#st aids references

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the st soundtrack choices and the way that they’re edited and incorporated are fucking genius seriously you guys it ties into the narrative and queerness and other themes so well and also if you enjoy my gay mike analysis you’re def gonna want to read this imo

if i ever start talking about the ST song choices and their relationship to songs/song choices regarding songs that are seemingly pro-protest and anti-conformity but are actually still safe enough to still enforce the norm and have  been ACTIVELY USED by conservative politicians to give the appearance of counterculture and rebellion while still upholding and enforcing the norm while giving their supporters the illusion of rebellion and freedom, and how oppressors like to frame themselves as the underdogs and how not only do oppressors/rightwingers want to squash counterculture music and expression but also will actively steal and twist it to make it reinforce the norm and fit their agenda, i Will Not Stop talking about it, like once that can of worms is opened it is uncloseable sorry. 

yes i am staring DIRECTLY at “raise a little hell” being used for steve’s party which is tied to conformity and seems like rebellion but actually isn’t rebellion (like how jonathan talks about how nancy is just a suburban girl who thinks she’s rebelling but is actually just doing the same thing as other suburban girls)  yes i am staring DIRECTLY at ‘rock you like a hurricane’ and ‘shout at the devil’ and ‘the four horsemen’ and billy, somebody who sees himself as counterculture and rock and roll but in reality is using rock and roll to reinforce dated, bigoted beliefs and promote hatred. and how all of those songs, despite all being rock songs, occupy different subcultures and tie into politics and culture in very different ways.  like they didn’t do this accidentally, this pattern of songs is constant and it’s backed up by scenes like what i mentioned with steve and jonathan and nancy and conformity. and thats why i have a LOT TO SAY ABOUT THE SONG CHOICES IN S4 RELATIVE TO S4′S THEMES OF ANTI CONFORMITY AND HOW WE HAVE TO LOOK PAST THE SURFACE AND JUST ARGHHHHH  like i remember seeing a genius quote about it in an article awhile back (not abt st specifically but about the phenomena of how conservatives and those who want to maintain the norm use rock and roll and previously counter-culture efforts in order to twist it and enforce the norm): 

“rock n roll isn’t dead, rock n roll is alive and wants tax cuts for the rich” it’s not just limited to rock and roll though, pop songs that are deemed to be nostalgic and counterculture are used in that way too (even if they actually ARE counterculture and QUEER TOO, they get twisted), specifically Rise Up by Parachute Club comes to mind, which isn’t in st, but similar songs ARE and thats why im so excited to analyze them, because Rise Up was thought to be a queer anthem but was used WITHOUT PERMISSION as the theme for the United Alternative convention (a canadian rightwing convention) and im certain that there’s other pop and rock songs in ST that have similar things that have happened to them, in addition to the ones that i’ve already mentioned  imo this ties into why we don’t HEAR any really harsh metal etc. it’s not an accident. there’s a REASON why metal doesn’t play for eddie until his scene at the end and also why they chose master of puppets specifically and how rock music is literally constantly used as a puppet to reinforce the norm under the guise of rebellion and how EDDIE STILL DIED DESPITE HIS REBELLION and how master of puppets is also about drug use and how people think that they’re in control/the master but they’re actually the puppet of their addiction just like how people often think that they’re being counterculture and progressive but they’re actually reinforcing the norm (see: billy)  and reason this ties into why we hear a KISS song during the hellfire game instead of a dio song or an iron maiden song or any of the more harsh metal songs that eddie is CLEARLY A FAN OF, ones that LITERALLY HAVE FUCKING SONGS ABOUT WIZARDS AND DND RELATED THINGS but they didnt use that but they DID use ‘detroit rock city’ but they CUT THE SUBSTANCE OUT OF IT JUST LIKE HOW CONSERVATIVES CUT THE SUBSTANCE AND COUNTERCULTURE OUT OF SONGS WHEN THEY TWIST THEM FOR THEIR OWN NARRATIVE, because they cut out the intro of detroit rock city where a radio broadcast plays talking about a boy in a car crash AND they cut out the car crash at the end. and this ties into what im saying about cutting the substance out of it because without the context, the song just seems like it’s about rock and roll and having a fun time and a guy recklessly driving to a concert. but WITH the context, we learn that the guy that the song is talking about, the one driving recklessly to a concert, IS THE ONE WHO THE RADIO BROADCAST IS TALKING ABOUT, THE ONE WHO DIED. because we hear the CRASH AT THE END. but the show didn’t include the radio broadcast OR the crash!! because THEY LITERALLY REMOVED THE DANGER and the SUBSTANCE OF THE SONG THEY REMOVED THE FULL CONTEXT, JUST LIKE THE CONSERVATIVES, THE SHOW USED IT TO SUPPORT THEIR OWN NARRATIVE AND NOT SHOW US THE FULL PICTURE/NOT MAKE US AWARE OF THE DANEGR (THE DANGER BEING A.) HOMOPHOBIA AND CONFORMITY BUT ALSO B.) THE LITERAL DANGER OF VECNA AND HOW WHAT HAPPENS IN THE DND GAME MIRRORS WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED WITH HENRY/VECNA BUT HOW WE DONT REALIZE IT BECAUSE IT JUST SEEMS LIKE A GAME. and THAT’S just like how the GA sees dnd and the dnd arc in s4 as being JUST about the game, as JUST hearing ‘detroit rock city’ without the context and thinking it’s just about a guy going to a concert, not realizing that it’s about his DEATH AS A RESULT OF THAT CONCERT, just like how the dnd and hellfire arc in s4 it was NEVER just about dnd, it’s about queerness and the aids crisis and homophobia too.  Just like how the satanic panic was NEVER JUST ABOUT DND but the media and conservatives manipulated the rhetoric to make it seem like they were just scared of the game. It was about hating outcasts, upholding the norm, homophobia, and all forms of bigotry. It was about control and maintaining the norm, anti-conformity.  and this lack of use of actual metal music up until master of puppets also ties into how rock music and metal specifically was demonized in the satanic panic and how while people could see eddie as being counterculture and would demonize metal music, they never actually take the time to get to know him just like how they never actually take the time to listen to metal music. because just like how if they took the time to get to know eddie, they’d realize he isn’t evil, the same applies with metal music. and this sounds like im pulling stuff out of my ass but this is why eddie mentions ozzy osbourne to steve and that’s why steve narratively doesnt know who ozzy osbourne is.  it’s not just a random scene, the purpose of this scene is to tie “not getting to know/listen to eddie” to “not getting to know/listen to metal”- why? because OZZY OSBOURNE AND BLACK SABBATH IS LITERALLY KNOWN FOR HAVING VERY POSITIVE MESSAGES ABOUT PEACE AND LOVE AND KINDNESS AND ANTI-WAR IN THEIR SONGS. BUT PEOPLE CAN’T SEE PAST THE HARSH METAL OF IT TO ACTUALLY LISTEN TO THE MUSIC. JUST LIKE HOW THEY CAN’T SEE PAST EDDIE’S APPEARANCE AND GET TO KNOW HIM. Steve doesn’t *know* who ozzy osbourne is, just like he doesn’t know eddie, just like how people don’t know metal music, just like how people make baseless assumptions about both of them.  THIS IS ALSO WHY WE SEE STEVE BITING A  BAT, JUST LIKE EDDIE MENTIONS OZZY DOING: BECAUSE STEVE AND OZZY ARENT THAT DIFFERENT, BLACK SABBATH AND THE BEATLES ARENT THAT DIFFERENT, MUCH OF THE CORE MESSAGE IS THE SAME, MESSAGES OF LOVE AND PEACE AND ANTI WAR.This is why we don’t hear ‘real’ metal music in s4 until the end, with master of puppets, because people aren’t seeing eddie for who he is, people, the audience, literally aren’t hearing the music until the end, people don’t see eddie for what he is (a good person and a hero) until he is dead. Just like how people NOW see the fact that black sabbath is full of good messaging, but didn’t see it at the time (which also ties into how black sabbath HAS been used in present-day to reinforce the norm). And all of this ties into ‘shout at the devil’ too, and how Billy and so many people at the party but esp Billy and his character, don’t realize what the song is actually about (motley crue talking about how ‘hey i mean technically this supports you christian folk, because it’s shout AT the devil, not WITH the devil,’  but how that’s rooted in sarcasm because the rightwing christians don’t realize that THEY are the devil, just like Lucas’ ‘normal’s just a raging psychopath’ quote, they don’t realize that their ‘normalcy’ IS the hatred) and then ALSO how ‘shout at the devil’ has been repurposed by nostalgic rightwingers trying to reinforce the norm while thinking that they’re rebelling (ie, again, those rightwingers think that they’re the victims, that they’re shouting at the devil, not realizing that they ARE the devil.)  Just like how black sabbath’s messaging of peace and love but also taking action and even violence against hatred WAS counterculture, because the current culture is hatred, so love is the real counterculture. Just like how I’ve talked about before, having a happy ending for the queer characters is the most counter-culture thing that the show could do, more counter culture and shocking than any violent bury your gays death could possibly ever be, because those circumstances are the NORM, queer success and joy and happiness is the real counterculture.  and how we DID hear metal music with Billy in previous seasons, with him listening to Metallica, but how that’s tied to the fact that BILLY is the one not hearing the music, ignoring the counterculture reality of the lyrics and instead continuing to conform with misogyny and racism and homophobia and heternormativity, he sees hatred as counterculture which is not true because the current norm and culture is rooted around hatred and bigotry.   and then how THAT and the satanic panic ties into a queer allegory and the aids crisis panic and how the music choices circle back to that and how the oppressors tend to see themselves as the oppressed and position themselves as victims (cough Jason cough and cough catholic victim complex cough and the people pushing the satanic panic acting as if they were the ones being being targeted when in reality they were the ones targeting others and how during the aids crisis, homophobes etc saw themselves as the victim of ‘the predatory gays trying to give them aids’ instead of seeing the aids victims as the victims and how it ALL TIES TOGETHER and how VECNA SEES HIMSELF AS THE VICTIM WHEN HE’S THE OPPRESSOR HE SEES HIMSELF AS SAVING PEOPLE AND HAVING BEEN VICTIMIZED WHEN HE IS THE ONE VICTIMIZING PEOPLE!!!!!

AND HOW ALL OF THESE BIG THEMES TIE INTO THE CYCLE OF ABUSE IN A BIG WAY BUT ALSO IN A MORE PERSONALIZED AND SMALLER SCALE WAY WITH ABUSERS SEEING THEMSELVES SOLELY AS VICTIMS AND CONTINUING TO PERPETUATE THAT ABUSE. EVEN LONNIE POSITIONS HIMSELF AS THE VICTIM IN A ROUNDABOUT WAY WHEN IT COMES TO WILL’S DEATH, WANTING TO COLLECT MONEY AS ONE OF THE ‘VICTIMS’ OF THE QUARRY’S NEGLECT/WILL’S DEATH. MEANWHILE, LONNIE WAS THE ABUSER TO WILL, LONNIE WAS THE ONE WHO HURT WILL. BUT HE POSITIONS HIMSELF AS A VICTIM, JUST LIKE HE DOES WITH JOYCE AND JONATHAN, WHEN HE’S TALKING TO JONATHAN IN S1, HE TALKS ABOUT “maybe i’m not the bad guy,” and how JOYCE is the problem. Abusers and oppressors positioning themselves as victims is a constant theme in ST and it only makes sense that it would be reflected in the music, which is why i DONT think that i’m looking too far into it with this writeup!!  and yes this also ties into the s3 trailer baba o riley remix LIKE GOD I NEED TO WORK ON MY ST MUSIC ANALYSIS I HAVE SO MUCH TO SAY and how theres a reason why they use certain songs from the 70s vs the 80s and themes of nostalgia but also of using that nostalgia to reinforce the norm of heteronormative, conservative and hateful beliefs.  and i also have a LOT TO SAY ABOUT THE SONG CHOICES FOR WILL AND JONATHAN AND THOSE SONGS BEING USED IN A GENUINELY COUNTERCULTURE WAY WITH WILL BEING GAY AND JONATHAN BEING AN OUTCAST AND HOW BEING COUNTERCULTURE ISNT ABOUT WHAT YOU LISTEN TO BUT ABOUT WHO YOU ARE AND HOW EVEN THOUGH SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO IS ONE OF THOSE SONGS THAT  *HAS* BEEN USED BY THE RIGHTWING TO REINFORCE THE NORM, THE *WAY* THAT ITS USED AND PRESENTED IN ST AND IS LITERALLY ONLY EVER USED IN SITUATIONS WHERE THE CHARACTERS CAN HEAR THE SONG VERSUS OTHER SONGS LIKE ‘ROCK ME LIKE A HURRICANE’ THAT ARE USED IN A WAY THAT CHARACTERS CANT HEAR THEM AND SO ITS NOT ABOUT WHAT THE SONG IS SO MUCH AS IT IS THE ACTIONS TIED TO IT AND HOW ITS BEING USED AND HOW THAT LITERALLY APPLIES TO HOW THE SHOW USES IT BUT ALSO  HOW IT GETS USED IRL AND HOW EVEN SONGS THAT ARE GENUINELY COUNTERCULTURE GET STOLEN AND USED TO REINFORCE THE NORM AND HOW SONGS THAT WERENT INTENDED TO BE COUNTERCULTURE CAN BECOME COUNTERCULTURE AND AND AND  JUST ARGHHH I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS AND ALSO HOW WE HAVE SONGS *ABOUT* ROCK AND ROLL BUT ARE LACKING IN ACTUALLY GETTING TO HEAR THOSE ROCK AND ROLL SONGS THEMSELVES Regarding songs that are about rock and roll but not actually really rock and roll songs, I am staring DIRECTLY at you, ‘rock and roll hoochie koo’ and ‘rock me amadeus’ in s4 and even ‘detroit rock city’ which sure its a rock song but its also ABOUT ROCK, we get more songs ABOUT ROCK than we do ROCK SONGS and even with detroit rock city, like i said, they REMOVE THE CONTEXT, and it’s very interesting to me, especially with the rock song, ‘play with me’ by extreme that plays when mike is looking for dnd players and how that ties into my gay mike analysis- sorry not sorry- and into the themes of conformity for mike but explicitly how those themes tie into him being GAY, not just that he’s affected by conformity, because he IS affected by it in multiple ways outside of his sexuality, but it’s also explicitly tied TO him being gay and how just like the dnd arc was never just about dnd/games and is also about homophobia and queerness AND how games/dnd has been tied to mike and will’s sexualities and relationships, the song ‘play with me’ is not just about games/mike trying to find people to play games with, it’s also about mike trying to figure out his sexuality/who he wants to be with/’play’ with (be in a relationship with/who he’s attracted to.  and that’s why we get so much ‘mike doesn’t like women’ imagery in those scenes but ALSO more ‘mike DOES like men’ imagery in those scenes and in the van scene with ‘boy’ behind his head whereas in previous seasons the imagery was more focused on ‘mike doesn’t like women’ and how a lot of his attraction towards men in previous seasons was directed towards Will Specifically rather than acknowledging his attraction to men as whole (ie in S4, he has the word ‘boy’ beside his head instead of the word ‘will’ behind him or something representing Will, whereas in s3, we see things representing Will Specifically rather than boys as a whole, things like the Will the Wise drawing beside Mike’s head when he’s making out with El in the bedroom) but now in s4, mike is coming to terms more with his attraction to men as a whole.  and how THAT ties into mike slowly getting over his heteronormativity and internalized homophobia and moving away from just focusing on the heteronormative failure of not being attracted to girls and instead towards his active attraction to men and moving away from viewing everything through that heteronormative lens of seeing everything relative to his attraction to women and through the internalized homophobia lens of being disgusted with himself about his attraction to men (cough sauna scene cough and how im going to show in my gay mike analysis that mike was disgusted with HIMSELF in that scene)  and how mike may be disgusted with himself about his attraction to men but just like how other people/will’s love for mike specifically makes Will feel better/not like a mistake/helps him get over his internalized homophobia, mike’s love for will specifically is what helps him get over his internalized homophobia regarding his active attraction to men, just like how i said, we saw the imagery shift from “attraction to will specifically vs lack of attraction to girls as a whole (rather than lack of attraction to el specifically)” to “attraction to men as a whole specifically in addition to attraction to will and how his attraction to will helped him come to terms with that attraction to men vs still having that lack of attraction to girls as a whole because he’s already come to his realizations about that in s3″ especially with mike’s obvious crush on eddie and how he’s branching out in attraction to men as a whole outside of will because he’s already realized his lack of attraction to girls but is now figuring out his attraction to men in s4 AND how this STILL ties back into how will/mike’s love for will helped him get over his internalized homophobia AND into the music choices in st, because the songs that play during the mike-eddie cafeteria scene are “i was a teenage werewolf” and “fever,” and how long story short the “Teen Wolf” poster in the video store 100% represents Will, especially with ‘Teen Wolf’ literally having a scene where the character comes out as a werewolf but the other person asks them initially if they’re coming out ‘as a fag’ (and theres a million other parallels to will that i could go into but wont for the sake of the length of this post but WILL go into at another time so just take my word for it rn or go look for yourselves at the movie), and so then,  we have “fever,” a song about infatuation that represents mike’s crush on eddie/his sexuality/attraction to men as a whole, but then also ‘I was a teenage werewolf,” a song that TIES THAT ATTRACTION/ABILITY TO COME TO TERMS WITH HIS SEXUALITY to his FEELINGS FOR WILL. It’s not just his crush on eddie that helps him come to terms with it/admit his sexuality for himself, it’s that his feelings for will help him come to terms with his CRUSH ON EDDIE and with his sexualty, since again, like I said, Mike may be able to apply that internalized homophobia hatred to himself, but he CANNOT APPLY IT TO WILL.  And how all of THAT is part of WHY mike seems to go back into the closet (in terms of being out to HIMSELF) at rink o mania/in lenora, why we get ‘in the closet at rink o mania,’ because MIKE IS LITERALLY GOING BACK IN THE CLOSET. because WILL is what makes him feel better about his sexuality, but now that he’s having conflict with will, he’s questioning his sexuality too/his willingness to be out, ESPECIALLY SINCE LIKE I TALKED ABOUT IN ANOTHER POST, HE SEEMS TO THINK THAT WILL TOTALLY HAS A CRUSH ON ANGELA AT RINK O MANIA, SO NOW NOT ONLY IS HE DOUBTING THE IDEA THAT WILL COULD HAVE FEELINGS FOR HIM BUT HES DOUBTING THE IDEA THAT WILL LIKES MEN AT ALL. AND SO IF MIKES LOVE FOR WILL IS TIED TO HIS ABILITY TO BE OPEN WITH HIMSELF ABOUT HIS SEXUALITY AS A WHOLE, THEN WHEN HE FEELS LIKE HE’S LOSING WILL/IT ISNT REQUITED/HE’S WRONG ABOUT THINKING THAT WILL COULD BE GAY, THEN HE STARTS TO DOUBT HIMSELF AND HIS OWN SEXUALITY TOO AND WHETHER OR NOT HE’S ACTUALLY GAY OR IF THERE’S JUST SOMETHING ELSE ‘WRONG’ WITH HIM/IF HIS LACK OF ATTRACTION TO GIRLS COMES FROM SOMETHING ELSE.  AND SO MIKE IS LITERALLY GOING BACK INTO THE CLOSET AT RINK O MANIA HES LITERALLY GOING BACK INTO IT DESPITE THE CLOSET DOOR BEING OPEN IN S4 EP1 DESPITE HOW HE SEEMS MORE LIKE HIMSELF AND PLAYS DND IN HAWKINS BUT THEN TOTALLY CHANGES IN LENORA. He’s BACK in the closet at rink o mania, but started closing the door as soon as he saw will/was gay panicking and having doubts.  And how imo that ties into why we see so much bi imagery at rink o mania, but how I still think that aligns with gay mike and actually plays a key role in backing up what i’ve said here about the connection between mike’s love for will and his ability to get over his internalized homophobia/embrace his attraction to men: because we specifically see WILL in front of the bi imagery more than we do mike: because not only is mike reconsidering his own ability to be out/his own attraction to men, but he’s also reconsidering any suspicions that he may have had about Will being gay, because he seemingly sees Will having a crush on Angela, which i talked about at length in this post, and how like i’ve said before, when you look at the evidence objectively without the context of Will’s sexuality being confirmed, WILL seems like the possibly bi one because his sexuality isn’t nearly as framed around lack of attraction to women as mike’s is- and mike doesn’t have that outside ‘will is gay’ confirmation from noah schnapp/the duffers, so he IS relying on that ‘objective, in-the-show- evidence,’ but actually has even LESS evidence than us for will being gay and not bi, because Mike hasn’t seen things like the conversation between Hopper and Joyce about Lonnie calling Will a fag, he hasn’t seen Will’s pov the way that we have, at rink o mania, he hasn’t seen Will making a painting for him, he didn’t see Will’s reaction at the sauna, there’s so much gay Will imagery that mike HAS NOT SEEN.  He’s seen the homophobic bullying etc though, so he does still have enough to go off to suspect that will could be gay/into men, but he doesn’t have confirmation, and he DEFINITELY hasnt seen a ton of ‘will explicitly doesn’t like women imagery’ because even we are the audience havent seen very much of that, not nearly as much as we’ve seen for mike, which, mike’s own lack of attraction towards women is what he’s going base his analysis of Will off of, and we know that mike has a LOT of scenes where he’s put into a situation where he feels that lack of attraction, whereas not only does will have many, he has EVEN FEWER that mike actually gets to see (ie, the girl in lenora, mike doesn’t see that) which, THAT, imo is why we see the bi imagery at rink o mania, when the two of them are fighting and mike is confused about his sexuality and will’s sexuality, but see way more explicitly gay/not interested in women imagery everywhere else in the show. it’s not that they forgot to put the bi imagery in other scenes and instead their hand slipped and they put explicitly gay/lack of attraction to women imagery. it’s that the bi imagery at rink o mania serves a specific purpose in regards to will and mike’s dynamic and sexualities and trying to figure themselves and eachother out. (not that bi people are just confused but that this is the 80s and that will and mike are trying to figure out labels and mike is trying to figure out if will IS bi and mike is trying to figure out if hes going to continue to try and pretend to  have attraction to women/stay in the closet due to the connection between mike’s relationship with will vs mike’s ability to embrace his own sexuality)  (which, just expanding on that, like i said, mike has seen the homophobia that will’s faced AND mike in s3 feels like he’s seen will having a lack of attraction to girls- the ‘day free of girls’ scene despite the fact that that scene was more about will’s friends ignoring him than it was about will’s attraction to girls, we’re looking at this from mike’s pov- so i think that mike could absolutely have suspicions that will IS gay and that it’s not just random bullying IN ADDITION to his own hopes about his feelings being requited) It’s like how if Lucas was mike’s “straight” guide (mike going to lucas about girls in s3 constantly and letting lucas take the lead and how lucas also pushes mike towards el when making fun of him in 1), then Will is mike’s gay guide LMAO.  It’s not that Mike is only gay if he can be with will/if will is gay: mike is still gay regardless, but it’s about mike’s ability to accept and embrace that gayness. Especially since if Mike is being internally homophobic to himself and believing in the homophobic stereotypes, then he, in his mike brain, has to also apply that hatred/stereotypes to Will, which is where it becomes difficult for mike and why Will is tied to mike’s ability to embrace his sexuality outside of just his love for will specifically.  And how while Mike’s love for will is what helps him get over his internalized homophobia, his platonic love for el is what helps him get over his heteronormativity (he experiences BOTH imo because heteronormativity alone does NOT explain his disgust and shame towards HIMSELF during the sauna scene and how he was the one holding the door open etc etc but thats a topic for the full gay mike analysis) because he’s hurting her as a result of it and doesn’t want to hurt her because he DOES love her platonically and care about her!  And so that’s the thing. Mike’s love for Will is tied to his active attraction to men/his internalized homophobia, whereas his platonic love for El/his relationship with El is what’s tied to heteronormativity. This is also why I don’t believe that Mike has been intentionally using El as a beard all along, because El isn’t narratively connected to the internalized homophobia side of things, she’s connected to the heternormativity side of things.  and how THAT ties into that fact that gay mike works SO WELL with el and her arc and character and how once el finds out that it was never ABOUT HER as a person, that it’s not that mike doesnt LOVE HER but rather that he’s not attracted to girls AT ALL, she’s going to be HAPPIER than if she found out that mike just fell out of love with her for who she is or something about her/that mike chose Will over her. That’s REALLY one of the big things that makes me a gay mike truther is because if he wasn’t gay, El wouldn’t need to be set up the way that she is as a character, wouldn’t need to be set up in such a specific way with a lack of knowledge about homophobia, wouldn’t need to be set up as a character who’s felt inherently unloveable for who she is, wouldn’t need to be set up as being twins with Will/the writers clearly not just wanting to pit them against eachother, wouldn’t need to be set up in a way where BOTH her and mike don’t understand attraction/romance, because if she was a typical straight girl not raised in a lab, she would have a better/even just a more existent understanding of romance and attraction due to the pressures of heteronormativity that results in girls having to face those topics at a young age, and so then, Mike would be the only one in the couple who doesn’t understand it/is having to figure it out from scratch because he’s gay. But with the way that El’s set up, it’s meant to put them both on equal footing with not understanding attraction/not having a great knowledge of its existence/what it is/how it’s defined and how it feels.  And sure, they’re kids and of course ANY kids don’t understand attraction perfectly: but a gay kid in the 80s and a girl raised in a lab have less of an understanding of it/experience with it. And absolutely, bi people did NOT have it easy in the 80s, I’m not saying that it was easier for them to understand their feelings, I’m saying that they DID have feelings towards the ‘opposite’ gender, whereas for Mike that attraction to the ‘opposite gender’ it’s a blank slate because it doesn’t exist for him, just like it is for El, because it didn’t exist for her in the lab.  If mike was anything other than gay, El wouldn’t be need to set up in a way where Mike being gay is the best-case scenario for her relationship with him and her own arcs and themes and having a happy/satisfying conclusion to them.  So many girls in the 80s who aren’t El, who HAVE been raised with that heteronormativity and understanding of attraction/even if they dont understand, having more of a knowledge of its existence at ALL than el does from a young age would be angry and very likely homophobic if they found out that their boyfriend was gay. But El won’t be. And that way, her relationship with Will isn’t hurt, her relationship with Mike isn’t hurt by him being gay (whereas if he was anything but gay, their relationship would be hurt by him ‘falling out of love’ with her for who she is/something about her, but if he was never in love with her, and isn’t into girls at all, then it’s not about her), that way, El isn’t put into a position of having to choose whether or not to be on the same side as homophobes, who are portrayed consistently as the bad guys in the show.  (I am NOT saying that El being mad at mike would be homophobic. I AM saying that if she was set up in a different way, she would have to make the CHOICE of being homophobic or not, of what side to be on, but this way, she isn’t put into that position, which aligns more with her narrative and character) And like we see in the s4 bedroom fight, El is upset about Mike not saying he loves her, but I also think she’s more upset about Mike lying to her. She KNOWS that he doesn’t show that he’s in love, but she wants to see if he can even say it, if he’ll lie about it or not, and I think the REAL hurt comes from him lying about it.  And so, if Mike is gay, then not only is “mike lying to el about being in love with her” resolved, but “el being hurt by mike not loving her/feeling unloveable for who she is” is resolved, because it was never ABOUT HER.  And sure, “mike lying to el about being in love with her” could be resolved if mike was bi and just fell out of love with her and then was honest with her about it, but again, that doesn’t align with a.) the cracks in their relationship from the VERY BEGINNING IN S1 and b.)  with a satsifying conclusion for el’s arc, themes, and characters, and with her and mike and will all staying on good terms with eachother.  Like I’ve been saying: if not el, then who? Then WHAT GIRL if will specifically wasn’t an option bc it’s not just that he wants to be with will? If mike isn’t in love with el/attracted to her but IS still attracted to girls, then WHAT WOULD HE CHANGE ABOUT EL? WHAT GIRL DOES HE WANT? HE’S ALREADY TRIED TO MOLD HER INTO HIS ‘IDEAL’ GIRL FROM S1 TO S3 AND NOT IN AN INTENTIONALLY HARMFUL WAY BUT IN A ‘VERY INFLUENCED BY HETERONORMATIVITY AND TRYING TO MAKE EL MEET THE SAME EXPECTATIONS THAT HE FEELS HE HAS TO MEET’ WAY. BUT THAT STILL WASN’T ENOUGH!!! Because Mike’s ideal girl DOESNT EXIST. And the closest that we get to it, the scene where Mike initiates the affection, the closest we get to him being attracted to her (even though he isn’t, but it’s the closest scene we get), is when El is a.) dressed more stereotypically masculinely, b.) she looks so similar to will that the guy at the police station literally mistook her for will and c.) she has very little understanding of the world/unique personality/ability to articulate that personality (she does have a unique personality but it isnt SHOWN to mike very much in s1 compared to the other seasons which is the thing).   The closest that we get to Mike being attracted to El, the scene where HE initiates it for once (even during the makeout/affection scenes in s2, El is the one initiating more, she’s the one holding onto HIS arm, she’s the one holding HIS face while they makeout and just sits there or takes her hands off of him), is a scene where El is the closest that she is to resembling a man. And it’s not just that mike still likes women but prefers masculine women, because even THEN, he’s still not fully attracted to her, he’s still operating around heteronormativity and what he thinks he has to do rather than what he actually wants/is attracted to, because he’s still figuring out what he wants/is attracted to.   El is literally his ‘ideal girl/the closest thing to it’ in that scene because she MUST BE the closest thing to an ‘ideal girl’ for him in that scene because it’s the only scene where HE initiates the kiss, its the closest he can get to loving her/being attracted to her, even though he doesn’t/isn’t, it’s the closest that he gets to it.   How are all of the issues with mike and el’s relationship explained if Mike was genuinely attracted to her at some point? They’re not. They’re not fully explained or fully resolved, even though parts of them can be explained. If they wanted to make Mike anything other than explicitly gay, it wasn’t necessary to set El up in the way that she’s set up. Not that El’s character revolves around Mike, but rather, that they could have addressed the exact same themes and ideas with her character without needing to set her up in a way that works perfectly with gay mike.  And how going back to my discussion about counterculture and music, and what is and isn’t counterculture and how people like Billy think that hatred is counterculture when in reality, love and happiness is counter-culture (just like how homophobes and bigots today bitch about how ‘the woke mob is overtaking everything and cishet white conservatives are a minority’), and Mike is starting to embrace counter-culture and anti-conformity in s4 because he’s realizing that love and happiness is the real counter-culture, and beginning to get over his heteronormativity and realize that hatred is the norm and that conformity and the norm sucks and hurts people (whereas in s3 he was trying to embrace conformity and continue to reinforce the norm). Mike is starting to realize that just like I talked with the music, bigots are using symbols of freedom and love and anti-bigotry to turn themselves into the victims Mike is getting over his internalized homophobia because like I said, he not only can’t apply that homophobic rhetoric to will, but being unable to apply it to will makes it more difficult for him to apply it to himself.   People who have enforced heteronormativity and homophobia are acting like they’re the victims of having to deal with queer people rather than the other way around, acting like they’re the victims of the aids crisis rather than queer people, acting like they’re the victims of people like eddie rather than eddie being the victims of people like them. Mike is realizing that society isn’t victimizied by his attraction to men, that it isn’t something bad- that it ISNT BAD because something that hurts something that’s bad (ie mike’s sexuality ‘hurting’ society/heteronormativity) is actually something good. He is realizing that the norm sucks, that the norm is hatred.  People are also using dnd to push their bigoted narrative, it’s all wrapped into the satanic panic alongside the music which is then tied to queerness and the aids crisis and homophobia. Mike was rejecting dnd/embracing that bigoted narrative to an extent in s3 but now he is starting to go against that narrative and embrace dnd and that ties into him embracing his sexuality like i’ve talked about already in this post.  Anyway im gonna explain these last few sections and the links between counter culture, conformity, the ST soundtrack choices and gay mike in a different post/in the analysis, but I need to rewatch the show and analyze the music relative to mike in order to really fully make the point about mike and counterculture and conformity and how it ties into gay mike and how it’s all demonstrated by the ST music.  conclusion: mike wheeler is gay the music is gay the music supports gay mike, the stranger things music team are absolutely genius and the way that the narrative is so interwoven with various topics and how that interweaving is supported by the music choices and the ways in which those music choices are implemented is absolutely fantastic.  god i need to finish both my music analysis and gay mike analysis.

#stranger things #st music #st soundtrack #st analysis #byler #gay mike wheeler #st nost #byler analysis #hellfire as an allegory for queerness #st raise a little hell by trooper #st rock you like a hurricane by the scorpions #st shout at the devil by motley crue #st the four horsemen by metallica #mike’s ability to accept his sexuality is tied to will #st master of puppets by metallica #jason ref #billy hargrove ref #st aids references #st and conformity #el hopper analysis #mike wheeler analysis #milkvan #eddie munson ref #steve harrington ref #mike's active attraction to men #st rock and roll hoochie koo by rick derringer #st detroit rock city by kiss #mike's lack of attraction to girls

[byler-alarmist]

Netflix reference to Byler spotted in another of their shows!!

#this may be their second stranger things reference #i saw that toothed dick in the previous episode that looked like my demobat post and thought it might be a fluke #but this is a direct stranger things reference!!! #so now i'm thinking that flying dick with the circular fangs was really a nod to the demobats after all...... #netflix #stranger things netflix #human resources netflix #st reference #rip off the band-aid #the van scene #stranger things #byler #byler tumblr

[dancingbirdie]

Okay so on Astarion, I was reading this fic about him not knowing Tavs true intentions with him and it bothering Astarion a lot, so what if he goes to some mage or magic user and asks them to show Tavs true intentions to him, when he does the vision he sees is just... being snuggled. It's Tav on top of him and the both of you are falling asleep, his hands are under your shirt softly petting your skin as your sleepy self is contently snuggled up to him. I just start crying about him finding out that Tavs DASTARDLY and EVIL plan with him, their greatest desire from him... is to simply be held. 🥺

Hi @goblin-creatcher! Thank you so much for this BEAUTIFUL prompt. I, uhh, kind of took it and went a million miles an hour with it. This is honestly one of my favorite things I've ever written. I hope you enjoy it as well! xoxoxo

Something Imagined / Something Real

Word Count: 3.9K

Rating: Mature

Pairing: Astarion x f!Tav

Warnings/Tags: Brief but detailed description of rough consensual sex, descriptions and references to Astarion's trauma/trauma responses, minor Act 1 and Act 2 spoilers, FLUFF, angst

Suggested Song Pairing: Slow Dancing in A Burning Room (Stripped) - cover by ST LUNA

Summary: Astarion has been suspicious of Tav’s true intentions toward him. He persuades Gale to cast a spell and reveal her motivations. ANGST and FLUFF ensue. A rewriting of Astarion’s confession scene from Act 2.

The sun had just begun to set on the campsite when Astarion decided to put his plan into action. He had waited until Tav departed with some of the other party members before making his way over to the wizard. Gale was too busy reassembling the bookshelf inside his tent to notice Astarion’s approach. It wasn’t until he gave a polite cough that Gale jumped and whirled to face him. 

“No, no, no,” he began all at once, hands raised in a sort of shooing motion. Astarion stared at him in confusion. “I can respect Tav’s indulging in your need for blood, but as I’ve said before: I taste terrible.” 

Astarion scoffed. “Charming. Actually, wizard, I was coming to request your aid in a different, though somewhat related, matter.”

“Really? Care to elaborate?” Gale responded, still somewhat wary. It wasn’t often he found himself alone with the vampire. 

“Testy, I see,” Astarion crooned teasingly. His knee-jerk response to people treating him like a monster, to behave in the most false saccharine sort of way. 

But he drew up short, censoring himself before saying anything else he might regret. He knew he needed to get on the wizard’s good side if he had any chance of getting the answers he sought. 

“I was hoping you knew a spell to reveal someone’s true intentions. Their… motivations for behaving in a certain way, so to speak,” he finished more seriously. 

Gale pondered the question for a moment before answering. 

“Hmm… yes, there is magic to determine that sort of thing… Although it’s been some time since I practiced it…” He trailed off, rubbing his chin in thought. 

“Why are you asking for such a thing?” he asked suddenly. 

Astarion had been prepared for this question, of course. No one did anything for free, no questions asked. He delivered his explanation perfectly, as he’d been rehearsing in his mind.

“One might say our dear sweet Tav and I have been growing a bit… closer these days, but I can sense a master manipulator when I see one. I just simply want to ensure their intentions toward me - toward the party - are true,” he replied with mock innocence. 

“Ah, yes,” Gale nodded. “I gathered as much when the two of you slipped away from the tiefling’s party a few nights ago.” 

“But,” he continued on,”I needn’t think you should worry when it comes to Tav. She seems about as transparent as they come. I’m sure any intentions she has toward you are true.”

Yes, but the best actors always mask their motivations behind innocence and transparency, Astarion thought to himself. I should know. I’ve been doing it for centuries.

After the party’s unfortunate meeting with that Gur in the Sunlit Wetlands, Astarion realized he would have to take potential threats from Cazador even more seriously. He wasn’t about to lose his freedom, not now that he finally had some small taste of it. 

It didn’t hurt to be more suspicious of everyone he encountered, even the sweetling Tav. Anyone could be an operative sent by Cazador, and the best ones would be as skilled as he was in the art of manipulation. It was well-known at this point that the person he’d grown the closest to on their journey was their brave party leader, Tav. Unlikely as it may be that she was scheming for his master, Astarion’s paranoia wouldn’t let him indulge in interactions with her a second longer unless he knew how she truly felt. 

Given Gale’s hesitation, Astarion knew he would have to kick his acting up a notch. Press on that wizard’s heartstrings. Touch the one nerve he knew he was sensitive to.

“Gale, darling, from one literally damaged soul to another, indulge me just this once,” Astarion beseeched him. 

The wizard glared at him a moment, before finally relenting with a heavy sigh. “Fine. Fine. But I want it known that I don’t agree with this so-called solution one whit,” he grumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

“Yes, yes, noted and formally documented, on my word as a former Baldurian magistrate,” Astarion replied cheerily. “So, let’s hop to it then, shall we?”

“What, right now?” Gale asked, shocked. “Shouldn’t we be, I don’t know, a little less conspicuous?” 

“What better time than now?” Astarion responded. “Tav’s out gathering firewood with Wyll and Karlach. They won’t be back for some time. As for Lae’zel and Shadowheart, well…” he paused, gesturing over his shoulder. 

Said two were engaged in a heated sparring session on the outskirts of the camp. Snarls and curses could be heard emanating from both warriors as they tried, and failed, to gain the upper hand against their opponent.

“That lovers’ dance could go on until morning,” Astarion finished. 

“Fair point,” Gale admitted begrudgingly, grimacing at the sound of swords clashing violently. “Very well. Let’s get started.” 

Clearing his throat, Gale began to utter a series of phrases completely foreign to Astarion. He watched as the wizard began moving his hands in a wavelike pattern, forming a circle before them. Suddenly, a mist began to form from seemingly thin air, taking shape according to the boundaries Gale’s hands were creating. The mist grew more and more opaque until it appeared before them like a clouded mirror. 

As the fogginess of the ethereal magic began to clear, the “mirror” became a confusing blur of scenes whipping by, too fast for Astarion or Gale to really comprehend. There were flashes of Tav and Astarion, together and separate, but they disappeared too quickly to ascertain their context. It was as though the spell was shuffling through the entirety of Tav’s thoughts, assessing each one at breakneck speed. 

Finally, the spell slowed to a halt, stopping on one scene in particular. Astarion was struck speechless by what began playing out in the foggy portal before them. So distracted, he didn’t even notice Gale’s tight cough, or how the wizard suddenly became intensely interested in a copse of trees nearby, rather than the revelation the spell was revealing.

Not that the scene was especially profound, objectively speaking. In fact, to anyone else, it might be viewed as the least revelatory thing possible that the spell could have shown. Boring. Inconsequential, even. But to Astarion, it was almost earth shattering. 

He saw himself - he could see his face! - with Tav, lying tangled together in some immaculate four-poster bed. 

That was the first shock that coursed through him, nearly causing his knees to buckle. He was seeing himself for the first time in over 200 years. Or at least, he was seeing himself as Tav saw him. And… the person he saw… Well, he was gorgeous. White blonde locks, curled and tousled in a devil-may-care sort of way. A strong, patrician nose that suggested good breeding. High, sharp cheekbones. Full lips, upturned in a thoughtless grin. Red eyes bordered by long, sweeping lashes. Delicately pointed elven ears. Smooth alabaster skin, without blemish or spot. 

Astarion could scarcely believe his own eyes. 

The second shock to his system was the nature of their activities. He would have been less surprised had the vision shown them fucking. Him taking her roughly from behind perhaps. His name a cry of ecstasy from her lips as he pistoned in and out of her with a feral sort of determination. 

Fantasies of lust, of total domination, now those were things he was familiar with inspiring in the minds of the victims he had taken as lovers. It was what he strove for, in all honesty. Desire like that all but ensured he would capture his prey and live to serve another day for his master. 

But nothing of the sort was occurring between vision-Tav and himself. Instead, they were just… embracing? What in sweet hells was this?

She lay halfway on top of him. Her hair was mussed, perhaps from sleep or perhaps from previous lovemaking. One hand was drawing absentminded shapes across his chest, her lips trailing behind, leaving kisses in their wake. He watched as vision-Astarion chuckled softly, as his hands slipped beneath her sleepshirt to caress her waist, as he placed an innocent kiss on the top of Tav’s head. Eventually, she reached for his hand. They both watched their fingers intertwine, blissfully content.

It was the purest, unadulterated expression of affection that Astarion had ever seen. Something in his heart quaked at the sight of it. He wanted that moment. He envied, he hated, vision-Astarion for enjoying such apparent happiness.

So absorbed in the vision and its implications, Astarion failed to notice the soft padding of feet that indicated someone’s re-entry into the camp. 

“If the two of you are quite finished poking around in my head,” an angry voice suddenly spat from behind them, “I’d appreciate you preserving what little privacy I have left and shutting that damn spell off.”

Mortified, Astarion and Gale turned to see Tav, arms crossed and visibly seething with rage. Gale quickly dispelled the magic with a flick of his wrist. A blush was slowly but surely rising up Tav’s neck to reach her cheeks. Whether from rage or embarrassment, Astarion couldn’t be certain. 

“Tav, let us explain-” Astarion started.

“It was his idea-” Gale blurted at the same time, pointing at Astarion. 

Both paused, glaring at one another. But Tav would have none of their feeble attempts at backpedaling. 

“The explanation doesn’t matter. Whose idea it was doesn’t matter. The fact is that both of you violated the privacy of my mind, which I’ll remind you, has ALREADY been violated by having a bloody tadpole forced inside of it!” Tav shouted. At their words, the camp became enveloped in a heavy silence. Even the crickets ceased their chirping.

Astarion cringed inwardly, knowing the other party members could plainly hear this altercation and had likely stopped whatever it was that they had been doing to listen in. He noted the sounds of swords clanging together had ceased. He was certain Lae’zel and Shadowheart at least were aware of what was happening. Nosy bastards, all of them.

But what disturbed him even more was the realization that Tav’s eyes were welling with tears. She was too proud to acknowledge them or wipe them away. Such was her nature. But they were there nonetheless, and the knowledge that Astarion had brought her to the point of tears was enough to spur a rush of utter self-loathing inside him.

Without another word, Tav turned on her heel and marched stiffly out of camp, toward the direction of a nearby creek they’d identified as a water source earlier in the day.

“I can’t believe I let you convince me to perform that spell,” Gale said as she disappeared between the trees. He dragged his hands down his face. 

“How could we have been so doltish, forgetting that all of our privacies have already been violated with this tadpole business?”

Astarion didn’t have an answer to that. At least, not one the wizard could possibly understand. 

The thought hadn’t occurred to Astarion, he realized, because violations of privacy had been something so intrinsic to his being for over 200 years. He didn’t even recognize it as something abnormal. Like a fish unaware that the water surrounding it is, in fact, water. 

Violations of privacy were a part of life, at least for him. So much so that his request for Gale to perform that magic hadn’t even occurred to him as an overstepping of boundaries. To Astarion, it had simply been a matter of survival. He had needed to know another potentially manipulative person’s true intentions, and so he had found a means to uncover it and maintain the upper hand. 

Belatedly, he also realized that Gale’s hesitation to cast the spell had had nothing to do with being inconvenienced for the evening, but because the wizard had known that it was improper to do to another person. If he had misread that, Astarion wondered, then what other truly benevolent behaviors had he mistaken as pragmatic manipulation?

“I need to go find her,” Astarion murmured, clenching and unclenching his fists in an uncharacteristic fit of uncertainty. 

“Yes, you do,” Gale asserted. “We both owe her a sincere apology… if she’ll even accept it.”

“I’ll see if I can convince her to come back to camp,” Astarion replied, making to leave in the direction Tav had stormed off. 

“Wait,” Gale said, a hand on his shoulder. Astarion turned to meet his gaze. 

“Look, well, I’m obviously not an expert in healthy demonstrations of affection. But I do think it’s obvious from what you saw in that spell that Tav well and truly cares about you. In perhaps the purest way possible. Treat that carefully.”

Part of Astarion wanted to laugh aloud in utter hopelessness at the wizard’s advice. Someone cared for him? Truly and purely? No hidden games, no strings attached? Oh certainly, that wouldn’t be a problem for Astarion at all. Obviously, his 200-year existence as a master-manipulator-fetch-hound for a power-hungry vampire lord had perfectly prepared him to respond to this situation in a healthy manner. Obviously.

But all that was too much to reveal to someone he barely knew and too heavy to say aloud. Rather than giving some smarmy retort, Astarion opted instead to give a stiff nod and continue walking toward the edge of camp. He had no idea how he could make things right with Tav, but at the very least he could try. 

***

He found Tav sitting on a fallen tree near the edge of the creek bed. Her legs were drawn up to her chest, arms wrapped around them as she rested a cheek to her knees. In the waning twilight, she reminded Astarion of some misbegotten gargoyle perched on the roof of a temple, solitary and so very sad. 

Her ears twitched as she noted his arrival. Astarion wasn’t trying to be stealthy. On top of everything else, the last thing he needed to do was scare her. 

“Can I join you?” he asked softly, wincing to himself at the awkwardness of the question. 

The reality was that there was no way to broach this conversation without some stilted beginning, and he hated it. Navigating tricky conversations was normally something he excelled at. But as he was quickly finding, when it related to Tav, nothing in his past life had prepared him to respond to her well. 

“If you’d like,” Tav answered tonelessly. 

Knowing it was probably the best response he was going to get, Astarion swallowed thickly and moved to sit down on the log next to her. 

“I… wanted to… apologize for what you saw, back at camp,” he began.

“Apologize for doing it, or apologize for getting caught?” Tav asked as she turned her head to look at him, resting her other cheek on her knees. 

Astarion balked at the question. Her piercing gaze unnerved him. He hadn’t really thought that far. 

“Both, I suppose?” he answered honestly, although it sounded more like a question to Tav. She huffed a laugh.

“You know, part of me really wants to yell at you. Scream in your face. Tell you off proper,” she mused.

“So why don’t you?” Astarion asked, perplexed. 

Tav didn’t respond at first, just sat there studying him. As if by staring at him long enough, she could project the answer into his mind. 

Astarion didn’t interrupt her, much as he would have liked to. Part of him always bristled when people gazed at him for too long. It was unfair that they could study him, when he hadn’t been able to so much as glance at his reflection in over 200 years. 

Finally, Tav released a heavy sigh, her body curling further in on itself. She closed her eyes as she spoke.

“Because then I would be just like every other bastard in your life who’s mistreated you.”

Astarion flinched in surprise. Those had not been the sort of words he’d been expecting. The truth of them cut deeper than had she raged at him like she wanted to. It left him feeling even more vulnerable, and that in turn made him want to retreat into the comfort of viciousness.

“I don’t need you to pull any punches,” he scoffed, glaring at her. “Go ahead and say what you will.”

She straightened up at his tone, opening her eyes and returning his glare. 

“No. I don’t want to,” she said testily.

“I don’t need your pity,” he hissed. “It’s insulting.”

“Gods damn it all, Astarion!” Tav exclaimed suddenly, causing him to jump in surprise. She threw her hands up in defeat. “I’m not doing anything out of pity! I don’t want to rage at you, because I know that whatever I say right now, I won’t mean it come the morning!”

Astarion blinked. Once again he was left feeling flat footed by the turn of the conversation. Sensing his surprise, Tav continued on with her deluge of words.

“You hurt me tonight, and I’m angry at you - and at Gale, for that matter - for what you did. But you’ve shared enough of your… history… with me, that I realize your behavior is just… just a byproduct of centuries of abuse and manipulation you’ve endured! And I won’t be another abuser in your life. I won’t,” she asserted. 

Astarion continued staring at her, as if she were some otherworldly creature that had just wandered across his path. He watched as Tav inhaled a deep breath, releasing it shakily. She turned away from him to peer out into the forest, uncertain. She opened and closed her mouth several times before actually speaking. As if whatever she was about to say was more intimidating to her than anything else she’d said tonight. 

“I… care deeply for you, Astarion,” she said quietly. “You obviously saw that in the vision. I’m not playing any games. There’s no hidden motive. I’m not trying to manipulate you.”

She turned to look at him again before continuing, her breathing a bit unsteady. 

“I didn’t sleep with you that night of the tiefling party as some sort of maneuver to gain your trust. Although I understand if that was your motivation for doing so.” 

Astarion’s expression morphed into one of guilt. But Tav nodded soberly, as if she had already expected it, before continuing on. 

“It’s okay. I’m not angry. But I’m putting all my cards on the table now, so to speak. Actually, your decision tonight forced my hand, but I had been planning on telling you soon anyway. So, there you have it. The truth of my intentions. What you do with that information is up to you.”

She turned back to gaze out at their surroundings. Like she was giving him the opportunity to bolt away without her watching him. As if she expected him to flee from her confession. 

But Astarion didn’t flee. He remained seated, staring at her in complete wonderment. 

“Why?” he asked quietly.

She looked back at him again, confusion evident on her face. 

“Why what?”

“Why do you care for me? You’re so… well-adjusted. And I’m well… this,” he finished lamely, placing a hand on his chest. 

Tav pursed her lips. “It would be a mistake to misconstrue my empathy for you as me being well-adjusted. Everyone has their own demons, Astarion,” she murmured. “Mine just look different from yours.”

Astarion mulled her words over in his mind, considering them. He leaned forward to brace his forearms on his knees, his head drooping slightly. 

“I…,” he started, unsure. “That vision… what it implied… You deserve something real, Tav. You’re incredible… truly.” 

Tav closed her eyes, bracing for the fallout. Even though she would accept his decision, whatever it was, she didn’t think she could bear to watch him deny her. It would hurt too much. 

“Look. When we met, I had a plan. A nice, simple plan,” he blurted all at once. Rising swiftly to his feet, Tav watched as he began to pace before her, near to bursting with frenetic energy. 

“Seduce you, sleep with you, manipulate your feelings so you’d never turn on me,” he counted off, laughing half-heartedly. “It was… easy - instinctive. Habits from two hundred years of charming people kicked in. All you had to do was fall for it. And all I had to do… was not fall for you… which is where my nice, simple plan fell apart,” he finished, stopping to stand before her. 

She held his gaze, speechless. 

“I want you,” he whispered fervently. “I want what was in that vision… I want us to be something real.”

Never in a million years had she thought he would respond to her like this. She opened her mouth to speak, but Astarion cut her off with another sudden exclamation. 

“I just don’t know what real is,” he confessed, his tone a touch hysterical. Tav knew from his body language that being this transparent was completely out of Astarion’s comfort zone. 

“Being… close to someone - any kind of intimacy - was something I performed to lure people back. For him. Even though I know things between us are different, being with someone still feels… tainted. Still brings up those feelings of disgust, and loathing. I… I don’t know how else to be with someone. No matter how much I’d like to,” he finished, staring at her with beseeching eyes, willing her to understand.

Tav rose to her feet, coming to stand before him. 

“I don’t want you for your body,” she whispered. “Or to perform any acts of intimacy. We can be together, without sleeping together, for as long as you need.”

“Really,” he asked softly, his voice pitched low, rough with emotion.

“Really,” Tav asserted, giving him a small smile. “Would it be all right if…” she paused, conflicted. He eyed her curiously.

“Could I hug you?” she whispered.

The fact that she asked before doing so caused a well of emotion to spring up inside him. Eyes watering, Astarion nodded. 

Slowly, Tav moved forward to wrap her arms around his waist. Her head nestled into the crook of his neck and shoulder. A perfect fit. He felt her exhale a deep sigh.

Tav hugging him was a sensation unlike any he had ever felt. At least, any he could remember feeling. The act of being touched, embraced, without any desire for something more. She just wanted to hold him, feel him close to her. It was incomprehensible to him, but utterly enjoyable, at the same time. 

Slowly, ever so slowly, Astarion raised his arms to return Tav’s embrace. Drawing her even closer, he bowed his head to rest his cheek against her hair. It was soft, like the finest silk. He closed his eyes as he inhaled deeply, appreciating her sweet, floral scent.   

She made to pull away after a moment, not wishing to overwhelm him. But Astarion gripped her more firmly, a silent urge for them to stay that way a little longer. 

“This… this is nice,” he whispered. 

He both felt and heard Tav hum contentedly in response. 

It wasn’t identical to the vision from Tav’s mind that he had seen, but Astarion reveled in their embrace nonetheless. It felt like the beginning of something new. And for the first time in his very, very long life, Astarion felt excited at the prospects of what would come next. 

#astarion #dancingbirdiewrites #bg3 astarion #astarion ancunin #baldurs gate astarion #baldur’s gate astarion #astarion x f!reader #astarion bg3 #bg3 astarion fic #astarion x tav #astarion x reader #astarion x mc #baldurs gate 3 #bg3 fanfiction #bg3 fic

[contemplatingoutlander]

My thoughts go especially to the victims of the many conflicts worldwide.

beginning with those in Israel and Palestine, and in Ukraine.

May the risen Christ open a path of peace for the war-torn peoples of those regions.

I appeal, once again, that access to humanitarian aid be ensured to Gaza,

and call once more for the prompt release of the hostages seized on last Oct. 7

and for an immediate cease-fire in the strip.

Amid renewed concerns about his health, Pope Francis presided over Easter Sunday Mass, and with a hoarse but strong voice, he delivered a major annual message that touched on conflicts across the globe, with explicit appeals for peace in Israel, Gaza and Ukraine. The appearance came after the pope decided to reduce his participation in two major Holy Week events, seemingly at the last minute. [...] On Sunday after the Mass, Francis took a prolonged spin in his popemobile around St. Peter’s Square before ascending to a balcony overlooking it to deliver his traditional Easter message. “Let us not allow the strengthening winds of war to blow on Europe and the Mediterranean,” he said to the tens of thousands of faithful, dignitaries, Swiss Guards and clergy filling the square. [color emphasis added]

Referring to the stone that had blocked the tomb of Jesus before his resurrection, which Easter celebrates, Francis said that “today, too, great stones, heavy stones, block the hopes of humanity.” “The stone of war, the stone of humanitarian crises, the stone of human rights violations, the stone of human trafficking, and other stones as well,” he said. [...] But his focus, Francis said, was particularly turned toward the conflicts afflicting the world. “My thoughts go especially to the victims of the many conflicts worldwide, beginning with those in Israel and Palestine, and in Ukraine,” he said, calling for the exchange of all prisoners between Russia and Ukraine. “I appeal once again that access to humanitarian aid be ensured to Gaza, and call once more for the prompt release of the hostages seized on 7 October last and for an immediate cease-fire in the Strip,” he added. [color emphasis added]

______________ video source for gifs

#pope francis #israel #gaza #ukraine #easter message #vatican #jason horowitz #the new york times #my gifs

[blueiight]

The Great Flood of 1924 or 1927?aka, a bored trivia post

s1e05 has become the boogeyman of this fanbase for events that largely occur toward the very end of it, but the flood that leads to claudia’s makeshift burials being exposed is very fascinating in terms of chronology. it speaks to how amc iwtv only slightly shifts around history to situate its immortal characters deeply within the environment of a city thats largely viewed by many, including the source material itself, as an ahistorical pleasure garden with no past or present worth caring about.

from @diasdelfuego’s s1 timeline, we have already seen an example of how the show moves with its environment, altering the release date/place of jelly roll morton’s wolverine blues from 1923 indiana to 1917 new orleans [and it be a record the fictional lestat played a role in creating — lestat aiding in a notorious trickster’s story, one of the most oblique lies on louis’s end to make lestat look more sympathetic or one of the funniest historical movearounds on the showrunners’ end, who knows].

this great flood that brings the living situation in rue royale to a head for claudia is another one of them. when lestat and louis read claudia’s diaries, they discover how shes kept careful record of the people shes buried, killed, and mutilated. they interrogate her to ask where the bodies are, and only toward the end of the confrontation does she reveal where she buried them all.

LOUIS: Where are the bodies?

CLAUDIA: Chalmette. Now get out of my room!

LOUIS: Chalmette's three feet below the river line—

CLAUDIA: So what, get out of my room!

LOUIS: What happens when the next storm comes out the Gulf?

and sequenced near immediately, in classic amc iwtv didactic fashion, the next storm comes out the gulf and unburies the bodies claudia buried on very low-lying ground.

now, temporarily exiting the show and into reality, the true flood of southern louisiana in this period occurred in 1927, when the missisippi river valley experienced heavy rainfall.

where disaster stops, and where segregationist city engineers enter, is that bankers and business leaders in new orleans lobbied the governor to intentionally broke the levee outside of new orleans proper, and so he did, ensuring that the city itself would not be flooded, but flooded out much of the low-lying areas in st. bernard parish. remember chalmette? it is in st. bernard parish.

the subsequent conversation lestat + louis have with tom anderson confirm this even more, with tom describing the number of bodies, the 56 ‘floaters’ from the ninth ward [a neighborhood in new orleans that borders chalmette], all people who have been mutilated in some fashion.

tom anderson notes this as well:

Most of the poor fools they hooked out of the bayou are former inhabitants of the Quarter, so don't be too startled if the police come knockin' on your door.

indicating that most of the people claudia killed, mutilated, and buried there were the wealthy, white neighbors of the rue royale mansion and not residents of low-lying parishes that were seen as fodder by the state of louisiana. now why didnt lestat, who was able to hypnotize an entire room of soldiers in episode 3, hypnotize the 3-4 officers that came to inspect their mansion? questions, questions… (that have very obvious answers but are secondary to this post)

referring back to the s1 timeline linked, this great flood of 1927 was either moved up to 1924, matching the decision to move up + alter the creation of the wolverine blues in episode 3 for narrative reasons, and/or refers to the odyssey of recollection, aka., how keeping exact dates and recalling the numerous historical events u have lived under after 145 or so years of misery become difficult. this post is just a fun little trivia bit + something i found to be interesting

#yn. #iwtv #vampterview #louis de pointe du lac #claudia #lestat de lioncourt #family from hell

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

Not sure if you saw this opinion piece from The Hill but it lays out just how in over their heads, Harry and Meghan are when it comes to diplomatic relations.

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4651318-harry-and-meghans-heart-of-darkness/

Another anon also kindly sent the article to me.

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4651318-harry-and-meghans-heart-of-darkness/

Archived Link

Some quotes:

It should have been a simple trip to London. Prince Harry arrived on Tuesday to attend a worthy cause. Yesterday, he celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Invictus Games at St. Paul’s Cathedral — an event Harry co-founded in 2014 to honor wounded soldiers and military veterans that now includes 23 nations. He did so alone. His wife, Meghan, the duchess of Sussex, remained in Montecito, as did King Charles III’s two young grandchildren.

Interesting that Harry has no agency for his own children. They’re either Meghan’s kids only or Charles’s grandkids only.

Harry and Meghan’s most virulent fandom, often referred to as the ‘Sussex Squad,’ fail to understand the tragic extent to which African nationals are being placed in harm’s way by Moscow and Beijing. Now, as Western interests are being attacked in the Sahel, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are unwittingly aiding Putin and Xi’s by continuing to undermine King Charles as head-of-state and head of the Commonwealth.

I’ve told you how the Sussexes pose security threats the UK and now here it is in black and white: all the Sussexes’ red flags playing right into Russia and China’s open arms. The Sussexes probably aren’t secret agents or double agents, but they’re stupid enough and exploitable enough that they’re essentially leaving the doors open and unlocked for burglars to raid the house when no one’s home.

Quick note for anons - please don’t send me asks copying whole articles in their entirety. I won’t post them because of some bad history* and will make a separate post to share the link and one or two quotes instead of using your post. And that’s not fair to you because you deserve to get credit for things that you find, even if you’re anonymous. So please, if you’re sending me articles, send me just the URL, info about where to find the article, or what you think of the article. (A few anons have been sending me articles in full copypasta lately and I should’ve said something sooner when I realized what was happening.)

* Back in ye olde days, Sussex Squad was reporting blogs en masse for copyright violations when the blogs copied or reprinted articles in full without attribution and blogs were getting shut down left and right because of that. I’m leery of reprinting whole articles because, well, I like my blog and I like all of you, but I don’t know that I have the energy to start over again if I get shut down. So I’d rather not risk it.

#red flags #you might've seen my ramblings on this in other blogs as “national security anon” #security #sussexes #brf

[lamarseillasie]

When Marat meets Jeanne D'Arc

This is a little Marat anecdote that I discovered recently, reading some of the issues of L'Ami du Peuple: apparently, Jeanne d'Arc has been venturing into revolutionary France as a true patriot - she even appears in Marat's newspaper!

In February 1791, Marat received letters from a certainly somewhat mysterious person who signed them "Jeanne d'Arc". In the March 4 issue, Marat displayed one of the letters in L'Ami du Peuple, along with some other letters he had also received:

Jeanne d'Arc's letter denounces the Marquis de La Fayette in particular, and also recounts an episode in which his officers apparently violently intimidate some citizens in the Tuileries. In the letter, she refers to La Fayette as 'Mottié', which was also the way Marat used to call him in his newspaper. I'm not sure if it was Marat himself who changed his name to 'Mottié' when transcribing the letter or if it was actually originally written that way. In any case, it's interesting and a little funny to think that Marat might have induced other citizens to "defame" La Fayette by calling him by his family name. Here's a rather poor translation I made of the letter itself:

"The officers of l'état-major entered the Thuileries last Thursday, bayonets out to repel the people. Vinezac pushed the indignity to the point of striking a peaceful citizen with his sword, another citizen who blamed this violence was arrested by the aide-de-camp who usually accompanies the king's wife: but the people soon forced him to release him. A cent-suisse assured me that yesterday they had a man in bourgeois dress at their head to command them; he added that Mottié was a scoundrel who was betraying us; and that l'état-major was made up of nothing but brigands who had sold out to him. Mottié was heard to tell the king "that he had nothing to fear from the populace, that he was going to make them see that this scoundrel was not ready to reason, that the Parisian guard was devoted to him, that he had them marching to the beat, and that he would reply that everything would go as he might wish": a discourse that he had held at Gutgnart dit St.-Priest, when he wanted to withdraw. He knows you, Badauts, this vile scoundrel; he treats you as automatons who do his bidding, as brute beasts who know only the voice of your leaders, as ferocious satellites who would disembowel your mothers, and he does you justice. This is only for the flat soldiers who blindly obey their officers, against their fellow citizens, against their brothers. Among the large number who refuse to treat them badly, and who know their rights, how can there not be someone with a heart, who will put the bayonet in the belly of a Vinezac, a la Jarre, a d'Arbelay, and other brigands on l'état-major? Ah! If only one of them had the courage to put a bullet through the head of the counter-revolutionary Mottié, he would be the liberator of the fatherland, and France would be saved!

Signée Jeanne d'Arc.

Ce 29 février 1791."

Curiously, this is not the only time that Jeanne d'Arc appears in L'Ami du Peuple. In the issue of February 13, 1791, Marat briefly evokes her, praising her and asking her to get in touch.

"Warning.

The excellent patriot who signed her letters Jeanne d'Arc, is asked to give her well hidden address to the doorman of the Hotel de la Faudriere, rue de l'ancienne Comédie. We have something interesting to pass on to her: until now, she has been advised to remain silent, and we wish to obtain information on the important facts she has denounced. We will gratefully receive her new information,

Marat, l'ami du peuple."

It's not known whether Jeanne d'Arc passed her address on to Marat or whether they actually got in touch, as I couldn't find any other record in his newspapers, pamphlets or correspondence that mentioned her. Apparently, her identity was never revealed either and, considering that Marat received numerous letters from various readers of L'Ami Du Peuple, it is practically impossible to deduce who the real person behind these letters was. However, it is clear that she did at least pass on important information to Marat.

Doing a bit more research on the subject, I came across a short thread by historian Paul Chopelin on Twitter, in which he talks about this anecdote. According to him, the year before Jeanne d'Arc appeared in Marat's newspapers, the "Chronique du Manège", a royalist newspaper, mocked the militant activist Théroigne de Méricourt, calling her an "anti-Jeanne d'Arc". In this context, the Jeanne d'Arc who wrote to Marat may have adopted this pseudonym as a way of avenging Madame de Méricourt... Who knows!?

Although there is no concrete proof that can tell us who the mysterious person who signed her letters to Marat as Jeanne d'Arc really was, there is no doubt that this is all very fascinating: It shows us, in the end, that Marat really did have all sorts of people in his secret network of informants and patriotic companions!

#marat #jeanne d'arc #l'ami du peuple #marat anedoctes #jean paul marat #frev #french revolution #my posts

[george-the-good]

The Sunday Pictorial - May 18, 1947

By a Special Contributor to the ‘Sunday Pictorial’

The tumult and the shouting dies. But for the King there can be no relaxation. When the cheering crowds disperse and go home, he has a tedious exacting job to do at his desk.

Throughout Britain this week the talk has been of our King and Queen. When they left for South Africa they were envied their promise of sunshine and non-austerity food.

Then, day after day, we heard of them giving a reception here, auditions there... It was work, hard work.

And now they are back… to work again in surroundings so familiar that they lack the excitement and glamour of the young Dominion.

Passers-by, looking up at the Royal Standard floating above Buckingham Palace, know that the King is back in London and try to imagine what he is doing. But all that emerges from behind those grey stone walls is a dull, factual Court Circular, with its list of people received, Privy Councils held, and ladies and gentlemen in attendance.

Now let’s go through the tall, double glass doors of the Privy Purse, the ‘business’ entrance of the Palace, on your right as you face it from the Mall, and see how the King’s day is planned, how the head of the Empire does his work.

In general control of the King’s official activities is his private secretary, holder of an office that has grown in importance greatly during the past three reigns until today it is often referred to as that of the ‘Sovereign’s Personal Prime Minister.’

The present private secretary is sparsely built, quizzical Sir Alan Lascelles, who holds the office not because he is first cousin to the Earl of Harewood, the King’s brother-in-law, but because of his long record as a servant of the Crown. He was assistant private secretary to the Duke of Windsor when he was Prince of Wales, private secretary to the Governor-General of Canada, and assistant private secretary to George V, Edward VIII and George VI.

Always an early riser, Sir Alan walks over from his house at St. James’s - which he has rent free as part of his salary - just after nine, and is firmly seated at his desk, with a good idea of the news of the day, by nine-thirty. At any moment after that a bell may ring, and an old-fashioned card indicator on the wall falls, showing the words ‘The King.’

Then Sir Alan, known to the King and Queen and to everyone else at the palace as Tommy, ‘goes up’ to the King. Those words are literally as well as constitutionally true, for the King’s business room - he does not call it his study - is on the first floor.

With the King, Tommy will go through the latest dispatches and messages from our Ambassadors abroad, reports from Whitehall, minutes from various Government departments, ‘submissions’ from the Prime Minister and from the Premiers of the Dominions, each of whom has the right of direct approach to the King.

Tommy knows more of what is going on all over the Empire and the world than anyone else, except the King. That’s part of his job.

It is his task to advise the King on every kind of problem, from whether he should accept an invitation to open an agricultural show, to what he should say in a Christmas broadcast, or whether and how he should intervene in some major crisis in public affairs.

Under Sir Alan are two assistant private secretaries, who take on the routine work, fixing details of programmes for provincial visits by the King and Queen, arranging for audiences and so on.

Part of their task is to furnish a short ‘aide-memoire’ for the King about everyone whom he receives in audience. The King has a really remarkable memory for faces and names, but he cannot be expected to remember details of each man’s career, of the interests and attainments of everyone he meets.

Another of their responsibilities is to furnish rough outline material for the King’s speeches, material which the King himself will later review and arrange.

Altogether there are about forty-five active members of the Royal Household in daily attendance at the Palace, not counting another fifty or more extra equerries, ushers, chaplains and holders of political appointments to the Household. They are the men - and women - who comprise the Court of St. James’s, the wheels in the smooth-running machine of British monarchy.

Today the Palace is run not as a great gentleman’s house, with everything in profusion regardless of cost, and kindly but not over-efficient amateurs holding important jobs, but on strict business lines.

In any business house it is true that if the boss is slack or unpunctual, the rest of the staff are likely to fall off in efficiency. That is true at the Palace as well, and the ‘boss’ - the King - is as hard working, as early rising as anyone on his staff.

Seven-thirty is his normal hour for rising, and he has his simple breakfast alone - bacon is his favourite dish, but the ration does not always run to it. Immediately afterwards he walks into his ‘business room,’ unlocks the red-leather dispatch boxes which have been brought in by the Page of the Presence - an old and trusted Palace servant - and settles down to read.

His papers may include a secret report from a British ambassador on the state of war-preparedness in the country to which he is accredited, and a memorandum on the miners’ attitude to nationalisation of the coalfields, as well as half a dozen other important matters. All of these the King reads and digests.

Presently he rings for his secretary, and the long morning procession begins, to end before lunch with perhaps a new ambassador coming to present his ‘letters of credence’ or a new bishop to do homage on bended knee before the secular head of the Established Church, or an Empire statesman or an outgoing Governor-General to have audience and stay to lunch.

Almost every day the King and Queen lunch together, usually with Princess Elizabeth at table as well, and over lunch the family discuss their plans, arrange theatre parties or dances, talk over the coming week-end at Royal Lodge, and chat of the everyday familiar things that are part of any family’s life.

If there are important State guests at luncheon, the talk is naturally on a more serious plane, and Elizabeth, who meets as many of the important Palace visitors as possible, as part of her training, joins in the conversation.

After luncheon, the King likes to take a short stroll in the Palace gardens, sometimes with Elizabeth and her Corgi dog, sometimes alone. Then it is back to his desk till tea time.

Tea is another family gathering, after which, there is usually a final audience the King must give to the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, or some other highly placed member of his Government.

Between then and dinner, the King sits at his desk tidying up the odds and ends left over during the day: for he is a man with a tidy mind, as befits a former naval officer, and he cannot bear leaving over things unfinished till the next day.

Often it is seven-thirty before he is finished - and that means that one or other of the secretaries, if not all three, is still on duty - and the royal dinner is served at eight.

There is just time to bath and dress - the King nearly always wears a dinner jacket and black tie - before he joins the Queen and the Princesses for what they all regard as the pleasantest part of the day.

In armchairs, the King and Queen and their daughters like to sit, the King reading a light book for relaxation, or looking at a sporting magazine, the Queen knitting or doing embroidery, and the Princesses reading or studying.

Even then, the King is not off duty. At any moment there may be a telephone call from Whitehall, a Government messenger may come to the Palace with urgent dispatches which the King must see at once.

Then the private line to Tommy’s house over at St. James’s comes into action, and if the matter is one of real gravity, the King’s secretary will leave his own home and rejoin his master for a conference that may go on till midnight.

For being the King-Emperor is a full-time job. He is, indeed, the servant of his own subjects and he is ready always to turn from his own recreations to the duty which is not of his own choice, but which he has accepted at all times with unflagging zeal.

#King George VI #1947 #1940s #British Royal Family #Sunday Pictorial

[toast-tales]

I Lava You, Chapter 6: Stuck Like Glue

Read Chapter 1 here!

Cover art by @luckyshotwrites!

This short story takes place after P39 of ITWOM and as such, contains minor, minor spoilers for ITWOM - read at your own risk! You do NOT need to have read WIDFALI to enjoy this story!

This story is cowritten with the amazing, fantastic @luckyshotwrites and uses the minor character June from their ongoing vore story What I'd Do For A Livable Income. It's chock full of monsters, magic, goofs, and absolutely fantastic worldbuilding and characters. Give it a shot if you haven't yet!

Contains: references to g/t soft, safe vore. ~1000 words.

Chapter 6: Stuck Like Glue

June specified that they were talking about themselves, not humans in general. That way I'm not lying. Still, June's shoulders slacked with the lies he carried.

“Nope. I don’t feel pain—” AH! Wait, normal humans feel pain. No—Tristan told me some humans don't. “I was born very different from humans…I don’t feel pain, so I won’t get hurt if you throw me.” June was blissfully unaware of his friend’s intentions.

He felt the extra squish from Sam’s anticipation.

These words from June were all it took to remove the inhibitors from Sam’s questionable urges. They stood up, June in hand, and looked around for a suitably clear path from them to the wall. 

They looked down at the human in their hand, and a moment of hesitation hit them. Am I sure they’re not gonna get hurt? 

Unfortunately, Sam’s excitement was beating out the shred of concern they had, aided by the fact that they trusted whatever came out of this human’s mouth. Probably more than they should. Hey, he said it was fine!

Sam eyed the blank spot on the wall ahead of them and gave June one last look, their nerves buzzing with excitement. A wide grin spread across their face. “Alright, little buddy, I gotta see this.” 

That was all the warning the giant gave before winding their arm back and flinging the unsuspecting slime towards the wall as hard as they could.

June swung back with Sam's arm, then with the velocity of a thousand meteors, his body collided with the wall. June's body splatted against the wall and flattened upon impact.

He at least maintained the fleshy color of his "skin". As if a human could do this.

He went as flat as construction paper before popping back into his humanoid shape. His fell from the wall and bounced back onto the ground like a bouncy ball. He chortled softly, completely unharmed.

June laid with his back against the floor, looking at Sam upside-down because of his head’s angle. 

“That was so much fun!” June had endured plenty of high falls on his old world too. “You throw really fast!”

Sam watched the scene unfold before them with amazement, their eyes sparkling with childish glee. This was helped by June’s enthusiasm, who was amazingly unharmed by this whole thing. 

“That was SO FUCKING COOL!” they exclaimed, running over to June and picking them up in a fit of excitement. “I’ve never tried anything like that with a human before.”

Their mind buzzed with possibilities. The first thing that came to mind was kicking June around like a little human hackey-sack, but they put that thought aside. For now.

The second thought was, obviously, showing June off to Christopher and providing him with a demonstration. But…nah, they’d wait until tomorrow.

Sam casually tossed June up in the air like a wadded-up piece of paper before catching them again. “You are by far the coolest human I’ve ever found, little buddy.”

June liked the rush of air when being thrown up and then caught.

The slime’s body bubbled happily. Coolest? Me? He knew the human vernacular meant one of two things. It could mean that he was cool to the touch—but…June was fairly certain his body wasn’t cold. Which meant…

He clung to Sam’s hand, affectionately. “You mean it?!” 

“Hell yeah!” Sam resisted the urge to toss June at the wall again, though their arm itched to do so. “You got any more cool tricks?” They took a seat back at their desk, still holding June securely (a relative term if there ever was one) in their hands, subconsciously squeezing parts of June between their fingers as they did so.

June had plenty of “cool tricks.” But I can’t show Sam any of them! He whined in his head as Sam squeezed again. He didn’t mind it—he let the gentle rolls of Sam’s clutch and release massage him. 

“None that I can think of,” June replied. His big, round, curious eyes looked up at Sam. “What about you? Do you have any really cool tricks you can do?”

Sam thought about it for a while. They didn’t think June would be overly impressed by their amateur lockpicking skills. They turned back to their PC, remembering what they had been distracted from earlier. Suddenly, their eyes glanced over one of the icons on the desktop, and a wide smile broke on their face. They hadn’t had someone to show off to in a long time, and the excitement almost bubbled over in them. 

“OH! I’ve been working at getting this sixth-level map and I think I’ve mastered it,” Sam enthused, getting swept away in their addiction to their favorite rhythm game. They were about to position their fingers over the keys as usual when they realized they’d have to let go of the squishy human to do so. They let go of June, though with the slightest hint of reluctance. 

“Here, here, check this out.”

For the next hour, Sam gave June a front-row view of a very flashy, colorful display with both the game and RGB lighting of their keyboard, mouse, and PC lighting up and swapping colors as they played. It was clear Sam had some level of skill with the game. Sam gave June more information and fun facts about the game than the slime would ever want to know.

June, situated between Sam and their keyboard, watched the screen bustling with joy. He cheered Sam on when they did well, and served their famous special encouragement platter when they messed up, which they freely served to friends 7 days a week. 

June himself wasn’t skilled with games—many times, he would end up staring into space when he played, admiring the beautiful scenes instead.

In this case, the lights of the keyboard pulled him away. He wasn’t bored by any means—he simply felt happy to be there and to observe his new friend succeed.

This opportunity was granted by his glasses—before, the world was pretty dark, nearly black with sprinkles of energy-filled light from individuals. And now, he could see everything in awe-inspiring detail. 

The game would be entertaining enough that Sam would almost forget about the fact that they had a human to eat with them—at least, until their stomach started growling again. 

* * * * * * * * * * * *

<- Chapter 5

Hey, this IS a vore story...right? Remember?

Thanks for your patience on this update - and we might need to ask for that patience again, but thank you for reading!

#i lava you #widfali #itwom #widfalitwom #oc sam #widfali june #vore writing #vore stories #gt vore #g/t vore #g/t vore story #gt vore story #safe vore #soft vore #sfw vore #nonsexual vore

[scotianostra]

On March 8th 1859 the Scottish author Kenneth Grahame was born in Edinburgh.

When he was a little more than a year old, his father, an advocate, received an appointment as sheriff-substitute in Argyllshire at Inveraray on Loch Fyne. Kenneth loved the sea and was happy there, but when he was five, his mother died of puerperal fever and his father, who had a drinking problem, gave over care of Kenneth, his brother Willie, his sister Helen and the new baby Roland to stay with their maternal grandmother, ‘Granny Ingles’, who had a large house called the Mount, in Cookham Dean in the village of Cookham in Berkshire.

Mr Grahame was a pupil at St Edward’s School from the age of nine, by the time he left he was head boy, captain of the rugby XV and the winner of several academic prizes.

He began working as a banker and rose to become company secretary at the Bank of England, working on ideas for a book from the bedtime stories he told his son Alistair .It was while working at the bank he had an encounter that could have cost him his life.

At around 11 o'clock on the morning of 24 November, 1903, a man called George Robinson, who in newspaper accounts of what followed would be referred to simply as 'a Socialist Lunatic’, arrived at the Bank of England. There, Robinson asked to speak to the governor, Sir Augustus Prevost. Since Prevost had retired several years earlier, he was asked if he would like to see the bank secretary, Kenneth Grahame, instead.

When Grahame appeared, Robinson walked towards him, holding out a rolled up manuscript. It was tied at one end with a white ribbon and at the other, with a black one. He asked Grahame to choose which end to take. After some understandable hesitation, Grahame chose the end with the black ribbon, whereupon Robinson pulled out a gun and shot at him. He fired three shots; all of them missed.

Several bank employees managed to wrestle Robinson to the ground, aided by the Fire Brigade who turned a hose on him. Strapped into a straitjacket, he was bundled away and subsequently committed to Broadmoor.

His first book, Pagan Papers, was published in 1893.a collection of stories and essays on the general theme of escape, the book did well. A year afterwards, Grahame had retreated to his country home and began to write The Wind in the Willows -111 years later the book is is still in print and as popular as ever. The Wind in the Willows tells the story of four animals living on a stretch of the Thames at Pangbourne, near Reading.

He also wrote The Reluctant Dragon. Both books were later adapted for stage and film, of which A. A. Milne’s Toad of Toad Hall was the first. The Disney films The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad and The Reluctant Dragon are other adaptations.

Grahame died in Pangbourne, Berkshire, in 1932. He is buried in Holywell Cemetery, Oxford.

Some people believe AA Milne wrote wind in the Willows, but he wrote the play Toad of Toad Hall, which is based on part of The Wind in the Willows.

#scotland #scottish #history #edinburgh #author

[the-trans-folk-witch]

The Planets as Angels and Demons

In my tradition I work with planetary virtues by assigning them to days and hours in which certain works must be performed. As someone who also works in a Catholic context, I've assigned Angels and demons to embody the benefic and malefic aspects of these Planets. To me, an angel is not ruled by a planet, but is the planet itself. This is where anism comes into my practice. I acknowledge western occult classifications of angels and their planets, but I rework them to fit my own revelations instead of that according to old irrelevant wiccan men. That said, the 7 angels vs 7 demons lists across the world are heavily influenced by kabbalah. However my own list pulls from Greek Orthodox traditions and Philippino Catholic traditions based in Manila. I also allow the 3 books of occult philosophy to influence my worldview of these spirits and purposes. The 3 books of occult philosophy state that there is a benefic and malefic side to each planet. To copy this within my practice I assign one angel and one demon to a planet. I come to them not in ceremonial methods, but as folk saints.

The angels and their remedies are as followed:

Uriel- (sun/sunday) "regent of the sun" in folklore. He is known for being renowned, amiable, and acceptable; he adds potency in all good works, equaling a man to kings and princes, elevation to high fortunes, and success in all endeavors- I understand Michael as being the Sun in most traditions but I view micahel as being more war-minded and aligned with Mars. Uriel is historically referred to as regent of the sun and that should not be ignored.

Gabriel- (moon/monday) rendering the bearer grateful, amiable, pleasant, cheerful, and honored; removing malice and ill will, security during travel, increase of riches, bodily health, and the driving away of enemies and other evil things. - dreams, blessed pregnancy, prophecy of futures pertaining to spiritual paths and one's fate. Protector of families.

Michael-(mars/tuesday) potency in war, judgments, and petitions; victory against enemies, justice toward enemies for the sake of justice, not revenge. , and stopping of blood. Michael isncommonlynassociated with the color red and as mars is the" red planet" I saw it as fitting. Mars is described as our "sister planet" due to its similarities with earth. Given michael being so close and dear to humanity I saw this closeness and resemblance as representative of his love for us.

Raphael- (mercury/wednesday) rendering the bearer grateful and fortunate to do what they please, bringing gain, preventing poverty, and helping memory, understanding, and divination. He also encourages occult understanding through travel and reading signs given in nature. The protector of travelers and claims vengeance towards thieves.

Sealtiel- (jupiter/thursday) is often seen as the Patron Saint of prayer and worship for members of the Eastern Orthodox Church and some Catholic traditions. In some Orthodox traditions, he is said to help people interpret dreams, break addictions, protect children, preside over exorcisms, and rule over music in heaven. Orthodox Christians will seek his help if their prayer is suffering from distractions, inattentiveness, or coldness. In Catholic tradition, he is depicted with a thurible. He helps fight addiction, helps one seeking gains and riches, favor and love, peace, concord, appeasement of enemies, confirmation of honors, dignities, and counsels, and dissolving of enchantments. "The undoer of witchcraft" which is a title given to St Michael Archangel in traditions that don't recognize this angel.

Jehudiel- (venus/friday) ending concord, ending strife, procuring a woman's love traditionally but all genders apply. aiding in conception, working against barrenness, and causing spiritual abilities in a generation (or gifting a child with the power of prayer). also known for the dissolving of enchantments or lustful charms of a woman causing peace between men and women, making all kind of animals fruitful, protecting pets, curing melancholy, causing joyfulness, and bringing good fortune.

Barachiel-(saturn/saturday) the ability to bring forth, to make one safe, to make one's prayer powerful, and to cause a success of petitions with princes and powers. Marsilio Ficino and others also associated Saturn with intellectuals, whose minds are more lofty and divine than those of common folk. This is because Saturn is the highest planet in occult cosmology and therefore closest to God. this angel brings creativity, good study habits, focus, peace of mind and strengthens decision making skills to ensure good choices are made. -------

The Demons to be shared below are the traditional names of demons taken from Agrippa's 3 books of occult philosophy. It was common in older orthodox beliefs to associate the demons of the 7 deadly sins with the Planets, but I find the demons of the 7 deadly sins to be less influential and deadly than planetary powers would rival. Sin is on earth and changes as nature does. It's not written in the stars and predestined. Therefore, the 7 most well-known known demons on earth would not be fit to personify a planet. Expect a post on the 7 shortly.

After requesting the aide of these planetary demons, always cleanse the soul by prayer to the corresponding angel. Cursing another is similar to rolling in the mud yourself. Wash your hands as Caesar did. Without furthermore, here are the planetary demons that oppose these angels for matters of harming others:

Sorath(sun/sunday)- causing a man to be a tyrant, proud, ambitious, unsatisfiable, and to have an ill ending. Causes requested illness and can only be remedied by the corresponding angel.

Hasmodai- (moon/monday) rendering a location unfortunate and causing people to flee from it, hindering physicians, orators and all men whatsoever in their office. Blurs the psychic senses, hides works, ruins divination, curses divination tools to never work again.

Barzabel- (mars/Tuesday) hindering of buildings/homes, casting down the powerful from dignitaries, honors, and riches; causing discord, strife and hatred among men and beasts, chasing away bees, pigeons. and fish; hindering mills, rendering misfortune toward hunters and fighters, causing barrenness in men, women, and animals; striking terror into enemies, and compelling enemies to submit. Blighting of crops and all works money flows from.

Taphthartharath - (mercury/wednesday) rendering the bearer ungrateful and unfortunate in activities, encouraging poverty, driving away gains, and inhibiting memory, understanding, and divination. Steals spiritual gifts from others and gives them to the witch, can steal luck and good fortune of others. Hides the works of thieves, and protects stolen property from recovery.

Hismael- (jupiter/thursday) attract the baleful influences of Jupiter, of which Agrippa is curiously silent. However I am here with my own thoughts and experiences. This demon quite literally brings an end to the mind. It decays one's thoughts and happiness. It causes lunacy and mania. The hottest of the demons here.

Kedemel- (venus/friday) encouraging strife, driving away a woman's love, blocking conception, encouraging barrenness, blocking generational gifts and the blessing of ancestors, bringing bad luck, destroying joy, and encouraging melancholy. Ruins families, causes miscarriage, and attracts another's lover to you.

Zazel- (saturn/saturday) according to Agrippa includes the hindering of buildings and plantings i.e. growth, casting a man from honors and dignities, causing discord and quarrels, and dispersing armies. Turns one's men against him and creates jealousy. Ends the life of men.

Call on these spirits at your own risk. Always follow it with proper spiritual hygiene.

#folk witchcraft #traditional witchcraft #transgender witches #beginner witch #folk catholicism #animism #santa muerte #folkloric witchcraft #witchcraft #demons #demonology #angelology #grimoire

[lestatslestits]

I am once again posting by the skin of my teeth, but it’s still Thursday here which means I’m not late for TOTA Takeover Day Four, dedicated to Fergus MacKinnon.

Fergus is a very special character to me, and his arc is devastating. I work in mental health and out of all of the characters in the show, Fergus is the one who hits closest to home for me.

And as a result it took me a long time to decide what I wanted to write. In the end, I’m pleased with the outcome and I hope y’all enjoy it too.

Note: this is a direct follow up to Rosalie’s ficlet from Day One, in the sense that they take place in the same day/night, and this fic makes reference to that one (although it’s brief and you can definitely still understand this one if you haven’t read it)

He can’t sleep, so he decides to go to the kitchen.

He likes kitchens, they’re filled with the kinds of things he understands: things powered with electricity, things alive with faint humming noises and barely-there vibrations that no one notices but him. This kitchen, massive and industrial, sounds nothing like his mam’s kitchen growing up, or even the kitchen in the flat he had occupied until he occupied a series of loony bins instead, but there’s still something he finds grounding about it, especially late at night when there are no staff members to chase him out because they are afraid he’ll learn where the knives are kept.

(He already knows where the knives are kept, and how to pick the lock on the cupboard door.)

(He once spent an entire afternoon hiding in an entirely different and thoroughly forgotten cupboard just to prove to himself that he could do it without being caught out. To this day, no one knows.)

There are two ways to get into the St. Jude’s Hospital kitchen when you’re not on staff. One involves abseiling down the side of the building from his fourth floor room and the other involves being able to walk silently, blend into the shadows, keep his head down, and be massively underestimated by everyone who sees him. He’s not in the mood to rig up a rope this late in the evening, so he chooses the latter option.

Stuart doesn’t typically work the graveyard shifts, and the aides who do are less inclined to act like big stupid guard dogs eager to slam patients into walls. The one occupying the nurse’s station nearest to the kitchen has brought a book to read and it must be a good one because he doesn’t even look up as Fergus slips past him.

He wishes he knew what the book was. He’s already read everything in the hospital’s single-shelf “library,” and money is always tight so hasn’t picked up any books on his last few outings. But as he can’t very well go up and ask, he puts the thought aside and focuses on picking the locks on the kitchen door. There are two, and he knows how to pick them both with paperclips.

(Technically speaking, he isn’t meant to have paperclips, but they are remarkably easy to nick from almost any desk in the hospital, so he’s always got plenty on hand.)

He slips into the kitchen and shuts the door behind him. He breathes easier in here, out of the line of sight. Even so, he turns one of the locks behind him, and navigates in the dark so that no light shines out under the crack in the door.

For a long moment he relishes his hard-won freedom, and loses himself in the sounds all around him.

In his younger days no one had believed or even had any interest in listening to his insistence that there were voices—whispers—in the electrical hum of the world around him. In fact, no one had cared about the voices he heard at all, until they started shouting abusive litanies and telling him to follow the hidden messages he heard in television and radio broadcasts.

(After that they had cared a lot.)

(To this day the voices he hears in the ambient noise of the modern world are the only ones he actually finds comforting—and the ones no one else seems interested in.)

He allows himself this moment of peace where these voices drown out the ones demanding self-hatred and paranoia.

(The meds that they give him make those voices quieter, but they never silence them completely.)

Once he’s fully grounded in the space and his eyes have adjusted to the darkness, he reminds himself that he’s on mission and moves primarily by sound and touch in search of his prize.

The cocoa here is shit. It’s cheap powdered stuff bought in bulk and mixed with hot water, often without much effort at stirring out the clumps. He’s working with what he’s got, but he swaps water out in favor of milk, a small luxury. Once it’s boiling gently he stirs in the cocoa mix, using the light of the open refrigerator to determine when the clumps have been properly obliterated.

He does the washing up when he’s finished with the kitchen: puts everything back into order and escapes with one perfect cup of cocoa, locking the doors behind him. The aide at the desk has not looked up from his book.

~~~

“I’ve got something for you.”

The figure in the narrow bed shifts under a multitude of blankets. “Fergus? What time is it?” His voice sounds thoroughly wrecked.

“Late. You slept through the cocoa round. Figured you needed the rest, though.”

“So you’re waking me now instea—oh.” Campbell Bain has flopped onto his back and is now squinting up at him with bleary, watery eyes.

He extends the cup he’s holding. “Made it myself,” he explains, answering the unasked question of where he got cocoa at this hour.

“Do they no keep the kitchen locked up tae keep the loonies out of the knives and all?”

“They try,” he agrees amiably, with a subdued smile. Then, “It’s going cold.”

Campbell heaves himself into a sitting position and coughs mightily for his effort. Fergus waits until he’s done before he hands him the cocoa.

“Rosalie stopped by. Earlier.”

“Oh?”

“She couldn’t—“

“Right,” The boy’s head bobs in understanding. He sips the cocoa and declares, “That’s no bad. Different than what we get on the cocoa round, though.”

“I used real milk.” He’s actually properly proud of that, and feels the pride legitimized by Campbell’s appreciative smile. It drops when he asks, “How’s the throat?”

“Hurts.”

Fergus brushes Campbell’s absurd fringe from his face and presses a hand to his forehead. Still feverish.

“Thanks for the cocoa. I didnae know you could cook.”

“It’s just cocoa, Campbell.” He hesitates and adds, “I like kitchens, though. They whisper to me.”

It’s not a strange thing to say. Not here. And anyways, Campbell never seems to register strangeness. He looks unsurprised, and there’s sincerity in his voice when he asks, “What do they say?”

“Good things,” Fergus replies. He doesn’t elaborate. It’s too personal, anything beyond that. Campbell doesn’t press.

“That’s nice,” he says, drinking the cocoa to the dregs. “I’m glad. Thanks for the cocoa.”

“Don’t mention it.” He means that literally: this has to be a secret between the two of them.

Campbell nods in earnest understanding.

“And get some rest. You look like hell.”

Before any offense can be registered, Fergus slips out the door and back towards his room a floor above. He’s less restless now. Maybe he’ll even manage to get some sleep.

#takin over the asylum #TOTA Takeover #tota #fergus mackinnon #takin’ over the asylum #tota fandom #tota fanfic

[theculturedmarxist]

A Big-Money Operation Purged Critics of Israel From the Democratic Party

How the Israel lobby moved to quash rising dissent in Congress against Israel’s apartheid regime.

The following article is adapted from the new book, “The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution,” out December 5, 2023.

In May 2021, the Israeli government began pushing ahead with evictions of Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem. It was one more creeping step forward in an occupation and annexation process that had been under way for decades, but what was new this time was the reaction of Hamas, the government in Gaza. If Israel didn’t back off its plan to evict the families and the Palestinian Authority wouldn’t stand up for the homeowners in Sheikh Jarrah, Hamas announced, they would do it themselves.

The Israeli government did not back off, as was to be expected, and Hamas responded by launching rocket attacks into Israel, attacks that were intercepted by the U.S.-built Iron Dome air-defense system or that otherwise crashed to the earth. Israel launched an assault on Gaza, and what became known as the Gaza War of 2021 broke out.

In Gaza wars past, the Washington ritual had always been repeated. Israel had “a right to defend itself,” each statement began, even if the support for that right was occasionally caveated with a hope that Israel might decide to respect human rights and, perhaps, if it saw fit, limit civilian casualties.

This war was different. In the United States, the tenor of the coverage was far less sympathetic than it had been, with images of Israeli police attacking protesters in East Jerusalem and reports of widespread casualties from the Israeli strikes. Mark Pocan, the Madison, Wisconsin, congressman who’d previously co-chaired the Congressional Progressive Caucus, reserved an hour of time on the House floor on May 13, and Democrats paraded through to denounce the assault.

It was like nothing the U.S. Congress had ever seen. Ilhan Omar, standing in the well of the House, bluntly but not inaccurately called Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu an “ethno-nationalist.” Rashida Tlaib added, “I am a reminder to colleagues that Palestinians do indeed exist.”

Omar recalled her own experience as an 8-year-old huddled under a bed in Somalia, hoping the incoming bombs wouldn’t hit her home next. “It is trauma I will live with for the rest of my life, so I understand on a deeply human level the pain and the anguish families are feeling in Palestine and Israel at the moment,” she said.

Ayanna Pressley, the elder of the Squad and the least inclined to challenge the status quo on Israel-Palestine, spoke directly to the political guardrails put up around members of the House of Representatives—and then ran right through those guardrails. “Many say that ‘conditioning aid’ is not a phrase I should utter here,” she said, “but let me be clear. No matter the context, American government dollars always come with conditions. The question at hand is should our taxpayer dollars create conditions for justice, healing, and repair, or should those dollars create conditions for oppression and apartheid?”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hit hard, too. “Do Palestinians have a right to survive? Do we believe that?” she asked, reminding the House that Israel had barred Omar and Tlaib from traveling to the country. “We have to have the courage to name our contributions,” she said, referring to the U.S. role in perpetuating and funding the fighting.

The clerk of the House addressed Cori Bush: “For what purpose does the gentlelady from Missouri rise?”

“St. Louis and I today rise in solidarity with the Palestinian people,” Bush responded.

What made the moment dramatically different, however, was that the Squad wasn’t isolated, but instead was part of a sizable group pushing back. Rep. Betty McCollum of Minnesota rose to slam the assault on Gaza, as did Reps. Andre Carson of Indiana, Chuy Garcia of Illinois, and Joaquin Castro of Texas.

As chair of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, McCollum had influence over U.S. foreign military aid. “The unrestricted, unconditioned $3.8 billion in annual U.S. military aid . . . gives a green light to Israel’s occupation of Palestine because there is no accountability and there is no oversight by Congress,” McCollum said. “This must change. Not one dollar of U.S. aid to Israel should go toward a military detention of Palestinian children, the annexation of Palestinian lands, or the destruction of Palestinian homes.”

Castro thanked Tlaib for her presence, agreeing with her statement, “My mere existence has disrupted the status quo.” He seemed to address Israeli leaders directly when he said that “creeping de facto annexation is unjust.” “The forced eviction of families in Jerusalem is wrong,” Castro said from the floor, offering what would have been an uncontroversial assertion most anywhere else, but that was a foreign one to the House floor.

Marie Newman, who had been beaten by the combined force of No Labels and AIPAC donors in 2018, had come back and won in 2020, and she joined her colleagues on the floor. In January 2021, she spoke out publicly against Israel’s unequal distribution of the Covid-19 vaccine, demanding that the country vaccinate people in the Palestinian territories it was occupying and allow the vaccine to get to Gaza through the blockade. She organized a letter sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken demanding that he act. “They ended up negotiating that the vaccine would go through. And so, as a freshman, that was kind of a big coup,” she said. “Never before on any matter that engaged on Palestine, on any letter, resolution, legislation, did you get 23 or 25 members of Congress to sign up something, it just didn’t happen. So, we felt like, Oh, gosh, this is so good. Then that’s when the DMFI [Democratic Majority for Israel] first was like, ‘Oh, shit, she’s a pain. She’s a problem.’”

Newman was warned that being outspoken on the issue would come with a cost. “A couple of folks in my delegation, and then a couple of folks in Congress that were Democrats—more conservative than I am, said, you know, you need to be careful, because it’s really going to ruffle some feathers,” she told me. Speaking against the Gaza War on the floor brought out more opposition. “That’s when I started getting donors that had given to me in 2018, and even some of them in 2020, saying, ‘This is going to really hurt you, Marie, just so you understand.’ And it did; they were correct.”

The hour of speeches critical of Israel’s bombing of Gaza was a sloshing together of watery metaphors—a high-water mark and also a watershed moment, one that unleashed a flood of money that would erode the foundation on which the Squad had built its power to date.

After the success of the first Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, Democratic politicians began to recognize that voters were in a progressive mood. This early recognition had saved Ed Markey’s Senate seat and produced the environment in which progressive Democrats—and groups like the Sunrise Movement—had so much influence over legislation. If Sanders had led a self-described political revolution, the Gaza speeches galvanized the counterrevolution and brought tens of millions of dollars off the sidelines and into Democratic primaries, with the express purpose of blunting the progressive wave. “We’re seeing much more vocal detractors of the U.S.-Israel relationship, who are having an impact on the discussion,” Howard Kohr, head of AIPAC, told the Washington Post in a rare interview. “And we need to respond.”

Throughout the 2020 cycle, AIPAC had been content to let DMFI run the big-money operation in Democratic primaries. To encourage support for it, AIPAC donors were even allowed to count money given to DMFI as credit toward their AIPAC contributions, which then won them higher-tier perks at conferences and other events. But the unprecedented display of progressive Democratic support for Palestinians amid the Gaza War, as seen on the House floor, was triggering. AIPAC would go on to spend well over $30 million against progressive candidates in the coming cycle, potentially upping that to $100 million in the 2024 race. Their first target was Nina Turner.

The problem, Kohr said, was “the rise of a very vocal minority on the far left of the Democratic Party that is anti-Israel and seeks to weaken and diminish the relationship. Our view is that support for the U.S.-Israel relationship is both good policy and good politics. We wanted to defend our friends and to send a message to detractors that there’s a group of individuals that will oppose them.”

A Controversial Vote

In September 2021, Congress prepared to cut Israel a fresh check. It was considering its latest bill to both avoid a government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling—a legislative maneuver needed to avert both default on the debt and a global financial crisis—and Pelosi decided at the last minute to add a billion dollars in new money to the bill to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome, which had been depleted by the Gaza War. The round number had a symbolic, slapped-together feel and was well out of whack with what the United States had previously provided, representing 60 percent of the total funding given to the Iron Dome over the entire last decade. Sen. Pat Leahy, who chaired the Appropriations Committee, which doles out the money, told reporters the request wasn’t remotely an urgent one. “The Israelis haven’t even taken the money that we’ve already appropriated,” he said. Democrats, though, were making a billion dollar point, whether the money was needed or not.

But so was the Squad. Jayapal, backed up by the now six members of the Squad and by Minnesota’s Betty McCollum and Illinois’s Marie Newman, threatened to take the bill down if the money were included. Pelosi relented and pulled the bill from the floor on a Tuesday. The Washington insider outlet Axios described the stunning development for its readers: “Why it matters: There has never been a situation where military aid for Israel was held up because of objections from members of Congress.”

Mark Mellman’s client Yair Lapid, not yet prime minister, was serving at the time as Israel’s foreign minister. According to a readout later provided by the Israeli government, Lapid called Steny Hoyer to demand to know what had happened. Hoyer assured him that it was a “technical” glitch and that the House would get Israel its money quickly.

Making good on his promise, Hoyer moved to schedule a new vote, suspending the House rules so the bill could hit the floor on Thursday of that week. Omar spoke with him the night before and pleaded for a delay, arguing that a spending increase that large needed to at least be discussed and that there were other ways to move the legislation. Why use this moment, Omar asked him, to force a fiery debate on the House floor? Doing it this way would put a target on the backs of the opponents, she said—with part of her aware that this was the precise purpose of hurrying with the vote. “Israel wants a stand-alone vote to show the overwhelming support for Iron Dome,” Hoyer told Omar.

Bowman and Ocasio-Cortez both lobbied Hoyer for a delay or for a different legislative vehicle, but both were told the same thing. The vote was going ahead. In a floor speech, Rep. Ted Deutch charged Tlaib with anti-semitism for accurately referring to Israel’s government as engaged in apartheid. Pelosi made an unexpected appearance to claim that the proposed money was part of a deal President Obama had cut with Israel to fund Iron Dome. Voting against the funding, speaker after speaker said, would be tantamount to killing innocent Israeli civilians. “All of this framing starts to cross a new line—that we are now removing and defunding existing defense, when the bill is actually just shoveling on more,” Ocasio-Cortez texted from the Capitol, trying to lay out her frame of mind. “Meanwhile the vitriol started to really heat up—AIPAC has escalated to very explicit, racist targeting of us that very much translates to safety issues. This is creating a tinderbox of incitement, with the cherry on top being that Haaretz’s caricature of me holding and shooting a Hamas rocket into Jerusalem with Rashida and Ilhan cheering on.” Back at home in New York, she said, rabbis from City Island who were typically progressive and on her side were sending out mass emails warning that her vote would put people’s lives at risk. She had even been banned from attending High Holidays in her district.

Ocasio-Cortez walked onto the House floor and voted against the Iron Dome funding. She and Bowman, in the neighboring district, had gotten a barrage of calls and emails to their offices urging them to support the funding, but almost nothing at all from constituents telling them to vote it down. “Those on the ‘yes’ side were very clear, and very loud, and very consistent with why they believed the vote needed to be ‘yes,’” Bowman told me. “And that’s why I’m saying there needs to be much organizing on the left around this issue and others.” But back in the cloakroom, Ocasio-Cortez was shaken. For the first time in her life, she had been trailed that week by her own private security detail, the Capitol Police having refused to offer protection, even as the FBI was investigating four credible threats on her life, one of them a still-active kidnapping plot.

The other three members of the original Squad—Pressley, Omar, and Tlaib—had all cast “no” votes. The two newest additions, though, were split, with Cori Bush voting “no,” but Bowman voting to approve the funding. In the cloakroom, AOC began to tear up while telling Omar and Tlaib that she felt she had to go out there and change her vote.

“Alex, it’s fine,” Omar said, embracing her. “Just don’t go out there and cry.” Omar was a big believer in the mantra that you couldn’t let them see they’d hurt you.

Tlaib cut in. “Ilhan, stop telling people not to cry!” They all laughed, knowing Rashida’s penchant for letting her emotions flow freely down her cheeks.

It may have been good advice from Omar, but Ocasio-Cortez didn’t put it into practice. On the floor, she saw Pelosi, who knew AOC was angry at being forced to vote on the funding. Pelosi approached her, telling her she hadn’t wanted this stand-alone vote, that it was Hoyer, who controlled the floor schedule, who had forced it. “Vote your heart,” she told Ocasio-Cortez.

AOC broke down, this time on the floor, with tears flowing in full view of the press and her colleagues, some of whom gave a shoulder of compassion, others giving awkward back pats as they slid past. She switched her vote to “present.”

Speculation about the tactical designs behind the vote quickly shot through the press. Did this nod toward the pro-Israel camp mean AOC was angling for a New York State Senate bid? Was she worried that redistricting would bring heavily Jewish New York suburbs into her territory? Or was all of it just becoming too much?

Her “present” vote was the epitome of Ocasio-Cortez’s effort to be the consensus builder and the radical all at once. Voting her heart, she felt, would have permanently undermined her ability to serve as a peacemaker on the issue. “While I wanted to vote NO[,] the dynamics back home were devolving so fast that I felt voting P[resent] was the only way I could maintain some degree of peace at home—enough to bring folks together to the table[,] because all this whipped things up to an all out war,” she said.

Omar and Tlaib held firm, though, and the threats of violence ratcheted up. “For Muslim members of Congress, it’s a level no one understands,” Omar messaged me when speaking about the death threats the next day. “The anti-American rhetoric is a violent beast and our vote yesterday makes it 10x worse.”

Marie Newman also faced serious pressure after she had announced her opposition. Ahead of the vote, she said she got a call from a member of party leadership, and from other from rank-and-file members, urging her to reconsider. Pressure had been applied in the run-up to the vote, too. “I was like, well, it is what it is. It’s done. And I feel good about it,” she said. The resistance was fiercest on the floor during the vote. “I got bullied on the House floor. Two of AIPAC’s members—congressional members—came over and literally yelled at me,” she said, demanding to know why she had voted the funding down. “First of all, my husband is an engineer, and from an engineering standpoint, there’s no way that battery system costs a billion dollars,” she told them. But also, she said, her district was opposed to it and would rather the billion dollars be spent here, in the United States.

The next day, Ocasio-Cortez sent a long note of apology to her constituents. “The reckless decision by House leadership to rush this controversial vote within a matter of hours and without true consideration created a tinderbox of vitriol, disingenuous framing, [and] deeply racist accusations and depictions,” she wrote. “To those I have disappointed—I am deeply sorry. To those who believe this reasoning is insufficient or cowardice—I understand.”

Then Came the Money

Amid the 2021 war in Gaza, Nina Turner was setting on a 30-point lead in a special election when DMFI and an allied organization, called Mainstream Democrats, decided to make an example of her. 

Mainstream Democrats PAC, backed by LinkedIn billionaire Reid Hoffman, and DMFI were effectively the same organization, operating out of the same office and employing the same consultants, though Mainstream Democrats claimed a broader mission. Strategic and targeting decisions for both were made by pollster Mark Mellman, according to Dmitri Mehlhorn, a Silicon Valley executive who serves as the political adviser to LinkedIn’s Hoffman. DMFI also funneled at least $500,000 to Mainstream Democrats PAC. Together, Mehlhorn and Mellman controlled the kind of money that could reshape any race they targeted.

“Our money is going to the Mainstream Democrats coalition, which we trust to identify the candidates who are most likely to convey to Americans broadly an image of Democrats that is then electable,” Mehlhorn told me, saying he relied on the consultants linked to DMFI to make those choices. “I trust them. I think Brian Goldsmith, Mark Mellman—they tend to know that stuff.”

The super PACs came in with a deluge of money and swamped Turner, electing Shontel Brown instead. On election night, she thanked supporters of Israel for her victory. 

Mehlhorn, Hoffman’s right-hand man, was explicit about his purpose. “Nina Turner’s district is a classic case study, where the vast majority of voters in that district are Marcia Fudge voters. They’re pretty happy with the Democratic Party. And Nina Turner’s record on the Democratic Party is [that] she’s a strong critic,” he told me. “And so, this group put in money to make sure that voters knew what she felt about the Democratic Party. And from my perspective, that just makes it easier for me to try to do things like give Tim Ryan a chance of winning [a U.S. Senate seat] in a state like Ohio—not a big chance, but at least a chance. And he’s not having to deal with the latest bomb thrown by Nina. So anyway, that’s the theory behind our support for Mainstream Democrats.”

Mellman, in an interview with HuffPost, acknowledged that his goals extended beyond the politics of Israel and Palestine. “The anti-Biden folks and the anti-Israel folks look to [Turner] as a leader,” Mellman said. “So she really is a threat to both of our goals.” His remark was itself a case study in the strength of Washington narratives to withstand reality. The party’s right flank, led by Manchin, Gottheimer, and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, was actively undermining Biden’s agenda, while Turner’s allies in Congress were the ones fighting for it.

In response to DMFI’s spending in 2020, the group J Street, a rival of AIPAC that takes a more progressive line on Palestinian rights, launched its own super PAC to compete. Its leaders guessed DMFI would spend somewhere between five and ten million dollars. If the advocacy group could cobble together $2 million, said J Street’s Logan Bayroff, that would at least be something of a fight, given that AIPAC and DMFI had to overcome the fact that what they were advocating for—unchecked, limitless support for the Israeli government, regardless of its abuses—was unpopular in Democratic primaries.

But then AIPAC itself finally stepped into the super PAC game in April 2022, funding what it called the United Democracy Project. It would go on to spend $30 million, with its first broadside being launched against Turner in her rematch against Brown.

The constellation of super PACs and dark-money groups around No Labels, the political vehicle for Josh Gottheimer and Joe Manchin, kicked into gear, targeting progressives in primaries around the country. And then came the crypto. Hoffman’s super PAC spent heavily, while crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, his Ponzi scheme having yet to collapse, chipped in a million dollars against Turner. SBF, as he became known, seeded his Protect Our Future PAC with nearly $30 million and began spending huge sums.

 “We’re always gonna expect the right to have more money, given that they’re operating off of the basis of big donors. But that’s a little bit more of a fair fight,” he said of the disparity between J Street and DMFI. “But now you add to what DMFI is doing, 30 million [dollars] from AIPAC—that’s just in a whole other realm,” he said. “It’s been a radical transformation in the politics of Israel-Palestine and the politics of Democratic primaries.”

Going into 2022, Turner was joined by the biggest number of boldly progressive candidates running viable campaigns in open seats since the Sanders wing had become a national force. There was Gregorio Casar in Austin, Delia Ramirez in Chicago, Maxwell Alejandro Frost in Orlando, Becca Balint in Vermont, Summer Lee in Pittsburgh, Nida Allam and Erica Smith in North Carolina, Donna Edwards in Maryland, Andrea Salinas in Oregon, and John Fetterman and Mandela Barnes running for Senate in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — both, coincidentally, their respective state’s lieutenant governor. Also in Oregon, Jamie McLeod-Skinner was challenging incumbent Kurt Schrader, one of the most conservative Democrats left in Congress, who had made it his personal mission to block the Build Back Better Act and to stop Medicare from negotiating drug prices.

Redistricting had also produced two progressive-on-centrist primaries between sitting Democratic members of Congress, as Marie Newman and Andy Levin were both crammed in against centrist incumbents. On January 31, kick-starting the primary season, Jewish Insider published a list of fifteen DMFI House endorsements, nearly all of them squaring off against progressive challengers.

“In Michigan and Illinois, Reps. Haley Stevens (D-MI) and Sean Casten (D-IL) are, with support from DMFI, waging respective battles against progressive Reps. Andy Levin (D-MI) and Marie Newman (D-IL), who have frequently clashed with the pro-Israel establishment over their criticism of the Jewish state,” the Jewish Insider piece read.

In January, DMFI released its first list of fifteen endorsements, the start of the year’s battle to shape what the next Democratic class would look like. The constellation of progressive groups that played in Democratic primaries scrambled to respond. Their loose coalition consisted of J Street, Justice Democrats, Sunrise Movement, Indivisible, the Working Families Party, the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC, and Way to Win.

Because Justice Democrats had been unable to form a collaborative relationship with the Squad, it hadn’t been able to raise the kind of small dollars that AOC or the Sanders campaign could. This meant it was increasingly relying on the small number of left-wing wealthy people who wanted to be involved in electoral politics and were okay angering the Democratic establishment. This left the organization without many donors, but with enough to stay relevant.

Collectively, the groups would be lucky to cobble together $10 million, up against well more than $50 million in outside spending, and that’s before counting the money that corporate-friendly candidates could raise themselves. Remarkably, the Squad and Bernie Sanders were conspicuously absent from this organized effort to expand their progressive numbers.

In the summer of 2020, facing down their most intense opposition from within their party, the four members had created a PAC called the Squad Victory Fund. But in the 2022 cycle, it raised just $1.9 million, and a close look at the finances show that it spent nearly a million dollars to raise that money—renting email lists to hit with fund-raising requests, advertising on Facebook, and so on. The remaining million was doled out mostly to the members of the Squad.

Had the Squad worked collaboratively with the coalition of organizations—lending their name, attending fund-raising events, and the like—several million dollars could have been raised. If Sanders had turned on his fire hose, the resources available to the left would have been considerable. As it was, the left had to find a way to even the playing field, and, to a handful of progressive operatives, Sam Bankman-Fried seemed like the only path left.

After SBF was arrested, he texted with a reporter at Vox, saying his effective altruism evangelism and woke politics was all a cover. “It’s what reputations are made of, to some extent. I feel bad for those who got fucked by it,” he said in a series of direct messages the reporter published, “by this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shib[b]oleths and so everyone likes us.”

John Fetterman was locked in what threatened to be a tight primary race with Rep. Conor Lamb for a Senate nomination, and Lamb’s campaign was openly pleading for super PAC support to put him over the top. Early in the year, Jewish Insider reported, Mellman had reached out to Fetterman with questions about his position on Israel. “He’s never come out and said that he’s not a supporter of Israel, but the perception is that he aligns with the Squad more than anything else,” Democratic activist Brett Goldman told the news outlet.

Mellman said the Fetterman campaign responded to his inquiry and “came with an interest in learning about the issues.” Following the meeting, the campaign reached out again. “Then they sent us a position paper, which we thought was very strong,” Mellman said. But it wasn’t quite strong enough. Jewish Insider reported that DMFI emailed back some comments on the paper, which “Fetterman was receptive to addressing in a second draft.”

In April, Fetterman agreed to do an interview with Jewish Insider. “I want to go out of my way to make sure that it’s absolutely clear that the views that I hold in no way go along the lines of some of the more fringe or extreme wings of our party,” he said. “I would also respectfully say that I’m not really a progressive in that sense.” Fetterman, unprompted, stressed that there should be zero conditions on military aid to Israel, that BDS was wrong, and so on. “Let me just say this, even if I’m asked or not, I was dismayed by the Iron Dome vote,” he added. DMFI and AIPAC stayed out of his race.

During the Gaza War in 2021, Summer Lee had once posted support for the Palestinian plight. “It was really one tweet that kind of caught the attention of folks,” she said. “Here, this is it, we got you. And it was really a tweet talking about Black Lives Matter and talking about how, as an oppressed person, I view and perceive the topic. Because the reality is—and that’s with a lot of Black and brown progressives—we view even topics that don’t seem connected, we still view them through the injustice that we face as Black folks here and the politics that we see and experience here, and are able to make connections to that.”

Lee had written on Twitter: “When I hear American pols use the refrain ‘Israel has the right to defend itself’ in response to undeniable atrocities on a marginalized population, I can’t help but think of how the West has always justified indiscriminate and disproportionate force and power on weakened and marginalized people. The US has never shown leadership in safeguarding human rights of folks it’s othered. But as we fight against injustice here in the movement for Black lives, we must stand against injustice everywhere. Inhumanities against the Palestinian people cannot be tolerated or justified.” That was the extent of her public commentary on the question.

But the comment was shocking to some in Pittsburgh. Charles Saul, a member of the board of trustees of the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle, was later quoted by the paper saying he was concerned about Lee because “she’s endorsed by some people I believe are antisemites [sic], like Rashida Tlaib.” He went on: “Another thing that worried me was her equating the suffering of the Gazans and Palestinians to the suffering of African Americans. That’s one of these intersectional things. If that’s her take on the Middle East, that’s very dangerous.”

In January 2022, AIPAC transferred $8.5 million of dark money to the new super PAC it had set up the previous April, United Democracy Project. Private equity mogul and Republican donor Paul Singer kicked in a million dollars, as did Republican Bernard Marcus, the former CEO of Home Depot. Dozens of other big donors, many of them also Republicans, along with more than a dozen uber-wealthy Democrats, kicked in big checks to give UDP its $30 million war chest.

On May 11, Israel Defense Forces sparked global outrage, first, by killing Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and then, again, days later at her funeral procession, by attacking her mourners and pallbearers and nearly toppling her casket.

Primary Elections

That Tuesday in May was a day that DMFI, AIPAC, and Mainstream Democrats had been hoping would be a death blow to the nascent insurgency that had been gaining traction in the primaries. In April, AIPAC had begun its furious barrage of spending, tag-teaming with DMFI, Mainstream Democrats, and Sam Bankman-Fried to make sure Nina Turner’s second run against Shontel Brown never got off the ground. Turner was smothered. Reid Hoffman’s PAC had spent millions to prop up conservative Democratic representative Kurt Schrader, who was facing a credible challenge from Jamie McLeod-Skinner in Oregon.

Nida Allam, a Durham County commissioner and the first Muslim woman elected in the state, ran for office after three of her Muslim friends were murdered in a gruesome Chapel Hill hate crime that drew national attention. AIPAC would spend millions to stop her rise. Elsewhere in the state, it spent $2 million against progressive Erica Smith in another open primary. United Democracy Project, for its part, began hammering away at Summer Lee, whose Pennsylvania primary was held the same day as North Carolina’s.

Justice Democrats, the Working Families Party, Indivisible, the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC, and the Sunrise Movement worked in coalition with J Street on a number of races in which DMFI and AIPAC played. Where the progressive organizations could muster enough money, the candidates had a shot. “If you look at the races we lost, we were outspent by the bad guys six, eight, ten to one. If you look at Summer’s race, it was more like two to one,” said Joe Dinkin, campaign director for the Working Families Party.

AIPAC and DMFI did manage to win their rematch against Marie Newman, who had beaten the incumbent Democrat Dan Lipinski in 2020. That win had been critical, as Lipinski would certainly have been a “no” vote on Biden’s Build Back Better and the Inflation Reduction Act. In 2022, Newman was redistricted out of her seat, with much of her former area being sent to a new district, the one Ramirez claimed. Illinois Democrats carved up the Palestinian-American stronghold and split it into five separate districts, diluting its strength. This forced Newman into an incumbent-on-incumbent contest with a centrist. AIPAC and DMFI also knocked off the synagogue president Andy Levin.

Nida Allam lost a close race, and Erica Smith, who also faced more than $2 million in AIPAC money, was beaten soundly. And in Texas the following week, Jessica Cisneros was facing Rep. Henry Cuellar in a runoff she would lose by just a few hundred votes. But McLeod-Skinner knocked off Schrader, and progressive Andrea Salinas overcame an ungodly $11 million in Bankman-Fried money through Protect Our Future PAC to win another Oregon primary.

The marquee race, however, was in Pittsburgh, where AIPAC and DMFI combined to put in more than $3 million for an ad blitz against Summer Lee in the race’s closing weeks. In late March, Lee held a 25-point lead before the opposition money came in—and that amount of money can go a long way in the Pittsburgh TV market. As AIPAC’s ads attacked Lee relentlessly as not a “real Democrat,” she watched her polling numbers plummet.

But then she saw the race stabilize, as outside progressive groups pumped more than a million dollars in and her own campaign responded quickly to the charge that she wasn’t loyal enough to the Democratic Party. Her backers made an issue of the fact that AIPAC had backed more than one hundred Republicans who had voted to overturn the 2020 election while pretending to care how good a Democrat Lee was.

“When we were able to counteract those narratives that [voters] were getting incessantly—the saturation point was unlike anything you’ve ever seen—when we knocked on doors, no one was ever saying, ‘Oh, hey, does Summer have this particular view on Middle Eastern policy?’ Like, that was never a conversation. It was, ‘Is Summer a Trump supporter?’” she said. “We were able to get our counter ad up, a counter ad that did nothing but show a video of me stumping for Biden, for the party. When we were able to get that out, it started to really help folks question and really cut through [the opposition messaging].”

On Election Day, Lee bested Irwin by fewer than 1,000 votes, winning 41.9 percent to 41 percent, taunting her opponents for setting money on fire. Had she not enjoyed such high popularity and name recognition in the district, AIPAC’s wipeout of her 25-point lead in six weeks would have been enough to beat her.

John Fetterman, meanwhile, was able to face his centrist opponent in an open seat for the U.S. Senate without taking on a super PAC, too, and won easily. In Austin, Casar and the progressive coalition behind him had known he was within striking distance of clearing 50 percent in the first-round election, which would avoid a May runoff—and avoid the opposition money that would come with it. They spent heavily in the final weeks, and Casar won a first-round victory, another socialist headed to Congress. Once sworn in to the House, one of his first major acts as a legislator was to support Betty McCollum’s bill to restrict funding of the Israeli military. He quickly became one of the leading progressive voices critical of U.S. adventurism abroad, likely producing regret among DMFI and AIPAC that they had allowed him to slip through.

The big-money coalition had not gotten the knockout win in the spring it had hoped for. But AIPAC itself posted impressive numbers. It spent big against nine progressive Democrats and beat seven of them, losing only to Summer Lee and an eccentric, self-funding multimillionaire in Michigan. Without their intervention, Turner, Donna Edwards (who saw AIPAC spend more than $6 million against her), Nida Allam, and, potentially, Erica Smith would have joined the progressive bloc in Congress, in districts that are now instead represented by corporate-friendly Democrats. And many of the ones who did make it through had been forced to moderate their stances on the way in. Still, the Squad of AOC, Omar, Tlaib, Pressley, Bowman, and Bush was being joined by Summer Lee, Delia Ramirez, Greg Casar, Maxwell Frost, and Becca Balint. On a good day, that was ten. But what kind of ten?

Summer Lee, reflecting on her near-death experience, was pessimistic. I asked if the amount of spending had gotten into her head and influenced the way she approached the Israel-Palestine issue. “Yes, absolutely, and not just with me. I see it with other people. I see people who are running for office or thinking of running for office in the future, and they feel deterred because this is a topic that they know will bury them,” she said. “There’s absolutely a chilling effect . . . I’ve heard it from other folks who will say, you know, we agree with this, but I’ll never support it, and I’ll never say it out loud.”

More broadly, though, it makes building a movement that much more difficult, Lee added. “It’s very hard to survive as a progressive, Black, working-class-background candidate when you are facing millions and millions of dollars, but what it also does is then, it deters other people from ever wanting to get into it,” she said. “So then it has the effect of ensuring that the Black community broadly, the other marginalized communities, are just no longer centered in our politics.”

Her narrow win, coupled with some of the losses, began to crystalize into a conventional Washington narrative that the Squad was in retreat and that voters wanted a more cautious brand of politics. “It’s a way of maintaining that status quo,” Lee told me. “But also it’s just disingenuous when we say that we’re not winning because we’re not winning on the issues. No, we’re not winning because we’re not winning on the resources.”

Israel’s Rightward March Continues

Whatever the fears of hard-line Israel hawks, the rise of the Squad did not materially slow the expansion of Israeli settlements into occupied Palestinian territory. In 2019, the Squad’s first year in office, Israel added more than 11,000 new settlement units. In 2020, the figure doubled to more than 22,000, many of them in East Jerusalem and deep into the West Bank. “As stated in numerous EU Foreign Affairs Council conclusions, settlements are illegal under international law, constitute an obstacle to peace and threaten to make a two-state solution impossible,” said an EU representative to the United Nations in a report chronicling the increase. The settlement expansion included multiple “outposts”—seizure of farmland and pasture—which puts any semblance of Palestinian independence or sustainability farther out of reach. In 2021—despite Israeli prime minister Lapid’s campaign promise not “to build anything that will prevent the possibility of a future two-state solution”—settlement expansion in East Jerusalem doubled in 2021 compared with the year before, threatening to fully slice the remaining contiguous parts of Palestinian territory into small, prisonlike enclaves.

On August 5, 2022, without the support of his cabinet, Lapid launched air strikes on the Gaza Strip, agreeing to a truce on August 7. Palestinian militants fired more than a thousand rockets, though no Israelis were killed or seriously wounded. The three-day conflict left forty-nine Palestinians dead, including seventeen children.

Israel’s initial denial of any role in the killing of reporter Abu Akleh gradually morphed under the weight of incontrovertible evidence into admission of possible complicity. Partnering with the London-based group Forensic Architecture, the Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq launched the most comprehensive investigation into her death. On the morning of August 18, at least nine armored Israeli vehicles approached the group’s headquarters in Ramallah and broke their way in, ransacking it and later welding shut its doors. An attempt by the Israeli government, headed by Mellman ally Yair Lapid, to have the European Union label Al-Haq a terrorist organization was rejected by the EU, which reviewed the evidence Israel provided and found it not remotely convincing.

With the primaries over, Bankman-Fried’s PAC, AIPAC, and DMFI had mostly stopped spending to help Democrats. In September 2022, the Democratic National Committee refused to allow a vote on a resolution, pushed by DNC member Nina Turner and other progressives, to ban big outside money in Democratic primaries. Leah Greenberg, cofounder of Indivisible, said it was absurd that Democrats continued to allow outside groups to manipulate Democratic primaries even though they clearly had little interest in seeing the party itself succeed. Their goal is to shape what the party looks like; whether it’s in the minority or majority is beside the point. “For a group called Democratic Majority for Israel, they don’t seem to be putting much effort into winning a Democratic majority,” Greenberg said.

Rep. Elaine Luria, a Democrat from Virginia whose race was listed as “key” by AIPAC, had been one of the organization’s most outspoken and loyal allies since her 2018 election and had regularly teamed with Gottheimer as he made his various power plays. Her first significant act as a member of Congress had been to join him in confronting Rashida Tlaib with their white binder of damning quotes. Still, AIPAC’s United Democracy Project had declined to help her, and Luria was among the few incumbent Democrats to lose reelection in 2022.

Instead, AIPAC’s first foray into the general election had been to spend its money in a Democrat-on-Democrat race in the state of California. According to Jewish Insider, “a board member of DMFI expressed reservations over [David] Canepa’s Middle East foreign policy approach, pointing to at least one social media post viewed by local pro-Israel advocates as dismissive of Israeli security concerns.” The allegedly dismissive message, which Canepa posted on May 13, 2021, as the Gaza War raged, had read, “Peace for Palestine.”

But AIPAC saved the rest of its energy for Summer Lee. Because the Republican in the race had the same name, “Mike Doyle,” as the popular retiring incumbent Democrat—deliberately, no doubt—voters thought that a vote for Doyle was a vote for the guy they’d known for decades. After spending millions of dollars attacking Lee for not being a good enough Democrat, AIPAC spent millions in the general elections urging voters to elect the Republican. Lee won anyway.

At the end of 2022, Bibi Netanyahu, at the head of a right-wing coalition so extreme that mainstream news outlets had dubbed it fascist, was once again sworn in as prime minister, ousting Yair Lapid, the prime minister backed by DMFI’s Mark Mellman. 

Disclosure: In September 2022, The Intercept received $500,000 from Building a Stronger Future, Sam Bankman-Fried’s foundation, as part of a $4 million grant to fund our pandemic prevention and biosafety coverage. That grant has been suspended. In keeping with our general practice, The Intercept disclosed the funding in subsequent reporting on Bankman-Fried’s political activities. A nonprofit affiliated with Way to Win, called Way to Rise, has donated to The Intercept, facilitated by Amalgamated Foundation.

#ilhan omar #alexandria ocasio cortez #rashida tlaib #israel #palestine #democrats #democratic party #ayanna pressley #no labels #aipac #us congress

[crowehorte]

Daily Grimoire Challenge Day 1

From the @2024-grimoire-challenge Week 1 Prompt List

Spell: A set of written instructions that outline the material, verbal, and somatic components of a magic working with a specific intended outcome.

Ritual: The process of casting a spell.

Lavender A genus of 47 plants from the mint family. Native to the "Old World," lavender is found across Europe, north and eastern Africa, and southwest Asia all the way into India. It is also know as Spikenard or simply Nard, with the origins either stemming from the ancient Greek city of Naarda or the sanskrit word Nalada. The late Latin name used commonly in modern times comes from Lavandarius, which refers to lavanda (things to be washed) and the verb lavo (to wash).

Lavender grows best in sandy or gravelly soil and requires a full 6 to 8 hours of direct sunlight. Too much humidity or water in the soil can cause fungi to grow and roots to rot, which is why well-draining soil is required for it to grow well. English lavender has a germination period of 14 to 28 days and reaches full maturity after 100 to 110 days.

It's frequently used in essential oils and potpourri mixes for its fresh, sweet scent with faint citrusy notes, and it's often paired with Chamomile in aroma therapy blends dedicated to relaxing and soothing the mind. As a spice, it's often added to desserts or paired with mild sheep or goat milk cheeses. Lavender buds can be steeped in sugar and boiled to create a syrup that can be added to coffee, tea, and baked goods, and it pairs well with chocolate flavoring.

Lavender has been used as an ingredient in incense and perfumes throughout the centuries, and has been referenced in the Christian bible. It's commonly associated with St Joseph of the Catholic faith; the patron saint of fathers, families, expecting mothers, unborn children, virgins, and workers. He is invoked in prayers regarding employment and vocation, happy marriages, grace in death, and daily protection.

In my experience, lavender is frequently used as a spell component used in purification, protection, and general blessing spells. Given the association with St Joseph, the frequency it appears in lotions and soaps, and how it's used to aid in sleep and relaxation, I think that its mundane uses heavily inform its magical use. We associate it with cleanliness and good vibes, and fathers are often our first protectors, so it makes sense to use it in this way.

#2024 grimoire challenge #definitions #herbal components

[aromantic-enjolras]

So I watched the Broadway Backwards video and I'm kind of mad now.

After a long, long while, I have finally found the time to watch the Broadway Backwards take on One Day More. And ooooh boy. Do I have Thoughts on it.

Please someone tell me I'm misunderstanding the presenter at the beginning and this is not supposed to be set at ACT UP. Please tell me the Republican lady having super teased hair is just something US Republican ladies do and not meant to set this in the 80s. Because otherwise... Otherwise this is Les Mis Twitter levels of bad. This reads like a 15-year-old writing fanfiction in 2012 who just discovered ACT UP existed, except that this is Broadway. This is a fundraiser for Broadway Cares. A lot of people in there were around during the AIDS crisis. They should know better.

There are no references to AIDS whatsoever. On a Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS fundraiser set at AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power. (This one is self explanatory, right?)

The Enjolras stand-in is wearing a shirt that's just a trans flag. Apart from the lack of subtlety, the trans flag was created in 1999, seven years after the breakup of ACT UP.

The Valjean stand-in is a Republican lady who joins them because her son "would still be there if they didn't tell him he was going to hell". Not saying religious bigotry is not a problem, but it's not the one ACT UP was fighting!!

The group is preparing for a march on Washington. That's.... not how ACT UP worked. If we believe Ann Northrop, one of the most active members of ACT UP New York, the biggest demonstration they ever did was Stop The Church, an action outside the St. Patrick Cathedral in New York City, and it was a pretty small action on a specific target, not a big demonstration on a symbolic one.

This might just be symbolic, but the flag they fly is the Progress Flag. Which was invented in 2018. Talk about anachronism.

Also, this is just petty, but "Gay Son"??? That is a weak-ass slogan. Worried you'd offend someone if you said something more specific than that, Broadway?

I guess I'm more prickly about this than I could, because I'm reading a book on ACT UP at the moment and the author namechecks Broadway (and Broadway Cares) specifically when talking about how even very gay-heavy institutions and communities left HIV+ people to rot, but... this is just plain bad.

#les misérables #text posts #my posts #my opinions #history #ACT UP #one day more

[zooophagous]

The last in a series of vignettes in Wayward Souls that describe the history of Luther Strauss and how he managed to survive his first years as a fledgling vampire. We will return to the continuing plot after this. Thank you for your patience and I hope you enjoy these asides as much as I had fun writing them.

Account of an examination of a newly fledged vampire in Trier, Germany, May 17th 1790. By a Doctor Oskar Schiller. Translated from its original German by Sylvain Pietra with additional corrections via The Van Helsing Institute of St. Joseph vocational department:

 

17, May, 1798

This journal is late. It is eight years late, to the day. I should have done better to record my observations earlier when they were fresh, but the distance between now and then has given me the ability to examine the findings more objectively, now that the emotional component has had time to subside. I believe that this journal would be worth more, now, when my mind is clear than it would have been then, when I would be writing from a state of panic.

The following account details an office visit with my most peculiar patient. I have not met another like him before, and I have not met another like him since. I am of the belief that patients of his nature prefer to avoid treatment; or are otherwise very rare; and perhaps the truth is a combination of both.

I will not reveal the name of the patient here, for his safety. Should my journal fall into less kind hands the details of his identity would place him in mortal peril; it sounds strange to say as much, for by all accounts he is already dead. I will refer to him by the initials L.S.

I will start my observations from as early as possible, before he became a patient, L.S. was a peer. We both maintained similar practices in medicine, and we have called one another friends, though never close. L.S. was difficult to be close to even before his unfortunate regressions; but he was educated and polite and lived a normal life with a decent practice. Of course, I must insist my own practice was superior, but L.S. was a good doctor and by all accounts a good man. I know of no complaint against his character and I have none of my own to add.

He suffered, however, from a terrible and incurable sickness known as grief. It began with a terrible fever- not in L.S. but in his young daughter, a fever that would regrettably prove fatal to her.

Many ailments of the mind are born of grief. Some medicate their ailment with drink or absynthe or laudanum. L.S. was not given to the use of heavy substance. He was of a very clinical mind, being a physician, like myself; and was driven absolutely to solve his problems at their core.

Therein was the problem. At the core of the issue was death, and there was no cure for death. The study of human health improves with every year, but the realm of life and death is solely up to God.

I told him as much, when he found himself in my office. He did not want to hear it. I perscribed aids for the pain, aids for sleep, perscribed travel and exercise to ease the pain of loss. I even once perscribed a trip to the brothel, for all the good it would do him.

The only temporary stop-gap for pain was the delusion that he could repair his problems, and the bastard hurt so deeply, I indulged him. When he asked for books on medicine, I gave to him every book in my library. When I ran out of these, I helped him find more. His tastes began to stray into the unscientific and the esoteric, into desperate searches of half-true tales of men who made pacts with devils to get what they wanted.

God had seemingly ignored the prayers of L.S. and so he began to pray to something else.

I could no longer help him, by this point. As a man of God myself I am quite unable to bring myself to that peculiar realm of study, and his appetite for these materials made him a better hunter for it than I was anyway. It was all I could do to deal with his physical ailments.

He was not addicted to substance, despite his mania. The problem actually seemed to be not imbibing enough, of anything. He ate very litte, he slept even less, and his work became nonexistent except in pursuit of his goal.

His unattainable goal. I regret deeply that I was unable to help him. It should have been that he moved on with his life, and perhaps raising up a new family would have prevented him succumbing to the loss of the old. I resigned to keeping my old friend on palliative care, doing what I could to keep him comfortable until the end came for him and he rejoined his lost child. He grew more and more gaunt and haggard every day, and it seemed the end would come sooner rather than later.

It was with no small degree of consternation, then, that I received a letter one evening from L.S. that read only "I've found it."

I tried to respond quickly, but he was already unreachable. His windows were darkened and no one could say where the mad doctor had gone. I feared the worst, and unfortunately I am seldom wrong.

I was called in for an examination the following night, for a man discovered dead in the streets. He was apparently the victim of some violence and had been robbed of any valuables and stabbed repeatedly.

What an awful surprise, to lift back the sheet that covered the poor wretch and see that familiar face. I wish I could say he looked to be at peace. It was clear he had died fighting, his arms were covered in wounds- no doubt L.S. had tried to raise his hands to block an attack, or perhaps to plea for mercy, while the blows rained down on him. The killing blow was made to his neck.

His throat had been cut badly. No skilled butchery went into this- it was flayed open and the flaps of skin lay like the petals of a grotesque rose. His entire body was both stiff and pale. He had lost so much blood, in fact, that livor mortis was unable to set in where the body had touched the ground. There was not enough in him to color him.

A sad life, with a sad end. All the pity in the world could not help him now. I saw to it he was buried with his name and his title, near the little daughter he had missed so terribly. No doubt someone had promised him some great rare relic to lure him and dispose of him. But, his apartment was so terribly full of hideous arcane accoutrements that finding out who had promised him what and when was nigh impossible.

I had to bury him and wash my hands of it. I had done my Christian duty to him for long enough, I should have been allowed to be done with it then, at its logical end point. But God works in mysterious ways, and he was not done testing my faith.

Some two or three days had gone by since the burial of L.S. It was late spring, blooming into summer. I remember that it was a beautiful sunlit day. I remember that, because it is not the sort of day or hour one expects a specter.

A stranger wandered into my practice. It is not uncommon for a drunkard or a day laborer to come in off the street complaining of hangover pains or work related aches. This one staggered as he walked, no doubt another drunkard. He looked disheveled and his clothing was wet and dirty.

I did not recognize him at first. Not until he looked at me with his too familiar eyes and finally spoke my name.

"Doctor Schiller. What happened to me?"

My legs nearly fell out from under me. The breath stuck in my chest like a dart and I gripped the wall to stabilize myself. There before me stood L.S. in his grave clothes. Dirty, tattered, but awake.

I say awake, and not alive. For he was NOT alive. There was a moment of panic, of course. That perhaps a mistake had been made, perhaps I had allowed despair to cloud my judgement and allowed a man to be buried alive. But last I had seen him, his trachea and jugular had been ripped in half. Now he was speaking, not but two days after the fact. It was impossible he had been alive and I was only more sure of it now. He was dead when he had been buried. He was still dead in my office.

He was so drained of blood he appeared grey, even now, standing in front of me. He had been mortally wounded several times, though now the wounds appeared absent. His neck was repaired as if by a tailor. Pink scars crossed like a spiderweb over the skin where it had knit itself together. His skin clung to his empty skeleton like a wet cloth, and the stink of the grave still covered him, as did the dirt, and this reanimate demon that defied all reason now stood before a reasonable man, and asked what had happened?

"What happened?" I repeated, finding my breath and strength. "You found it. That is what happened."

"I did?" He asked stupidly. I was incredulous. L.S. had discovered his secret, his cure for death, and it had worked, though he did not seem to understand the miracle he had become a part of.

I stood backed against the wall, trying to remember where I had left my pistol. L.S. stepped towards me with his confused, pleading eyes. He spoke again, with a grating voice like a coffin lid.

"Can you help me?"

"Help you!" I laughed, despite it all, I laughed. "You have cured death! You are the superior physician. Heal thyself!"

He spread his arms out wide. "Please. It hurts."

He was closer now, and I finally brought myself to look at him. What I thought was the dirty remains of a shredded graveshirt I saw now was actually skin. Dead strips of skin hung from his arms in tatters, and boils and blisters ran up and down the length of his hands and exposed forearms. Horrid yellow fluid moved beneath the transluscent skin, and what color there was in his cheeks was from injury.

This instilled a sense of pity- I have been a physician for many years, and I know well the terrible pain inflicted from such severe burns. I dropped my guard.

"How did this happen?"

"I don't know." He replied weakly, still holding his limbs out as if it pained him to move them. "I believe it is sun-burn."

Sun burn like that, I have only seen once before, on a sailor on the open ocean lost for many days on a raft with no relief from the tropical sun. And even then, it wasn't half so severe.

I sat L.S. down and began to remove the dead skin judiciously. He was silent. He offered no explanation for his death and sudden reappearance but watched me work like a cat watches a lark. He had changed drastically, and had he not walked or talked, one might easily assume he were dead. He was cool to the touch and firm, and though I tried several times to find one I could decipher no pulse.

I offered him something for pain, and some water, which he drank greedily. He paused and turned his head and spit out a tooth. I bent to pick it up, and he only shrugged.

"That is the last of my teeth." He said flatly. "The others have been pushed out, by new ones."

New ones. As if deciduous teeth are expected in a man almost sixty years old. He drew back his lips in a tight grimace and I saw that he was right, however. Few teeth remained, save for a jagged set of sharp white teeth that were newly sprouting from the gum.

I asked if he was hungry, and he did not reply. I insisted he eat something. He asked for bread and broth. It was provided, and I watched him try to eat. He did drink the broth, as he had the water. The bread however, caught in his throat. He choked, he gagged, and I feared he might vomit- the fear was hot and bright in my heart, at the thought of what might appear from a dead man's gullet. He spat the bread out in despair.

He groaned deeply and complained bitterly that he was so, so hungry. So awfully hungry, but could not eat.

I had once helped this poor soul amass a library of the occult. God forgive me, I had read some of the books in his collection. He was avoiding the obvious yet unasked questions that hung above our heads like an executioner's axe. It was up to me to try something, and so I did.

He had been emptied of his life's blood. I fetched my blood letting tools, and drew some of my own. I do not know what I meant to do with it. Many of the books in his... academic pursuits placed great importance on life's blood. I had a sense, an intuition that perhaps he knew what to do with it.

I offered it to him in a cup. He did not question my methods or even pause before putting it to his lips and consuming the entire contents. It was now my turn to stave off vomiting. He dropped the cup and took one or two fast steps towards me, but stopped short of touching me. He blinked down at the cup as if incredulous at his own hunger.

He finally looked at me.

"Doctor Schiller. I am afraid that I am dead."

"Yes." It was all I could think to say to him. "Yes, I believe you are."

"What do I do?"

How does one answer such a question?

"I believe the dead should stay in their graves." I told him. "I believe the dead should go to God."

"I do not believe God will have me."

It was now I began to grow angry. "You have ignored my advice for decades, and now you ask me what to do now that you have ruined yourself? You expect me to fix what you have done? I do not know what to say to you. You are dead, you should return to your grave, the best I can do is to put you there myself!"

I raised my voice and my pistol at him. I am not pleased with it, I do not make it a habit to act so unkindly to my friends or to my patients. But I was afraid of him. Afraid of whatever it was he had done to himself. I felt in that moment, that we had ceased to be peers. He had become something else, and whatever it was, I was now prey. I hated him.

He did not retaliate, but he shrunk. He was often too quiet in life, and was now too meek in death. Too meek to do anything but raise his hands to placate me.

"Doctor Schiller, please, do not harm me!"

I did not know if my pistol could have harmed him. How does one kill a dead man? His corpse however was not incorruptible, and the burns along his arms had told me he could still feel pain. It was that fear of pain that would keep him in check.

But, the Devil knows a man's heart well, and will exploit it, even the kind parts of it. Especially the kind parts. When he raised his hands to me, to beg for his own unholy existence, the pink scars of his death throws were revealed in the palms of his hands.

He had perished struggling and pleading once already; and even now, in this state, he did not seem capable of violence on his own behalf. Perhaps his many years of self denial- verging on self punishment, had atrophied his ability to fight for himself. I admit, I faltered. I could not do it. I could not put him through it twice.

I did, however, insist he must return to his grave. I gave him a new shirt and we waited till nightfall and I returned him to his rightful resting place. I tucked him into his vault like I was sending a child to bed. I warned him that he was not to return. He was dead, and he would keep to the realms of the dead, and if I saw him outside of his place, I would remove him with extreme prejudice.

I did not sleep that evening or the next or the next. When I finally gave in to exhaustion, after rising again I wondered if it wasn't a terrible nightmare. Maybe my own mind had invented some form of madness in the fallout of the heartache of burying a colleague and a friend. I began to think perhaps, that this was the more likely truth. I had experienced a delusion. Maybe the brain sickness of L.S. was contagious.

Such an elaborate and detailed delusion is cause for its own concern. Before long, I began to panic. I had to know the truth, so I developed a contrivance, a lie to get into the vault of L.S. to prove to myself that he was rotting in his crypt and that reality was still as it should be.

It was under the excuse that I was looking for signs of plague. It was a stupid excuse, as it was well known at the time that L.S. had died of an obvious murder, and not from illness. But I insisted, and I am respected enough that I was eventually able to get my way.

It was weeks post mortem and the workers cursed me for my idiocy. We braced for a rush of rot, an eruption of putrefaction from the breaking of the seal- but none came. There in the bottom of the vault lay L.S.

He looked exactly as I had left him. Even the globes of his eyes were still round and intact beneath the lids. He was still wearing my shirt.

We put him back quietly and exited the yard. I still send a stipend to the grounds keeper of the yard, for the care of L.S. If a patient needs bloodletting, not a drop of it is spilled. Even now I send this token, eight years later, and never has the groundskeeper asked me to stop. If anything, he will ask me to send more.

I will retire this year and will no longer be able to provide for L.S. I hope charity finds him, I fear what will happen if he is forced to fend for himself.  I do not know if I have done the right thing, by feeding his madness for years or for feeding his hunger now. Perhaps I have done the world a great disservice, and if that is the case I hope the Lord can forgive me. I hope the Lord can forgive L.S. and take him to his daughter. Perhaps the separation from her is the punishment he has earned for overstepping the natural boundaries of life and death over us all.

#wayward souls #writing #vampires #long post