious. 

You were. 

You were bordering a fine line of staring and eye-fucking him that your mother and sister were finding absolute humor in. Your eyes flickered back and forth between his clerical collar and his face trying to shake the thoughts that were circling their way around your head. 

“Well, I’m glad that I feel so familiar to you. I hope to see more of you during your time here with us.” 

He smiled at you with such sincerity you forgot about all the lust brewing for a second. His face held so many emotions but you couldn’t place any of them. 

“You will.”

You smiled back at him, your eyes holding something a little more heavy though. You were aware of the priesthood’s celibacy and something about knowing you couldn’t have him made the feeling that more intense. Although, you didn’t miss how it seemed the feeling was reciprocated while you looked at him. Father Paul spoke, breaking the silence that you two created. 

“Well, it was very nice to meet the rest of your family, Mrs. L/N, but I am afraid that I have some matters to tend to back in my rectory. You all have a very nice night.” 

His gaze lingered as he spoke, giving you the same treatment as you did moments before and it was making you squirm on the inside. His gaze was soft but so intense and the contrariety of it left your mind racing. While you and your family said a choir of goodbyes, you watched Father Paul walk away as your family made the way back to the house. Your sister spoke up, whipping you from your thoughts. 

“At this point, you should just tell him you want to fuck him.” 

Both of your parents exclaimed your sister’s name in shock but the two of you were left laughing. 

“Oh come on, I wasn’t that bad.” 

“Y/n, you might as well have been sucking his fingers in front of us.” 

As you guys walked back into the house your mom snickered as you genuinely asked for her opinion. 

“Was I being that obvious about it?”

She paused. 

“You could be…less obvious about it.” 

You groaned in embarrassment rushing straight to your room to avoid any teasing for the night. 

“Goodnight!” 

~*~

You couldn’t sleep. You opened your phone to check the time knowing full well that it was the middle of the night. You just wanted to see how late it was. 

3:33. 

Shit. 

You let out an exasperated sigh wiping your hand across your face. It was usually at this point in the night that your hand found its way in between your pajama pants and gently glided itself across your sensitive floret. Your hips jolted forward at the contact and as soon as that sensation spread through your body, images of Father Paul flickered in your mind. As your finger circled over your clit you found yourself reaching your climax faster than usual. As your orgasm flooded through your limbs, your chest heaved for air trying to calm the euphoria running through your veins. 

Pulling your hand from under the sheets, you let your arm drape across your eyes grappling with what you just did. But before you could really identify the problem with your actions, sleep weighed heavily on your eyelids. 

When you woke up, your middle of the night scandal was the first thing on your mind. 

How am I gonna look at him again? 

A string of questions ran through your mind leaving you mentally scattered but as you got ready for the day and saw your sister in the main room, it left the front of your mind. 

“Morning.” 

“Morning. You gonna go to church today?”

You shot your sister a look that was a mixture of embarrassment and a playful knowing. You two erupted into a fit of giggles that ended with you looking at her out of the corner of your eye. 

“Maybe.”

She watched you, impressed by your honesty, and nodded her head. Taking a sip of her drink she spoke through her swallow making her voice a little gummy. 

“Your best chances of seeing him are in the evening. For some reason, he’s stopped coming out in the day. Probably to avoid Bev. That woman would sew herself to his hip if she could.”

“Bev was up the Monsignor’s ass too, nothing out of the ordinary. I’ve never seen someone try to get so close to fucking God.” 

You both were laughing until you saw your mother emerge from the hallway and you halted the sound in your throats. 

“What’s so funny?”

“Oh, nothing. Just givin’ Bev shit for being Bev.”

Your mom laughed through her nose and shook her head at your antics and you were preparing for a small lecture. 

“So I take it you’ll be heading to the church tonight y/n? Typically we only go on Sundays now but I’m sure Father Paul would be ecstatic to see one of us a little more often.” 

Your family took great pride in taking the piss out of you and to be completely fair you made it quite easy. You rolled your eyes at your mother because even she knew you had lost touch with your faith, but now you had reason to find it–maybe. 

“I wasn’t planning on it but since Briar and now you have both greeted me with the question maybe I will. Build some rapport with the man.” 

“We both know you’d wanna build something more than rapport with him.” Briar chimed in. 

“I literally can’t even! You know…with him. It’s against their whole code. Don’t think I forgot. But also they like should come up with a code to not have hot priests, I’m just sayin.” 

They both just hummed in agreement still silently giving you shit. 

“You guys are terrible.” You laughed. 

~*~

You had all day to conjure up a scheme of how you’d find a way to get close to Father Paul and you finally decided on a plan while you were getting ready. 

Confession. 

Technically you didn’t need a priest for confession but it’d be nice to have someone listen while you were in the box. Everyone separated into their rooms for the day and you hoped that was still the case when you stepped out of the house. 

“Skirt’s a little long isn’t it.” 

You didn’t expect Briar to be sitting in the main room so her voice spooked you before you registered her words. 

“Yeah, but I think the side slits balance out the potential prude.” 

You shoved your leg out to the side showing off how the slit in the maxi skirt stopped at the middle of your thigh. Paired with a fairly tight black long sleeve and chunky boots, you were bordering on looking like a mortician. In your mind, being clad in all black hid not only you, but your true intentions from being so visible. The last thing you needed was being sniffed out through a choice of clothing, but you’d be lying if you said you weren’t hopeful for an interaction. 

“I’ll be back.”

“Be safe.” Briar snickered

Stepping out into the cool night air, you were thankful to feel something other than the emotional heat from your family. It immediately soothed your nerves and you found yourself focusing more on your plan. With the church doors open, you noticed you saw nobody walking in and when you walked up the steps you were surprised to see the pews empty. It felt like you were intruding, like a fly buzzing around a dinner table. Your footsteps echoed in the empty building and you felt an overwhelming feeling to run out and forget about this elaborate plan. To sacrifice your need for affection and carnal satisfaction for a walk across the shoreline or to the general store. Just something else. 

Your eyes panned over to the confession box and you were wrestling with your gut feeling to stay. Maybe you should confess and get it off your chest…just not with him there. With disquieted uncertainty overcoming you, you took a step back to exit the church deciding that you’d come back another day, but when you expected your body to glide through the air, you stumbled into something solid instead. Whipping your body around you apologized profusely. 

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry! I was spaced out and didn’t hear anybody behind me I’m so-” 

And then you paused. As your eyes traveled up to meet the person you stumbled into your eyes caught the clerical collar. It was like a bullet lodged itself into your chest and you felt your limbs begin to grow cold from shock. You knew who lied above that collar and you had to find the guts to look at him in the eye. 

“It’s no trouble at all. Are you alright? You seem pretty startled.” 

Father Paul placed his hand on your shoulder looking down at you with genuine concern. You made the mistake of looking at him directly in the eye and you wished you didn’t. His deep brown eyes furrowed under his brow waiting for your response but you were entranced by him. Stuttering when you found your voice. 

“I, uh, yeah. I’m fine. I just was in my head about something.” 

Father Paul cocked his head slightly trying to figure out where to step with you. He narrowed his eyes for a moment and flickered back and forth between you and the confessional box. 

“I noticed you were quite focused on the confessional, were you looking to confess this evening, y/n?” 

You panicked. Backed in a corner, your mouth moved faster than your brain. It was too late before you could register the words flying out of your mouth. 

“Well, yes and no. I’ve been quite separated from my faith as of late but I’ve been struggling with…some intense internal issues that can’t be ignored now. I’m not sure if confession would make it better or worse and that’s why I was so engrossed in it.” 

“Well. We’re here now. If you’re comfortable, I can lead you through it.” 

You were hesitant. You worried that in your current state, you’d divulge too much, but maybe that’s exactly what you needed to do. To just get it all out of your system and bear the humiliation. You looked at him one last time and it was as if he was waiting for your compliance. He may as well have been extending his hand out to lead you to it. Closing your eyes and accepting this as a fated moment you inhaled a deep breath and nodded. 

“Okay.” 

Walking to the confessional, you got down on your knees, folded your hands in front of your mouth, and exhaled a breath you didn’t realize you were holding. You looked through the latticed opening and made out a few of Father Paul’s features. A feeling began to pool in your stomach as you realized the dynamic of the situation you were in. Your mind swiftly moved into the gutter wishing you were on your knees for a different reason. 

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned–and will continue to do so.” 

You paused deciding one last time if you were going to bear all your bones here. Swallowing your pride, like a gun sounding the start of a race, you relieved yourself with zero guilt. 

“Being separated from my faith has left me in a deeply sacrilegious state. For the most part, I can ignore my thoughts, my taboo interests but since I stepped foot back on this island it's all come bubbling back up.”

You looked to see if Father Paul was looking at you but he stared straight ahead giving you his complete focus to your confession. 

“I find, grave desire in things I shouldn’t. Sexual hunger that I can’t displace somewhere else because I know the only reason it brews within me is because I know it’s wrong. Father, these feelings came back to the surface when I laid my eyes on you during Mass. I couldn’t help it. The feeling that pooled in the depths of my stomach and left me aching for something more. Forgive me, Father, for my boldness, but I fear that the only way I can feel relief is to…release.” 

You felt your breath quicken at how honest you were being but it was soon replaced by the feeling of of excitement. 

“I know it’s wrong but I…I can’t stop the feeling. This is all I can say, I’m sorry for my sins.” 

Silence. 

You felt like you sat in silence for an eternity waiting to hear his voice echo to your side, but you didn’t. Instead, you heard the pace of his breathing. You almost confused it for your own but you held your breath trying to calm your nerves and still it echoed. 

“Father…I. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said any-” 

“Y/n. Come to the other side. 

As you rose to your feet, you heard the door on his side of the confessional click open. When you stood in front of the door, it was the first time this evening you found the courage to look him directly in the eye. There was a dastardly hunger swimming in his brown eyes. Like a predator stalking his prey, his aura was intense and left you frozen in front of him awaiting his command. His eyebrow slightly cocked upward and his hand raised, coaxing you towards him. You followed, pausing before you stepped inside his side of the box but he coaxed you forward with his voice so smooth and alluring. With little room, you were left to slot yourself in between his legs. 

Your breath hitched as you looked at him again and he patted his thigh with his hand that was wrapped in a rosary. Clenching around nothing, you made the swift decision to close his legs and straddle them instead of taking his knee. Letting your hands rest on his shoulders you stared him down. Nothing but salacity was radiating between your bodies and quickly you began to feel your desire rise into your face. Searching his eyes for any indication of his feelings you opened your mouth to speak but he occupied the silence before you. 

“I wondered if, you would find the courage to be truthful and I must say I’m struck by your honesty.”

Your heart nearly stopped. 

You fucked this up, bad.

“Father, I-”

“No need for any apologies. I’m glad you were so honest.” 

“You…you are?”

“Lying is a sin, so yes. But it relieves me of my own prurient conscience so that I may indulge in you free of guilt.” 

You weren’t paying attention to the movement of his body due to being so focused on his words, but when his words were punctuated with the rolling of his rosary-clad finger across your cloth-covered center, you were made very aware. Your cunt clenched around nothing and your body lurched forward unintentionally writhing over his hand. Your breath came out in shutters and your eyes, now hooded with lust, gazed into his own in a frenzy. 

His fingers kept gently teasing your bud through your panties and you couldn’t help the compulsion to ride in tandem with his movements. The beads of the rosary gifted you an unknown kind of pleasure that you knew would afflict your mind for the rest of time. It was a feeling that was near indescribable but the pleasure was too good to deny. You rested your head on his forehead, gripping onto his shoulders for some type of leverage. You bit the corner of your lip in an effort to silence yourself, but your ragged breathing was near that of an incensed bull. 

“If you did a better job of controlling yourself yesterday, I may have been fooled by your sheepish nature, but you just couldn’t quell this desire on your own, could you? You went home to seek some satisfaction but you found none, so you came here to plague me instead. Praying that I’d fix this ache within you. Am I right y/n?”

You went to respond but Father Paul’s finger slipped past the barrier of your underwear, leaving you to feel your arousal be spread across your puffy petals. A moan escaped your throat and the way it echoed off the confessional walls into the church made you shrink into his body. A pathetic attempt to hide from your lechery. Father Paul hummed, urging you to speak as he sank two fingers into your honeyed garden. Catching your breath, you found your words. 

“Y-yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, Father~”

You brought your head up to look at him again, too dazed to even feel like this was real. As his fingers continued to roll themselves against your sweet spot, your breath quickened as your mouth stayed ajar looking for the courage somewhere in yourself to slot your lips against his. As he rolled his finger over your swollen bud, your body decided for you. Your lips danced in a sweat and lust-filled hysteria leaving your brain foggy with desire. You rolled your hips into his hand needing more of him and your sounds slowly increased in volume as you felt a bead of the rosary slide across your center. The feeling of the beads slightly grazing your sensitive lips brought you faster to the precipice of elation than you expected and you pathetically whined for your release. 

“I’m, I’m close, Father.” 

You expected him to speed up his ministrations, but instead, he removed his slick-ridden fingers from your garden and brought them up to his lips. As if his hand was dripping in myrrh, he sucked you off of his fingers and paused before he spoke. Ghosting his fingers across his lips, his tongue hesitantly licked the tips of them as he dragged his hand away from his face.

“If you’re going to be brought to rapture by my hand it will be done when all of me is inside of you.” 

Father Paul motioned you to stand up and you staggered out of the confessional with him not far behind. He grabbed your hand and dragged you down the center of the church pews up to the altar. Ripping the white cloth off the altar, Father Paul held his hand out before sitting you down on the altar. He caressed his hands down the curves of your body before toying with the waistband of your skirt. Looking down at you, you saw the fervor swimming in his irises. 

“My sweet lamb, is this alright?”

You nodded and he slotted himself in between your legs feeling his bulge at your center. Depraved and corpulent lust washed over your body and your fingers fumbled with his belt, unfastening it with haste. You looked up at him and his face was closer than you expected, the heat radiating off of your bodies leaving a mist of humidity between you. You palmed him through his jeans and an inviscerated moan crawled out of his throat. The sound urged your body to move faster, the need to have him inside of you becoming near unbearable. 

He kissed you again, insatiable ardor all that you could taste. The feeling trickled down your body leaving goosebumps across your soft skin and a river seeping through the fabric of your panties that slowly painted the apex of your thighs. He tapped your thighs and you took it as a sign to lift your hips. In a swift motion, your skirt and underwear were left in a pool by the altar. Father Paul removed himself from his sweater, throwing it in the pile of sacrilegious cloths that served as a visual reminder of the desacralization that was about to take place. He left his button-up to cling to his chest and he moved his jeans and underwear down to the middle of his thighs, leaving him with his fervid cock on full display. 

You kicked your boots off your feet, the thud echoing a little bit louder than you intended. With your feet now free from their confines, you wrapped your legs around Father Paul’s legs, bringing him as close as possible. Your hand slithered between your bodies and varnished the tip of his cock in your amatory nectar. Your moans harmonized in synchrony and you gazed into his lust-blown eyes seeing nothing but black and you were sure yours were the same. He asked silently one last time for consent and you nodded slightly before he entered you. 

The stretch of his cock was something you felt only one could dream about. It filled you perfectly and you knew you wouldn’t last long. Your head dipped back in zeal, relishing in the feeling that was rushing in waves over your form. When your head tipped back up, your eyes met the enlarged crucifix that hung in the center of the back wall. For a reason unknown to you, locking eyes with Jesus as you desecrated His holy house made a pang of carnal hedonism tangle in your sexual daze. 

Your hands webbed themselves in Father Paul’s hair gripping at his strands and pulling his face into the junction of your neck and shoulder, feeling his breath heat up your skin. You felt his mouth open and drag itself across the side of your neck. A slight chill graced the parts where his spit marked his territory. You felt his breathing get heavier and all of a sudden you felt his cock slip out of you and he picked you up from the altar, turning you around and kicking your feet into a perfect V shape. He bent your body over the altar and slowly pushed himself back into you, the new angle making you cry out in complete perverted passion. 

His thrusts were deep and pointed making sure that you felt every inch of him drag in and out of your seraphic labyrinth. Just when you felt that the feeling couldn't get any more intense, his hand entangled itself into your hair and pulled your body up, flesh against his chest. His thrusts became rougher and you could hear the smile in his voice as he spoke. 

“Feel good, my dove?” 

You were fucking yourself back onto him, any coherent thought on the brink of leaving you amidst your ardent pleasure. 

“S-so…so good, Father. Shit.”

You were running out of air, your body paying more attention to the dam that was about to burst within you. 

“Better than your hand?”

“Uh-huh”

Your eyes were rolling back in pleasure and were hooded as you looked back at him. He gingerly guided your body back down to the altar and removed his hand from your hair, slowly tracing his hand down your back. Both of his hands grabbed your hips and the feeling had you crying out as his tip kissed your cervix. You felt his body lean over yours as he moved your hair away from your neck. His breath was sticking to your neck before a whisper ghosted over your ear.

“I’m sorry, but trust me right now.” 

He licked from the base of your neck and then you felt him pierce your skin with his teeth. In your licentious stupor, you just moaned out at the contact not fully registering that his teeth were sinking into your flesh or the fact that footsteps were echoing through the church. 

“Father, you weren’t in your rectory so I assumed this would be second best to find you-oh…” 

Bev.

Her grating voice almost brought you out of your daze, but Father Paul resorted to slow, deep thrusts as he kept he kept sucking your neck. When he lifted his face from your neck you felt a warm liquid trickle down your skin and pool towards your collarbone before landing on the altar. You lifted your head, your body weak and wracked with pleasure. You could barely make eye contact with her as your eyes were so hooded but you heard her voice resonate through the building once more. 

“Haresis Dea.”

Your head dropped unable to focus on her and your body rolled back into Father Paul’s, needing more of him as your orgasm was slowly fading back into your body. As you moved against him, his hips slowly began to thrust back into your sloppy cunt as Bev waited for some semblance of an explanation. 

“God has chosen her. He has chosen to consecrate this union, this nocturnal metamorphosis with lascivious intent because she is the last piece. God has willed it this way and has chosen her.” 

Father Paul bent down to lap at your neck again and his hips regained their momentum. You pushed yourself up from the altar and wrapped your arm around the back of his neck lapping at the blood that was dribbling down his chin.

“Very well.” 

And you heard Bev’s footsteps walk out of the church, the main doors closing behind her. Father Paul picked you up again, turning your body back around to face him. There was a certain ferality that wasn’t in his features before that had you clenching around his cock. With the doors shut, you both let your moans reign loose, a salacious cacophony filling the air. Your eyes scaled up the wall again and you came face to face with Jesus as a pool of heated arousal settled in your lower stomach begging to be set free. Your head knocked back in avidity and you didn’t see him slice a small cut in his wrist. 

When his thumb found your enflamed bud, you brought your head forward and he placed his bleeding wrist against your lips. As a wave of sexual delirium washed over you, your mouth hung open and he urged you to suck on his wrist. The metallic taste flooded over your tongue as your orgasm heightened your senses. Father Paul kept fucking you through your high until he reached his own, his cock painting your labyrinth a warm alabaster. He pulled his wrist away from you as you both were trying to calm down your breathing. 

Both of your mouths now covered in a drying garnet hue, you found yourself pressing your lips against his once again, unable to satisfy this ache completely. He chuckled as you both pulled away. 

“Easy, my dove.” 

You nodded, placing your hands flat against his chest. 

“Let’s get you dressed and then walk to the rectory, hmm?” 

Licking your bottom lip and locking it behind your teeth, you nodded as you slowly made the return back to your body.  

© yeonjuns-beanie

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The FTC has Big Pharma’s number

On November 27, I'm appearing at the Toronto Metro Reference Library with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.

On November 29, I'm at NYC's Strand Books with my novel The Lost Cause, a solarpunk tale of hope and danger that Rebecca Solnit called "completely delightful."

The most consistent bright spot in the dark swirl of US politics is the competence of the Biden Administration's progressive enforcers: people like Rohit Chopra, Jonathan Kanter and Lina Khan, who keep demonstrating just how far a good administrator can go. Anyone can have a vision, but knowing how to execute is the difference between hot air and real change:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/23/getting-stuff-done/#praxis

Take a minute to contrast Biden's administrators with Trump's: Trump's administrators had an ideological vision just as surely as Biden's do, and Trump himself had a much more pronounced and explicit ideology than Biden, whose governance style is much more about balancing the Democratic Party's blocs than bringing about a specific set of policies:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/06/personnel-are-policy/#janice-eberly

But whatever clarity of vision the Trump administration brought to DC was completely undermined by its incompetence (thankfully!). Apart from one gigantic tax break, Trump couldn't get stuff done. He couldn't deliver, because he'd lose his temper or speak out of turn:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/14/when-youve-lost-the-fedsoc/#anti-buster-buster

And his administrators followed his lead. Scott Pruitt was appointed to run the EPA after a career spent suing the agency. It could have been the realization of his life's dream to dismantle environmental law in America and open the floodgates for unlimited, wildly profitable corporate pollution and pillaging. But the dream died because he kept getting embroiled in absurd scandals – like the time he sent his staffers out to drive around all night looking for a good deal on a used mattress:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/epa-s-pruitt-told-aide-obtain-old-mattress-trump-hotel-n879836

Or his insistence on installing a CIA-style "Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility" (SCIF) so he could play super-spy while reading memos:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/26/politics/epa-administrator-scott-pruitt-sound-proof-booth-scif/index.html

Or the time he sent his security detail to the Ritz-Carlton to demand that they supply him lots of little bottles of his favorite hand-cream:

https://www.vox.com/2018/6/7/17439044/scott-pruitt-ritz-carlton-moisturizing-lotion

There were other examples in the Trump administration, but Priutt is such a good case-study. He's like a guy who spent his whole life training to compete in the Olympics, and finally got a shot, only to be disqualified for ordering too much room-service in the Olympic Village. Priutt was wildly ambitious, but he was profoundly undisciplined – and wildly incompetent.

Compare that with Biden's progressive enforcers and agency heads, who showed up on the first day of work with an encyclopedic knowledge of their administrative powers, and detailed plans for using them to transform the lives of the American people for the better:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

The Biden administration's competence translates into action, getting stuff done. Maybe that shouldn't surprise us, given the difference between the stories that reactionaries and progressives tell about where change comes from.

In reactionary science fiction, we enter the realm of the "Competent Man" story. Think of a Heinlein hero, who is "able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly."

In Competent Man stories, a unitary hero steps into the breach and solves the problem – if not single-handedly, then as the leader of others, whose lesser competence is a base metal that the Competent Man hammers into a tempered blade:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/RobertAHeinlein

Contrast this with a progressive tale, like, say, Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry For the Future, where the Competent Man is replaced by the Competent Administration, in which people of goodwill and technical competence figure out how to join forces to create population-scale architectures of participation that allow every person to contribute their skills and perspective:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/03/ministry-for-the-future/#ksr

The right's whole ideology insists that the world can only be saved by Competent Men. As Corey Robin writes in The Reactionary Mind, the unifying factor that binds together conservative factions from monarchists to racists to Christian Dominionists is the belief that a few of us are born to rule, and the rest to be ruled over:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/25/mafia-logic/#mafia-logic

The Reaganite insistence that governments are, by their very nature, incompetent and malign ("The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I’m from the government, and I’m here to help'"), means that conservatives deny the possibility of a Competent Administration.

When conservatives take office and proceed to bungle the most basic elements of administration, they're fulfilling their own campaign narrative, which starts with "We must dismantle the government because it is bad at everything." Conservatives who govern badly prove their own point, which explains a lot about the UK Tory Party's long run of governmental failure and electoral success:

https://apnews.com/article/uk-suella-braverman-fired-cabinet-shuffle-7ea6c89306a427cc70fba75bc386be79

There's a small mercy in the fact that so many of the most ideologically odious and extreme conservative governments are so technically incompetent in governing, and thus accomplish so little of their agendas.

But the inverse – the incredible competence of the best progressive administrators – is nothing short of a delight to witness. Here's the latest example to cross my path: the FTC has intervened in a lawsuit over generic insulin pricing, on an issue that is incredibly technically specific and also fantastically important:

https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/ftc-blasts-pharmas-abuse-fda-patent-system-sanofi-mylans-insulin-monopoly-lawsuit

The underlying case is before the FDA, and it concerns the dirty tricks that pharma giant Sanofi used to keep Mylan from making a generic version of Mylan's Lantus insulin after its patent expired.

There's an explicit bargain in patents: inventors can enlist the government to punish their rivals for copying their ideas, but in exchange, the government demands that the inventor has to describe how the invention works in a detailed patent filing, and when the patent expires, 20 years later, rivals can use the patent application as instructions for freely copying and selling the invention. In other words: you get 20 years of exclusive rights in return for facilitating your competitors' copying and selling your invention when the 20 years are up.

Pharma doesn't like this, naturally: not content with 20 years of exclusivity, they want the government to step in and punish their competitors forever. In service to that end, pharma companies have perfected a process called evergreening, where they dribble out ancillary patents after their initial filing, covering minor reformulations, delivery systems, or new uses.

Evergreening got a moment in the public eye earlier this year, with John Green's viral campaign to shame Johnson & Johnson out of using evergreening to restrict poor countries' access to TB medication:

https://armandalegshow.com/episode/john-green-part-1/

The story of pharma is that it commands gigantic profits, but it invests those profits into medicines that save our lives. The reality is that most of the key underlying pharma research is publicly funded (by Competent Administrators who apportion funding to promising scientific inquiry). Pharma companies' most inventive genius is devoted to inventing new evergreening tactics:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/19/solid-tumors/#t-cell-receptors

That's where the FTC comes in, in this Sanofi-Mylan case. To facilitate the production of generic, off-patent drugs, the FDA maintains a database called the "Orange Book," where pharma companies are asked to enumerate all the ancillary patents associated with a product whose patent is expiring. That way, generics manufacturers who make their own version of these public domain drugs and therapeutics don't accidentally stumble over one of those later patents – say, by replicating a delivery system or special coating that is still in patent.

This is where the endless, satanic inventiveness of the pharma sector comes in. You see, US law provides for triple damages for "willful patent infringement." If you are a generics manufacturer eyeing up a drug whose patent is about to expire and you are notified that some other patents might be implicated in your plans, you must ensure that you don't accidentally infringe one of those patents, or face business-destroying statutory damages.

So pharma companies stuff the Orange Book full of irrelevant patent claims they say may be implicated in a generic manufacture program. Each of these claims has to be carefully evaluated, both by a scientific team and a legal team, because patents are deliberately obfuscated in the hopes of tricking an inattentive patent examiner into granting patents for unpatentable "inventions":

https://blueironip.com/patents-that-hide-the-ball/

What's more, when a pharma giant notifies the FDA that it has ancillary patents that are relevant to the Orange Book, this triggers a 30-month delay before a generic can be marketed – adding 2.5 years to the 20 year patent term. That delay is sometimes enough to cause a manufacturer to abandon plans to market a generic drug – so the delay isn't 2.5 years, it's infinite.

This is a highly technical, highly consequential form of evergreening. It's obscure as hell, and requires a deep understanding of patent obfuscation, ancillary patent filings, generic pharma industry practice, and the FDA's administrative procedures.

Sanofi's Orange Book entry for Lantus insulin listed 50 related patent claims. Of these, 48 were invalidated through "inter partes" review (basically the Patent Office decided they shouldn't have allowed these claims to be included on a patent). Neither of the remaining two claims were found to be relevant to the manufacture of generic Lantus.

This is where the FTC's filing comes in: their amicus brief doesn't take a position whether Sanofi's Orange Book entries were fraudulent, but they do ask the FDA to intervene to prevent Orange Book stuffing because "improper listings can cause significant harm to competition and consumers."

This is the kind of boring, technical, important stuff that excellent administrators can do. The FTC's brief is notice to the FDA that it should amend its procedures to ban (and punish) Orange Book abuse. That will make it possible for you, a person who needs medicine, to get that medicine more cheaply and quickly. In America's pay-for-use privatized healthcare hellscape, this could be a life-or-death matter.

There's plenty of things the Biden administration is getting very, very badly wrong, but we shouldn't lose sight of how its progressive wing is making real, lasting change for the better. Competent Administrations are the true peoples' champions. They beat Competent Men every time.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/23/everorangeing/#taste-the-rainbow

[ipostwhatiwant1202]

Headcanons of the boys that I think are 100% valid and no one can tell me otherwise:

Leo

• just dance legend

• is not allowed anywhere near the stove

• has the best sense of humor, only because he isn't trying to be funny, he's just very dry

• takes extremely good care of his teeth

• can nap literally anywhere

• king of gentleman. pulls out chairs, holds open doors, and will gladly give you his seat when you walk in the room, even if there's other places to sit

• will allow you to vent but doesn't hesitate to tell you when he thinks you were in the wrong

• big fan of greys anatomy

• weeb.

• he 100% is a wine guy.

• horrible at math

• not a physically affectionate guy but let him do things for you.

• head patter

• health nut but has a huge sweet tooth

• he may seem high strung, but the guy knows how to have a good time

Raph

• best hugger ever

• will ruffle your hair all the time

• he can and will pick you up just to move you out of the way

• emotionally in tune enough to be dangerous

• can sing very well

• 2nd best cook in the house

• loves cop shows

• showers twice a day just cause he can

• definitely an acts of service guy over physical affection. he can and will google how to fix your sink instead of calling donnie (who ends up there anyway). makes you gifts all the time

• loves puns

• big animal lover, cats specifically

• the loudest sneezer there ever was

• he has allergies and makes it everyone's problem

• very patient

• closeted swiftie and that speaks for itself.

Donnie

• black coffee drinker

• has the worst hygiene due to his work schedule

• loves real housewives

• can and will eat his weight in pasta

• physical affection is nice but he's more of a words of affirmation guy. he'll happily hug you but will never hesitate to tell you how he feels about you (after you get through the awkward stage)

• worst dancer

• very heavy sleeper when he does fall asleep

• king of sarcasm

• can speak multiple languages

• has the best laugh

• will stare at you until you pay attention to him

• heavy metal music is his favorite

• loves dirty jokes

• the biggest baby in the world when he's sick

• silent but deadly temper

Mikey

• king of nicknames

• most empathetic and emotionally aware person you'll ever meet

• type to pick you up to hug you

• cooking is his specialty

• physical affection, quality time, you name it, he loves it. he craves attention and connection. please show him your favorite things because he loves trying new stuff

• loves to gossip (definitely a girl's girl)

• lightweight

• extremely good at drawing

• very observant

• best dancer and can tango like it's no one's business

• really good at impressions (especially trump)

• very abstract thinker and good strategist

• very ticklish

• allergic to cats but loves them a lot

• not easily provoked but puts raph to shame when full blown angry

[quirkle2]

something i've noticed in my obsession with ritsu kageyama is that he underestimates people a lot

i think the first example of this is in episode 8, and it's absolutely littered throughout the rest of season 1. it starts with koyama, and the way ritsu says, "that guy is finished—it's over," when shigeo reaches 100%. while he Does have good reason to believe this, and so does the audience, koyama still manages to "win" by pulling a trump card that completely negates anything shigeo would be able to throw at him

when he's locked up with the awakening lab kids, his first idea is to act like he and the others don't have powers at all, which Wildly underestimates claw's communication between members. ritsu was literally noted to be an above-average esper, and "special treatment" was suggested for him. the fact that he even thought that would work at all suggests he either thinks they're incompetent (which, since all he's seen from claw is koyama so far and koyama can pack a fucking punch, is a little silly) or he's panicking and clinging to desperate, sloppy plans. it also kinda reminds you he's Literally Thirteen. god . he'sso small

also, the fact that ritsu doesn't even remember the awakening lab's kids names is another example of this—he deemed them "unimportant" during his arc, and continued to think this for a good while (i'd say he even holds onto some of those views well past the show's runtime, if his little comments about the twin's telepathy in the transmission arc is anything to go by) (also also, that <- deserves a post all on its own bc the fact that he meets another pair of siblings with esper abilities and sees that it's brought them closer instead of torn them apart . wow that makes me ill)

reminder that he listens to one of the kids "get killed" in another room and then watches a claw member drag the kid back out and throw his bloody, lifeless form to the floor. This Happens To Him. he watches this go down, and then he Continues to misjudge them. his little comment about the claw lackies "underestimating them because we're kids" is a bit funny to me now, given this entire post

he does it to shou immediately. he doesn't see a scar on him, so he immediately assumes he's lower tier and about as strong as the lackies. even after shou stomps and cracks the fucking hallway in half, ritsu walks right up to him and doesn't seem threatened. i doubt he's trivializing this situation just bc shou is a kid—that just wouldn't make sense from ritsu's perspective on things

he's already seen the biggest baddest esper in town—he lives with the guy. he knows the strongest esper is his own brother, so his view on other people's powers are very skewed. ritsu is so caught up in his trauma that he thinks shigeo is unbeatable, and i think part of that is because he was so young when The Incident occurred. anything scary that happens to you at that age is going to seem insurmountable to you, if you've never tried to overcome that fear. ritsu fully believes ???% is completely invulnerable (and yes, that's largely true) but he seems to carry that idea over to shigeo as a whole

maybe dimple's comment about ritsu being able to reach shigeo's level got more into his head than i originally thought it did—he "knows" he's at least close enough to shigeo to eventually surpass him, and since he puts shigeo's powers on a pedestal built with shaking hands, he thinks, hey, i must be pretty close to that. i must be pretty invincible too

he tends to mentally call fights finished before he's seen everything his opponent can do. ritsu straight up responds "i don't believe that," to shou's little you can't defeat me, and he's seen basically nothing in shou's arsenal

to his credit, once all the scars show up, he shuts his mouth and admits he's no match. and i think after the 7th division arc, he stops brushing people's abilities aside so much

this is why the shimazaki fight is so important for his character.

he fights him even though he Knows he'll lose. the shimazaki fight is Not ritsu underestimating him—previously, he's lost battle after battle because he truly and fully thought he'd win. he does not think he'll win this, and he's doing it purely to distract shimazaki from shou's position

ritsu kageyama is 1000% ride or die, especially when it comes to his own beliefs and trauma. i think if shou's situation wasn't as similar to ritsu's as it rly was, ritsu wouldn't have tried so hard to help him. ritsu risks his life to give this kid just a few extra minutes to deal with his father, and the way he enters the fight speaks pretty highly of how much he Wasn't underestimating him

he enters the fight by blinding shimazaki, by pulling a trick from his pocket underhandedly, and even though it obviously doesn't work, it shows that ritsu believes he'll need to do more than just use his powers like he normally does. i believe this is the first time he fights this way as well, with this covert trickery that uses his environment to his advantage—he keeps doing it throughout the fight; throwing cars, dislodging rocks to collapse ceilings. he's truly trying to think outside of the box because he entered this fight with the knowledge that he'll likely lose, and he needs more than just Himself to stay alive

but enough about ritsu underestimating claw, or awakening lab kids. i think the person he underestimates most of all is his own brother.

maybe i'm stretching the definition of "underestimate"—maybe there's a better word for it that i can't think of right now—but the way ritsu seems to think that shigeo will snap at the slightest issue in his life is... well. it's a little,,, patronizing, isn't it? he doesn't seem to have faith in shigeo's ability to keep a cool head, and even though he knows for sure that shigeo is Powerful (and even, sometimes overestimates that aspect of him) i think he tends to undermine his control over that power, tends to believe he'll blow up and scarcely doubting that assumption. he grew up like that, constantly in fear of his brother unleashing that "monster" again, and that in and of itself is an example of ritsu not having enough faith in his brother

when he sees onigawara talking to shigeo loudly in the hallway, ritsu sees how nervous shigeo is and narrows his eyes, like he senses something building in him. when reigen gets slashed during the 7th division arc, the fear in ritsu's gaze is not directed to reigen's "killer," it is directed to his brother, in fear of an oncoming explosion. and i Would say he gets better at this, but even at the tail end of s3, at the beginning of confession arc, ritsu fully believes (until he sees the car that hit shigeo, i think) that ???% came around because tsubomi rejected him. he thinks his brother would react so negatively to that, that other side of him would come out to wreak havoc.

when mob Does actually ask tsubomi out, he just cries when he's rejected. he reacts like every other teenage boy reacts, by quietly crying to himself. it's a very normal thing—after the absurdity and the sheer vastness of power and destruction the audience was just put through, mob walking away and crying quietly about being rejecting by a love interest is the first taste of normalcy we've had in like three episodes. what ritsu thought would spark this is actually the thing that calls the story and the audience back to a place that is solid and grounded

i'm not saying ritsu is a bad brother—that is so so SO far from my point—i'm saying that he's young and he's full of multitudes, and that includes mistakes. and that is Refreshing

this little guy is So full of faults, and it's one of the many things i love about him. he's a character that's practically built upon flaws with "good traits" as an afterthought, instead of the other way around, and the fact that he's been written like that, but introduced to be the polite, honor student, supportive, younger brother type is So Fuckin Cool!

it compliments his arc perfectly, because the reason big cleanup arc starts is because he's tired of being all that. he's tired. i never stop thinking about his maybe i wanted to find out what it would feel like to be a fool, it's Such a good line, and even if his reasonings for big cleanup arc seem nonsensical to some, i think it makes perfect sense in this odd, fucked up way. he literally Says it, right there. he explains everything in those few lines during that rooftop scI'M GETTING OFF-TOPIC

ritsu is a good character and his numerous flaws are what make him interesting to me. if he stayed that polite, honor student, supportive, younger brother type, i probably wouldn't give a shit about him. he is interesting Because he's made some pretty bad choices, Because he's made some pretty disgusting assumptions. he's a kid, fumbling along, with trauma dragging him by the wrists. i could talk about him for hours

[crplpunkklavier]

this has probably all been said before but people who act like phoenix only started lying in aa4 or post disbarment make me laugh. the trick he pulled with the trump card was to present a piece of evidence as something its not, to trip up the killer and make them stumble into a confession. WHICH, YES, isnt exactly GOOD conduct. but its literally not the first time he has done that EXACT same scheme.

Tigre: I can see straight through you, Phoenix Wright! That ain't the bottle with the cyanide in it. Phoenix: No, no. This is the bottle we found traces of the poison in. Tigre: Don't mess with The Tiger or you're gonna get ripped to shreds! The cyanide bottle was brown. And it was made of glass. That cheap piece of trash don't look nothin' like it!

sure, he didn't forge that piece of evidence. but he took a piece of evidence from the scene and presented it as something it wasn't, and they very kindly call it a "bluff" in recipe for turnabout, but it is a straight up lie. phoenix went on record in a court of law saying that this is a bottle of poison, while he and the prosecution and the judge verifiably KNEW that wasn't true. it was a means to an end and it worked. but phoenix lied.

obviously it was a real dick move to give apollo that card and risk HIS career for his own agenda, but that's not exactly new behavior either? this guy formally indicted wendy oldbag of murder in the very first game to buy himself some more time. and yeah, he needed that to win the case, and we all thought it was haha funny because it's just wendy oldbag. but if you translate that into real life, can you fuckin imagine?? they took her into custody. she lost her job after that trial.

he's always been a bitch bastard is what i'm saying. i love him dearly. none of that shit was okay. it's just more noticable in aa4 because he stopped wearing a suit while he cons people. and also because apollo punches him in the face for it

[batboyblog]

Do you think there is any benefit to the idea that Biden should just not bother with these TV debates anymore? With how the media is so strongly stacked against him, that it might be more beneficial to focus on things where he excels at like town halls and meeting people in person?

I think he agreed to do it, so backing out would look worse and be more damaging than any benefits from sticking to events that play to his strengths. Indeed the media attacked him pretty heavily for being over choreographed in events and interviews (sounds like Hillary being "over prepared") I do think Biden should, and if you look at the last few weeks he has, do more events with the people, and if he can wrangle a televised town hall that'd be great.

but on debate, we shouldn't think Biden is some historically bad debater. In 2012 Obama BOMBED his first debate with Romney, people were writing the death notices for his re-election (much closer to E-Day then July!) and it was Biden who swung into action at the Vice-Presidential debate, laughing in Paul Ryan's face and mocking him easily showing Ryan up as unlikeable and trying to destroy social security. Biden is good at being the every man reacting to "Malarkey!"

I think what went wrong in the first debate is two fold. First of all when you're President and you care to do the job, there's never ever gonna be enough time, there will always be one more call, one more meeting, one more thing that needs your attention. Biden mentioned aids adding things to the schedule. If you're a President like Biden who is good at the job and likes it, I can see how it becomes hard to say "no" because we're talking huge things. So Biden had been working too much, too hard, for too long. That week he went to Europe, did the G7 meetings lots of meetings lots of work, flew back to the US to California to do a fundraiser with Obama and George Clooney, flew back to Atlanta to do the debate. Along the way the guy gets a cold, so what we all saw was a guy who was tired from months of working too hard, jet-lagged, and sick. Trump did nothing that week, he golfed and hung out with friends showed up rested and not having a head cold.

The other thing is the prepped for the wrong debate. One team Biden pushed for rules that ultimately helped Trump. The rule of mics being off when the other is speaking, people hate when Trump interrupts, he's at his worse when he does that, you made sure he couldn't do that. Second no crowd, all politicians feed off crowds, read their energy. crowds cause Trump to lean into his worst instincts always reaching for the next big reaction, but also Biden feeds off people's reactions, in a way that is much better for him than it is for Trump.

outside the rules, clearly Biden and his team gamed out the debate assuming the moderators would do the heavy lifting of fact checking Trump and calling him on his lies and Biden's job was to look like the smart normal politician and spit out facts and figures. As a life long stutterer being able to recall and recite exact numbers and data points in just the way they were written down is not and never been a strength of Biden's, he's NOT dumb, but I can say you carry the baggage of people thinking you're an idiot from when you were a disabled kid your whole life, and I've read a lot of stories that some times in a room full of Harvard and Yale people he can get rattled. And I think that happened they pushed him to try to memorize their talking points their data sets and he got in his head. And when the debate turned out to not at all be what he planned for, when the moderators showed no interest in pushing back on Trump, Biden was caught off guard, a not sick, not jet-lagged, not tired Biden would have turned it around more quickly. We saw later in the debate Biden figure out what debate he was in and how to act and start to ditch trying to remember data sets and just throw out quips and lines "morals of an ally cat!", had he been feeling better, he'd have gotten there much faster.

So I think if Biden takes better care of himself, is strict about not adding more to his work load, takes time off to relax and rest before a debate (work on his tan like JFK did before the Nixon Kennedy debate) and also focuses on being himself, he's not Obama or Bill Clinton who are great masters of explaining complex issues with facts and figures that makes you feel like you're in school with a favorite teacher. That's not Joe, he knows the stuff, he does, but his skill his being everyone's favorite uncle telling it like it is, let him do that and he'll be fine.

[quixtrix]

rayman, eden's feel good american dream story; an analysis

guess who's back with taking ubisoft's silly guys and cutting them open. yknow, if you strip rayman of his personality, of all the behind the scenes we get of him, we get a run of the mill news reporter that is an immigrant, who by face alone serves as a shining ray of hope. he's easily something that by all means, can be classified as a diversity hire. immigrant, nonhuman (which in the world of clh can be considered to be equated with poc irl), and notably the only one in his work environment. don't believe me?

we rarely ever see anyone other than rayman on the show in the form of a coworker. the only time we do see other eden affiliated people, they are both white. "but you can't see red's face!!" there is a reason his dialogue makes you think of more right leaning people with their claims of 'wokeness is destroying everything' under something like april from tmnt being black and not ginger. he's a caricature meant to represent a specific group of people under fascism; those who have successfully consumed the fearmongering and have let it turn from fear of those that they are told are beneath them into hatred for them. there is also the fact that on live tv he throws up a middle finger, refers to an implied group of immigrant people as 'filthy interdimensional alien scum,' and seemingly gains no backlash for it. yes, the other reporter does try to give red a chance to go back on his words, but he sticks to it. and despite all of this, we get no indication that neither red nor the niji 6 had to apologise or received punishment for this. in fact, red is possibly given more chances by eden due to him being weirdly in charge of bullfrog's containment in a way? (i'm not entirely sure WHY he was there, but as he is one of eden's tv personalities, he's at a possibly televised trial of a terrorist.) now if you compare this to rayman, who also acted inappropriately on tv by literally saying fuck, you'd come to realise that rayman was treated so much more harshly. he was IMMEDIATELY replaced by a clone of himself, with no warning nor any indication that eden would do such a thing. it's very likely this was one of, if not the first time that rayman has slipped up like this on live tv. maybe it's a repeat offence considering his personality, but then you could argue that red is a repeat offender of the same shit and then you have to wonder why a soldier like red was not easily replaced but someone who is the literal face and voice of eden was with ease. it's because rayman made himself more than jus a story, he humanised himself by showing a peek of his raw feelings. remember that cute little exposition of the rayman kids show about hybrids? where we see all of these hybrids working as society's grunts and the kids are told to be thankful for hybrids? it's very sweet and gives a good message! now the rayman kids show is a product of eden propaganda, but rayman very much has a hand in it, most likely as a writer. he uses his platform to speak on issues that has happened and affected him. this can be seen in his biopic.

jus sit with this image for a moment. you ever think about why rayman is specifically made as an alien? why he's specifically an immigrant? in real life news reports and speeches, there is a difference in implications when people use immigrants and not aliens. you wanna know why?

as someone apart of an immigrant family myself, i live in a community of other immigrants. majority of them are hispanic, and while i myself am not hispanic, i am very aware of how hispanic immigrants were referred to and treated by politicians under trump's presidency. how couldn't i? even as children in middle school and elementary, we had discussions about what trump was saying because it directly targets my friends and their families. they are people targeted by a man who specifically uses derogatory terms to dehumanise them, to make it easier to justify in the average american mind that the government is doing the right thing by keeping out and protecting america from these so-called 'invading animals.' makes what red was saying earlier feel very on the nose, right? adi shankar, the showrunner for captain laserhawk, is also an immigrant man. immigrated from india, which by the way, did you know has a lot of people immigrating for the purpose of having a better life? that's a common sentiment that can be found in every single immigrant family's story. i've asked my filipino mother why she took an opportunity to live and work in america, and she told me it's because she wanted to give her children a better life than what we would have had in the philippines. hell, i bet if you share a similar background to me, you can ask your own parents the same thing and get the exact same answer, regardless if you came from latin america or africa, or asia. it's because of the concept of the american dream. everyone who has ever engaged with any degree of immigrant discussion has heard of the american dream. it's a concept that seems to be consistently proven via word of mouth, with the biggest examples being celebrities. they will always, without fail, eventually speak about the american dream within their backstories. and typically, they will use their platforms to further empower others within their community. it's why people from specific ethnicities tend to group together, why people make art meant as something akin to a homage to their people. it provides hope to the masses, makes you relate to the person on the screen, and believe that this society is truly a gracious one by providing opportunity. because yeah, it may be bad, but it could be worse. i mean we appreciate you! just look!

dont mind the fact that the majority of opportunities allotted to you is grunt work, the work where you at the base of the pyramid, with the harder jobs and the jobs no one wants to do. dont mind the fact you will be actively dehumanised, forced to work for hours in conditions we wouldn't put anyone else in, but hey. we appreciate you. we thank you. and yknow, you can become more than what you are. yknow, we let someone just like you be more than what you are! nevermind the fact that if they slip up, they'll be met with MUCH harsher criticism in comparison to someone who isn't you! aren't we so gracious? i probably sound a bit like matpat's insane out of context real world examples, but this show is filled with political imagery, so let me be. anyways, let's get back to eden and rayman. rayman, despite being specifically from dimension x as an alien, keeps hybrids in mind when he's doing his work.

people of colour tend to share solidarity with one another due to the fact that surface wise, we share similar struggles. to grossly oversimplify things, we all face discrimination through our appearances and are oppressed by the rules of a society created by our white oppressors. again, hybrids and dimension x immigrants can be equated to irl poc, and despite being different from each other, there is still community. rayman keeps them in mind, hoping to make things better for the overall nonhuman and nonnative (native as in naturally born) population of eden. but, rayman is not what he believes he is. because despite everything he has worked for, despite what he has tried to do, he is still a facilitator of the fascist regime that has an active hand in the perpetual oppression of his own people. one of the core concepts within fascism is us versus them. it's an easy way to instill fear (which is very much needed in fascism to make it easier to lie to the masses) and it's used in multiple layers, beginning with a large group (ex. us versus ussr, capitalism vs communism), then progressively sizing down (ex. saying all eastern europeans are communist, then going smaller and say all those affiliated with eastern europeans are communist) with the goal being to put people against each other and break up community since if you put your minds together, you'll start to realise that the fascist system is bullshit. what i've personally come to find is that in order to hide the fact that there is fascism lurking is that someone that can be considered a 'them,' an other, will be given a seat at the table. it's so they can be used as an excuse, a human shield, when they inevitably slip up and can be paraded to the masses as proof that the other is not as smart or powerful as 'us.' the 'other' within the 'us' is used as something to look down at, while also justifying to oneself that they have a place, that they are not being oppressed. they have an opportunity as much as anyone else! so long as they don't mess up. rayman messes up, and is shunned from 'us.' hes a mistake, impure, clearly not like 'us,' 'us' who had been so gracious to give this 'other' a place. he's cut out and discarded because he has well worn his purpose, and clearly, they can just get another little puppet. they'll dress him up and make him worthy of being one of 'us,' and make sure that this one won't fall to the fault of his little ideas. which is exactly what leads to rayman's transformation of ramon. being forcibly forced out and discarded by eden because he showed his true ideas makes him realise that there was no real place for him within the system. because what good is his work if it leads to what he tried not to create? it's worthless, just as the system it attempts to thrive in is.

tl;dr, rayman is a representation of the american dream, specifically celebrities. he tries to do what he can with his platform, but the fact is that within a fascist system, his impact is not entirely felt in the way he wants it to. that is why he becomes ramon.

anyways if you reached the end of THIS LONG ASS PIECE GOOD LORD thank you!! always open to discuss this and take criticism, my ask box is open in the lil 'who's asking' :^]