#which makes right wing conspiracy theories like candy to her

[badolmen]

How to tell my father “No I don’t think I’m intellectually superior because I went to college but I do think you have stopped trying to learn about the world and people around you which upsets me because I know you can choose to learn and grow but refuse to do so”

[delldarling]

charting dreams | spiros

a commission for an absolutely wonderful anon!

male deity x female reader 5k words lemon | dream sex, creampie, hints of future angst additional note: ‘night flying’ ointment is a real thing, BUT please consult healthcare professionals or experts and do copious amounts of research before seeking it out and dear god, don’t ever ingest it, please & thank you

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There are… Way more books on the subject than you thought there would be. Which is good! Being able to compare information will help you find one that works well for you, but honestly? It’s kind of depressing that none of them have that old-world magic-looking binding. Just once you were kind of hoping that you might stumble onto something tangible and magical outside your dreams. If you can, you’re going to complain about the lack of embossed covers and fancy sounding titles when you see him again.

If you see him again.

Thus, the books. Lucid dreaming has been on your mind for quite a while now. It’s an interesting turn of phrase, and the thought of it, what all the books describe it as: Being able to bend your dreams to your will? That sounds pretty damn awesome. It’s not like this all came out of nowhere though. You’re not looking into it because of nightmares, which is apparently fairly common, or because you have some kind of serious yen for knowledge about brains and dreams. You’ve been… Dreaming of someone. 

It would probably sound like some kind of fairy tale to anyone that hadn’t experienced it, and most people would just write it off as some kind of intensely vivid, though random, series of dreams. You’d been half tempted to do that at first too, of course. 

It had all started out as crystal clear flashes in your dreams, like a perfect memory of a favorite movie scene. Simple conversations about your day held on a fancy looking carousel, glittering golden lights drawing your eyes away from your companion. Some days you traded amusing anecdotes under towering arches, draped over the top with what you first thought was blue gauzy material and fairy lights. Instead, you found out that they were actual fairy lights, little winged beings flitting about in a storm, eating holes in the sky.

“Stars,” he’d explained, pulling you to a stop as one of the little pixies pulled a dark blue swirl from the sky, like midnight-colored cotton candy, and ate it, leaving a gleaming star-like hole behind. You’d felt such an intense sense of wonder, heart loud in your chest, that you’d woken yourself up, hand actually outstretched as if you could touch-  

They were wonderful and strange, and you remembered them with a clarity that you’ve never associated with dreams before. You could smell things - sweetness in the air, salt water on the breeze, and you could feel the heat and cold when you walked by his side. Still, it hadn’t been hard to write it all off as nothing more than an overactive, tired mind. Maybe you’d binged too many fantasy stories in media lately and your brain was just mushing everything together? Never mind that you can’t recall anything recent about pixies eating holes in the sky. 

They’ve continued though, the dreams, the meetings you have with him. Far off places on maps are spread out before you like a feast, his arm warm under your hand as he escorts you or does his best to leave you breathless with laughter. You’ve always woken from those dreams invigorated, but with the strange sense that you were missing something, until- his face. On a shore with cresting orange waves, you turn away from the blinding glare of reflective sunshine, and then you see him, draped in a dark chiton, just before you wake.

Even having seen it just the once, you can’t erase it from your thoughts. The color of his eyes, shades shifting when you unfocus, like photographs of far flung nebulae. The impression of feathers twined with his hair and yet arching away from his temple like actual wings. The way his lips look when they shape your name, his hand taking yours so he can twine your fingers together-

He’s too beautiful to be true.

You’re both convinced you’ve made him up, and absolutely convinced you couldn’t have. Aren’t people supposedly only able to see those they’ve seen before in their dreams? And you know, without a doubt, that you’ve never seen anyone that looks like him in your day to day life. Unless he’s just a piece-meal of people or ideas you’ve found attractive. Even then, you’re not sure you could have put him together so smoothly. 

It’s hard to believe that you’ve made him up though, when he declares that he is real. That, at least, has never happened before. Though you’re not sure you’ve ever taken the time to ask someone if they were a product of your imagination when you’ve been dreaming, having been too caught up in your imagined adventures yourself. 

One night he’s stroking his thumb over your cheekbone, claiming that you should chart your dreams-

“Prove it,” you blurt, and you can feel your pulse speed. His image wavers, there and gone, and his eyes widen. “Prove that you’re real,” you clarify and your pulse ratchets up another notch. 

“How?” He asks with a laugh and then takes your hand in his, clinging almost, like he can’t quite believe he’s touching you - never mind that he’s touched you before. His laugh sounds strained though, and the smile on his face is… Thin. “And you must calm your heart, dear one. You’ll wake, and how will I prove myself then?”

“I don’t-” know, you’re about to say, but he presses a finger to your mouth, worrying at his lower lip as he glances over your shoulder.

“Perhaps… Perhaps, I can tell you the dreams of those near you,” he says softly. “Yes, wait here for just a moment.” He does vanish then, and the dream loses a bit of clarity. You have a vague memory of being unable to read one of your favorite books, and then he’s back, whispering random sounding things into your ear, arms curled around your middle. “A family dog, a work dispute interrupted by a cart of apples, and a great webs, knitted by a grandmother. Ask your neighbors,” he pleads, mouth deliciously warm where it’s brushing your ear. “I am real, and I know their dreams - ask them,” he urges, and then you wake.

He’s so strangely eager for you to believe him, and after that list... You give in to the mild embarrassment and make awkward small talk with two of your neighbors. Bringing up recent dreams in front of the mailboxes is a little difficult, but you manage, if not exactly smoothly. You half hope it comes to nothing, that they brush off your questions and move on with their day - what are you even doing, trying to prove that a dream man is more than a figment? But one of them mentions an old dog they used to have, and then the other claims they dreamed or arguing with their boss. 

“-we were at the bottom of a hill though, and one of those old apple carts came tearing down, nearly mowing us both to the ground. It was a bit more.. Vivid than usual, I suppose.”

“‘S nothing,” your other neighbor interrupts with a laugh. “My kid thinks great grandma must be a spider and has nightmares about her knitting webs as gifts.” 

With a peculiar fluttering feeling in your chest, you march right back into your place. He’d been telling the truth.

Or you’d become prescient. You’re not sure which is the more likely, but… 

Lucid dreaming. 

You crack into the stack of books you’d taken home from the library with eagerness. You want to try and take control in your dreams not only because manipulating them would be interesting, but because you’re desperate to prove that he’s more than a figment on your end. You try not to get caught up in thoughts of prescience - even if he is real in some way, it’s still a bit hard to believe you’re suddenly able to tell the future, even through dreams. You’re tempted to bring that up though, just like the very non-magical looking books, when next you see him. 

There are a copious amount of notes and preludes in nearly all of the books, as well as the articles you’ve looked up online, that say to not get your hopes up. Lucid dreaming apparently doesn’t work the same way for everyone, and the results are rarely immediate.

Succeeding on the first try isn’t unheard of, one person writes, but it is exceedingly rare. True success will come in stages, starting with Awareness. Are you aware that you’re dreaming? Are you aware of where exactly you are in your mindscape? And that brings us to another important vocabulary word: Mindscape.

“Mindscape,’ you mutter, flicking idly through the pages. Some of the books are very cut and dry, but on the other hand, the articles and first hand accounts on the internet are… Kind of out there. You feel less like you’re researching and more like you’re getting drawn in by click bait or conspiracy theories when you read about personal mindscapes and see the hand drawn maps. Some of them are detailed enough - in both drawing and description - that you wonder why they aren’t trying to market them. 

Still. You try and gather up information without getting your hopes up about it all, but honestly that’s the most difficult part. Having already experienced something.. Other while you were dreaming, you can’t help but think maybe you’ll have the upper hand. He’d told you, more than once, that your dreams had felt different to him, so you can’t get it out of your head, and... your hopes are most definitely up. 

You clear your schedule, and even buy some special kind of ointment meant to help aid in lucid dreaming, heavy with mugwort and pennyroyal. The fancy art on the jar reads Night Flying in filigree letters, but on the back, in very large red print is: DO NOT INGEST. Half of you wants to set it aside, but you have done the research. On your forehead and temples only, or sometimes- you check your notes, wrinkling your nose when you see the written neck, and feet included. You open the jar, still unconvinced, but it only smells faintly of mint. 

You’re unashamed to admit that you use less than the recommended smear, just to be safe. You settle down in bed, going through the breathing exercises that supposedly help aid sleep, and cross your fingers. 

Not much happens. You wake in the morning, feeling well rested and too lethargic to get out of bed, but- No dreams. Not that you recall, anyway. Your hopes crash hard for a few hours and you clean your face and neck of the flying ointment a little more viciously than you need to. It seems so silly in the light of day, but you can’t shake the feeling of those dreams. Not the memories of them, crystal clear, not the weight of his hands in yours. But he hasn’t always shown up every single night. 

You try again. And again, and it isn’t until the third night, when your pillow now seems to be steeped in the scent of minty pennyroyal from the ointment, that you finally achieve a vaguely lucid dream. 

You’re walking down the street when you realize that you can’t hear the sounds of traffic, and then- Then you realize you’re dreaming. Your heart rate picks up, and you spin in place, exuberant, wondering why you’re turn seems to take twice as long as normal - and then there’s a plain looking door standing in the middle of the sidewalk. You walk towards it, after all, where else is there to go? But as soon as you place your hand on the plain brass handle, you frown. Between the books and the disappointment of not being able to tell the future, of not getting to see him, you.. You want magic in your life. You’d rather walk through a door that reminds you of Narnia, with gilded edges and some kind of fancy door knocker, than walk through one that looks like you can push it over with a strong breeze. 

Concentrating on actually changing a dream takes way more effort than you would have thought though. If you close your eyes, it seems to give your subconscious enough tether to try and take back control. You close your eyes, and instead of seeing the fancy door you would have wanted, you’re distracted by thoughts of fluttering pages- no. You open your eyes, forcing yourself back on track, and laugh, finding your hand not on a plain brass handle, but on an ornate knocker. You smooth your fingertips along the swirling lines of it, pleased with yourself. Maybe it’s not quite what you’d hoped, but you’ll happily take it. You knock and then step back, assuming with every fiber of your being that he’s going to be on the other side, that he’s going to swing it open and pull you into his arms, but- The door creaks open, revealing a plain looking room with purple windows. It’s disappointingly empty, and he isn’t anywhere to be found.

You take a step into the room, letting the door close quietly behind you and then glance down at your hands. Lucid dreaming is all about being able to change things, isn’t it? You think of him, breathe deeply, and snap your fingers, willing him to appear with everything that you have within you.

Nothing happens. You’re still alone, with only the slightly hazy room for company. You can’t help but feel like you’re missing an intrinsic piece to the puzzle of his presence. Maybe you need to call his name, but… 

You frown at the ornate rugs beneath your feet, eyes getting distracted by the whirling patterns. You’re not entirely sure you can remember his name. You have vague memories of him telling it to you, but all of those seem to be the ones in which you hadn’t yet been able to see his face. For a half second, the weight of disappointment bows your showers. Maybe you have made him up. You blink, and the dream seems to lose focus, your lucidity ebbing like a tide. You’re on the verge of waking, you realize, and then his voice is heavy in your ear, his lips warm as they brush against the shell of it, saying quickly, and fondly: “My name is Spiros. Don’t forget it so easily next time, hm?”

You wake with his name on your lips, half expecting him to manifest inside your bedroom. After a few heart stopping seconds though, you have to sigh. It stays tragically empty, and yet the heat of him, the texture of his lips- you can still feel it. You’re not going to give up.        

After a while though, you feel like all your free time is spent sleeping. You experiment with the flying ointment, but after the last two or three times, decide that you no longer need help. The awareness of lucid dreaming happens more than half the time now, and you can change some things, but otherwise… You’ve been spending each night combing through strange places, catching the barest glimpses of him over the horizon, hearing his voice, faint on the breeze. Maybe, you tell yourself one evening, you need to stop chasing him. It’s like trying is only tiring you out, making you wander through long roads, only to find he was right where you left him. He doesn’t feel like a figment any longer, but the fact that he doesn’t is beginning to scare you, just a little. You can’t spend all your time searching for him, can’t spend all your time sleeping. You decide to stop chasing, even if you still practice actual lucid dreaming. But then, the next time you achieve more than awareness, more than that sense of reality, Spiros is waiting for you. 

“Been searching, have you?” He teases, reaching out for your hand and- you can feel him. The faint whorls of his fingertips, the drag of his nails over the palm of your hand. It’s more than just the strange clarity from before, or the sense of being aware, Spiros’ feels real, and if you couldn’t see the shifting nebulae of his eyes, you might think you were actually awake. He tugs you a step forward and then turns you about in quick whirl, leaving the room with the faint sense of spinning, like you’ve actually been turning too many fast circles on your feet. 

“Who are you?” You can’t help asking, letting him take another few dancing steps before you put your feet down, refusing to be moved. “I’ve been chasing you, trying-”

“Spiros,” he says, coyly, like he thinks you might be teasing him back. “Haven’t we talked about this before?”

“Not your name,” you say, glancing past his shoulder. Maybe you shouldn’t be staring quite so intensely at his eyes. The dizziness hasn’t yet faded. “Who are you, that you can jump into another person's dreams? I’ve been researching, you know, and- I still can’t figure it out. How you knew about my neighbors. I thought for sure that I was fooling myself. Or maybe that I was prescient,” you confess, embarrassment wrapping around you like a cloak. “But if you’re real-”

“My apologies,” he says, and even more strange than knowing that this is all a dream is that you can feel it. His sincerity, heavy in the air, and it sounds like… It sounds like cricket song. “For leading you on a chase. I cannot come often, there are too many dreams to spin, but-” He rests his forehead against yours, eyes falling closed. “I cannot seem to stay away.”

“Why?” You ask, just as confused, if not more so. 

Spiros pulls away, eyebrows raised and for a moment his jaw works, like he’s searching for the words to say. 

“You,” he says insistently. “Something about your dreams kept me coming back, but it was you that made me stay. Don’t you remember our talks?” Spiros asks, hair brushing against your cheek as he leans in again, and- feathers, there are wings, tangled in hair somewhere above his ears. 

“I do,” you reassure him, hesitantly lifting a hand to stroke a single fingertip along his jaw. Faint stubble pricks at your finger, though not enough to make it uncomfortable. “That isn’t the point of this, though. You’re attracted to me,” you say, hardly believing it, and yet feeling the truth of it all the way down to your bones. “You’re attracted to me, and- to spin,” you say suddenly, thinking of the way your neighbors had claimed the dreams were extra vivid. “You spin dreams? I thought-” But you’re not entirely sure what you thought. Maybe he was simply a person with a talent for something beyond lucid dreaming? Creating them though..

Spiros sighs, taking a step back, letting your hand fall away from his face. 

“I had hoped to save this particular conversation for another time, but you are much more observant than you used to be,” he says, shrugging a single shoulder, mouth slightly mournful. 

“I don’t know whether I should be charmed or irritated by the way that sounds,” you say quietly, crossing your arms over your chest, just to give yourself a sense of normalcy.

“I’m one of the oneiroi,” he says, like that should mean something to you. “One of many. I.. Once there were many who called us gods.” His eyes flash back to you and then down, the afternoon breeze whipping his hair away from his face. “And perhaps we were, but now?” He turns in a circle, as if he can see far beyond the confines of the park you’re standing in. He probably can, you realize, if what he says is true. “There are medicines to combat us, or people who have severed themselves from this realm so severely that we can’t even catch sight of their dreams. And our newest siblings-” Spiros’ mouth twists. “They are so fast, swooping in on daydreams for their sustenance. Few of you take the time to notice us these days. If we’re noticed, perhaps we’re called nothing more than spirits.”

You wake with more questions than answers, but you feel satisfied with one thing: Spiros exists. Maybe not exactly how you’d pictured, but he wasn’t a figment. And he- Cares. About you. It’s still mind boggling though, trying to process the information, trying to sort out what you should do about it. You enjoy time with him, you’re very attracted to him, but you can’t help but worry about whether disbelief will always be lingering in the back of your head if you pursue things. 

If only to cement his interest, Spiros seems to return twice as often after that, taking you on such vibrant, whirlwind adventures that sometimes they short out, speeding up your sleeping heart until you nearly wake. After one of these strange glitch-like interruptions, Spiros takes you to a warm night garden so the two of you can catch your breath, and it barely takes a blink before you’re suddenly lying in dark grass, softer than down against your back.

“Comfortable?” He asks, sitting to the right of you, his eyes tracing your body like a caress. 

“I want you,” you find yourself saying, almost before you can even finish the thought inside your head. Spiros blinks, and the whole area seems to pause, as if it’s holding its breath along with him. After a moment, his eyes seem to change, the cool toned stars in their depths turning to molten gold, to heat and wanting, and the air becomes heavy with it.

“Truly?” Spiros asks, like he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing. He reaches out to touch you, fingers hovering over your shoulder and then stops, waiting for your response. 

Yes, you think to yourself, thinking of every small touch, of his breath against your skin, of the way he says your name to capture your attention. His fingers tremble until you take his hand and press it to your chest, wondering if he can feel the unsteady rhythm of your heart. “Yes,” you finally say aloud, pushing away all your doubts. “Isn’t it obvious?” You ask, only half teasing, still wrought with nerves, even as he leans down to kiss you. 

“As obvious as I feel?” Spiros asks and you can almost taste him, he’s so close. He cups your breast and then strokes his thumb over your nipple, breathing out slowly as he does. 

A small laugh escapes you, more of a rough, low gasp than anything else. “‘S why I’m asking,” you say, closing your eyes before you can get lost in his own. His mouth meets yours, soft and warm, stubble barely noticeable against your chin or cheeks when he tilts his head to deepen the kiss. It’s almost a shame, you think, hesitantly sliding your fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck, that I won’t come away from this with evidence. His kiss turns almost desperate, needy, after that, teeth tugging at your lower lip as he straddles one of your thighs, hand smoothing down your body and taking your clothes as he goes. He tastes like evening, and it’s beyond frustrating, not knowing what else to compare it to.   

Despite knowing that you won’t bare the marks of this when you wake, Spiros seems desperate to leave you with the sensation of them. Your lips feel swollen, buzzing with his attention by the time he pulls away so you can breathe, and his hands are heavy on you, half massage, half the slow drag of his nails, just enough to leave your skin pebbling even though you’re not cold in the slightest. He seems content to just touch, to watch you writhe underneath him, your hips arching as you try and get closer. He’s still dressed, still covered by that dark chiton, hands steady- but his face. The look in his eyes is greedy and pained. You wrap your fingers in the front of his chiton and yank, pulling him back down to kiss, to taste the pulse in his throat. The angle has him pressed to you, hard and hot and bare underneath his clothes and you moan against his mouth at the sensation. You don’t want him to look so sad, you want him to stop thinking, to feel you- Your hand slips between you, moving aside material until you can take him in hand. 

Spiros tenses, pulling his mouth away from yours so he can groan quietly, immediately rolling his hips down into the grip you have on him. “Are you impatient?” He asks, voice gone rough and rasping. “I would think- by the dark,” he gasps, hand wrapping around your thigh when you squeeze him. He seems lost for words, lips pressed so tightly together that they’re trembling. After a moment he shifts, spreading your legs so he can kneel between them. The sight of it, the way his hands slide up your thighs, makes your heart beat even faster. A buzz, a zip, seems to shudder through the very foundations of the earth, and for a split second you could have sworn you saw your own ceiling and bedroom instead of stars and nebulae wheeling through the sky above you. 

“Concentrate,” Spiros insists, breathing the word out against the juncture of your neck and shoulder. His breath tickles and you shiver, blinking a- he bites you. Not hard enough even to bruise, but the sharp edge of it has your back bowing, attention fully settled on Spiros’ hand dipping between your thighs. They’re the perfect texture, and he uses just the right amount of pressure to slick them through your wetness, to stroke slowly over your clit. Between the bite and his fingers, you’d forgotten to move, but you squeeze him again, wanting to reciprocate, wanting to share the pleasure.

It feels like forever and no time at all before you’re aching so badly that you’re about to beg. Every brush of his thumb, every time he curls his fingers inside you has you rocking up into the motion, but you want him, want him to speed this maddening rhythm. “Enough,” you gasp, choking on a laugh when he ceases all movement, a slight frown curling his lips. “Not- enough of you,” you say, and then you’re whimpering as he pulls his hand away, his clothes vanishing before you can blink. 

“Enough foreplay?” He asks, licking at his fingers before both of his hands are curling around your hips, dragging you towards him until his cock is teasing your clit with slow strokes. 

“Yes,” you say, a bit sharply, unable to do more than grasp at the soft grass underneath you. The angle is perfect for watching, for seeing him drag the head of his cock over you until it’s gleaming with your wetness, but it’s too gentle and you can’t find purchase with your feet to help press you harder against him. “I want you to fuck me,” you demand, breath coming fast as he takes a moment to glance at the far side of the garden. 

“I suppose I should,” he teases, smirking before his eyes drop back down to you. “Morning is approaching too fast for my liking.” You don’t know how he knows, you have little idea of the time you’ve spent here now, but you’re not complaining when he lets go of your hip to take himself in hand and press himself into you. You tighten, eager for him, for the feel of him filling you and his eyes flutter closed, lips parting like he’s forgotten to breathe. “You- you feel-” His jaw snaps shut, and he takes a deep breath before his hand curls back around your hip again, and he sets an unforgiving pace. 

“Oh,” you get out, clutching tighter to the grass. You no longer care that you can’t move your hips, that you’re having to tense your thighs so your legs aren’t dangling uselessly- watching is wonderful. Anywhere or with anyone else, you would have worried about him getting tired, but Spiros looks like he has endless stamina, thrusting into you this way. His knees finally shift though so he can bring you closer, so his skin can brush against your clit with the angle change and then you’re shaking apart, head thrown back. You’re dizzy with the force of it, breathless and then Spiros is gasping your name and heat fills you until you’re overflowing, his thrusts slow and he loosens the tight grip he has on your hips. “Spiros,” you breathe, trying not to focus on the way the stars and trees overhead are shifting in the breeze. You blink, and you think you see your ceiling again, morning light casting pale patterns over the walls- and then Spiros is lifting you, a hand against the middle of your back as he pulls you into his lap, uncaring of the mess, to place an eager kiss against your lips.

“I don’t know that I’ll ever get enough of you,” he confesses against your mouth, hand gentle as he cradles your jaw. “But you must wake soon, and I cannot keep you here.”

“You sure?” You tease, grinding yourself down and then whimpering because- He’s still hard.

Spiros looks drunk, cheeks ruddy, eyes heavy lidded, but he grins. “If only I could,” he murmurs, and his next kiss is sweet, and lingers long after you’ve woken. 

You’re alone in your room, and even though it’s cold out, the blankets feel stifling. You shift your legs, still blinking sleepily and freeze when you feel how slick you are. You wonder if you’re not going to hurt yourself with this in the future, with longing for more time with him.  It’s only then that you notice a single, gleaming feather on your pillow. The sight lays your fears to rest.

If only for the moment.

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...turn the page?

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #355

“despite all my rage, i am still just a rat in a cage”

Have you ever shared a shower or bath with someone as an adult? No, only as a kid. What kind of pizza toppings do you like? Meats or jalapenos. When did you first take a shot of alcohol? Never, and I'm not interested. Did you babysit for money when you were in middle school? No. Who is your favorite band? How long have they been? Ozzy Osbourne, since middle school. Has the last person you kissed ever been to your house? My old house, yes. Not the one I currently live in. Have you ever been to a spa? Only because my friend at the time took me. When talking on the phone, do you place it against your left or right ear? My right. What’s your favourite Lunchables meal? The nachos one. Do you like Bob Marley? NO. Omg his voice is awful. Have you ever eaten at Golden Corral? Yeah. I'm not a big fan. Do you sit and eat dinner at the same table with your family? We only ever do that if my sister is over (she comes for dinner once a week). Are you listening to any music right now? If so, what are you listening to? Yeah, Violet Orlandi's cover of "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" by The Smashing Pumpkins. God she's so beautiful and talented and asdfjkaljddkfjlwkee FUCK I'm gay for her. Who was the last person to make you genuinely smile? Watching Mark. :') Is there something you want to say to someone but can’t/won’t? Yeah. Do you like men who have a sensitive side? Yes. Please be in touch with your emotions, for the love of God. Have you ever tried to get someone into a certain band/artist? Not persistently, no, but Mini is a case where me mentioning them enough got her to listen to them. Metallica, by the way. They're her favorite band because of mwah, haha. Have you ever carved you and someone else’s initials into a tree? It's possible, but I don't believe so. Do you like Dairy Queen? Love it. They're Oreo Cupfection thing is BOMB. Is there anyone you know with an amazing personal success story? Yes. I have a friend Shannen who first was a widely-recognized photographer in the state, and now she's a fashion designer (or something like that) up in New York. Is there a song in a different language that you can sing? A number of Rammstein songs. How do you feel about bands that use pyrotechnics in live concerts? So long they're well-made for safety reasons, I don't care much. They do seem a bit unnecessary, though; like just look at James Hetfield's accident that burned half his body because of standing in the wrong place. It seems easy to fuck up and get in a dangerous range. Ever fallen down a hole? No. Do you like bananas? Yeah. How long do you normally spend in the shower? Not even 10 minutes, usually. I've never understood how people can take such long showers. Have you ever been a featured member on any website? Yeah, on a Silent Hill fansite. Have you ever had any weird pets? Not by my standards. A ball python morph is as "weird" as it gets. Are you currently talking to/texting/instant messaging anyone? Nope. Have you ever experienced insomnia? Ugh, yes. I went through a horrible insomnia spell, and I still have an awful time trying to fall asleep. Do you like egg nog? Nooo. Would you ever wear Converse with a prom/formal dress? I'm not opposed to it, but realistically I'd probably wear something more traditionally suiting just because. Do you prefer hot chocolate with or without marshmallows? Without. How many different people of the opposite sex have you cried over? I've cried all the oceans over just one lol. Would you rather be a surgeon or mortician? Being a mortician actually doesn't sound awful, weird as it sounds. It sounds almost relaxing if I could just be alone with some music doing my job. Would rather be a musician or a painter? A painter. Would you rather write your own book or make your own movie? I'd love to write a book. At home, do you have a trampoline? No. When you are about to go to bed, do you put on some sort of noise? No. What is your favorite Christmas movie? Jim Carrey's How The Grinch Stole Christmas. And what about your favorite Christmas song? Probably "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" or whatever it's called. "Carol of the Bells" too, of course. What is your ultimate favorite stocking stuffer? Haha, okay so it seems to be an unspoken rule that Mom always gets us Slim Jims for our stockings, and that's obviously the best considering my sisters and I loooove them yet still don't buy them much. You're making me ready for Christmas, lol. After Halloween, do you sort out all of your candy into little piles? I did as a kid, and then my sisters and I would trade what we preferred. When you listen to music with headphones, do you keep the volume low enough to hear surrounding noise faintly, or do you blast it? It's honestly pretty loud. What did you have for breakfast this morning? Cold pizza from dinner leftovers last night. What’s the largest animal you’ve ever had as a pet? Our late boxer mix, Cali. She was a big 'ole pup. Do you own any kind of helmet? No. Out of everything currently in your refrigerator, what food or drink is your favorite? Food: strawberries. Drink: Mountain Lightning. What’s the worst injury you’ve ever had? Either when I skinned my knees so deep that pus was visible, or when I fainted onto my chin and got a short, but very deep cut. Do you like the taste of cough syrup? No. What is something you like to have conversations about? I like talking about deep stuff, like where we came from, our unique feelings and beliefs, conspiracy theories and cryptids, mysterious stuff like that, too. And don't forget animals. And Mark, haha. What all is in the trunk of your car? I don't have a car, and I don't remember what's in Mom's trunk, even though I helped bring in groceries just the other day. Do you ever put fruit on your cereal? Ew, no. Is your heat or air conditioning currently on? Our AC is currently on because it's too damn hot. The weather here has been so up and down, it's wild. Have you ever fallen off of a horse? No. Which do you value more, your appearance or your intelligence? Honestly? I'd be dumber than I already am if it meant being happy with how I look, because my appearance now is a key factor to my depression. When was the last time you drove something other than a car or truck? Oh jeez... I have no idea. I don't think since I've driven a golf cart at someone's b-day party as a kid. Were your grandparents present when you were born? No. If you drink/smoke, how often do you do these things? I don't smoke, and I only have a drink or two very rarely, usually just on special occasions. What do you think of fast food? I like it way more than I wish I did. What website do you spend the most time on and why? YouTube, because I'm always listening to and/or watching something. What’s the most amount of time you’ve spent online? Is this usual for you? In one non-stop setting, I don't want to know. I pretty much only exist on the computer. When it comes to travel, what kinds of places intrigue you most? Mountainous, loads of nature, cooler/cold, mysterious locations... stuff like that. Do you think humans colonizing Mars is a good idea? Would you go, if you could? If we learn from our goddamn mistakes and not fuck up its environment, it could be healthy or even life-saving for humanity, but I'd prefer to stay on Earth as long as possible. What is the farthest you’ve walked in one day and what made you do it? I dunno, maybe at Disney World or something like that as a kid. What is something important that’s often on your mind lately? Physical health stuff. I'm worried about a lot of things relating to that. What about something unimportant, but you can’t stop thinking about it? I don't know about "unimportant," at least to me. Do you like oatmeal? If so, what kinds of things do you like in it? Yeah. I only really eat the cinnamon apple ones; I always use milk and sprinkle some sugar in there, and it's delicious. What was going on the last time you felt nostalgic? When Mom and I stopped at Jason's house to bring the family some treats following his mother's death. I stayed in the car and couldn't even look towards the house, but yeah. So many memories just stampeded me. How much attention do you pay to the movements of the stars and planets, and do you believe they influence anything? I pay zero attention to it; I don't believe they have influence over people in any way. What is the most difficult or involved video game you’ve ever played? I guess you could say World of Warcraft. It's definitely the most involved, like I've been playing it almost consistently since 2014, and I used to be in a Heroic raid team, which certainly wasn't easy. Then there's some achievements I busted my ass to get. Which accent do you find most sexy, alluring or appealing? British is where it's at. Which accent do you find most annoying, disturbing, or bothersome? Extremely Southern ones. Can you cry on cue? Is it any kind of useful? No. Does it take you a while to actually get jokes? Embarrassingly, it frequently does. Can you wear socks to bed or does it annoy you? Ugh, I could never. I hate the feeling of socks. Have you ever bleached your hair? By myself, no, but a professional has to dye it. Do you like jelly beans? They're okay. It really depends on the flavor, and even then I can't eat a lot of them. Do you have trouble sleeping when it’s storming? Yes, but not because it scares me, but rather that I'm just jumpy. Subtle thunder isn't so bad, and I LOVE the drone of heavy rain, but once you add booming thunder and strong flashes of lightning, it's too disruptive for me to fall asleep easily. Who was the last person you know that graduated? (high school or college) My not-so-little sister is just about to finish her Master's lakdsjfakwe I'm so proud of her. Were you happy or sad when you found out your babysitter was coming? I think I was always kinda bummed out, even though I liked my babysitters. I had horrible separation anxiety from my mom. Did you have a boyfriend in kindergarten? No, but I did have this one guy who'd been like obsessed with me since pre-k and would always chase me to hug and kiss me. In pre-k it was awful, but he still did it sometimes in kindergarten, despite the teachers getting on him about it. It's actually a memory I forgot for a very long time, like I think my brain tried to oppress it, and I wonder if it has anything to do with my fear of people standing behind me, men specifically, and being raped. Did you ever read the Magic Treehouse series? Oh yes, I was obsessed! Who was your best friend in elementary school? It jumped between Brianna, Kim, and Quiata. Did you ever watch The Land Before Time movies? YESSSSS. I even had the computer game. Did you collect anything when you were a kid? Stickers. I'd put them on my dresser everywhere to the point it was absolutely covered. Did you get an allowance? No. Not because my parents didn't want to or anything, but rather they couldn't afford allowances to three kids. Were you into American Girl dolls? Nah. I got one, but I think it was mostly so my sisters and I each had our own. Nicole, however, was sooooo into them. Were you friends with your childhood neighbors? Some, yeah, especially the boy down my street named D'Andre. We would hang out ALL the time, be it at each other's houses or just riding our bikes. He actually got married very recently and I'm so happy for him, ahhhhh!! What was your biggest fear when you were a kid? Thunderstorms. Did you ever play the "Reader Rabbit" computer games? Oh my god, YES. The one where you were hosting a surprise birthday party was my absolute favorite. Did your parents let you drink soda growing up? Yes. .-. What was your favorite kind of cake as a kid? Chocolate, of course.

[antoine-roquentin]

Author Richard Beck, in We Believe the Children: A Moral Panic in the 1980s, locates the roots of the McMartin conspiracy theory in the social progress of the previous decade—particularly in the gains won by women. “In the ’80s you had a strong, vicious anti-­feminist backlash that helped conspiracies take hold,” Beck tells me. “In the ’70s, middle- and upper-middle-class women had started to enter the full-time workforce instead of being homemakers.” This was the dawn of what the economist Claudia Goldin has termed “the quiet revolution.” Thanks in part to expanding reproductive freedom, career horizons had widened sufficiently by the end of the 1970s for women to become, in Goldin’s words, “active participants who bargain somewhat effectively in the household and the labor market.” They were now forming their identities outside the context of the family and household.

The patriarchal family was under siege, as conservatives saw it, and day-care centers had become the physical representation of the social forces bedeviling them. “You had this Reagan-­driven conservative resurgence,” Beck says, “and day care was seen as at least suspicious, if not an actively maligned force of feminism.”

Day care held a prominent place in right-wing demonology. As far back as the 1960s, conservatives were warning darkly that child care “was a communist plot to destroy the traditional family,” as sociologist Jill Quadagno writes in The Color of Welfare. In 1971, President Richard Nixon vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Act, which would’ve established a national day-care system. In his veto message, Nixon used the Red-baiting language urged upon him by his special assistant, Pat Buchanan, saying the program would’ve committed “the vast moral authority of the national government to the side of communal approaches to child-rearing against the family-centered approach.” In a decade of rising divorce rates, at least conspiracism and reactionary social conservatism could enjoy a happy marriage. By the time Judy Johnson came forward in 1983 with allegations that a teacher at the McMartin preschool had molested her child, the country had been primed to assume the worst by more than a decade of child-care fearmongering.

Certainly it wasn’t just the movement of women into the workplace that created the conditions for a reactionary panic. There were other cultural forces at work. The anti-rape campaign of the 1970s, historian Philip Jenkins writes in Moral Panic, had “formulated the concepts and vocabulary that would become integral to child-protection ideology,” in particular a “refusal to disbelieve” victims. The repressed-­memory movement of that era had created a therapeutic consensus surrounding kids’ claims of molestation: “Be willing to believe the unbelievable,” as the self-help book The Courage to Heal put it. “Believe the survivor…No one fantasizes abuse.” And the anti-cult movement of the late 1970s had raised the specter of satanic cabals engaging in human sacrifice and other sinister behavior.

Beck likens conspiracy theories to parables. The ones that stick are those that most effectively validate a group’s anxieties, with blame assigned to outsiders. In a 2017 paper on Pizzagate and pedophile conspiracies, psychology professor Jim Kline, now at Northern Marianas College, argues that conspiracy theories “are born during times of turmoil and uncertainty.” In an interview, Kline goes further: “Social turmoil can overwhelm critical thinking. It makes us get beyond what is logically possible. We go into this state of hysteria and we let that overwhelm ourselves.”

The McMartin accusations were a vivid demonstration of the rot in the American social structure, as perceived by conservatives. Perhaps inevitably, the claims metastasized. Now it was hundreds of children who had been assaulted and subjected to satanic rituals, and now, instead of just one McMartin teacher, there was an entire sex ring involved. One boy told of adults in masks and black robes dancing and moaning; of live rabbits chopped to bits by candlelight. “California’s Nightmare Nursery,” People magazine called it. But soon the case began to fall apart. The stories of abuse turned out to have been coaxed out of children by way of dubious and leading questioning. Judy Johnson, who made the initial accusations that her son had been molested, was found to be a paranoid schizophrenic. In 1986, a district attorney dropped charges—at one point there had been 208 counts in all—against all but two of the original defendants. A pair of trials ended in 1990 with the juries deadlocking on some charges and acquitting on the others. After seven years and $15 million in prosecution costs, the remaining charges were dropped.

However flimsy its premises, the case whipped up a national panic. In 1985, a teacher’s aide in Massachusetts was wrongly convicted of molesting 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old boys and girls; the prosecutor had told the jury that a gay man working in a day care was like a “chocoholic in a candy store.” Around that time, employees at Bronx day-care centers were arrested for allegedly sexually abusing children. Five men were sentenced before all ultimately saw their convictions overturned.

Liberals certainly participated in the hysteria—Gloria Steinem donated money to the McMartin investigation—but by and large it was a reactionary phenomenon. What drove the panic, Beck says, wasn’t just the sense that children were being harmed. “It’s that families were being harmed.”

In 2016, three decades after the McMartin trial, WikiLeaks, in cahoots with Russian hackers, published the private emails of top Hillary Clinton adviser John Podesta. In one, Podesta is invited to a fundraiser at Comet Ping Pong. Amateur internet sleuths blew it up into a conspiracy theory about a child-sex ring. The pedophiles communicated in code: “hotdog” meant “young boy”; “cheese” meant “little girl”; “sauce” meant “orgy.” The theory was easily debunked. Eventually it was abandoned by the high-­profile internet figures who’d initially given it oxygen, but not before Pizzagate, as it was immediately dubbed, had spilled over into reality. In December 2016, a 28-year-old man named Edgar Maddison Welch, having driven from North Carolina to Washington, DC, fired an assault rifle inside Comet in a bid to rescue the children he thought were locked away there. No one was hurt. Welch was sentenced to four years in prison.

The QAnon conspiracy picked up where Pizzagate left off, alleging that the liberal elite’s pedophile ring extends way beyond one restaurant and that it is only a matter of time before Trump arrests Podesta, Clinton, and other Democratic power brokers for their crimes. All of this was fueled by an anonymous internet poster dubbed Q, who claims to be a government insider.

With Pizzagate and QAnon, the molesters have changed from day-care workers to the liberal elite, and the politics behind the theories now are more explicitly spelled out. But the general context is more or less the same: conservative retrenchment after a period of progressive social gains. If women’s entry into the workplace in the latter half of the 20th century triggered deep anxieties about the decay of traditional gender roles and the family unit, in the 21st century it was same-sex marriage, growing acceptance of transgender rights, and the seeming cultural hegemony of a social justice agenda. “Q found that fear,” says Travis View, a conspiracy theory researcher and a host of the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

“While Q directly never touches on trans rights or those sorts of things, there is a great deal of anxiety on those sorts of issues,” he says, referring to the QAnon community at large. “They’re concerned generally on the sort of accep­tance of trans people and the oversexualization of children.” On the matter of transgender rights, the conspiracists are aligned with “normal” conservative politics; from the state legislatures to the White House, Repub­licans have made considerable hay out of attacking and overturning various protections that had been extended to trans people.

Conspiracy theories of all kinds draw their energy from social anxieties. Occasionally there is some real basis for the theories. In her book, Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power, Anna Merlan details the belief among black New Orleanians after Hurricane Katrina that the city’s levees hadn’t failed on their own—they had been bombed intentionally to destroy the poor parts of New Orleans. The theory was “rooted in a real event—a 1927 decision to dynamite levees outside of New Orleans, the logic there being that they were going to flood low-lying areas and save the city itself,” Merlan said in an interview with Mother Jones’ Becca Andrews. “[I]t created a lingering sense of suspicion that maybe the government would do this again.”

View points out that the concern about elites preying on children isn’t baseless, either. “The core of elements of the systematic elite child abuse theories—they aren’t crazy,” he says. “There are instances of wealthy powerful abusing children and other people covering it up. Jeffrey Epstein, the Catholic Church. People have the sense that elites can commit horrifying crimes and get away with them.” The Epstein arrest earlier this month has done much to ratify the QAnon worldview. “This is just the beginning,” declared QAnoner Liz Crokin, a former gossip journalist. “The Storm is officially here.”

And thus does the legitimate concern about elite predation and impunity get woven into a demeaning and dangerous social crusade. The “Storm” cited by Crokin—also known as “The Great Awakening”—is part of the vivid eschatology that QAnon adherents share with tradi­tional conservative culture warriors, one in which judgment is at last be rendered against liberals, and the nuclear family is restored to its proper place. “One thing they often talk about after ‘The Storm’ is that they imagine that the economy will be restored so that a single income can support a family again,” View says. “They imagine traditional gender roles and norms will be upheld and how children are raised will return to what [it] used to be.”

The differences between the pedophile conspiracies of the 1980s and those of today are telling in their own way. There’s the matter of scale. The pedophile witch hunt of the ’80s managed to mobilize entire institutions, with much of the media uncritically amplifying its falsehoods and police taking action based on shoddy nonevidence. Lives were ruined around the country. But except for some reckless far-right pundits and websites, the media hasn’t taken the claims of Pizzagate and QAnon seriously. Earnest conversations about the conspiracies are limited to online image boards and social media. 

There’s also the nature of the targets. Where the pedophile conspiracies of the 1980s attacked the institutional emblems of feminist progress, the pedophile conspir­acies of the 2010s attack the cultural emblems of creeping cosmopolitanism. The ritual abuse of the 1980s supposedly happened in the suburbs in state or state-licensed institutions such as schools and child-care facilities. Today the abuse happens in businesses in cosmopolitan cities. Comet Ping Pong, in the Chevy Chase neighborhood of DC, is known as a welcoming space that regularly showcases progressive DIY artists and musicians—“a tangible emblem,” in the words of University of New Haven sociology professor Jeffrey S. Debies-­Carl, “of inclusivity, tolerance, and other progressive values that are threatening to the conspiracy-­prone alt-Right.”

British historian Norman Cohn, in his book Europe’s Inner Demons, finds elements of pedophile conspiracies throughout history. In the 1st century B.C., members of the Catiline conspiracy, an aristocratic plot to overthrow the Roman Republic, supposedly swore an oath over the entrails of a boy and then ate them. And in the witch hunts of the 15th–17th centuries, tens of thousands of people were tortured and killed over allegations that they’d performed ritual child murder, among other heinous acts.

The conspiracy theories documented by Cohn are fundamentally political. The rituals they describe are the means “by which a group of conspirators affirms its solidarity,” he writes, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing “an existing ruler or regime and to seize power.” The mass witch hunts that followed are political too, based on the “demonological obsessions of the intelligentsia.” The history of American political reaction is full of sex demons. Jim Crow was buttressed by myths about black male virility. Likewise, North Carolina’s infamous bathroom bill was sold in part on the fear that predatory men could say they’re transgender to gain access to women’s bathrooms. Opponents of abortion rights continue to conjure gory fantasies of promiscuous women committing “infanticide,” an incitement that Trump turned into an applause line in an April rally.

In this way, pedophile conspiracies act as a sort of propaganda of the counterrevolution, a fun-house reflection of the real threats to the social order. This is what connects QAnon and Pizzagate to McMartin to the witch hunts of the Middle Ages to the dawn of major religions. The demons may take different forms, but the conspiracy is basically the same: Our house is under attack.

“Decay of morals grows from day to day,” goes one despairing account. A secret cabal is wreaking havoc across the land, the man complains to his friend. Its members “recognize one another by secret signs and marks,” and “everywhere they introduce a kind of religion of lust” that subverts “ordinary fornication.” There is a rumor that they worship the “private parts of their director and high priest.” Maybe the rumor is false, “but such suspicions naturally attach to their secret and nocturnal rites.”

In this dialogue, written by Marcus Minucius Felix in the 2nd century, the Roman pagan Caecilius Natalis speaks of Christians the way Pizzagaters described John Podesta and his fellow liberal elite. Natalis is particularly incensed by the cult’s initiation ritual. The details are as “revolting as they are notorious”: New members are initiated into the cult, he reports, by stabbing and killing an infant who has been coated in dough.

[toshootforthestars]

via Brian Beutler, posted Oct 2020:

In his opinion (on King v Burwell, 2014), Chief Justice John Roberts concluded with a veiled plea to right-wing activists to stop treating the judiciary as a workaround for their political failures. “Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them,” he wrote. “If at all possible, we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter.”

That would have been the end of the story but for some extraordinary luck and the help of FBI Director James Comey.

When Republicans won the presidency and concurrent congressional majorities in 2016, despite losing the popular vote, it breathed new life into their legislative and judicial schemes to abolish the ACA. They first heeded Roberts’s advice and sought to repeal the ACA by statute, but failed to muster the votes they needed to pass new legislation. Somewhere along the way, Obamacare had become popular. Bruised, Republicans turned to their other driving policy fixation—regressive tax cuts—but did so in a way that fueled yet a third legal challenge to the ACA.

In the years since the Trump tax cuts passed, this pending lawsuit has loomed in the background like a theatrical prop, its significance misunderstood as a mere symbol of frustrated Republican ambitions. The challenge presupposes that, in voting for the tax-cut bill, Republicans in Congress secretly also voted to eliminate the ACA’s constitutional underpinnings, making it ripe for the Court to nullify. One of the provisions of the Trump tax cuts zeroed out the tax penalty Democrats established to enforce the ACA’s individual mandate. In 2012, Roberts had agreed that the mandate only works as a tax. Without a tax penalty, they now argue, the mandate becomes a plain command. That makes the provision unconstitutional, according to this suit, and therefore the Court should eliminate the entire health care law.

The argument’s obvious opportunism, and Roberts’ enduring distinction as the Court’s pivotal vote, led most political elites to dismiss the legal threat—after all, even with the retirement of Anthony Kennedy and the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh there remained five votes to uphold the ACA.

But nothing is written. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September, just weeks before the November 10 oral arguments in this long-shot ACA case.

Against Ginsburg’s dying wishes, Senate Republicans quickly made clear they intend to fill the vacancy before the election. President Trump followed suit by nominating one of the most openly anti-ACA judges in the country, Amy Coney Barrett, to take over Ginsburg’s seat.

[emphasis mine]

He openly mused that by confirming her as quickly as possible, she would be in place not just to strike down the ACA, but possibly to install him for a second term in office against the will of the public.

In anticipation of a coming defeat, Republicans at all levels of government have taken extraordinary steps to encumber emerging Democratic majorities. This has included efforts to reduce Democratic electoral margins by challenging ballots and making it harder to vote. At the federal level, Trump’s administration has cut the Census count short, so that he can certify a congressional reapportionment that omits millions of Americans.

The GOP has also deprived the public of relief from the Trump-coronavirus recession, which will saddle the incoming government with an economic emergency.

But Barrett is the crown jewel, the missing piece that Republicans believe will allow them to dominate national policy making without requiring them to adopt an agenda that can actually win popular majorities.

Barrett embodies the Republican dream of imposing conservatism on the masses without ever having to take difficult votes or admit to the right’s true beliefs.

She also represents what Republicans have been seeking in the courts since 2010: the power to destroy Obamacare without first receiving permission from the public, then pretending it wasn’t their doing. Thus the absurd spectacle of Senate Republicans distributing talking points to downplay the threat Barrett poses to health care, on the grounds that their own lawsuit is “ridiculous” and unlikely to succeed.

Republicans now head into the election appealing to voters with three deceptions: That they support the pre-existing conditions protections they’ve asked the Supreme Court to annul (in a lawsuit they apparently agree is frivolous); that their zeal to replace Ginsburg in the midst of an election they’re poised to lose has nothing to do with health care; and that any attempt by the Democratic Party to undo the GOP’s multifaceted theft of the courts would constitute an unacceptable breach of the norms they’ve spent five years gleefully sundering.

As the leader of the Democratic Party, Joe Biden awoke late to the nature of this opposition, and remains of two minds about it. He has adopted strategically wise negotiating positions on the kinds of reforms that would bring American citizens greater political equality, and force Republicans to compete for votes, rather than suppress them. At the same time, he remains committed, at least in public, to the view that Republicans can be persuaded to be loyal opponents. “What I learned a long time ago is that it’s always appropriate to question another man or woman’s judgment,” he said at a recent town hall event. “It’s never appropriate to question their motive.” Before Donald Trump’s presidency, this kind of boilerplate was bipartisan, the sort of thing even the most strident members of both parties repeated robotically to convey a largeness of spirit. But what if it’s wrong?

The Republican Party’s core rottenness—its dishonesty, corruption, pettiness, racism—is the defining political fact of our time.

Whatever we say about it, confronting all of us in the weeks and months ahead is the more important question of what we do about it. What do the rest of us—most importantly elected Democrats, but also journalists, political elites, and regular citizens—need to change about public life to account for the fact that one of the two major parties has embraced bad faith as an organizing principle?

As I sat down to write, I found myself daunted by the challenge of choosing a single episode to exemplify this scourge of right-wing nihilism.

Was it the time Republicans fanned conspiracy theories and otherwise exploited the 2012 deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, for political gain, only to completely abandon any pretense of caring once they won an election, then shrug off the preventable deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans on their own watch? Is it a greater irony that the very conservatives who now ask seniors to sacrifice their lives for the greater good of perpetual Trumpian rule once embraced the death-panels smear, or that they refer to themselves as “pro-life”? What about the fact that the GOP ran an entire campaign against the supposedly disqualifying, even felonious, email practices of a Democratic presidential candidate only to turn around and conduct foreign affairs over WhatsApp and dole out state secrets like candy? Is that worse than the fact that Republicans hit the fainting couches when a sitting attorney general and former president exchanged pleasantries on a tarmac, then cheered on Trump as he enlists all of the security services in his re-election campaign, and complained to reporters that Trump’s attorney general is screwing him over by not baselessly charging Democrats with crimes?

As a writer this problem presents itself as an embarrassment of riches, but as an American it’s really just an embarrassment.

Some amount of lying, and even more hypocrisy, is inevitable in politics. The Democratic Party isn’t immune. But it would be a mistake to confuse the acts of bad faith that have saturated Republican conduct for garden-variety hypocrisy or lying.

These contradictions don’t point to a lack of self-awareness or passing acts of shame-faced expediency. Republicans and professional conservatives revel in double standards because by embracing double standards they claim power over their opponents.

The Republicans have become a party that celebrates rulebreaking, because they have come to see rulebreaking as a show of strength. Their moral compass, inverted by their single-minded pursuit of self-interest, now points south.

[criticalotterstudies]

Why Are Right-Wing Conspiracies so Obsessed With Pedophilia?

Why do child-abuse conspiracies explode into public consciousness at certain moments? Explanations offered for the peculiar resonance of Pizzagate and QAnon tend to focus on pathologies in the media ecosystem—epistemic bubbles, polarization, the unruly growth of social media. But years before the fracturing of mass culture and the dawn of Reddit and 4chan, the McMartin accusations fed a national spectacle during which scores of people were wrongly accused of sex crimes against children.

The continuities between the McMartin case and Pizzagate suggest a broader explanation for pedophile conspiracies: They aren’t the residue of malfunctions in our media culture. They’re an outgrowth of the normal workings of reactionary politics.

Author Richard Beck, in We Believe the Children: A Moral Panic in the 1980s, locates the roots of the McMartin conspiracy theory in the social progress of the previous decade—particularly in the gains won by women. “In the ’80s you had a strong, vicious anti-­feminist backlash that helped conspiracies take hold,” Beck tells me. “In the ’70s, middle- and upper-middle-class women had started to enter the full-time workforce instead of being homemakers.” This was the dawn of what the economist Claudia Goldin has termed “the quiet revolution.” Thanks in part to expanding reproductive freedom, career horizons had widened sufficiently by the end of the 1970s for women to become, in Goldin’s words, “active participants who bargain somewhat effectively in the household and the labor market.” They were now forming their identities outside the context of the family and household.

The patriarchal family was under siege, as conservatives saw it, and day-care centers had become the physical representation of the social forces bedeviling them. “You had this Reagan-­driven conservative resurgence,” Beck says, “and day care was seen as at least suspicious, if not an actively maligned force of feminism.”

Day care held a prominent place in right-wing demonology. As far back as the 1960s, conservatives were warning darkly that child care “was a communist plot to destroy the traditional family,” as sociologist Jill Quadagno writes in The Color of Welfare. In 1971, President Richard Nixon vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Act, which would’ve established a national day-care system. In his veto message, Nixon used the Red-baiting language urged upon him by his special assistant, Pat Buchanan, saying the program would’ve committed “the vast moral authority of the national government to the side of communal approaches to child-rearing against the family-centered approach.” In a decade of rising divorce rates, at least conspiracism and reactionary social conservatism could enjoy a happy marriage. By the time Judy Johnson came forward in 1983 with allegations that a teacher at the McMartin preschool had molested her child, the country had been primed to assume the worst by more than a decade of child-care fearmongering.

Certainly it wasn’t just the movement of women into the workplace that created the conditions for a reactionary panic. There were other cultural forces at work. The anti-rape campaign of the 1970s, historian Philip Jenkins writes in Moral Panic, had “formulated the concepts and vocabulary that would become integral to child-protection ideology,” in particular a “refusal to disbelieve” victims. The repressed-­memory movement of that era had created a therapeutic consensus surrounding kids’ claims of molestation: “Be willing to believe the unbelievable,” as the self-help book The Courage to Heal put it. “Believe the survivor…No one fantasizes abuse.” And the anti-cult movement of the late 1970s had raised the specter of satanic cabals engaging in human sacrifice and other sinister behavior.

Beck likens conspiracy theories to parables. The ones that stick are those that most effectively validate a group’s anxieties, with blame assigned to outsiders. In a 2017 paper on Pizzagate and pedophile conspiracies, psychology professor Jim Kline, now at Northern Marianas College, argues that conspiracy theories “are born during times of turmoil and uncertainty.” In an interview, Kline goes further: “Social turmoil can overwhelm critical thinking. It makes us get beyond what is logically possible. We go into this state of hysteria and we let that overwhelm ourselves.”

The McMartin accusations were a vivid demonstration of the rot in the American social structure, as perceived by conservatives. Perhaps inevitably, the claims metastasized. Now it was hundreds of children who had been assaulted and subjected to satanic rituals, and now, instead of just one McMartin teacher, there was an entire sex ring involved. One boy told of adults in masks and black robes dancing and moaning; of live rabbits chopped to bits by candlelight. “California’s Nightmare Nursery,” People magazine called it. But soon the case began to fall apart. The stories of abuse turned out to have been coaxed out of children by way of dubious and leading questioning. Judy Johnson, who made the initial accusations that her son had been molested, was found to be a paranoid schizophrenic. In 1986, a district attorney dropped charges—at one point there had been 208 counts in all—against all but two of the original defendants. A pair of trials ended in 1990 with the juries deadlocking on some charges and acquitting on the others. After seven years and $15 million in prosecution costs, the remaining charges were dropped.

However flimsy its premises, the case whipped up a national panic. In 1985, a teacher’s aide in Massachusetts was wrongly convicted of molesting 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old boys and girls; the prosecutor had told the jury that a gay man working in a day care was like a “chocoholic in a candy store.” Around that time, employees at Bronx day-care centers were arrested for allegedly sexually abusing children. Five men were sentenced before all ultimately saw their convictions overturned.

Liberals certainly participated in the hysteria—Gloria Steinem donated money to the McMartin investigation—but by and large it was a reactionary phenomenon. What drove the panic, Beck says, wasn’t just the sense that children were being harmed. “It’s that families were being harmed.”

[wentzdayz]

🌸Blankets: Have you been in love? Yep, and hopefully I'll see her again 💕

🌸Stuffies: How did you meet your best friend? (If I can still consider her my best friend) On school, nine years ago

🌸Fluffy Pillows: What happened in your most recent dream? I was being followed by a guy on the street, and weird thing is, it happened in real life a few days ago, after I dreamed it. Hella creepy.

🌸Scented Candles: How do you relax? I don't

🌸Gem Stones: What’s your birthstone/favourite stone? Cornalinas (I don't remember the English name srry), or any blue or purple gem

🌸Pyjamas: Describe your favourite pyjamas! A N7 shirt I've been using since I don't remember how long aaaaand underwear

🌸Fuzzy Socks: What’s your favourite movie? Btw how can you choose just one

1) Donnie Darko: I mean I know it's the trademark edgy and complex movie but it's a w e s o m e

2) ‎Big Hero 6: I mean. I memorized the dialogues. Also, it has Japan AND science in it. How could I not love it.

3) ‎Wreck-it Ralph: I remember when it was about to come out, we knew that Sargent Calhoun and Felix were inspired in two characters from the Mass effect saga (which is my favorite) and all the movie is a mixture of my faves talking to each other so. I love it.

4) ‎Nightmare Before Christmas. How could you not love it cmon

5) ‎Harry Potter.

🌸Kittens & Puppies: Name of your pet or your ideal pet? My dog is named after an Argentinian actor but first of all, I didn't want the dog. I want a cat but they won't let me have one. I have a list of names for my future cat, tho: Spyro, Nyx, Vetra, Garrus, Aela, Clyde, Oreo, Spike. Most of them are just names from videogames characters.

🌸Laughter: What’s the funniest joke you’ve heard? The one where everyone shuts up.

🌸Mittens: Do you like the snow? I would like it if the last time it snowed here wasn't when I was 8 years old.

🌸Hot Coco: What’s your favourite Starbucks drink? I don't even have a Starbucks here. Plus, everything on Starbucks is like 3 times more expensive than an average drink.

🌸Soft Kisses: Describe your OTP They're the same guy with different clothes

🌸Rainy Days: What do you do on a rainy day? I think that's when I really relax. Like, my parents don't wanna go out if it's raining, even if they gotta do important stuff. So I'm relaxed cause I know they wont remind me I gotta do stuff.

🌸Flower Petals: What’s your favourite flower? Oh boy. There's too many. I'm just gonna say that all flowers have different meanings and there's few flowers I don't really like. Like the passionflower.

🌸Cotton Candy: What’s your favourite candy? How can you decide?????

🌸Bubble Baths: Your favourite memory? Probably that one time when I was a kid and I was running around the house, holding a mirror with the sun reflecting on my face, and I just felt my heart go warm and I felt the need to jump and I was smiling like super big and I remember thinking that I'm so happy to be alive.

🌸Wooly Scarfs: What song do you think relates the most to you? Maybe The Dark Wood Of Error or Polarize. Idk.

🌸Roasted Marshmallows: Your camping with friends! Describe the forest you’re pitching your tent in. There's still daylightbut the sun is about to set. We're putting out tents on the highest ground but it's not that high. There's a few butterflies here and there, and walking through the woods, you can breathe the heavy air, and it's so humid that when we touch the stones, covered in moho, we can smell it in our fingers too. When the sun filters through the leaves, the colors the butterfly's wings start glimmering. And the only sounds we hear are the wet ground under our feet as we walk, the air blowing through the leaves, and a few small animals running past us.

🌸Bird Songs: Name 5 things you love When cats let you pet them, rain, forests, girls, and anything vainilla

🌸Old Books: Do you read? If so, what’s your favourite book series? Artemis Fowl

🌸Warm Hugs: Who would you love a hug from right now? My cousin's husband and my crush.

🌸Clouds: What’s the best shaped cloud you’ve seen? The one that looks like an angel

🌸Fae: Describe yourself as a fairy I would pretty much be like Vidia from Tinkerbell

🌸Holding Hands: What was the name of your first love? Camila

🌸Cupcakes: Favourite cupcake flavour? Vainilla with blueberries it any berries

🌸Tealights: Describe a romantic date perfect for you We would play basketball just the two of us alone and we both suck at it, there's no pressure. It's almost nighttime and we're still out, eating junk food on a parking lot and I'm wearing her basketball uniform. We talk about deep stuff. We go to the movies and there's not many people. We fall asleep watching a documentary and talking about conspiracy theories. The next day we have this cool breakfast with everything we love, then we do normal stuff like going to the grocery store together and then make lunch and it's this big mess but we end up cleaning and hugging and then maybe cuddle with out cats. Perfect.

🌸Gardens: What’s the sweetest gift you’ve received? Handwritten letters from Cam, an Inuyasha drawing by her 9 year old sister, blue arrows for my bow that my mom gave me, a jack skellington plushie from my sis, drawings, and letters.

[kae-and-boi]

v: chicken

1-a decides to have a movie day, and sero just has to bring vines into it.

For the first time in a while, Aizawa had given his class a day off.  They deserved it, after the tiring week they’d had, and he decided that one day wouldn’t hurt him.  

All of them had unanimously decided to have a Ghibli marathon, as Kaminari and Tsuyu owned all of the movies between them.  Momo also brought her small collection of Shinkai films, just in case they finished all of the Ghibli movies and had extra time.  

Jirou had just finished setting up the stereo system when Kirishima walked in, with Mirio and Amajiki in tow.

“Hey, it’s alright if they watch with us too, right?” He asked, hopefully looking at his classmates.

“Of course!” Uraraka exclaimed.  “The more the merrier!”

“See, Amajiki-senpai? I told you everything would be fine.”

The older boy muttered something under his breath but none of 1-A caught what he’d said.  

“I’m putting on Howl’s Moving Castle, so get your asses in your seats!” Bakugou shouted.  

While the trailers were still playing, the rest of the class came into the living room and arranged themselves into a comfortable spot.  Iida was the last to come in, running drinks and snacks from the kitchen to the little tables dotting the common room. He almost tripped once, foot catching on Hagakure, but Uraraka nearly toppled off the couch trying to use her quirk on him.  

“Spec-fucking-tacular save, can we start now?”  Bakugou muttered.

Kirishima swatted his leg.  “Be nice, Katsuki!”

The blond muttered a few curses under his breath but then the movie was playing, so everyone shut up.

Somewhere after Ponyo and before Kimi no Na Wa, 1-A took a short intermission.  Some of the class needed to take a piss and some wanted to make an actual lunch after eating their weight in popcorn and candy, so they agreed to stop watching for an hour or so.  

The ones not making food or in the bathrooms were taking the opportunity to stretch out on the couches, taking up a couch each and were on their phones.  Uraraka was texting Komori from 1-B, sending the other girl pictures of Satou who’d fallen asleep half in a chair, half on the floor. She was jealous that Aizawa had given them the day off while everyone else was still in classes, and then almost had her phone confiscated.  

“Who’re you texting?” Hagakure asked, apparently leaning over the couch (and one of Shouji’s sleeping hand-turned-eye,) to look at Tokoyami’s phone.

“...No comment.” That only served to spur her on.  “Ooh! Is it your brother?”

“Fumikage doesn’t have any siblings.”  One of Shouji’s hands said.

“You know who I mean!  I’m talking about Hawks!”

A collective groan came from everyone in the room.  For about a week, Hagakure and Kaminari had been having a contest to see who could create the most believable-unbelievable conspiracy theory about their classmates and other Pro Heroes.  Kaminari had been winning with #DabiisaTodoroki for a few days but then his friend had raised, in challenge, #BirdBros. Along with that came a few screenshots of text conversations between Hawks and their classmate, which was more than enough for her to claim that Tokoyami and Hawks were related.

“There’s no way he’s Tokoyami’s brother!”  Kirishima protested. “You’ve met Tokoyami’s family, Hagakure!”

Bakugou snorted.  “The guy with wings?  He looks like Chicken Little.”

The class laughed, agreeing with Bakugou.  Maybe Hawks didn’t exactly resemble Chicken Little, but the pale hair and his nose really did it for him.  

“Hey, you should text him that.  2000 yen if you send that to him, haha.”  Sero suggested. Then in a scandalized tone, “Adam!”   Even Tamaki and Mirio laughed at that.

Elsewhere, Hawks was at home in his apartment with Dabi.  He hadn’t had anything better to do, so he’d invited the other man over to watch Venom with him.  Now, they were sitting on the couch with leftover popcorn and reminiscing about a hero job Hawks had the other week where he was called out to chase none other than Dabi himself.

“You’re were such a chicken.” Dabi dryly said, looking Hawks dead in the eye.  “I can’t believe I’m dating a coward.”

His winged boyfriend scrunched up his face in disbelief.  “I’m not a coward!”

“Mmhm, says the one who refused to jump out of the window.  I dived for it like it was food and I was a starving man. And I’m the one who doesn’t   have wings.”

“My feathers were thinned, and there was no way I wouldn’t’ve broken something.” Hawks protested.  

They bickered about it for a little bit before one of their phones beeped with a new message; Dabi reached over to check it.  

>>tokoyami: tell hawks that he looks like chicken little

>>tokoyami: dont question just do

“...”

“What’s it say?  Is it from Enji?”  The hopeful little light in Hawks’ eyes at the thought of a text from Endeavor disgusted him.   He still wasn’t sure if his boyfriend idolized his father out of actual preference or if he did it just to annoy him.

“Tokoyami says you look like Chicken Little.”

If he listened closely, Dabi could hear the sound of his boyfriend’s jaw hitting the floor.    Of course, he knew what Tokoyami was talking about, but just to have a little fun, Dabi asked, “What, is it some kind of insult between teenagers?  I mean, you do resemble him a bit.”

“Stop saying I look like Chicken Little!  He’s dumb , and a coward !  And I am NOT a coward!”

>>tokoyami: did you say it

<<dabi: yh

<<dabi: why r u sending vine memes

>>tokoyami: sero wanted me to

>>tokoyami: and i won 2000 yen from kirishima, thanks

<<dabi: welc

Dabi snickered and slipped his phone into his pocket before turning back to Hawks.

“I didn’t say you were a coward, or that you were dumb,” he pointed out.  “You said that on your own.”

“Well I’m not a coward.”

“And my name isn’t Dabi.”

“It isn’t.”

“Shush.  And I think you still look like Chicken Little.”

The angered squawk he made was worth the mess of feathers left on the couch.

read on ao3 || day vi

[dontfindyourcenter]

Chapter 11:  Running on empty

Rules: https://dontfindyourcenter.tumblr.com/post/177027661290/rules

Previous chapter: https://dontfindyourcenter.tumblr.com/post/177512216930/chapter-10-trial-4-trials-fourever-after

Right - I’m technically meant to be going to the Dimensional Research Lab now, but Mr. Nancy the Dewpider is about half the level of all my other pokemon, and you know what that means! TRAINING MONTAGE!  Except this time, it’s a TRAINING MONTAGE WHERE EVERYONE INVOLVED OTHER THAN THE ONE BEING TRAINED IS EXHAUSTED AND VERY BADLY INJURED!

The middle of Lush Jungle.  It is impossible to tell if the beads of light that do make it through the trees come from the sun or the moon.   Gradually, however, small groups of morelull wander into the scene, and as we see these pokemon emit more and more blue light from the caps of their heads, it becomes easier to see our hero, Pokemon Trainer Tori, walking towards the camera.  By her side is Mr. Nancy, a confident little dewpider who is clearly very excited to be a part of a team.  Behind the two of them, not even bothering to walk in a cool arrowhead formation, Tori’s five other pokemon are stumbling along looking like extras in a critically acclaimed war movie.  Many are visibly thinner than usual, still clearly recovering from having been badly poisoned in the third trial; the others are merely covered in bruises from having been beaten up in the fourth.

Tori frankly looks like she’d rather be stumbling along with the rest of the party; it’s clear from the bags under her eyes that she hasn’t slept in days.  But hey, this is where the choices she’s made in life have led her.  She has no-one to blame but herself.

Suddenly, Pokemon Trainer Tori points to the right of the screen, and the camera zooms back out - keeping Tori on the left side of the screen the whole time - until the picture is a wide screen with Tori and Mr. Nancy on one side and a wild fomantis on the other, with Tori still pointing at the wild pokemon.  Tori makes some kind of gesture at her pokemon; though the only audible music is very quiet, atmospheric stuff that couldn’t possibly drown out anything, the words that Tori says are still indecipherable, as though she just has no energy left whatsoever to make legible noises with her mouth.

Mr Nancy bounds forward on his three spindly legs, but stops early enough that she is still just about on the left half of the screen.  The battle starts with the fomantis using Razor Leaf, a bunch of leaves flying out from under the wild plant’s collar and flying into Mr Nancy.  Some of the leaves bounce off the surprisingly rigid surface of the bubble protecting Nancy’s head, while many others cause cuts in the lower half of his body.  Though clearly hurt, Mr. Nancy is quickly able to bounce back and get a critical hit with a Bug Bite attack, pulling the fomantis into the bubble around his head and clamping down with his teeth until the fomantis passes out.

Cut to Tori and her other five pokemon; though Tori is in both the middle and the foreground of the shot, the focus of the camera is still on the pokemon.  All five simultaneously give a sort of satisfied shrug - particularly impressive for Digit Al the magnemite, who has no shoulders - and turn to get out of the forest, content that Mr Nancy is already a decent addition to the party and that there are more useful things that they could be doing right now, like having a bit of a sleep.   Tori puts up her hand though, and all at once the camera sharply focuses on her as she sighs deeply before reluctantly saying,  “No...

We should still train him.”

What follows is a truly frantic succession of scenes; they transition from one to the next with such speed that the viewer must concentrate a great deal just to work out what’s going on, subconsciously mimicking the intense effort each pokemon must expend just to keep going.  The scenes, which feature sights from everywhere between Wela Volcano Park and Lush Jungle, include Wash the trumbeak trying over and over again to build a nest to roost in, only to immediately be immediately knocked out of it again by wild stufful; Nina the lycanroc resorting to Biting a wild Fletchling, unable to throw rocks any more with both her arms in slings; and Hedwig the dartrix using razor leaf against a schooling wishiwashi and somehow missing even though his opponent is more than eight meters tall.  The one scene that can be seen over and over again in the montage is poor Mr Nancy desperately trying to drag one of his injured teammates to the pokemon center clearly visible nearby, only for all pokemon involved to be dragged back into battle by their apologetic trainer.

Over the top of these images, we can hear a cover of the song “Highway to the Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins. It doesn’t take long for the listener to realise that the cover is being sung by someone who has been lied to his entire life about whether or not he has a good singing voice.  The singer is also very out of breath and has to pause between each word, so that it sounds like “High… way… to… the…danger, zone!”  At the end of the chorus it takes a really long time for him to even get the last two words out - there’s just a really long, breathy gap, and in the middle of that he says “...to the...” again just to make sure you know he’s still trying, and by the time he says “Danger zone!”  the whole thing has made the audience very uncomfortable.

Now we see Tori switch one of her pokemon out and calling Mr Nancy forward, and suddenly the montage has ended.  For the second time, we’re looking at a wide-screen shot of Lush Jungle with Tori and Mr Nancy on one side of the screen, a wild fomantis on the other.  In fact, the framing is almost identical, but this time the lighting is much dimmer, and Mr Nancy is much more nervous around his weird, pokemon-center-avoiding trainer.  

Finally, we hear Tori shout, “Nancy, use bug bite!”  And  Mr Nancy defeats his opponent just like he did earlier in the montage, but this time faster, stronger, and much sadder.  But with that final move, the unmistakable glow of evolution illuminates the clearing until it’s nearly blinding.  When the light fades, we can see that… Wash has evolved into a Toucannon.

Tori says, “Uh… congratulations and all, but… this wasn’t really about you…”

Moments later, almost as an afterthought, Mr Nancy evolves into an Araquanid, and Tori says, “Oh, sod it, I’ll take the win.  Yay, everyone!”

Fin

When I do make it to the Dimensional Research Lab, I overhear Lillie trying to train Nebby up.  “Nebby, use splash!”  she shouts, followed by “heh… I was pretending to be Tori.”  I wonder if she knows that the thing she just said is an insult.  Maybe she’s got me confused with Hau.

Lillie is here to ask if it was hard for me to face three trials in a row.  I’ve never agreed with her more.

Now here’s an interesting thing; the receptionist here says I “must be here for the Dimensional Research Lab”  because there’s “nothing else upstairs.”  But according to the lift, the Dimensional Research Lab is on the third floor. Anyone have any good conspiracy theories as to what’s on floor two?  Got to be some kind of cult meeting, right?  Suggestions welcome.

Up we go to meet Professor Burnet, and if you ask me - accepting that Professor Kukui is an obvious red herring - Burnet here is Suspect Number One for the Masked Royal’s secret identity.  I mean, if I were to make a Drag King persona, I’d want him to look like the Masked Royal.  And she wonders aloud who the Masked Royal can possibly be, like she’s Peter bloody Parker bringing in the latest pictures of Spider-Man.  I’ve got my eye on you, Burnie.

Time now to head through the tunnel in the south, and if I don’t want to organise a sextuple pokemon funeral, I’d better use some healing items.  I have only two super potions left, and I begrudgingly use both of them to be safe.  I decide to heal Mr Nancy and Hedwig, the two pokemon with the greatest advantage against digletts.  This seems like a fair bet, since the tunnel is called Diglett’s tunnel, and Hau just told me that Diglett’s Tunnel was made by digletts, and Olivia tells me that the tunnel is simply overflowing with a pokemon called diglett.

So obviously, well over half the pokemon in Diglett’s Tunnel are zubat.  These zubat love to use wing attack, a move that’s super-effective against both Mr Nancy and Hedwig.  I don’t know why I bother trying to think ahead sometimes, really I don’t.

By the time I get to the end of the tunnel, my team looks nearly as fragile again as it did before I went in the bloody cave in the first place, and there are two team skull grunts guarding the exit.  I do realise, though, that Donna the cubone is only one level away from evolving.  Since she’ll only evolve into an alolan marowak at night, and it’s three minutes to six, I decide to use a rare candy on her, and with the health she gains from evolving, she ought to be able to take a couple of hits now.  Since the only obstacles I have left are only Team Skull, I figure that’ll be enough.

And I’m absolutely right.  Hau shows up and we beat the Skull Goons in a double battle, and then he saves the whole damn challenge by healing my team to full health.  Thank Jesus, Mewtwo and Joseph.  I’ll leave you on that little miracle.

End of chapter eleven.