#can be the used to argue that they also can’t vote

[aynavaano]

Sunsets on Pabu

Old Hunter x f!reader

Rating: Explicit

Wordcount: 3k

Summary:

You spend a wonderful day at the beach with Hunter, Wrecker and Crosshair. In the evening the two of them decide to join the rest of your family at Sheps for dinner while you and Hunter stay at the beach to watch the sunset together but Hunter decides to turn his attention to you instead.

Notes:

Tadaaa! It’s finally here. I let you vote between a soft and a rough version and the majority voted for soft and loving. So this is what you get first. Reader is married to Hunter, you live on Pabu together and he absolutely worships you, we have oral (f receiving) and unprotected sex. Kind of public sex but not really. It’s porn with very little plot, just a little fluff. Also Tech lives, because I will die on that hill. And don’t worry all Hunter girlies that like it rougher, you will get your fic next week. (Spoiler alert: Hunter bends you over the dining table)

As the day winds down and the sun begins its descent towards the horizon, casting a warm orange glow across the beach, you find yourself grateful for the simple pleasures the island has to offer. You're dressed in your new cute bikini, that you let Hunter pick, feeling the warm sand between your toes as you stroll along the shore with him, Wrecker, and Crosshair. You spent the whole day at the beach together, swimming, basking in the sun and eating more Meiloorons than you probably should. The sound of the waves crashing against the beach is soothing, and you can't help but smile as you soak in the beauty of the moment. Unfortunately Tech can’t be bothered most of the time and only joins you for beach days when Omega pushes all his buttons and pulls the sweetest face on him, but you got used to it and instead often spend the evenings together at his and Phees place.

You hear Batcher barking in the distance before you even see Omega and Lyana approaching, making their way down from the town to let you know Shep invited everyone for dinner on his terrace. But despite the tempting invitation, you decline, having already decided you want to watch the sunset with Hunter. Wrecker and Crosshair however head off with the girls to enjoy Shep's famous cooking, leaving the two of you alone on the beach.

You watch them walking up the steep alley, Batcher happily running ahead and barking, while gathering your things and making your way further down the beach, seeking out a secluded spot, away from the houses, where you can enjoy the sunset in peace. The sand is still warm beneath your feet as you walk along the shore, hand in hand with your husband.

Finally, you find a spot that feels just right, a cove with a small patch of sand nestled between a few bigger rocks. You spread out your blanket and settle down beside each other.

Nestled in Hunter's arms, you watch as the sun paints the sky in beautiful shades of pink, orange and gold. It's a familiar sight on Pabu, one you've witnessed countless times before, but it never fails to take your breath away and with Hunter by your side, it always feels even more special.

"You sure you didn't want to go to Sheps for dinner?" you ask, snuggling closer to him.

"More than sure," he replies, his voice soft and warm against your ear. "It's not often that we get an evening just for us."

You smile up at him giving him a sweet kiss, his arms tightening around you protectively.

"They'll be fine," he reassures you. "Wrecker's probably already stuffed to the brim, like always, and complaining that he can’t fit more, and Omega's teaching Lyana new gambling tricks. And I'm sure Phee's doing her best to get Crosshair to open up, most likely with the help of her secret stash of Alderaan wine, while Tech is trying to argue that thats not the solution."

You smile at the thought of your friends enjoying themselves. Evenings on Sheps terrace are always a lot of fun, everyone’s together with good food and good talks but in this moment, all you care about is the feeling of Hunter's arms around you and the beauty of the sunset before you, as you lean in to press a gentle kiss against his lips, grateful for the love and warmth he brings into your life.

He pulls you closer to his chest, planting soft kisses on your lips, one of his hands tracing the curves of your body, gently caressing every inch of your skin, leaving goosebumps wherever he touches you. You playfully shift around until you're straddling him, capturing his lips in a passionate kiss. Your hand moves to his cheek and you let your thumb brush lovingly against his greying beard.

"You're going to miss the sunset if you keep looking at me love," you murmur softly, breaking the kiss momentarily.

"Well, then I guess it's good that the one thing I like looking at even more than sunsets is you," he replies with a smile, his eyes filled with adoration.

A mischievous grin spreads across your face as you lean in closer. "In that case …you know… I can make that view even better," you tease, your fingers tugging at the strings of your bikini top and with a swift motion, you unravel the top, casting it aside to expose your bare breasts.

He instantly wraps his arms around your waist, pulling you closer, burying his face between your soft breasts with a contented sigh. His beard tickles slightly against your skin, sending shivers down your spine.

He carefully begins to lick and gently nibble on your hardening nipples, getting a few soft moans from you in response. His hands roam over your breasts, cupping them with just the right amount of pressure as he looks up at you with admiration in his eyes.

"Sometimes I still wonder how I got so lucky to have you," he murmurs, his voice filled with love.

You chuckle softly and reach behind him, pulling on the back of his bandana to release his hair, which cascades over his shoulders in soft waves. You marvel at how long it has grown since you first started dating, admiring the subtle streaks of grey that have begun to appear over time.

With a gentle push, he guides you to lay on your back, positioning himself over you.

"If we're going to miss the sunset, we might as well make it worth it," he grins, his lips trailing kisses all over your body leaving a line of fire in their wake.

He takes his time, savoring every inch as he carefully removes your swim bottoms. Each touch is deliberate and full of love, each caress sending shivers of anticipation through your body, heat already pooling between your legs.

"Let me make take care of you my love," he murmurs, his breath hot against your skin, turning his attention to your core, already yearning for his touch

He kisses along your inner thighs, his breath warm against your skin as he moves closer to your center. When his tongue finally makes contact with your folds, a low moan escapes your lips and you arch into his touch. He quickly wraps his arms around your tights to keep you from moving and to hold you flush against his face.

"Oh, Hunter," you gasp, your fingers tangling in his hair as he continues to tease and lick. His movements are deliberate and unhurried, each stroke of his tongue sending waves of heat radiating through you.

"You feel so good cyare," he murmurs against your skin, his voice husky with desire. "I could do this all night."

He slowly increases the intensity of his licks and kisses and when he starts sucking your clit you are already a whimpering mess in his arms.

“You want my fingers?” he asks looking up at you.

Your only response is a desperate moan, the words lost in a haze of pleasure as he pushes you ever closer to the edge with his tongue but he doesn’t need to hear you, after all these years he knows exactly what you like.

He slowly slides first one then a second finger into you without any resistance, your pussy practically dripping for him and when he begins to thrust into you slowly you can feel the tension building in your core, the familiar coil of desire tightening with each stroke of his tongue and thrust of his fingers.

“Oh fuck…Hunter…feels…so good” you moan,

“Mmmhm…don’t hold back love” he groans before he descends down on your clit, mercilessly sucking it into his mouth until your body begins to writhe under his touch.

“M…m close” is all you can get out between your whimpers and mewls, his fingers pushing into you with an intensity that leaves you unable to have any coherent thoughts.

"Come for me, baby," he murmurs, his voice vibrating against your core as he curls his fingers up to find that extra sweet spot, the one that makes you see stars, driving you higher and higher until you're teetering on the brink.

With a final, desperate cry, you shatter beneath him, waves of ecstasy crashing over you as you ride out the storm of your release on his fingers, you pussy clenching hard around him. You’re a whining and panting mess, it’s crazy what he can do to you only with his mouth and his fingers.

When you slowly come down from your high he carefully slides out of you, his arms wrapping around you in a protective embrace and your body starts relaxing against him. Hunter's lips find yours in a searing kiss, his hands moving to cup your face as he gazes at you with a mixture of awe and adoration. His eyes are filled with love and tenderness, pressing a soft kiss to your forehead, his lips lingering against your skin.

"You're so beautiful when you come on my fingers," he murmurs, his voice filled with awe as he gazes at you with adoration, peppering your face with soft kisses. “I’ll never get tired watching you like that, it’s divine.”

You smile up at him, your heart overflowing with love and gratitude pulling him close, cherishing the moment and the man who means everything to you.

You wrap your legs around him, feeling his hardened length pressing against your thigh, your hunger for him in not yet sated and you eagerly wiggle around reaching down to free his cock.

“Can’t get enough, hm?” he chuckles.

"Mhm, help me take these off," you whisper, tucking at the hem of his swim shorts.

He quickly cast his shorts aside and crawls back over you, leaning in to kiss you, propped up on his elbows. You love how his body changed over the years, it got slightly softer as he let go of the hardships and battles, but lost not a single bit of his strength.

“I want to feel you inside me” you whisper desire lacing your words when his beautiful rock hard cock is finally freed from its confinement.

You reach down to stroke him, his lips grazing your neck, whispering sweet words of adoration and when you feel the precum already leaking from his tip you shiver with delight.

"Would you ride me a bit?" he asks softly, his voice a tender whisper against your skin.

"Who am I to deny you that wish?" you respond with a loving glint in your eye.

He rolls onto his back, effortlessly pulling you on top of him, his hands holding onto your hips, helping you to straddle him.

"Come here," he whispers, his eyes ablaze with desire, pupils blown wide, as you position yourself, sliding up and down his length, spreading your wetness all over him, before lining him up at your entrance.

With the last rays of the setting sun casting a reddish pink glow on your skin, you slowly sink down on his cock, until he bottoms out, relishing the sensation of being filled by him once more.

You both moan, taking a moment to fully enjoy it. You’ve been together for years but the sensation of taking him in completely, feeling yourself stretch around him, is still as good as it was the first time.

"Oh Hunter, you feel so good," you moan, steadying yourself against his chest.

You slowly begin moving up and down his length, relishing the sensation of being so full, his thick cock stretching you in all the right ways. Each movement sends waves of pleasure coursing through your body, igniting a desire within you that only he can still.

As you bounce up and down on his cock, your hair cascades in loose waves around your shoulders, still slightly damp from your last swim and your beautiful breasts bounce with every movement, drawing his gaze like a moth to a flame.

"I love you so much" he whispers, his voice filled with devotion, reveling in the sight of you on top of him, his eyes tracing every curve of your body illuminated by the dying sun. In this moment, he feels like the luckiest man in the galaxy, blessed to have you in his arms. Unable to resist, his hands come up to cup your breasts, his thumbs trailing over your hardened nipples, eliciting a soft gasp from your lips.

"I'll take it from here," he whispers huskily, his voice heavy with desire as he gently but hungrily pushes you onto your back, with ease, positioning himself between your legs and slowly starts thrusting into you. Taking your legs up over his shoulders, he picks up the pace, each movement driving you both closer to the edge of ecstasy.

As he plunges into you with increasing fervor, you become a moaning, whining mess beneath him, lost in the throes of passion. Fortunately, the waves crashing on the nearby rocks dim everything around, preventing your lewd sounds and the squelching of your soaking wet pussy from traveling too far up to the village.

"Hunter, I'm close," you gasp, your voice trembling with need. "Come with me?" You ask him, your eyes locking with his as you plead for release.

He lets go of your legs and comes down over you, propped up on his elbows, his hair cascading around your faces like a veil. With a deep, passionate kiss, he whispers against your lips,

"Cum for me, let me feel that beautiful pussy clenching around my cock" his words send shivers down your spine and when he thrusts deeper, his tip pushing against your cervix, just the way he knows you like it, you feel your body responding eagerly to him.

“Oh…fuck..Hunter”

It takes only a few more of these deep, powerful thrusts until you feel your pussy clenching down on him, the tension in your core reaching its breaking point. With a lewd moan, the delicious heat begins pulsing through your entire body and you're consumed by the intensity of your orgasm. He follows you almost immediately. Before the first wave of ecstasy fully washes over you, you feel him harden even more, his rhythm becoming sloppy and his arousal driving him to the brink.

With one final, deep thrust, he releases himself inside you, filling you up with his hot seed. You feel a surge of warmth as he gasps, his body crashing down against yours, his lips seeking yours in a deep, soulful kiss. In that moment, the world fades away, your mind goes completely blank, all sounds dim around you, leaving only the sensation of your orgasm pulsing through your body and the feeling of his hot skin against yours.

You bask in the afterglow of your shared orgasm, his forehead resting against yours, reveling in the intimacy of the moment. Your bodies are sweaty and you’re panting when you slowly come back to yourselves, the sounds and view of the surroundings returning to your senses.

He leans in to kiss you, his lips conveying a depth of emotion that words could never express. With a soft whisper, he murmurs sweet, loving words that warm your heart and soul.

You revel in the feeling of you bodies pressed together and when his softening cock slowly slides out of you, you feel his cum oozing from your core dripping down into the sand.

“I know you like walking around with my cum leaking out of you, but we should get you cleaned up love”

“Mhm…can’t think…n…can’t walk…Cross took…took all our towels back home” you mumble, completely blissed out and cock dumb.

“Let me take care of you riduur, like I always do” he whispers, looking down at your flushed face and your silly smile with pure love and adoration before he scoops you up into his arms.

You know what he’s about to do. He always carries you into the ocean whenever you have sex on the beach and you love it almost as much as being fucked into oblivion by him.

The water on Pabu is always warm, enveloping you in its soothing embrace as he wades into its depths and you cling to him, your legs wrapped around his waist, exchanging tender kisses as the gentle waves rock you back and forth.

As you float together, you trace the lines of his tattoo on his face, your fingers brushing lightly over his beard before trailing down his chest. You let your hands rest there, feeling the steady rhythm of his heartbeat beneath your touch. He pulls you closer, his arms wrapping around you protectively as you nestle your head in the crook of his neck, his long locks tickling your face in the gentle breeze. In this moment, surrounded by the warmth of the ocean and the tenderness of his embrace, you feel truly at peace.

The sun has set completely when you reluctantly emerge from the water and the cool evening breeze sends shivers down your spine. You quickly make your way to your beach blanket and lie down, the chill of the night air causing your teeth to chatter. Hunter pulls you close, wrapping you tightly in his embrace. With gentle hands, he drapes his soft knit cardigan around your shoulders, cocooning you in its warmth until the trembling subsides.

Nestled against his chest, you watch in awe as more and more stars begin to appear in the night sky, their twinkling lights casting a soft glow over the beach. With each passing moment, the world around you seems to fade away, leaving only the two of you alone in the embrace of the night. In this tranquil moment, wrapped in his arms and surrounded by the beauty of the starlit sky, you feel an overwhelming sense of peace and contentment wash over you that he is able to live this soft and gentle live here on Pabu and that he chose you to be part of it.

“Let’s go home” he whispers “before you start freezing again. And I’m sure Omega got us some leftovers from Shep”

You chuckle.

“Then we better get home before Wrecker finds them”

#the bad batch #bad batch smut #tbb smut #clone smut #hunter x you #hunter x reader #old hunter #pabu #hunter on pabu #dilf hunter #tbb #the bad batch season 3 #tbb hunter #tbb season 3 #sw tbb #the bad batch fanfiction #tbb fanfiction #tbb pabu

[trash-goddess]

One of the worst things about being a teenager is being infantilized. You are expected to be (reasonably) responsible for yourself but do not have any of the respect, resources nor decision making power that comes with it such responsibilities as an adult.

Being an adult with a fully functioning brain, and the having the respect, resources, decision making power and responsibilities is a delightful experience. Taking control of my life and living on my own terms has made every aspect of my life much more manageable.

So. As a twenty four year old. Who works full time, and thus has saved and paid off my student loans. Who is capable of managing my finances, groceries, and living a healthy lifestyle. Who is by all accounts, a reasonable adult. I find myself frustrated by seeing myself described as a child who is incapable of making such decisions has become incredibly frustrating. It showcases a lack of maturity and understanding!

I refuse to be dragged back down into childhood by people who have never even met me and do not know what is best for me.

And you can take my voting rights from my cold dead hands.

#aaaaaaaah #I’m a fucking adult!!! #I go on trips to other countries by myself!!! #i went to college #I took care of myself #I can take care of myself #I know a lot of this idea of 18-25 are children is a mostly in the context of sex #which I didn’t mention in the main post for a reason #because there is so much more to adulthood than sex #to be frank you couldn’t ban 18-25 year olds from having sex if you tried #but the most important aspect is voter rights #I think most of the people who believe this are conservatives #who are trying to prevent you people from voting #the idea that a twenty four year old isn’t an adult #can be the used to argue that they also can’t vote #this is a calculated attempt to discourage young people from voting #and if anyone tries to agrue that I’m not an adult #in this post will be treated as though they are a conservative reactionary

[decolonize-the-left]

This is Red Scare propaganda in 2023.

Did you know that a few days ago Democrats and Republicans voted to join sides against socialism and "socialist policies"(good welfare programs)?

According to Axios:

More than half of House Democrats sided with Republicans on Thursday in voting for a GOP resolution denouncing socialism. [...]

• The resolution denounces “socialism in all its forms” and opposes “the implementation of socialist policies in the United States of America.”

• A total of 106 Democrats voted for the resolution, while 86 voted against it and another 14 voted "present. "

What they're saying:

• “This [was] very much about politics and political messaging, and you saw that with some of the people voting present,” said Rep. Annie Kuster (D-N.H.), the chair of the centrist New Democrat Coalition, which supported the resolution.

• Kuster said leadership was attentive to swing-district members' needs: "It was very much open-door conversations this week ... just conversations about where our members were coming from and how they felt about this. They had strong feelings about this."

What we're hearing:

• House Republican campaign operatives are already sharpening their knives against Democrats who voted against the resolution.

• "It’s certainly a potent hit we’re excited about," Jack Pandol, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, told Axios. "If you can’t vote to denounce the horrors of socialism, yes, we will be letting your constituents know about it."

The other side:

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the Progressive Caucus, told Axios that her faction recommended its members vote against the resolution and she advised colleagues “however you vote on this bill, they’re going to use it against you, so it doesn’t really matter.”

• Jayapal also argued the bill's sweeping rebuke of socialism conflates historical despots with modern entitlement programs and Nordic social democracies: "They're trying to tie those successful [welfare] programs ... to [former ruler of Cambodia] Pol Pot."

So Democrats and Republicans can unite over what's important to them: Capitalism.

More than half of Democrats in office right now would side with Republicans against your well being. Over half of them.

What we're witnessing is an abuse of power that Only serves to keep Democrats and Republicans as power players in politics.

Coincidentally this comes after a historic rise in union membership, calls for higher wages, protests, and it's also right before presidential candidates have started campaigning!

They didn't sign a resolution like this over Trump supporters literally attacking capitol hill. They haven't made Any reform or agreement that could stop another Trump from winning an election again either. They literally expose people to right-wing candidates on purpose just to help themselves win elections.

But this? Good welfare programs and left-wing ideas being spread before an election? That was a priority. That needed to be stopped. That's dangerous.

Let me ask y'all something: if you feel comfortable showing regular people a bunch of far-right ideas on primetime tv but you wouldn't show them any left-wing ideas at all... Wouldn't that make you right-wing? At the very least you've chosen a side, haven't you?

Democrats don't want to challenge the status quo. Apparently that's the ONE thing they can agree on with Republicans about. That's it's staying here and not going anywhere. That's what this tells me.

If you caught yourself thinking I'll vote for a democrat,at least they won't make things worse please consider that keeping things awful on purpose absolutely counts as making things worse. And also being comfortable with far-right ideology but not far-left ideology means Democrats are closer to being fascists than fighting fascism.

This year spend some time researching candidates that are listed as independent, green party, socialists, or communists. The only people worth entertaining are people who actually care and actually want to change things for the better.

#mutual aid #direct action #leftist #lgbt #capitalism #biden #2024 voting #usa politics #socialism #communism #anarchism #indigenous #liberal #democrats #progressives #socdem #ancom #acab #eat the rich #current events #news #2024 elections #presidential election #primary election #2023

[scienceandstorytelling]

I can’t stop thinking about Will Branner’s performance as Max Jägerman and how it leads to my favorite usage of the Nightmare Time leitmotif in all the Hatchetfield musicals (and why I voted for NPMD as having my favorite title number in the poll I made a while back).

Max is a well-written character who already gives me hints of a tragic villain vibe, and then Will’s performance just fleshes that out tenfold. It features the duality Starkid has been playing a lot with in this series, where you’re sympathetic towards a character while also acknowledging the terrible things they do. Max is horrible and abusive towards his classmates and has given them years of trauma. But a teenage boy does not become a Literal Monster in a vacuum.

Alongside his role as a bully, the script gives us images of Max as someone who is struggling academically and would have probably fallen through the cracks if adults didn’t idolize him for his football prowess so they can live vicariously through him as he beats the rival town in the big game. We find out that he has a shitty dad who verbally abuses him for not being macho enough. That he probably doesn’t have all the sex people say he does. That the people he bullies hate-pranking him in revenge is “the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for [him].” And then Will’s acting keeps showing us glimpses of this goofier side of Max, glimpses of the person he might have been if he wasn’t such a bully.

And for those few moments in the aftermath of the prank, you think maybe he’s going to change now that someone has shown him what he perceives to be kindness. And then he falls through the floor and that opportunity is lost. But unlike what Mayor Lauter implies, I would argue that his fate isn’t fully sealed when he dies in the Waylon House. I think the moment of no return is when he kills Richie while the leitmotif plays.

Lots of people ship Max and Richie and have headcanons that they used to be friends, and I think it’s because of the parallels between them in this song. Here we have two 18 year old boys who have both been failed by the adults around them. Both are harmed by being stereotyped. Both are in the liminal social role of being in the process of stepping out of childhood and into living their adult lives after high school. And both of them are denied those adult lives. And then they fucking sing about it. The “will you pray for me” duet is such a powerful part of the song for many reasons, and I think it’s the moment that shows us that Max is still in the process of committing to being nothing more than a vengeful spirit, or at the very least is in the last stage of that process. The thing that strikes me the most is that Max is simultaneously trying to make Richie feel insignificant and alone while also projecting his own feelings onto him. “Is this the eternal dark without a dawn?” he asks, reaching up to the sky and not looking at Richie at all.

And what fucks me up is that Max fails in this moment. Richie is not alone. He never was, and now he’s even less alone. Not only will Pete and Ruth mourn him, so will Max’s former friends. Its so notable to me that this takes place immediately after Go Go Nighthawks, where we’ve just seen everyone, including, again, Max’s “friends,” sing about how great it is that he’s gone. It’s a real Ebeneezer Scrooge moment that makes me wonder if Max has been silently haunting the school these weeks since his death and it’s only now, having watched that, that he tips over into full villain mode. Max is the one with no one to pray for him, not Richie. And Richie basically says as much, and Max kills him anyway. Richie was doomed from the start in the sense that the show literally opens with a flashforward to his death, but I think Max is doomed too. “Don’t need no one to tell me high school will be my peak,” he says in his own introductory song. I said before how they’re both on the cusp of living their whole adult lives, but I wonder if Max had trouble seeing himself that way. He already didn’t think he would amount to anything after high school. A lot of these “peaked in high school” football star characters spend their adult lives being metaphorically stuck in high school, in their teenage years, because they can’t let themselves move on from their glory days. And here Max is, literally stuck in his teenage years forever as a ghost - but not literally stuck in high school, as we see when he follows them all to the Witchwood. When he makes he grand ghostly return he says to Richie, “I’m free!” (Free from what, Max?) He certainly has the freedom of a ghost to go anywhere and do anything. And yet he traps himself in high school. He prevents himself from moving forward. And all of that is why it makes me emotional every time when he casts aside any last chance of not being the villain and strikes the first blow on Richie, these two teenagers failed by the adults and the structures around them, their fates locked together, while the leitmotif plays and takes us back to that original line from Alice’s corpse singing to Bill about how he should have been a better father: Look what happens, nightmare time.

#npmd #starkid #hatchetfield #hatchetfield series #nerdy prudes must die #max jagerman

[gusty-wind]

“It does not actually articulate or force the articulation of a strategy for how to end the conflict to begin with. So you basically have a blank check — or a near blank check — for a strategy that’s completely gone off the rails.”

Lee called out his Republican colleagues for sending aid to Ukraine at the expense of America’s own interests.

“By voting yes and passing this bill now, it empowers drug cartels, it dissolves our borders, it spends insane amounts of money that we don’t have on the priorities of foreign countries all at the same time,” he said.

Lee also slammed the bills’ proponents for defeating an effort led by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) to increase accountability and oversight of the aid to the notoriously corrupt Ukrainian government through appointment of an inspector general.

“These are not choir boys,” Lee said. “These are not Boy Scouts. These are not Girl Scouts. These are people who have really set world records for corruption. It’s an art form over there.”

Vance laid out the arguments from Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for rushing the aid through without further accountability measures.

“The basic argument is that we have to rush resources to Ukraine immediately, or they’re liable to fall to Russian aggression,” he said. “And it’s all basically an argument made under the gun that unless you approve this appropriation of resources and weapons, then you will allow Russia to win. So it’s a kind of moral blackmail.”

Supporters of yet more aid to Ukraine can not admit the reality that the war is not winnable for Ukraine, Vance continued. “They can’t admit that this isn’t going well because if they admitted that, it would cause too much psychological harm, and they’d have to cut bait.”

Johnson added that proponents argue that it is in politicians’ naked political interests to support the aid because “it’s helping build our industrial base, and so it’s creating jobs in your state. And I call that a depraved justification.”

Musk, who noted his contributions to Ukraine’s war efforts, echoed the assessment of the trio of senators that the war is ultimately not winnable and that a peace deal is in their best interests.

Ukraine is “losing people every day,” he said. “And if you’re going to spend lives, it must be for a purpose.”

Musk continued:

There is no way in hell that Putin is going to lose. If he would back off, he would be assassinated. And for those who want regime change in Russia, they should think about: Who is the person that could take out Putin? And is that person likely to be a peacenik? Probably not. They’re probably gonna be even harder, even more hardcore than Putin if they took him out.  Ramaswamy detailed additional “unacceptable” risks to American and global interests from continued “endless funding” of the fighting in Ukraine, arguing that Americans see “daily strengthening of the military alliance between Russia and China, which, when combined, is the single greatest increase for the risk of World War III that we’ve seen in the post-World War II era.”

If the foreign aid passes the Senate, as is expected, the House must still act. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) would likely face a rebellion from members of the Republican conference if he brought the bill to the floor.

Monday night, after the conclusion of the X Space, Johnson seemed to throw cold water on the Senate’s package, echoing earlier statements that Congress must address American border security first.

“In the absence of having received any single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters,” a Johnson statement read. “America deserves better than the Senate’s status quo.”

The timing before Monday night’s vote is important, sending the message to any on-the-fence Republican senators that a vote on the unpopular aid package would imperil their political standing for legislation that will not become law.

Some Democrats have insisted they will use all the parliamentary tools at their disposal to bring the bill to the floor, although a path forward for the legislation in the House is unclear.

Bradley Jaye is a Capitol Hill Correspondent for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter at @BradleyAJaye.

#the great awakening #war is real #ncswic #treason

[murkycran]

Misc. Vox Fic Rec List

Welcome to my Miscellaneous Vox Fic Rec List!

Soooo after a lot of consideration, I decided to make a third rec list. This one will be for miscellaneous fics, which can mean anything from smaller Vox pairings to fics that are not strictly Radiostatic or VoxVal. You'll see what I mean.

I will keep updating this periodically as I read more fics, too, so feel free to check back every once and a while! I'll reblog it when I update it, plus make a note with the date at the top. Trust me, this is by no means a complete list; there's fics I still want to add to this that I just haven't gotten to yet. I just decided to go ahead and post it anyways, because if I kept waiting until I ran out of fics to rec I'd probably be working on this forever.

These are not in any particular order; I'm going by both my Bookmarks list on AO3 and my memory of fics I forgot to bookmark. I also tried to make notes on what fics were written before season 1 released, but I might have missed some, so keep that in mind.

Please let me know if any links don't work or are wrong!

✨Before you proceed:✨ read the tags on these fics if you decide to read them. Many of them have heavy material - no surprise given the fandom, but still, felt like this needed said. On that note, there's also fics with explicit material and some fics are straight up PWP. Again, read at your own risk/heed the tags.

Fic Rec List Masterpost

Radiostatic Fic Rec List

Staticmoth Fic Rec List

------

Alastor Makes a Porno by Charnel_Goat, spappest

Summary: Alastor interrupts Val and Vox's personal time to get his rut over and done with, and they're just going to have to deal with that.

Basically, Alastor and Val try to have a threesome, but they keep arguing, everyone's injuring each other trying to figure out the logistics, and nobody cares what Vox has to say about any of this.

Notes: This has Staticmoth, Radiostatic, and Valastor. It's not strictly leaning more towards any pairing (tho Val does make a pretty sweet comment at the very beginning about Vox lol), which is why it's going on the Misc List. Porn with an edge of hilarity that - despite the tags - made it pretty funny. Three terrible people being terrible to each other. Vox suffers. Heed the tags.

He's Visual, Alright! by dead_boy

Summary: For Valentines Day, Charlotte Morningstar— Lucifer’s brat— had announced the hotel would be hosting a sweetheart poll, allowing winners to vote for the biggest ‘sweethearts’ in Pentagram City! How adorable!

— Of course, when Angel gets involved, things get a little twisted, and hell treats it as a most-fuckable-celebs poll.

Vox isn’t the only one surprised by how high he scored, and how concerning the amount of votes he received was.

But there was no way in hell this “demand” was enough to make him give into Valentino and Velvet’s newest fixation: Making use of this fame and making Vox do some modelling!

Surely he won’t mind the lingerie and toys provided by Velvet and Valentino respectively, right?

edit march 2024: i can’t believe he just won the hottest hazbin character poll. literally manifested

Notes: Poly Vees. Funny af. Vox suffers, but in a good way. Written BEFORE the hottest HH character poll, can you believe that? Lmao.

stray by vol_ctrl

Summary: How Vox met Vark. ♥

Notes: No ship. Written before season 1 release.

After the Credits Roll by leftofrevolution

Summary: Everyone knew the Magnes sometimes liked to spice up their sex life by dragging another demon into the middle of it.

Vox maybe should have paid more attention to that particular tidbit of information than he did.

Notes: Lilith/Lucifer/Vox. Chapter 1 written before season 1 release, with Chapter 2 being released after season 1 release. I read for the crackship, ended up liking the Lilith/Lucifer/Vox dynamic and world-building a LOT. Lol. Poor Vox. Or good for him? Still has yet to be seen.

The Shopping Cart Test by spappest

Summary: Angel never expected Prince Charming to have a TV for a head, but when Vox kills Valentino and saves him from his abuse, well… Maybe Hell doesn’t have to be all that bad. With Val out of the way, everyone can have a happy ending. Angel’s safe, Charlie’s happy, and even Alastor finds love.

Oh, wait. This is Hell. It’s always that bad.

Notes: Angel/Vox. Started before season 1 release. First Staticdust fic I read. :)

Hold Me Up by Sameko

Summary: Vox has been in and out of a relationship with Valentino for years. Always breaking up. Always coming back.

Then one night comes the definitive crack at the expense of one of Valentino's employees, to which Vox never paid much attention other than for shits and giggles.

One night, one word too many, might be enough to shift the perspectives of two people once strangers to each other.

Notes: Staticdust. Pretty bleak and dark at times, but so, SO good. Two broken people trying not to cut each other with their edges while also trying to help each other.

Cruel Melody by Hiding_Behind_a_Pencil_and_Pen

Summary: A man hopelessly in love with a monster, despite how much it hurts.

A person chained to a beast he can never escape, no matter how hard he tries.

Vox and Angel Dust have given their body and heart to Valentino, and neither know how to free themselves from his lies.

But maybe, even if it never gets better, they won't have to suffer alone.

Or,

What if Husk was just a little too late to get to the bar in episode four? And a certain media Overlord helped Angel instead. They find out that they're not so different after all.

Notes: As of now, I think this is Queerplatonic Staticdust.

Revelations in Technicolor by Awesome_Possum

Summary: Velvette had been dead for six years, part of The Vees for four, and fucking Vox for a little over two. They had a good thing going.

On one of their bi-weekly Vox-mandated movie nights, Valentino put a plan into motion and Velvette learned something new and surprising about her business partner and part-time sugar daddy that made a shocking amount of sense.

It ultimately ended up bringing The Vees closer and if Valentino claimed that was his intention all along, no one had any reason to believe him.

Notes: The Vees are a V and Vox is the hinge, so he's in a relationship with both Valentino and Velvette. Interesting headcanons for Vox's human life. :) (What is the ship name for Velvette/Vox again?)

System Shutdown by Swoolie

Summary: Taking a leaf from Alastor's book, Vox goes on a small break from everything.

He doesn't stick around long enough to see the chaos that ensues after his sudden disappearance.

Notes: This is tagged with both Radiostatic and Staticmoth. It's too early in the story to tell definitively which direction it's going to end up, so for now it's going to be on the Misc list. I'll probably move it when it becomes more clear what the main pairing will be.

Dapple Rose by The_Penny_Tails

Summary: Everyone always assumes the same thing about Alastor and Vox's relationship: That it's one-sided, that it's based on fixation, and that the reason for their falling out was due to the obsession turning into something that couldn't be controlled.

All of those assumptions are correct. The only problem is, everyone gets the 'who is obsessing over whom' part of the equation wrong.

When Vox and Valentino end up stuck at the hotel, suddenly the entire relationship between the radio and television is put on display, casting it and Alastor in an entirely different light.

Notes: Tagged with both Radiostatic and Staticmoth. Due to both this and the entire story itself (you'll see what I mean when you read it), it's going here on the Misc List. I freaking love this story, because so far I've not seen another fic where Alastor was obsessed with Vox while Vox was not obsessed with him in return. :3 Everything Penny_Tails writes is gold!

Here I Come by Heliosolar

Summary: Vox contemplates his lackluster life as he stands over the edge of the city.

Or, the fall of Vox, both mentally and physically.

Notes: Written before season 1 release. No ships, just Vox. Heed the tags.

Entertainment for Two by Heliosolar

Summary: With the radio demon joining them for the night, Vox puts on a show the two overlords will never forget.

Notes: Written before season 1 release. Staticmoth and Radiostatic, at the same time. 😳

Proposition by Snorp_Lord

Summary: Alastor does not, strictly speaking, have a 'relationship' with the King of Hell. But they certainly have a something.

A something which does not include Vox. But Alastor is at least willing to indulge Lucifer in whatever this new idea is.

The new idea is Vox.

Notes: Contains Radiostatic, Radioapple, and Staticapple, but for this installment, Radiostatic is definitely the focus. Very intense, pretty sweet. 😳 Has 2 more parts in the series which are definitely worth the read, though they don't feature Vox as much.

meteor shower by spoondrifts

Summary: alastor, rosie, vox, and a study in non-traditional love.

Notes: QPR Alastor/Rosie/Vox. Very good! (What's the ship name for this?? Radiostaticrose?? Radiorosestatic?? Roseradiostatic?? Staticradiorose??)

spiraling down thy majesty by spoondrifts

Summary: “Okay, um, time out,” Lucifer said, because he felt like they were maybe losing the plot a little. “I feel like I should remind you that I’m not here because I was like, uh, overwhelmed with lust for you, in particular. I’m here because Husk said you were Alastor’s ex and I have poor impulse control and thought it’d be funny, but I’m realizing now that this is actually just really weird and you, my friend, have some serious issues that I am not equipped to handle.”

Or: Lucifer and Vox have a shared problem that starts with Al and ends in stor and has a in the middle—thankfully, there's a solution! (The solution is sex. It's just sex.)

Notes: Staticapple. Revenge sex. As in...they're both getting revenge on Alastor...using each other. Lol.

(Fic rec list to be continued as I read more)

#hazbin hotel #staticdust #staticmoth #radiostatic #staticapple #radiostaticapple #radiostaticrose #hazbin vox #hazbin angel dust #hazbin alastor #hazbin valentino #hazbin lucifer #hazbin rosie #hazbin velvette #fic rec list

[tmntxthings]

一Holiday Comps・゜・。

author’s notes: so last weekend me & mine decorated our own gingerbread houses, call me inspired ✨

author’s notes 2.0: *sigh* i couldn’t get this done during xmas, so sad, but i want it OUT of my drafts, totally lost the motivation after Donnie’s 😭 forgive meeeeee

warnings: cursing? competitive nature x10, unedited asf it’s 2:00 am rn :3

—————————————————————————

Leo

Obviously he would be trying really hard. Because if anything suddenly becomes a competition all this turtle is concerned about is being numero uno.

“We should up the stakes a bit. April! You’ll be the judge, anddddd add in stuff to like throw us off our game. Make it harder! Oooh time limit of 40 minutes?”

He’s like adding shit and making things way more complicated than just a, “Oh cool gingerbread house contest? When everyone finishes the judges can decide who wins!”

No! Nope! Not happening. This will be the X-Games of Gingerbread Comps. Glory or death type shiz. So how does this process that he thrust upon the whole gang work? Well let me just say he has no problem abiding by the time set.

But his house looks messy as hell. He had a very hard time getting the roof to stop collapsing and may have looked over at Donnie to see how he got it done. Icing? Everywhere. He has no problem when one of the challenges was to “Switch hands! Use your least dominant,”

Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Though some could argue that it didn’t matter what hand he used, it would have been messy either way. If one challenge was to switch seats and work on a brother’s gingerbread house be ready for a slick sabotage. One that Mikey may not have realized until his own foundation started fumbling, why were the walls caving in?! And what happened to the tree gummies that had been set aside?!

Leo happened, that’s what. Though he is quick to deny and not know the nature of those issues at all. By the end April is video recording to also get Sunita and Cass’s vote. Including Splinter that’s four! One for each turtle if everyone is lucky.

The responses on Leo’s house are making him pace. He can’t stay still as he hears Cass laugh out loud, wondering why the hell his gingerbread man is on the roof. “This one is a bit all over the place but, it’s got personality!” Is the saving comment from Sunita who revives Leo’s confidence in the whole ordeal

In the end I think with the time frame Leo definitely got shit on his house, but it doesn’t look all that pretty, one vote at least!

He’s butt hurt about whoever wins if it’s not him and definitely calls out his brother’s own flaws in their own work. Petty. P-E- to the T-T-Y~!

Donnie

If given an unlimited amount of time, I do believe Donnie would be a real rival in this house decorating competition. First of all he’s good with his hands, precision baby, precision!!! He has the most practice with fiddling around with crazy small parts. Those little sprinkle balls aren’t falling to the floor due to his hands.

Now he may not get a lot of them on, because this turtle will take up a lot of time just getting the foundation of the house perfect. The walls have to be straight! The roof cannot be uneven! April may have to stop him from using outside sources or trying to break the whole model build and go for something more his style.

Once he finishes with that Donnie probably took about 10 minutes alone with it having to be perfect. Icing is up next and oml this may be his downfall. There is so much to secure, and you have to take into account the drying time! The challenges he has no problem with either but they eat up his time completely!!

If April decides to do a bit of trivia, winner gets to penalize whomever he chooses, Donnie is most likely winning those even if April chooses a fair category like Jupiter Jim or Lou Jitsu. Trivia is just Donnie’s jam, and the only way he can get Leo to stop for two minutes or be able to eat one of Raph’s essential pieces like a peppermint decor!

Donnie’s build would be the cleanest, icing looking beautiful! Like touched of snow on the house! But he would hardly have any decorations due to sheer lack of time. He’d have a vote for sure but would get comments like, “It looks pretty simple!” or “This one doesn’t have a doorknob!”

“If I had more time,” would be his immediate come back. Puffing up and feeling defensive because this competition is definitely in his wheelhouse, but Leo of course had to make it to where a genius couldn’t thrive under such terse conditions. Hmph!

I’m sure April’s vote would be for Donnie

Mikey

He’s an artist, artists thrive in silly little gingerbread house competitions. I mean come on he’s the one who has the most creative ideas. Probably the most aesthetically pleasing as well!

But I fear Mikey will lack in the actual house building part. Which is literally just four slabs of gingerbread and the two more for the roof. He’d struggle to get it to stand. He’d struggle to get it to stay still. “Why does it keep MOVING?!” He’d be yelling out his frustration for sure

Even more so when he finally gets everything to stay in place only for one of the challenges to be switch houses. Leo getting his house and while Mikey doesn’t pay too much attention to what Leo is doing, when he gets his gingerbread house back it’s suddenly collapsing again?! He thought he had solved that problem! ACK! “LEO!!!” But no amount of calling his older brother out would change the fact that his house still isn’t put together

When…If he does get it together in time, you best believe he’s rushing to finally get to his favorite part! The decorations! He’s definitely eaten a couple of things without noticing it happening himself. It’s not exactly good candy, but candy is candy!

I think Splinter would vote for Mikey’s even if the house is crumbling, it’s a pretty crumbling house, out of all the brothers I think Mikey would win in a contest that wasn’t rigged by Leo!

Raph

I’m sorry, but he’d eat like half his materials. HE WOULD! So there wouldn’t be a house, maybe a shack if he’s lucky.

And on top of his appetite getting the best of him, everything is pretty darn small, and his fingers are chunky. This activity is just really not made for him but he’s doing his best, okay? His best with what he has left LOL

The hardest part would be decorating since the candy would be the smallest pieces to get on. He’d have icing everywhere, mostly on his fingers to which he would be licking clean, losing more material!!!

“Raph are you even trying???” Leo would goad, feeling that much better about himself and his standing even though he’s not doing much better as we have seen! Raph doesn’t let Leo get to him, he’s happy to just be doing something with the fam! And eating!

I think Cass would vote for this guy’s shack. Probably for some odd reason that I could never guess because she’s such a wild card to me sksksksks

#tmnt fandom #tmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #teenage mutant ninja turtles #leonardo #turtle bros #raph #mikey #donnatello #rise tmnt headcanons #rottmnt headcanons #rise headcanons #tmnt headcanons #headcanon #leo #raph tmnt #leonardo hamato #raph hamato #rise raphael #donatello #donatello hamato #donnie #michelangelo #christmas #gingerbread house #competition #rottmnt fluff #crack #rottmnt #rottmnt donatello

[beardedmrbean]

"Accidents" and deaths may be inevitable in extreme climate activism that could merit blowing up thousands of pipelines, author and radical climate activist Andreas Malm said in a startling new interview.

The "How to Blow Up a Pipeline" writer and activist gave an interview to The New York Times on his upcoming follow-up book, "Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown." At the top of the exchange, Malm was questioned on how "it’s hard to think that deaths don’t become inevitable if there is more sabotage" like blowing up pipelines. 

"Sure, if you have a thousand pipeline explosions per year, if it takes on that extreme scale. But we are some distance from that, unfortunately," Malm answered.

When pressed on that response, Malm argued, "Well, I want sabotage to happen on a much larger scale than it does now. I can’t guarantee that it won’t come with accidents. But what do I know? I haven’t personally blown up a pipeline, and I can’t foretell the future."

Malm admitted that he has recently taken part in actions that have been "illegal" and "militant." The interviewer, David Marchese, then pushed back against his condoning of political violence in a democracy.

"We live in representative democracies where certain liberties are respected. We vote for the policies and the people we want to represent us. And if we don’t get the things we want, it doesn’t give us license to then say, ‘We’re now engaging in destructive behavior.’ Right? Either we’re against political violence or not. We can’t say we’re for it when it’s something we care about and against it when it’s something we think is wrong," the interviewer said. 

"Of course we can. Why not?" Malm pressed.

"That is moral hypocrisy," the interviewer responded.

"I disagree," Malm said.

He went on to suggest that violence could be used as a proper response when overthrowing a violent system such as slavery.

"The idea that if you object to your enemy’s use of a method, you therefore also have to reject your own use of this method would lead to absurd conclusions. The far right is very good at running electoral campaigns. Should we thereby conclude that we shouldn’t run electoral campaigns?" Malm said.

He also revealed that he has shown his four-year-old child the film adaptation of his book.

"There were a couple of scenes that stayed with them, particularly when people were wounded. They found this fascinating. They know that their father is a little politically crazy, if I can put it that way," Malm said.

The Times wrote in a note on the interview that Malm believes specifically in property violence, not in violence against people. "Just to be explicit about this: Malm does not endorse or advocate any political violence that targets people. His aim is violence against property."

At one point, Malm said it would be "disastrous" if someone in the movement killed another person with a gun to advance the cause.

"Political history is replete with movements that have conducted sabotage without taking the next step," he said. "But the risk is there. One driver of that risk is that the climate crisis itself is exacerbating all the time. It’s hard-wired to get worse. So people might well get more desperate… We might smash things, which people are doing here and there, but no one is seriously considering that you should get a gun and shoot people… The point that’s important to make is that the reason that people contemplate escalation is that there are no risk-free options left."

Malm, who wrote a book titled "How to Blow Up A Pipeline" in 2021, admitted that he does not live a "zero-carbon lifestyle."

"No one who lives in a capitalist society can do so," he said.

Malm added the climate movement would be in a very difficult position should former President Trump win the 2024 election.

"What should the climate movement do then?" he asked of the climate movement's reaction to a Trump victory. "Should it accept this as the outcome of a democratic election and protest in the mildest of forms? Or should it radicalize and consider something like property destruction? I admit that this is a difficult question, but I imagine that a measured response to it would need to take into account how democracy works in a country like the United States and whether allowing fossil-fuel companies to wreck the planet because they profit from it can count as a form of democracy and should therefore be respected."

The New York Times previously published a guest essay by Malm in 2022 where he supported the disruptive tactics of the Just Stop Oil organization and promoted property destruction.

#nunyas news #guys gonna get shot doing something stupid

[mcheang]

Revelation AU

What if Felix took Adrien’s place again the day Lila tried to take over class rep duties.

Let’s just say thanks to his stalking, Felix knows Lila is a liar who makes Adrien uncomfortable and Marinette unhappy. He warns Kagami about it, who in turn wishes to expose Lila after being manipulated by her.

Knowing Lila has had too much time to sway the school to her side, Felix proposes an idea but needs Kagami’s help. Like Lila, Felix is a master at deception, at least when pretending to be Adrien.

When Gabriel fires Lila Rossi, Felix suspected Lila would want revenge on Adrien to hurt Gabriel. As such, he insisted that he take Adrien’s place for that day in school. Kagami lured Adrien and knocked him unconscious, allowing Felix to take his place while Kagami stayed with Adrien to keep him from interrupting their plan.

When Marinette tried to argue that Chloe should be punished for cheating, and how Caline suggested that Chloe was going to need a lot of work, Lila suggested she take over Marinette’s duties since Marinette is too busy with her love life.

Felix: I’m sorry, Lila. It’s just what you said. The reason you were not around to vote for Marinette is because you were on one of your MANY trips for charity. I know you’ve had more time for us now, except last I heard, you said you were going overseas. I know you’ll try to be there for us, but we all know how you can’t help answering the call for help from your many other friends overseas, even changing your plans at the last minute because you told us how much you cherish bonds overseas, knowing you can’t dismiss friendship that easily.

And just like that, Lila is also unreliable for being class president.

Lila: I will try to be there for the rest of the school year, even my mother put her foot down about that.

Felix quickly interrupts: Oh no! Are you that exhausted? We shouldn’t put more pressure on her.

Lila: But I have more free time on my hands.

Felix: Um, I heard you refuse to join Mylene’s cause to help Ramier’s cause to build pigeon shelters next week. And Marinette is not even going to be there! Not to mention I’m worried that Chloe might take advantage of you like she’s taking advantage of Sabrina, she’s already trying to take back power, but we all know that Chloe will dump her deputy duties on Sabrina, again. You’re too nice, Lila.

No matter what Lila says, Felix is ready to counter her.

And then comes the killing blow

Felix: I know you mean well, but my father also told about your special disease

He looked at Miss Caline Bustier, who now recalls Lila’s lying disorder

Felix: It’s embarrassing but my father does do background checking, Principal Damocles told him about your uncontrollable lying disease. I know Miss Bustier wanted to keep this a secret so we would not worry over you like we do over Rose, but we’re your friends Lila, you don’t have to hide this from us.

Alya is unsure if Adrien is telling the truth or he really wants to defend Marinette

Caline: I think you’re right Adrien. Lila needs all the support she can get, and she can only get that if we help her be honest

She just confirmed what “Adrien“ said.

The class is stunned. Lila really was a liar. And Ms Bustier did not even tell them. It was hard to tell whether their feelings of betrayal were directed more towards their naive teacher or Lila.

Lila herself was feeling quite furious with Adrien.

Naturally Hawkmoth was attracted to the akuma class…again.

He sensed Lila Rossi’s hatred to Adrien. Not a good idea. (Sure Lila tried to direct some hatred Marinette’s way but the latter was clearly surprised by Adrien’s move). Nathalie was already breathing down his neck on his treatment of Adrien.

Someone else in the class will have to do.

There was obviously a divide.

Some actually thought Lila had a lying disorder and could not control it.

Others like Alya Cesaire were immediately apologetic for not believing Marinette, cursing their own gullibility, and angry at Ms Bustier for keeping it from them.

Yes, Alya’s guilt was prime for akumatization.

Except…what is this? Her resistance to the akuma…it was so similar to…Viperion/Luka. Alya knows Ladybug’s secret identity.

True, Alya rejected the akuma and Hawkmoth summoned it back, but the idea that two friends of his son knew Ladybug suggested the possibility that the heroine herself was within Adrien’s social circle.

But who? He had akumatized most of them. All except…Marientte Dupain-Cheng!

Oh wait. If Alya is aware that Marinette is Ladybug, how could she actually believe that Ladybug is best friends with Lila?

No one is that stupid.

He discusses this with Nathalie.

Nathalie: but Alya is that gullible. Didn’t she believe Chloe of all people was Ladybug? Despite witnessing Ladybug saving Chloe from Stoneheart?

A pause.

Gabriel: it’s time we invited Marinette to our home again. It will be a chance for Adrien to tell her about his trip to London. (Aka akumatize and see if she really is Ladybug)

Meanwhile, Alya confessed Monarch discovered she knows Ladybug and has to leave town. She joins Luka with his dad and Penny.

Marinette feels guilty for telling Alya the truth. Tikki reminds her that Alya knowing has helped her before.

Before Alya left with Luka, the latter warned Marinette to be careful with her secret identity. “Monarch might decide to investigate our common friends. And you’re the one of the few he hasn’t akumatized.”

Marinette: few…Adrien! Wait, what am I saying, Adrien can’t be confused for Ladybug.

At the invitation for brunch, Gabriel knew Marinette was still oblivious to Adrien’s impending departure (he would have akumatized her otherwise).

Gabriel: I wouldn’t want to keep two lovebirds apart in these precious moments Adrien has in Paris.

Adrien dropped his fork. “Father!”

Marinette looked at her boyfriend in concern. “Adrien, what’s wrong?”

Gabriel: you didn’t tell her?

Adrien shut his eyes. “I’m moving to London at the end of the school year.”

Gabriel: as soon as the school day is over, he’ll be packing his bags.

Adrien: but I’ll miss the dance!

Gabriel: so is Kagami but I don’t hear her complaining to her mother.

Marinette understood immediately. Gabriel disapproved of her so much, he was willing to send Adrien away, take him away from his friends. “You can’t do that! It’s not right!”

“Oh, and what would you know of right, Ms Dupain Cheng. My own surveillance cameras have caught you spying on my house. Your male friends threw a wild party under my very roof while I was absent, draining even my back up power reserves. I’ve already shown my generosity by not suing them for the power disruption or demanding a restraining order on your presence. Do not test my patience.”

Marinette and Adrien were horrified, for different reasons. Adrien knew about Marinette’s stalker habits already but to hear that his father was capable of using the law to punish his friends…he knew he needed to tread carefully. Marinette was horrified to see her own flaws turned against her.

Gabriel settled down, forcing a smile on his face as he civilly asked, “And what do you think of my pancakes now, Marinette. Do you think my new recipe is better than before?”

Both knew they could not insult him and make their own situation worse, not when Gabriel has already proven himself of capable of following up his own threats.

“It’s certainly efficient,” Marinette finally managed.

They finished the breakfast in silence. Gabriel happily eating his pancakes. Marinette and Adrien holding hands tightly under the table.

Nathalie came in. “Adrien, your piano teacher is here.”

Gabriel: it’s been nice having you here again, Marinette. But good times never last long.

It took all Marinette’s willpower not to run or call Gabriel out for his cruelty. As soon as the coast was clear, she sank down against the wall and cried.

Her despair just begging Monarch to akumatize her.

Unfortunately for him, Tikki was also on alert should Marinette be depressed enough for an akuma. (Being in an akumatized purse was not fun!)

Tikki: Marinette, an akuma!

Marinette freaked and ran, worried that Ladybug’s immediate purification would give her identity away.

Rather than let the butterfly go rogue and cause another startrain, Monarch summoned the butterfly back. He can be patient. Sooner or later, Marinette has to break down and he will be ready.

Knowing she had to stay positive, Marinette devotes her energy to try to be optimistic, thinking of how she can get Gabriel to change his mind, or ways to make a long distance relationship work.

This was enough to make Gabriel give up and instead wait for Adrien to leave for London.

By that time, Marinette had already tried several plans to convince Gabriel to stay. She got Wayhem to organize Adrien’s fans to strike about Adrien’s departure but was countered by Gabriel saying Paris was too dangerous for Adrien. She threaten to call child care services except Adrien (influenced by the Graham wedding rings) vetoes this plan. She considered using Cosmobug to visit Adrien except Marinette doesn’t have the money or time to make such frequent visits plausible.

Eventually Marinette came to accept Adrien’s departure and both agree to work out a long distance relationship.

Gabriel is extremely disappointed that Marinette isn’t more unhappy when Adrien leaves. Oh well, it doesn’t matter. project Alliance will continue as plan.

#miraculous ladybug fanfic #miraculous ladybug fic #ml fanfic #ml fanfiction #ml fic #miraculous ladybug fanfiction #révélation au #Lila is exposed #Lila gets exposed

[olenvasynyt]

Does Azriel have a hero complex?

So I think a lot of SJM characters have a hero complex (Rhys and Aelin especially) but I want to talk about Az specifically because I think it is an essential part of his character.  

Now since barely get any POVs with Az we do not really know the inner workings of his mind and almost everything that we know about him is from other characters’ perspectives.  So this is all based on my interpretation of him and his actions, and not every action he makes is a result of a hero complex.  And I also don’t have a psychology degree or anything like that this is just for fun and a savior complex is not something you can diagnose anyway.  This is just a character analysis!  It’s fun.

Saving people

The basic definition of a hero complex is the constant need to save people.  Most people think of the knight and damsel in distress when a hero complex is mentioned, and this is true with Az: he has rescued Mor and Elain and Gwyn.  And rescuing people is of course part of it, but it’s a lot more intricate than just that; there are tons of other tendencies someone with a savior complex can have, and I personally think Az has tons of these tendencies.

2. very perceptive and sympathetic

A person with a hero complex is very perceptive and sympathetic.  They’re usually drawn to people who’ve had a lot of trauma.  They have a lot of empathy for others who are suffering.  They’re good at knowing what a person needs.  

You see this when he teaches Feyre to fly: he offers his backstory on how he learned and his love for the Nephelle philosophy to sympathize with her and this is actually the first time we hear Az talk a bit about his own past.  He is very sympathetic and perspective with Elain.  In ACOWAR he’s very quiet and courteous with her and offers to take her to see the garden.

I really like this quote: 

Page 334 of ACOWAR: It made sense, I supposed, that Azriel alone had listened to her.  The male who heard things others could not…Perhaps he too had suffered as Elain before he understood what gift he possessed.

3. Doing the dirty but necessary work

A person with a hero complex does the dirty but necessary work that most people don’t want to do.  I would argue that being the court torture-master is doing the dirty work.  And Rhys’ father used him and his shadow abilities when he was alive and high lord, and he is part of Rhys’ inner circle so he is important and he votes on things, etc, but he still does the dirty work, he does the spying and the torturing.

Quote on page 175 of ACOMAF: “It’s hard to tell with him—and he’d never tell me.  I’ve witnessed Cassian rip apart opponents and then puke his guts up once the carnage stopped, sometimes mourn over them.  But Azriel…Cassian tries, I try…but I think the only person who ever gets him to admit his feelings is Mor.  And that’s only when his infinite patience runs out.”

Cassian says Rhys’ father ”kept [Az] for himself as his personal shadowsinger—mostly for spying and dirty work.” 

And you can’t really tell if as likes this work but it is important.  

In ACOMAF page 288:  ”Does he mind what he does?  Not the spying, I mean.  What he did to the Attor today.” ”It’s hard to tell with him—and he’d never tell me.  I’ve witnessed Cassian rip apart opponents and then puke his guts up once the carnage stopped, sometimes mourn over them.  But Azriel…Cassian tries, I try…but I think the only person who ever gets him to admit his feelings is Mor.  And that’s only when his infinite patience runs out.”

4. Dismissing their own needs/pain, neglecting self-care

And that sort of brings me to my next point: 

They dismiss their own needs and continue to help others even if it negatively impacts them.  Not only does he keep secrets about his past, but he doesn’t like when people worry about him.

ACOMAF page 288: ”Are you worried about Az going to the mortal lands tomorrow?”  ”Of course I am.  But Azriel has infiltrated places far more harrowing than a few mortal courts.  He’d find my worrying insulting.”

He works really hard and that’s another huge thing with a savior / hero complex.  He works himself so hard to the point where his friends worry for him.

Page 376 ACOMAF: ”Getting Azriel to take any time for himself that didn’t involve work or training was nearly impossible.”

He often wants to go into battle even when he was injured.

Quote from ACOWAR page 610:  ”The argument with Rhys this morning had been swift and brutal: Azriel insisted he could fly—fight with they legions….Rhys refused…Azriel threatened to slip into shadow and fight anyway.  Rhys merely said that if he so much as tried, he’d chain him to a tree…It was only when Mor had begged him that he relented.”

5. Emotional and psychological burnout

And all of this leads to burnout which is a huge thing with Az.  He’s obviously very broody, and he suppresses his feelings, works really hard doing very laborious and traumatizing things and this leads to burnout.  We have evidence of this from not only his broodiness and quietness,

Page 293 of ACOMAF: Az gets back from the mortal realm, he’s described as needing to “return and assess…assess—and brood, it seemed, since Azriel had barely managed a polite hello to me before launching into sparring with Rhysand, his face grim and tight.” Used sparring to ”help work off his frustration”.

but physically too with the headaches that he gets.

Page 186 of ACOFAS:  “I had Madja make it for me.  It’s a powder to mix in with any drink…it’s for the headaches everyone always gives you.  Since you rub your temples too often.”

6. Low self-esteem, need for perfection

He doesn’t think he’s good enough, he doesn’t think his work is enough, he doesn’t think his ’heroic actions’ are enough.  You can see this with his spies; he wants his spying to be perfect to help people and help his High Lord. 

Page 376 ACOMAF: —the frustration of not being able to get his spies or himself into those courts took a toll on him.  The standards to which he held himself, [Mor] confided in me, bordered on sadistic. 

(this also contributes to the fact that he pushes himself too hard)

ACOMAF 205-206, Rhys says  ”I don’t trust this information, even with your sources…”  ”They can be trusted,” Azriel said with quiet steel, his scarred hands clenching at his leather-clad sides.  ”We aren’t taking risks where this is concerned,” Rhys merely said.  He held Azriel’s stare, and I could almost hear the silent words Rhys added, It is no judgement or reflection on you, Az.  Not at all. But Azriel yielded no tinge of emotion as he nodded, his hands unfurling. ”So what do we have planned?” Mor cut in—perhaps for Az’s sake.

Everyone understands he has low self esteem.

Page 256 ACOMAF: ”He set down his fork, blinking.  I might even called him self-conscious.”

And in ACOWAR Rhys says he doesn’t think he’s good enough for Mor.

Page 460 of ACOWAR:  Feyre: ”But—he loves her.  How can he sit idly by?” Rhys: ”He thinks she’s happier without him…he thinks he’s unworthy of her.”

I go back and forth between if he thinks he’s deserving of Elain or not, because this quote says he isn’t worthy,

ACOSF bonus chapter: “She looked up at him, her face so trusting and hopeful and open that he knew she had no idea that he had done unspeakable things that sullied his hands far beyond their  scars.  Such terrible things that it was a sacrilege for his fingers to skin, tainting her with his presence.  But he could have this. This one moment, and maybe a taste, and that would be it.”

but another quote in the bonus chapter implies so does think he’s worthy but I’ll talk about that later.

7. Guilt and overthinking

Az seems to often feel guilty when one of the plans goes wrong; he thinks he didn’t do as much as he could have.

Page 346 of ACOWAR:  ”Hybern had made its grand move at last.  And we had not anticipated it.  I knew Azriel would take the blame upon himself.  One look at the shadowsinger…told me he already did.”

He may have felt guilty for not reaching Cassian in time when he was gutted fighting that Hybern commander in ACOWAR

Page 543 of ACOWAR:  ”’By the time Az got there, he was down.’ Azriel’s face was stone-cold, even as his hazel eyes fixed unrelentingly upon that knitting wound.”

He might feel guilty for not helping Mor enough with Az, and he also feels guilty for keeping Rhys’ plan to let Keir into Velaris a secret.

Page 414 of ACOWAR:  "Whether [Mor] knew that though she’d tried to move past the bargain we’d made, the guilt of it still haunted Azriel, she didn’t let on.”

And when Eris calls More a slut, Az attacks him violently and Feyre has to call him off.  And I think this was a telling sign of his guilt:  

Page 429 of ACOWAR: 

”As Azriel turned his face toward me—The frozen rage rooted me to the spot.  But beneath it, I could almost see the images that haunted him: the hand Mor had yanked away, her weeping, distraught face as she had screamed at Rhys.”

He defends people to make up for his guilt, which sort of brings me to my next point:

8. Issues with overstepping boundaries and self-efficacy

I’m not talking about him kissing Elain in the bonus chapter and overstepping the boundaries of her mating bond with Lucien.  I’m talking about how a person with a hero complex oversteps and takes on other people’s responsibilities/problems.  With self-efficacy, a person with a hero complex might unintentionally undermine someone’s self-efficacy by not allowing them to face and overcome challenges on their own.

And he doesn’t do this all the time. In fact there are situations, specifically emotional situations that don’t pertain to him, that he walks away from and he goes ” That’s not my business.”

But you see this with Mor a lot, he is super defensive for Mor: when Eris calls her a slut during the High Lord’s meeting, he attacks him and chokes him out.  He jumps to her defense all the time even when she doesn’t ask for it.

He also refuses Elain’s offer to look for the Trove in ACOSF:

Page 311 of ACOSF: “We do not have the time to wait for Nesta to decide.  I say we approach Elain tomorrow.  Better to have both of them working on it.” Azriel stiffened, an outright sign of temper from him as he said quietly, “There is an innate darkness to the Dread Trove that Elain should not be exposed to.”

9. Fear of abandonment and rejection

And all of this pertaining to the hero complex, including overstepping boundaries, continuously helping, etc can be because of their fear of rejection.  A person with a savior complex fears being alone so they continuously help others to ensure their relationship continues.

Az actually tried to bring up his feelings for Mor after he rescues her from the Autumn court border and she leaves (talk about bad timing AZ) but I feel like Az hasn’t brought up his love for Mor because he fears rejection and also because of his low self-esteem.

Mor often has an argument with Rhys and he turns to Az to defend her and often he’s hesitant.  

Page 186 of ACOWAR:  Mor whipped her head to Azriel.  ”What do you think?”  The shadowsinger held her stare, his face unreadable.  Considering.  I tried not to hold my breath.  Defending the female he loved or siding with his High Lord…”It’s not my call to make.” ”That’s a bullshit answer,” Mor challenged.   ”I could have sworn hurt flickered in Azriel’s eyes, but he only shrugged.

You see this with his guilt that I brought up before with not doing enough to stop Hybern from attacking in ACOWAR, and his guilt over not telling Mor about their plan with Kier and Eris and letting Keir have access to Velaris.  

And this is an excellent quote:

Page 460 of ACOWAR:  ”There will come a day when Azriel has to decide if he is going to fight for her or let her go.  And it won’t be because some other male insults her or beds her.”

And he probably fears rejection from Elain.

10. A need for validation

Now another tendency a person with a savor complex can have is the need for validation, they want acknowledgment for the good things they’ve done, and this can lead to resentment if they are acknowledged.

And I don’t necessarily think this is Az, I feel like he would just say that helping is his job, being spymaster is his job, saving people is his job” but you can see in the bonus chapter of Silver Flames when Rhys asks him if he thinks he deserves Elain as a mate, he says ”I don’t think Lucien will be good enough for him” which in my opinion implies that Az thinks he is more heroic / more worthy of having Elain as a mate and sees Lucien as a coward.

ACOSF bonus chapter: “The Cauldron chose three sisters. Tell me how it's possible that my two brothers are with two of those sisters, yet the third was given to another.” “You believe you deserve to be her mate?"   “I think Lucien will never be good enough for her…”

There are obviously tons of other aspects of a hero complex beside a knight rescuing a damsel that I think apply to Az; he is a super traumatized and I think his hero complex / heroism in general is a result of that.

#acotar #azriel shadowsinger #tiktok video summary #character analysis #mor acotar #elain archeron #rhysand #a court of thorns and roses

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

A stunt impeachment inquiry.

December 13, 2023

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

          House Republicans will vote to open an impeachment inquiry of President Biden on Wednesday. Why? They can’t say—because they don’t know. Oh, sure, they have baseless conspiracy theories—but no evidence (a common situation with conspiracy theories). So, because they have no evidence to support baseless conspiracy theories, they argue they need an impeachment inquiry to help them pursue imaginary evidence—thereby maintaining the illusion of corruption where none exists.

          Of course, the real reason they will open an impeachment inquiry is because Donald Trump told them to do so. Trump was impeached twice—a level of disgrace achieved by no other president. Trump's solution is to denigrate and debase impeachment so he can argue that impeachments are nothing more than partisan retribution. As always, Trump seeks to undermine the institutions that dare to hold him accountable. Here, he is assaulting the Constitution because its provisions were (rightly) applied in a way never before witnessed in the history of our nation.

          The efforts of House Republicans to evade answering the “Why impeach Joe Biden” question would have been funny if they were not tragic and dangerous. Indeed, several House Republicans admitted that they did not have evidence to impeach Joe Biden—which is why (they claim) they need to open an impeachment inquiry. See Talking Points Memo, As They Admit There’s No Evidence, House Republicans Will Still Greenlight Impeachment Inquiry.

          The tragedy of the stunt impeachment inquiry is that it comes at a time when congressional Republicans are failing at every level in discharging their constitutional duties. Ukrainian President Zelensky visited with President Biden and senior congressional leaders on Tuesday—and left empty-handed. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell—a strong ally of Ukraine—expressed doubt that Congress will authorize additional funds for Ukraine before January, a month after the US will reportedly run out of funds earmarked for Ukraine. See Politico, McConnell: Border-Ukraine deal this year ‘practically impossible’.

          But if action on funding Ukraine is delayed until January, it will be swept into the maelstrom of two deadlines for government shutdowns. Current government funding expires on January 19 and February 2, 2024. While Senate negotiators are reportedly hard at work to reach a compromise, any compromise requires resolving intractable, decades-old issues relating to the management of the US southern border. By tying funding for Ukraine to the resolution of long-standing immigration issues in the US, congressional Republicans seem to be carrying water for Vladimir Putin and (therefore) Donald Trump. 

          Speaker Mike Johnson set an unattainable bar in setting conditions for aid to Ukraine. He said,

What the Biden administration seems to be asking for is billions of additional dollars with no appropriate oversight, no clear strategy to win and with none of the answers that I think the American people are owed.

          Johnson is demanding that the US exercise “oversight” of Ukraine’s “strategy” for defeating an invading Russian army. As the brave Ukrainian people have demonstrated, their “strategy” is to resist Putin’s vastly larger army with every ounce of determination and bravery they can muster. That bravery has held the Russian army at bay for more than 600 days, a stupendous achievement that continues to defy predictions that Ukraine would collapse in a week. The Ukrainian bravery and battlefield success is apparently not enough for the milquetoast Mike Johnson.

          President Biden responded to the vacuous, mealy-mouthed statement by Johnson, saying it was a “Christmas gift” to Vladimir Putin. Biden also noted that news commentators in Russia’s state-controlled broadcast network celebrated the Republican stonewalling of aid to Ukraine. Biden said,

This host of a Kremlin-run show said: ‘Well done, Republicans. That’s good for us,’” If you’re being celebrated by Russian propagandists, it might be time to rethink what you’re doing. History, history will judge harshly those who turn their back on freedom’s cause.

          The GOP’s impeachment and the reluctance to provide more military aid to Ukraine are rooted in Donald Trump's scheme to use his control over Republicans in Congress to inflict political damage on Biden—even if that vendetta hurts the interests of the American people and its allies.

          The good news (explained below) is that Democrats are making progress toward regaining control of the House. Indeed, Speaker Johnson’s stunt impeachment and abandonment of Ukraine will hasten that outcome.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

#Robert B. Hubbell #Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter #stunt impeachment #Ukraine #Russia #Russian interference #war in Ukraine #Putin #House Republicans #Kremlin caucus

[tanadrin]

so what the case seems to hinge on is this: City of Mobile v Bolden (1980) held that if you want to challenge the construction of voting districts on the grounds they violate section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, as then written, you have to show not only racially discriminatory effect, but racially discriminatory intent. in 1982, in response to this decision, a bipartisan bill amended the VRA to explicitly ask courts to consider racially discriminatory effects, though not going to far as to require representation to be explicitly proportionally based on race (which is what some opponents of the racially discriminatory effect approach were worried about)

plaintiffs sued alabama over its bad districting maps which continue to have only one black-majority district (that district in itself the product of an even earlier lawsuit), even though they argue most reasonable maps can and should have two, even if you also take into account other principles of redistricting, such as trying to keep political subdivisions and major urban areas together, not producing contorted or splayed out shapes, and, of course, maintaining equal population. alabama has a pretty large contiguous area of black settlement--the Black Belt--which the current map seems to at least partially split up.

alabama’s argument for keeping the current map is 1) continuity with older maps (Roberts points out that maps have been discriminatory in the past is not a reason to keep using them); 2) the gulf coast portion of alabama is a vital community of interest that can’t possibly be split up (Roberts points out that Alabama’s evidence for this is very shaky), and 3) the theory the court should be using around section 2 of the VRA isn’t the one it’s used since Gingles, but something new they came up with, called the “race-neutral benchmark,” which is based on the likelihood of the "median or average” of majority-minority districts that would occur, if you used all the traditional redistricting criteria except race, and generated a large number of possible alternatives by computer. so long as the actual district map resembles the race-neutral benchmark generally in terms of majority-minority districts, the state cannot be construed to have denied anyone’s right to vote on account of race, at least through racial gerrymandering

roberts finds this theory uncompelling; specifically, in amending the VRA congress explicitly said that discriminatory effects matter, not just intent, and section 2 of the VRA requires that minority voters not “have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and elect representatives of their choice.”

Individuals thus lack an equal opportunity to participate in the political process when a State’s electoral structure operates in a manner that “minimize[s] or cancel[s] out the[ir] voting strength.” Id., at 47. That occurs where an individual is disabled from “enter[ing] into the political process in a reliable and meaningful manner” “in the light of past and present reality, political and otherwise.” White, 412 U. S., at 767, 770. A district is not equally open, in other words, when minority voters face—unlike their majority peers—bloc voting along racial lines, arising against the backdrop of substantial racial discrimination within the State, that renders a minority vote unequal to a vote by a nonminority voter.

alabama’s theory of how this case should be decided doesn’t really make sense in light of either congressional intent in amending the VRA or the court’s jurisprudence since Gingles. the court has explicitly repudiated racial proportionality before (which is a concern alabama resurrects here), e.g., in Shaw v Reno (1993), where north carolina got a second majority-minority district out of its congressional map only by heavily gerrymandering that district’s borders. (north carolina believed this district was required by section 2 of the VRA, but the court disagreed. the difference is that the population in norht carolina brought together by this district was highly dispersed, whereas in alabama it is not)

roberts is content to reject alabama’s “invitation to change existing law” on the basis that alabama has misunderstood section 2 and the relevant past decisions of the court, but he’s also critical of how the benchmark would work in practice; section 2 doesn’t require redistricting to be a race-blind process anymore than it requires it to be perfectly proportional (indeed, it can be neither in practice, under existing law); the “race-blind benchmark” doesn’t actually reflect how redistricting is done in alabama (i.e., it isn’t a randomly chosen result that conforms to the properties of the average map of many randomly generated maps, it’s a product of deliberate design; and the benchmarks ignore certain traditional redistricting criteria, including alabama’s own districting guidelines); and the criteria alabama proposes as necessary to challenge a map that apparently conforms to that benchmark are insanely difficult to meet (e.g., requiring the plaintiff to prove the deviations between the state’s enacted map and race-neutral alternatives can only be explained by racial discrimination). alabama also tries to claim section 2 doesn’t even apply to single-member districts, but this is just flatly wrong

there are also some pretty lengthy shots at Clarence Thomas’s dissent in the footnotes, which are pretty satisfying to read if you’re into that sort of thing

[cxhleel108]

S7 Thots for this week: What an embarrassment…

��� Good to know that now that Bonnie has found another purpose in life than trying to get in my panties Rafael is there to take her spot🫤

• Rafael you can’t wear Jake’s wig and be Jake hunny I’m sorry.

• Oh my girl looks ready to FUCK yasss!

• They brought back the sex box with the same exact items again…nobody saw that coming, right?

• Right…

• The girls are so damn nosey this season like this is our 50th time peeping on the boys talking😭

• ???????

• Tanya so clumsy like damn bitch stop knocking shit over every time you tryna be sneaky😭

• Go Bryson for remembering what food we said we liked on one of our dates cuz even I don’t remember that shit.

• Here go us acting clueless again. Girl you don’t “think”, you KNOW Rafael has a thing for you🙄🙄🙄

• That’s fine, you can leave!

• Travis really don’t want Willow at all ooooo yikes girl get UP!

• I’m so glad we didn’t have to experience that argument between those two dear god this shit is stupid.

• WAIT WHY SHE KINDA GAGGED HER-

• Oh boo, so Uma gets a genuine sorry after you insult her once but Tanya ain’t get shit but a sorry ass half apology after you spent half a lifetime making her villa experience terrible? Girl go to hell😒

• Oh for the love of christ we can’t have ANYTHING.

• BYE WILLOW! And I better be right this time! (Spoiler alert…I’m not)

• I wish you’d rot, fyi.

• It’s Baby Challenge Day! Once again…nobody saw that coming, right?

• Omg PLEASEEEE. She ate😭😭😭

• Say hi to lil baby Nia everybody😍😍😍 She’s got on her bee outfit for her favorite singer Beyoncé of course.

• Raf really named his baby “Shelby Jones”…chile.

• Bryson’s being a lot cuter about the baby challenge than I expected ughh love that. (Also he’s so totally a girl dad and I’m not arguing about it)

• Here they go again tryna make a moment just because we disagreed on one small little thing🙄🙄🙄

• “Burpy burpy” has me so weak bruh💀💀💀

• Uma #1 bestie🤞🏽😛

• Why are our options to reveal a dirty secret just the same answers everyone else gave oh my GODDDD if I had a dime for every time the writing has pissed me off I'd be filthy stinking rich.

• Favorite segment incoming! Outfit time🤩

• The jumpsuit is cute but the other outfit????!!!???!! Soooooo goooood like I actually need that top irl.

• LMAOOOO HELP. If there are finna be a bunch of mishaps, I at least want them to be funny like this.

• Once again, I thought Bryson was finna ask us to be his girlfriend. Can y’all stop edging us like omg?

• #Raphneisoverparty finna be trending on Twitter.

• I’m glad they actually breaking shit off and aren’t tryna milk the relationship when it’s not worth it cough cough Hope and Noah cough cough.

• Omg y’all are really dragging it. Obviously our couple is not going to get voted off tf.

• GIRL🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄

• Ok, while questioning as to why I’m choosing my DAY ONE over him is astronomically stupid, “epically sassing” him in front of everyone is so unnecessary I didn’t even do it.

• Can we just get to the final episode already like what else is there left to even do?

#litg #love island the game #litg s7 #litg season 7 #litg stick or twist #litg mc #litg willow #litg uma #litg daphne #litg bryson #litg bonnie #litg rafael #litg vicky #litg travis #litg alex

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Solving the Moderator's Trilemma with Federation

The classic trilemma goes: “Fast, cheap or good, pick any two.” The Moderator’s Trilemma goes, “Large, diverse userbase; centralized platforms; don’t anger users — pick any two.” The Moderator’s Trilemma is introduced in “Moderating the Fediverse: Content Moderation on Distributed Social Media,” a superb paper from Alan Rozenshtein of U of Minnesota Law, forthcoming in the journal Free Speech Law, available as a prepub on SSRN:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4213674#maincontent

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/2023/03/04/pick-all-three/#agonism

Rozenshtein proposes a solution (of sorts) to the Moderator’s Trilemma: federation. De-siloing social media, breaking it out of centralized walled gardens and recomposing it as a bunch of small servers run by a diversity of operators with a diversity of content moderation approaches. The Fediverse, in other words.

In Albert Hirschman’s classic treatise Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, stakeholders in an institution who are dissatisfied with its direction have two choices: voice (arguing for changes) or exit (going elsewhere). Rozenshtein argues that Fediverse users (especially users of Mastodon, the most popular part of the Fediverse) have more voice and more “freedom of exit”:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty

Large platforms — think Twitter, Facebook, etc — are very unresponsive to users. Most famously, Facebook polled its users on whether they wanted to be spied on. Faced with overwhelming opposition to commercial surveillance, Facebook ignored the poll result and cranked the surveillance dial up to a million:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-ignores-minimal-user-vote-adopts-new-privacy-policy-flna1c7559683

A decade later, Musk performed the same stunt, asking users whether they wanted him to fuck all the way off from the company, then ignored the vox populi, which, in this instance, was not vox Dei:

https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-business-8dac8ae023444ef9c37ca1d8fe1c14df

Facebook, Twitter and other walled gardens are designed to be sticky-traps, relying on high switching costs to keep users locked within their garden walls which are really prison walls. Internal memos from the companies reveal that this strategy is deliberate, designed to keep users from defecting even as the service degrades:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

By contrast, the Fediverse is designed for ease of exit. With one click, users can export the list of the accounts they follow, block and mute, as well as the accounts that follow them. With one more click, users can import that data into any other Fediverse server and be back up and running with almost no cost or hassle:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/23/semipermeable-membranes/

Last month, “Nathan,” the volunteer operator of mastodon.lol, announced that he was pulling the plug on the server because he was sick of his users’ arguments about the new Harry Potter game. Many commentators pointed to this as a mark against federated social media, “You can’t rely on random, thin-skinned volunteer sysops for your online social life!”

https://mastodon.lol/@nathan/109836633022272265

But the mastodon.lol saga demonstrates the strength of federated social media, not its weakness. After all, 450 million Twitter users are also at the mercy of a thin-skinned sysop — but when he enshittifies his platform, they can’t just export their data and re-establish their social lives elsewhere in two clicks:

Mastodon.lol shows us how, if you don’t like your host’s content moderation policies, you can exercise voice — even to the extent of making him so upset that he shuts off his server — and where voice fails, exit steps in to fill the gap, providing a soft landing for users who find the moderation policies untenable:

https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6

Traditionally, centralization has been posed as beneficial to content moderation. As Rozenshtein writes, a company that can “enclose” its users and lock them in has an incentive to invest in better user experience, while companies whose users can easily migrate to rivals are less invested in those users.

And centralized platforms are more nimble. The operators of centralized systems can add hundreds of knobs and sliders to their back end and twiddle them at will. They act unilaterally, without having to convince other members of a federation to back their changes.

Centralized platforms claim that their most powerful benefit to users is extensive content moderation. As Tarleton Gillespie writes, “Moderation is central to what platforms do, not peripheral… [it] is, in many ways, the commodity that platforms offer”:

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300261431/custodians-of-the-internet/

Centralized systems claim that their enclosure keeps users safe — from bad code and bad people. Though Rozenshtein doesn’t say so, it’s important to note that this claim is wildly oversold. Platforms routinely fail at preventing abuse:

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/sexual-assault-harassment-bullying-trans-students-say-targeted-school-rcna7803

And they also fail at blocking malicious code:

https://www.scmagazine.com/news/threats/apple-bugs-ios-macos_new_class

But even where platforms do act to “keep users safe,” they fail, thanks to the Moderator’s Trilemma. Setting speech standards for millions or even billions of users is an impossible task. Some users will always feel like speech is being underblocked — while others will feel it’s overblocked (and both will be right!):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/07/right-or-left-you-should-be-worried-about-big-tech-censorship

And platforms play very fast and loose with their definition of “malicious code” — as when Apple blocked OG App, an Instagram ad-blocker that gave you a simple feed consisting of just the posts from the people you followed:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/05/battery-vampire/#drained

To resolve the Moderator’s Trilemma, we need to embrace subsidiarity: “decisions should be made at the lowest organizational level capable of making such decisions.”

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/07/full-stack-luddites/#subsidiarity

For Rozenshtein, “content-moderation subsidiarity devolves decisions to the individual instances that make up the overall network.” The fact that users can leave a server and set up somewhere else means that when a user gets pissed off enough about a moderation policy, they don’t have to choose between leaving social media or tolerating the policy — they can simply choose another server that’s part of the same federation.

Rozenshtein asks whether Reddit is an example of this, because moderators of individual subreddits are given broad latitude to set their own policies and anyone can fork a subreddit into a competing community with different moderation norms. But Reddit’s devolution is a matter of policy, not architecture — subreddits exist at the sufferance of Reddit’s owners (and Reddit is poised to go public, meaning those owners will include activist investors and large institutions that might not care about your little community). You might be happy about Reddit banning /r_TheDonald, but if they can ban that subreddit, they can ban any subreddit. Policy works well, but fails badly.

By moving subsidiarity into technical architecture, rather than human policy, the fediverse can move from antagonism (the “zero-sum destructiveness” that dominates current online debate) to agonism, where your opponent isn’t an enemy — they are a “political adversary”:

https://www.yalelawjournal.org/article/the-administrative-agon

Here, Rozenshtein cites Aymeric Mansoux and Roel Roscam Abbing’s “Seven Theses On The Fediverse And The Becoming Of Floss”:

https://test.roelof.info/seven-theses.html

For this to happen, different ideologies must be allowed to materialize via different channels and platforms. An important prerequisite is that the goal of political consensus must be abandoned and replaced with conflictual consensus…

So your chosen Mastodon server “may have rules that are far more restrictive than those of the major social media platforms.” But the whole Fediverse “is substantially more speech protective than are any of the major social media platforms, since no user or content can be permanently banned from the network and anyone is free to start an instance that communicates both with the major Mastodon instances and the peripheral, shunned instances.”

A good case-study here is Gab, a Fediverse server by and for far-right cranks, conspiratorialists and white nationalists. Most Fediverse servers have defederated (that is, blocked) Gab, but Gab is still there, and Gab has actually defederated from many of the remaining servers, leaving its users to speak freely — but only to people who want to hear what they have to say.

This is true meaning of “freedom of speech isn’t freedom of reach.” Willing listeners aren’t blocked from willing speakers — but you don’t have the right to be heard by people who don’t want to talk to you:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

Fediverse servers are (thus far) nonprofits or hobbyist sites, and don’t have the same incentives to drive “engagement” to maximize the opportunties to show advertisements. Fediverse applications are frequently designed to be antiviral — that is, to prevent spectacular spreads of information across the system.

It’s possible — likely, even — that future Fediverse servers will be operated by commercial operators seeking to maximize attention in order to maximize revenue — but the users of these servers will still have the freedom of exit that they enjoy on today’s Jeffersonian volunteer-run servers — and so commercial servers will have to either curb their worst impulses or lose their users to better systems.

I’ll note here that this is a progressive story of the benefits of competition — not the capitalist’s fetishization of competition for its own sake, but rather, competition as a means of disciplining capital. It can be readily complemented by discipline through regulation — for example, extending today’s burgeoning crop of data-protection laws to require servers to furnish users with exports of their follow/follower data so they can go elsewhere.

There’s another dimension to decentralized content moderation that exit and voice don’t address — moderating “harmful” content. Some kinds of harm can be mitigated through exit — if a server tolerates hate speech or harassment, you can go elsewhere, preferably somewhere that blocks your previous server.

But there are other kinds of speech that must not exist — either because they are illegal or because they enact harms that can’t be mitigated by going elsewhere (or both). The most spectacular version of this is Child Sex Abuse Material (CSAM), a modern term-of-art to replace the more familiar “child porn.”

Rozenshtein says there are “reasons for optimism” when it comes to the Fediverse’s ability to police this content, though as he unpacked this idea, I found it much weaker than his other material. Rozenshtein proposes that Fediverse hosts could avail themselves of PhotoDNA, Microsoft’s automated scanning tool, to block and purge themselves of CSAM, while noting that this is “hardly foolproof.”

If automated scanning fails, Rozenshtein allows that this could cause “greater consolidation” of Mastodon servers to create the economies of scale to pay for more active, human moderation, which he compares to the consolidation of email that arose as a result of the spam-wars. But the spam-wars have been catastrophic for email as a federated system and produced all kinds of opportunities for mischief by the big players:

https://doctorow.medium.com/dead-letters-73924aa19f9d

Rozenshtein: “There is a tradeoff between a vibrant and diverse communication system and the degree of centralized control that would be necessary to ensure 100% filtering of content. The question, as yet unknown, is how stark that tradeoff is.”

The situation is much simpler when it comes to servers hosted by moderators who are complicit in illegal conduct: “the Fediverse may live in the cloud, its servers, moderators, and users are physically located in nations whose governments are more than capable of enforcing local law.” That is, people who operate “rogue” servers dedicated to facilitating assassination, CSAM, or what-have-you will be arrested, and their servers will be seized.

Fair enough! But of course, this butts up against one of the Fediverse’s shortcomings: it isn’t particularly useful for promoting illegal speech that should be legal, like the communications of sex workers who were purged from the internet en masse following the passage of SESTA/FOSTA. When sex workers tried to establish a new home in the fediverse on a server called Switter, it was effectively crushed.

This simply reinforces the idea that code is no substitute for law, and while code can interpret bad law as damage and route around it, it can only do so for a short while. The best use of speech-enabling code isn’t to avoid the unjust suppression of speech — it’s to organize resistance to that injustice, including, if necessary, the replacement of the governments that enacted it:

https://onezero.medium.com/rubber-hoses-fd685385dcd4

Rozenshtein briefly addresses the question of “filter bubbles,” and notes that there is compelling research that filter bubbles don’t really exist, or at least, aren’t as important to our political lives as once thought:

https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/nor-2021-0002

Rozenshtein closes by addressing the role policy can play in encouraging the Fediverse. First, he proposes that governments could host their own servers and use them for official communications, as the EU Commission did following Musk’s Twitter takeover:

https://social.network.europa.eu

He endorses interoperability mandates which would required dominant platforms to connect to the fediverse (facilitating their users’ departure), like the ones in the EU’s DSA and DMA, and proposed in US legislation like the ACCESS Act:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/04/eu-digital-markets-acts-interoperability-rule-addresses-important-need-raises

To get a sense of how that would work, check out “Interoperable Facebook,” a video and essay I put together with EFF to act as a kind of “design fiction,” in the form of a user manual for a federated, interoperable Facebook:

https://www.eff.org/interoperablefacebook

He points out that this kind of mandatory interop is a preferable alternative to the unconstitutional (and unworkable!) speech bans proposed by Florida and Texas, which limit the ability of platforms to moderate speech. Indeed, this is an either-or proposition — under the terms proposed by Florida and Texas, the Fediverse couldn’t operate.

This is likewise true of proposals to eliminate Section 230, the law that immunizes platforms from federal liability for most criminal speech acts committed by their users. While this law is incorrectly smeared as a gift to Big Tech, it is most needed by small services that can’t possibly afford to monitor everything their users say:

https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/

One more recommendation from Rozenshtein: treat interop mandates as an alternative (or adjunct) to antitrust enforcement. Competition agencies could weigh interoperability with the Fediverse by big platforms to determine whether to enforce against them, and enforcement orders could include mandates to interoperate with the Fediverse. This is a much faster remedy than break-ups, which Rozenshtein is dubious of because they are “legally risky” and “controversial.”

To this, I’d add that even for people who would welcome break-ups (like me!) they are sloooow. The breakup of AT&T took 69 years. By contrast, interop remedies would give relief to users right now:

https://onezero.medium.com/jam-to-day-46b74d5b1da4

On Tue (Mar 7), I’m doing a remote talk for TU Wien.

On Mar 9, you can catch me in person in Austin at the UT School of Design and Creative Technologies, and remotely at U Manitoba’s Ethics of Emerging Tech Lecture.

On Mar 10, Rebecca Giblin and I kick off the SXSW reading series.

[Image ID: A trilemma Venn diagram, showing three ovoids in a triangular form, which intersect at their tips, but not in the middle. The ovoids are labeled 'Avoid angering users,' 'Diverse userbase,' 'Centralized platforms.' In the center of the ovoids is the Mastodon mascot. The background is composed of dead Twitter birds on their backs with exes for eyes.]

#pluralistic #cda #cda230 #section 230 #content moderation #federation #intermediary liability #mastodon #fediverse #protocols not platforms #activitypub #moderator's trilemma #agonism #subsidiary

[yes-these-obsessions-are-healthy]

Ok no but Arcane Survivor!AU crack idea. Piltover || Lanes || Zaun. Spitballing ideas

-Vander and the kids as Lanes. They try their best but Jinx accidentally causes Vander, Mylo, and Claggor to get medically evacced during challenges or at camp due to some ambitious mistakes and risky maneuvers to win. With only them left, Vi and Jinx are split up and absorbed into the two tribes, Vi to Piltover, Jinx to Zaun. Silco naturally takes Jinx under his wing, to the chagrin of Sevika and the rest.

-Viktor is out Episode 1 on Piltover’s side due to medical issues flaring up. He tried his best :(

-In Piltover, Mel and Jayce finding love, Mel putting Jayce in her pocket and weaving him around her finger as they become the dominant forces in their tribe

-In Piltover, Heimerdinger at some point is voted out despite having contributed a whole lot to his team due to politicking on Mel and Jayce’s end. The nice trusting guy gets to be the scapegoat

-Also in Piltover, Cait and Vi at first are at each other’s throats, but eventually find love and try to set themselves up as their own coalition/alliance against Jayce and Mel

-In Zaun, Sevika and Silco constantly argue over Jinx, but Jinx proves that her wacky out-there ideas on how to solve puzzles and challenges is what nets them win after win, though at the cost of some injuries toward other tribe members. Silco somehow manages to convince everyone that a few bruises and scrapes and near-accidental drownings are worth the wins because it means their tribe is still robust in members

-However, over time the number of injuries become so great that some need to be evacced or become less than optimal during the challenges to the point they can’t execute the plans Jinx and Silco lay out and they start to lose

-depending on the location, Jinx manages to trap local wildlife and provide meat for the tribe.

-Also takes charge of decorating the shelters. She and Silco sleep in the same shelter and talk long in the night. In the Interview asides, Silco subtly threatens to stab the producer when they dare suggest it might be a “romantic” relationship (yes, she’s 19, he’s 44. She’s homesick and feels guilty over causing her tribe to dissolve. No it is NOT a romantic thing you nasty voyeurs at home)

-Sevika in her Interview: *arms crossed* Nah it’s nothing like that. Still weird though. And she’s a fucking brat regardless. Kid put stinkbugs in my porridge this morning.

-Something something something something Silco and Jinx in the same tribe and she sometimes makes the team lose challenges but sometimes is the linchpin and during one challenge she makes a mistake and gets Silco seriously injured and he needs to be medically evacced but he’s like ‘No it’s okay. You’ve done so well. You can win this for the both of us.’ AND SHE FUCKING. DOES.

Idk i’m just rambling.

#silco #jinx #vi #mel #caitlyn #sevika #jayce #heimerdinger #character headcanons #Arcane AUs

[devilsrecreation]

Outlanders episode/fanfic idea

Body swap/position swap with the leaders (except Jasiri, she’s safe lol)

1. The position swap is pretty simple. Janja, Reirei, Kiburi, and Mzingo are all arguing on who has the most responsibilities. Sick of the arguing and bragging about everyone’s problems, Jasiri decides everyone needs to walk in each other’s shoes and orders the others to switch places. Janja switches places with Kiburi and Reirei switches with Mzingo. Shupavu and Njano get to watch all the leaders suffer and realize leading the different groups isn’t as easy as they thought

2. The body swap is the more fun version. The problem’s basically the same, except there’s a shooting star involved. Upon seeing it, Madoa is like “Wow! A shooting star! Make a wish, Jasiri!” and Jasiri half-jokingly says “Lol I wish everyone would get to walk in each other’s footsteps”. Little does she know, the leaders wake up trapped in different bodies. And thus, hilarity ensues.

- Janja: Janja thinks ruling over the crocs is a piece of cake since Tamka and Nduli are basically Chungu and Cheezi as crocodiles. Little does he know, it’s a lot harder than it looks, since Janja has to learn how to fight as a reptile while also making sure he gets enough water. I like to think Janja would try to spar with Tamka or Nduli, only to have his tail handed to him

- Kiburi: Kinda similar to Janja while he gets used to being a mammal, but he’s pulling through. However, he’s GOT to teach the other hyenas how to fight cuz during a sparring match, he whooped everybody’s tails. Now it’s up to the rest of the clan to teach Kiburi how to loosen up

- Reirei: Reirei is not doing well as a bird. She may be good at being a mother and the voting isn’t so bad, but she cannot eat an already decaying animal for her life. And it takes about all day to learn how to fly properly

- Mzingo: He’s raised Janja and his clan pretty much their whole lives, he’s sure he can handle a litter of pups and teenagers, right? …….Right? Well, not si much. Turns out his parliamentary rules don’t really work with jackal pups. And on top of that, Goigoi keeps forgetting Mzingo isn’t really Reirei and keeps trying to kiss him (Mzingo may be gay but Goigoi is NOT his type) 😭

Not even the skinks are safe, cuz Shupavu and Njano have switched with Kenge and Sumu hfhfgf. I guess bc they thought Kenge and Sumu’s lives were easier just cuz they had venom to protect themselves

- Shupavu in Sumu’s body: Shupavu was confident Sumu’s life was easy (save for his lack of friends when he was a child) cuz of the stinger. What she DIDN’T realize was that apparently, her new stinger could come off easily and not affect certain predators like hornbills and baboons. She also learns that like Ushari’s venom, Sumu’s venom is rather precious to him and she has to be careful not to use it too much

- Njano in Kenge’s body: I think Njano is the only one who loves his new body. He’s big, he’s got venom, and he has way too much fun scaring other animals for the fun of it. I think his only downside is that he can’t exactly sneak or spy on anyone cuz they all know he’s coming lmao. Like his og form, Njano tends to leave his (or should I say, Kenge’s) tongue sticking out, making Kenge’s body a little less intimidating, much to Kenge’s chagrin

- Sumu in Shupavu’s body: This has got to be the strangest one. A scorpion in a skink’s body. While Sumu kinda enjoys the new look (and he has a much easier chance of making a new friend if he wanted to), he’s no longer venomous. And he’s got a lot more predators than he usually had, making him turn to Shupavu and Njano for protection. Also he internally freaked out when he accidentally detached Shupavu’s tail, thinking he was gonna die (which is realistic for scorpions)

- Kenge in Njano’s body: This is probably the funniest one yet. Kenge, the big venomous monitor lizard with a hatred for anything little is….well, little. And because he doesn’t have any venom either, he’s pretty much harmless. He can’t even be taken seriously cuz Njano’s face is so goofy, he appears angy and that just makes everyone laugh and go “awww”. Lmao poor Kenge

Thankfully, everyone only has to deal with this for a day, since Jasiri manages to reverse it (as for how, off the top of my head, she wishes on the north star)

#inspired by a post on an rp blog i saw and i was like oooooh that’s an idea #still cannot get over kenge in njano’s body #i did my boy dirty #fanfic idea #TLG