#strongman rule

[shattered-pieces]

I have nothing but contempt for people who are in free countries yet support a dictatorship, support the war on a free country. I suppose russian propaganda has gotten to them here, but that's no excuse. They should know better. It's so obvious to anyone with half a brain who looks at the russian invasion that it's wrong and must be stopped. Russia is a huge country who attacked its smaller neighbor. No justification. Any "justification" is propaganda. It is merely a war of expansion.

Fighting against it is as morally right as fighting the nazis in world war II. Because russia is also doing nazi like things to pieple, not "just" bombing peaceful cities and killing civilians on purpose. It's committing grotesque war crimes. Just because Ukrainians dared to be free. Just because they dared to resist the russian machine that wanted to spread darkness and tyranny over Ukraine, not satisfied with keeping it in their own country.

#revenge for not wanting to be russians #:( #ukraine #russian invasion #appeasers need to shut up #america needs to wake up #supposedly free country #some ppl dont know what freedom is #cant see a threat if it were in front of their face #i wish i could slap them w the truth #how can i make them see the obvious if they dont see it? #perhaps they also want slavery #strongman rule #trump is a threat to democracy #his followers are facilitators of the evil russia does. #i despise all of them.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Steve Cousineau

* * * *

The weekend review: A tale of two speeches.

March 18, 2024

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

Democrats cannot rely on Republicans to defeat themselves in 2024, but Trump and the GOP are doing their best to set their party aflame. They stand on a burning platform and are dousing the flames with gasoline. It is a bonfire of ugliness and self-immolation that further weakens the GOP each day. Their chaos doesn’t make our job any easier, but it does make their job more difficult. Remember that fact next time you worry about the passionate but principled disagreements among Democrats.

Trump gave a speech near Dayton, Ohio over the weekend that was unhinged, dangerous, threatening, vulgar, and inflammatory. Trump's speech is drawing nearly universal condemnation from major media outlets and forced his campaign to issue “clean-up” statements that attempted defend indefensible statements by denying the plain meaning of Trump's words.

I will turn to Trump's speech in a moment, but it is important to focus on the comparison to President Biden’s speech over the weekend. Biden delivered a short address at an event for the press and White House staff at the Gridiron Club in Washington, D.C. The annual event brings the press and administration officials together for a night of pointed comedy mixed with serious talk about the state of the media in America. As expected, Biden gave a speech that was funny and self-deprecating. It was well received. See Factbase, Transcript | The President Addresses a Gridiron Club Dinner in Washington - March 16, 2024.

But Biden also addressed the serious issue of the role of the press in a free society. Biden said,

Folks, every single one of us has a role to play in making sure American democracy endures. This year, you, the free press, have a bigger role than ever. Let me state the obvious. You're not the enemy of the people. You are a pillar of any free society. And I may not always agree with your coverage or admire it, but I do admire your courage. Good journalism holds a mirror up to a country for us to reflect the good, the bad, the truth about who we are. This is not hyperbole: We need you. Democracy is at risk, and the American people need to know. In fractured times, they need context and a perspective. They need substance to match the enormity of the task. As a result, the choices you make really matter. And each story you [write] makes democracy stronger. I know it's possible because I know the American story. We're a great nation. We're good people, defined by core values of honesty, decency, dignity, light over darkness, courage over fear, and truth over lies. These are also the bedrock principles of good journalism. So, tonight, I'd like to toast the free press and toast to the American people and the enduring causes of democracy and freedom.

Biden’s comments praising and honoring the press were a class act coming from a guy who has been badly mistreated by the press for the last year. But “class act” is vintage Biden.

In contrast, in Ohio, Trump predicted that there would be a “bloodbath” if he lost the 2024 election, said that immigrants “are not people [and] in some cases they are animals,” repeatedly referred to President Biden as “that son-of-a . . . .”, said he did “not give a sh*t” about Republicans who don’t support him, referred to California Governor Gavin Newsom and “New Scum,” and made a vulgar comment about Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis. Otherwise, the 90-minute speech was disjointed and incomprehensible to those not steeped in MAGA conspiracy theories. See NYTimes, Trump Says Some Migrants Are ‘Not People’ and Predicts a ‘Blood Bath’ if He Loses. (This article is accessible to all.)

A Trump campaign staff person claimed that the “bloodbath” comment was meant to convey the effect of a Biden victory on the auto industry. (See the Times article above.) While it is true that the comment took place in the context of a discussion of the auto industry, the statement about a “bloodbath” was not qualified or limited in any way. Trump said there would be a bloodbath if he lost. Period. Full stop.

It was vintage Trump—oblique statements alluding to violence shrouded in plausible deniability. But Trump's followers are not steeped in nuance or subtlety. They hear “bloodbath”, and they think “violence.” That is why major media has not bought the Trump campaign’s attempt to twist the meaning and limit the damage from Trump's call to violence.

But for all the attention that Trump's “bloodbath” comment has received, another aspect of Trump's Dayton rally was more disturbing and unsettling. Trump began the speech by playing the desecrated version of the National Anthem that he recorded with January 6 convicted felons serving prison time.

As the bastardized song begins, a recorded voice says, “Please rise for the horribly and unfairly treated January 6 hostages.” The recorded voice then refers to the January 6 defendants as “unbelievable patriots.” During Trump's speech, he effectively promised to grant the January 6 defendants pardons.

There is nothing subtle about Trump's messaging. By calling for a “bloodbath” and referring to the January 6 defendants as “patriots” who will be pardoned, Trump is creating a permission structure for another violent insurrection. That’s the real story—and one that deserves to be highlighted every day between now and November 5, 2024.

That truth will become clearer each time Trump gives another campaign speech. He can’t help himself. He telegraphs what he is thinking and plotting. We should believe him. And so should that portion of corporate America that continues to support Trump.

The good news is that insurrection is not in the best interests of the institutions that are currently propping up Trump in a perverted love-hate relationship. Markets thrive on stability, not violence and insurrection. Corporate America understands that better than anyone.

But it gets worse.

Within twenty-four hours of Trump's call for a “bloodbath,” he called for the imprisonment of former Rep. Liz Cheney and the other members of the January 6 Committee. See Newsweek, Donald Trump Wants His Top Republican Critic Jailed.

So—Trump is calling for a second insurrection and prosecution of the current and former congressional representatives on the January 6 Committee. It doesn’t get any less subtle than that. Even Trump's least intuitive followers understand what Trump is saying.

As Trump is becoming more explicit in his dictatorial aspirations, he is also deteriorating cognitively. Last week, I cited a New Yorker article by Susan Glasser entitled, I Listened to Trump’s Rambling, Unhinged, Vituperative Georgia Rally—and So Should You. The New Yorker article is behind a paywall, so you may not have been able to read it. But Ali Velshi interviewed Susan Glasser on MSNBC and covered the substance of the article—so you can listen to Glasser discuss her observations about Trump. The interview is here. See MSNBC, You need to see how much worse Trump is now: Glasser.

In short, we have an aspiring dictator in cognitive decline who is telling us what his strongman fantasies are. As Bill Clinton would have said, “That dog won’t hunt.” We should be able to leverage those weaknesses to our advantage. They are scary, yes. But a disciplined response should allow us to convert Trump's increasing mania to our benefit—in part, by convincing persuadable independents and disaffected Republicans that the unhinged candidate they see on the campaign trail is unfit to govern this great nation again.

This leaves only the strongman fantasies of Trump's followers. Their loyalty to Trump makes sense only if he is their strongman, as Professor Timothy Snyder explains on his Substack blog, Thinking About. . . . The Strongman Fantasy.

As Professor Snyder writes,

Strongman rule is a fantasy. Essential to it is the idea that a strongman will be your strongman. He won't. In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents. We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something.  But the vote you cast for him affirms your irrelevance. The whole point is that the strongman owes us nothing. We get abused and we get used to it. 

There is probably little we can do to convince Trump's most cultish followers that Trump sees their support only as transactional and expendable. But Trump will continue to repulse portions of his remaining constituency by calling immigrants “animals,” praising thugs who killed police officers on January 6, mocking the disabled, calling soldiers “losers and suckers,” and desecrating the Christian principles that serve as the faith foundation for a majority of his supporters.

As I said at the top, we can’t count on Trump to defeat himself. But we should recognize that he is a weak candidate stranded on a burning platform, and he is acting as the chief arsonist. Every new voter we register and turn out to the polls will help build an insurmountable margin as Trump's former supporters at the margins reevaluate their past support for Trump. That is the only advantage we need in a closely matched election. We can make that happen—we already are!

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

#Robert B. Hubbell #Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter #election 2024 #Timothy Snyder #Strongman rule #rhetoric

[indizombie]

Voters in the Philippines have long shown a partiality to strongman rule, to roguish characters who promise to dispense with the messy compromises of democracy and get things done. That explains the election of Joseph Estrada in 1998, and more recently in the 2016 of Mr Duterte, who made no secret of his impatience with democratic norms. Bongbong Marcos does not have that kind of charisma, but he has run largely on refashioned memories of the strongman rule of his father.

Jonathan Head, ‘What the Marcos' return to power means for the Philippines’, BBC

#BBC #Jonathan Head #Philippines #democracy #Joseph Estrada #Rodrigo Duterte #charisma #strongman rule #bongbong marcos

[incompleteninny]

The forty-ninth free, unedited chapter of my upcoming book, “The Heist at Cordia Aquarium” is now available on its website (or click here to read from the beginning).

This chapter devolved into the existential dread that underpins my every thought. Not intentionally, but we got there in the end!

Ronan's box truck hurtles over a speed bump and the entire vehicle careens through the air. Inside the truck's container, Thea's stomach coils tighter toward the ground before springing to her throat as her body leaves the floor. In the middle of that weightless moment, wheels crash down onto pavement. Her stomach flips through the air and she plummets back to earth.

Near simultaneous, everything smacks onto the plywood floor: Ivan's fifty pound sack of salt thumps down beside him; Thea's cane clatters out of reach; and her own butt—

A shock jolts from her hip, down her leg, and back up her spine. Her head snaps backward out of instinct. Bone meets solid metal in a hollow clang, like a bass drum with its tension rods set too tight.

Stars burst into her vision. They blink out in the same breath and she slaps a protective hand over the swelling knot of skin at the crown of her head. "Ow. Gosh that really hurt."

[...]

For this week, there’s new art from Stella! The print book will have a handful of these art pieces inserted throughout. This one depicts the events of the freely available, unedited version of chapter twenty-eight. When the art came into my inbox, I nearly died. I Can Not Wait for the next few.

#next piece is one of thea + frank #asexuals will rule the world #but the wlws can rule them for this post because avery + sophia are very cute #not to mention psuedo-embarrassing-uncle barclay in his strongman hero outfit #enough gushing about Stella's art #if you want baby bunny pictures dm me #book tags I guess #asexual protagonist #queer #queer books #queer webnovel #truck-kun but he doesn't kill anyone

[wilwheaton]

Quite a few Americans like the idea of strongman rule. Why not a dictator who will get things done? I lived in eastern Europe when memories of communism were fresh. I have visited regions in Ukraine where Russia imposed its occupation regime. I have spent decades reading testimonies of people who lived under Nazi or Stalinist rule. I have seen death pits, some old, some freshly dug. And I have friends who have lived under authoritarian regimes, including political prisoners and survivors of torture. Some of the people I trusted most have been assassinated. So I think that there is an answer to this question. Strongman rule is a fantasy. Essential to it is the idea that a strongman will be your strongman. He won't. In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents. We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something. But the vote you cast for him affirms your irrelevance. The whole point is that the strongman owes us nothing. We get abused and we get used to it.

The Strongman Fantasy - by Timothy Snyder

[smiling-circus-au]

Come, come! To the greatest circus to exist! You’ll be left speechless by the end of a function! Come, come!

MEET OUR WONDERFUL STAFF!

DOGDAY, our great RINGMASTER! CRAFTYCORN, our skilled MAKEUP ARTIST and PROP MAKER! HOPPY HOPSCOTCH, our impressive STRONGMAN! BUBBA BUBBAPHANT, our unbelievable MAGICIAN! KICKIN’ CHICKEN, our fearless STUNT RIDER! PICKY PIGGY, our talented CHEF! BOBBY BEARHUG, our graceful ADAGIO! and finally, CATNAP, our incredible CONTORTIONIST!

Come, come! We will be waiting for you in

THE SMILING CIRCUS!

INFO:

THERE ARE NO CANON SHIPS IN THIS AU. HOWEVER, YOU MAY HEADCANON AS MANY AS YOU WANT WITH THE CONDITION OF BEING NICE TO WHOEVER DOESN'T THINK THE SAME AS YOU.

mod's first language is spanish, not english. excuse the grammar errors </3

mod speaking will 『be seen like this.』 don't want to see them? block both #.mod speaks. and #.mod answers. so you don't see me yap!

RULES:

✹ keep asks SFW. even if in this au they're adults, it makes me uncomfortable. insisting in this behavior will get you blocked. ✹ be patient. i am one person with a life outside of the internet, and a busy one at that. ✹ DO NOT SPAM MY INBOX. do not send the same ask multiple times. doing this will get you blocked. ✹ DO NOT DEMAND ART ANSWERS. i will draw whenever i want. insisting on this behavior will get you blocked.

NAVIGATION HELP:

CHARACTER INFORMATION

--TBA AS TIME GOES ON--

#smiling critters #.smiling circus au. #smiling critters au #dogday #craftycorn #picky piggy #hoppy hopscotch #bubba bubbaphant #catnap #bobby bearhug #kickin' chicken

[robertreich]

Trump's Chaos Agenda 

Donald Trump wants you to be disgusted. He wants you to be cynical. And he definitely doesn’t want you to watch this video. Why? Because that’s how he wins in 2024. Let me explain.

The Republicans’ election strategy is built on chaos. The more chaos they create, the more pessimistic Americans feel about the capacities of our democracy to govern the nation. So we give up on democracy and turn to a so-called strongman.

Trump has been pushing his party to deny the 2020 election result, shut down the government, pardon insurrectionists, impeach President Biden, investigate Hunter Biden, stop funding Ukraine, and obstruct the criminal prosecutions Trump is facing. He’s stoking hatred, using fascist language by labeling his opponents “vermin” and claiming immigration is destroying the nation.  

Trump wants voters to believe America is ungovernable, and that the only solution is an authoritarian like him taking over.

And he wants those who don’t support him to be so disgusted that they tune out — and not even bother to vote.

Trump’s chaos agenda is also drowning out news about how well we’re actually being governed under President Biden.

Rarely do we hear about how the economy continues to generate a record number of new jobs. 

Not to mention billions of dollars being invested to fix the nation’s infrastructure and combat climate change. Medicare on the way to lowering the cost of prescription drugs. Billions in student debt canceled, in spite of rulings from the right-wing Supreme Court. Corporate monopolies attacked. Workers’ rights to organize, defended.

Trump and his allies don’t want you to know about any of this. And sadly the media plays along by focusing mostly on chaos and dysfunction, with an inclination to blame both sides in the name of “balanced coverage.”

Folks, the political struggle of our time is no longer Left versus Right, Democrats versus Republicans. It’s now democracy versus fascism.

Be warned. And help spread the word about Trump’s chaos agenda by sharing this video.

#youtube #politics #election #Donald Trump #Joe Biden #video #videos #chaos

[deacblues]

In your opinion, what makes a good spider-variant design? I'm trying to avoid the pitfall of "bunch of normal ass clothes over the suit" I typically see, but also struggling to come up with anything that's clearly a spider-man when you look at it and doesn't confuse with peter parker's spider-man

That's a good question! So good that I'm going to bust out the proper capitalization and everything.

I'll give you a freebie right off the bat, because this is probably going to be a long post: one easy way to distinguish your character from Peter Parker is to draw them with a different body type. That way, even if their costume was similar to Peter's, it would obviously not be him.

Now, before getting into what I think makes a good Spider-Man design, I feel obligated to speak on what makes a good superhero design. Namely: Keep it simple, stupid! The best superhero costumes are pretty easy to draw, probably because they were designed to be drawn a million times by a million different artists. These costumes are simple enough that they can reduced to bands of colour and stay recognizable.

I promise that keeping your design simple will undoubtedly make it better-- or at least more superheroic, because this applies to Spider-Man, too!

Onto making a Spider-Man costume that is recognizably Spider-Man, but clearly not Peter Parker's. Obviously this costume is going to look different than Peter's classic costume, so we could start by figuring out what about that costume we can change. Thankfully, they already stripped Spider-Man down to the essentials in 1984.

Mike Zeck's black costume identifies these necessary elements of Spider-Man's costume:

Those luchador eyes

The front and back spider emblem

Form-fitting tights

The rest of the costume (the segmented colours, the web pattern, etc.) are basically fine for you to ignore or change at your leisure. Okay, maybe not... you could just draw Green Lantern and put a spider on his chest and back, and that probably wouldn't make for a great Spider-Man. But it's a place to start, at least. As long as you're putting serious thought into this costume, though, you should be able to ignore pitfalls like that.

Hey, speaking of thought, I thought I should cover some of those extraneous details Ditko included in his iconic Spider-Man design! Namely the way he chose to segment the reds and blues, he actually put loads of thought into it:

Namely, the high-rise gloves and boots help Peter's costume remain invisible beneath his civvies. I actually think these logistics are important to consider when designing a Spider-Man costume (or really any costume).

Anon mentions the "bunch of normal ass clothes over the suit" trend in spider-design in their ask, which I was happy to see because it means I can talk about something that really bugs me about recent Spider-Man stuff: How does Spider-Man stick to walls through regular shoes? No, seriously? Think about it for a second! When Miles wears Jordans over his Spider-Man costume and tries to stick his feet to a wall, wouldn't his feet just stick to his shoes instead?

Ditko rationalized this by deciding that Spider-Man can stick to walls through thin fabrics, but that rule has basically been forgotten. Despite how I sound, I'm mostly fine with this change (this is a textbook 'rule of cool' case), but these kinds of things are worth thinking about.

In that vein, keep in mind that Spider-Man's superpowers really lend themselves to acrobatics. Your spider-character probably shouldn't be wearing a suit of armour, or something that would greatly restrict their movement or sticking ability. That's why I labelled "Form-fitting tights" as a necessary characteristic of a Spider-Man costume earlier on in this post.

Before I wrap this up, one more thing you can try doing if you're stumped is looking at real life for inspiration. Whether that's going back to the old strongman outfits that gave way to the original superhero costumes, looking at modern day equivalent athletic wear, or even looking at actual fashion (as long as you're not just putting that fashion over the suit), there's bound to be something that could give you ideas.

#spider-man #peter parker #costume design #questioning #tumblr keeps fucking my post formatting

[imholtorf]

The Seven Deadly Sins in the Hellverse.

According to Vivziepop, she explains that the 7 Deadly Sins represent each circus act.

1.

Lucifer Morningstar rules the Pride Ring and all of Hell as he represents the ringleader due to his status and attire. An app on Blitzo's phone that says "Lucimaster" probably the equivalent to ticketmaster as Lucifer owns a theme park called "Lu Lu World" and his wife, Lilith does concerts as there is a poster of her in the background in the Hazbin Hotel pilot episode.

2. Satan rules the Wrath Ring, though he never made a physical appearance, but he was mentioned several times by the characters as they use his name to swear and in the pilot episode of Helluva Boss a homeless imp is holding a sign that says "Monee Helps Satan Bless" he would be consider the imps' version of God. In episode "Ozzie's" there's an app on Blitzo's phone that says "Satan's Workouts" as he is mentioned by Beelzebub in "Queen Bee" that she saw him shirtless. Satan would represent the circus strongman.

3.

Beelzebub rules the Gluttony Ring and is Vortex's girlfriend. She throws a ton of crazy hound parties when Vortex mentions her in "Spring Broken". Vivziepop says that Beelzebub represents the animal tamer as she goes through hoops, which she does during the "Cotton Candy" song. An app on Blitzo's phone that says "Bee Eats" the app would be about food delivery.

4.

Mammon rules the Greed Ring, he owns a theme park called "Loo Loo Land" which is a rip-off of Lucifer's Lu Lu World. He represents a jester due to his obvious attire, an app on Blitzo's phone that says "Moneymakerz Bank" which is a banking app.

5.

Asmodeus or Ozzie or Ozz rules the Lust Ring. He is the owner of a club called "Ozzie's" and a factory called "Big Ozzie's Factory" which the sex toys and Robo Fizz at Loo Loo Land are created. He was also responsible of creating the Fizzarolli sex toys, much to his displeasure as it was for Fizz's likeness for Mammon.

When I watched a youtube video of this youtuber called Cartoon Universe as he says that Asmodeus represents a stage magician as he appears on the stage with smoke like most magicians do. The app on Blitzo's phone called "Lustinder" a parody of a real-life dating app called "Tinder". Asmodeus is also the keeper of Asmodean Crystals, a type of magical mineral that gives hellborn demons access to the human world.

6. Leviathan rules the Envy Ring. There's no information about him or the Envy Ring, but there were glimpses of deep sea demons in "Ozzie's", and a mother and son deep sea demon from "Western Energy". In "Mammon's Magnificent Mid-Season Special (ft. Fizzarolli)", the twins, Glitz and Glam might also be from the Envy Ring, because of their fish-features. An app on Blitzo's phone that says "EnVee" a parody to "TikTok".

7. Belphegor rules the Sloth Ring. She never made any physical appearance, but she was mention by Beelzebub when she couldn't convince her to use her party drugs when she wanted to throw a bigger party. Sloth Ring is home to the Baphomets, a candle-headed goat demon and where the medical buildings are located such as the St. An's Hospital in "Western Energy" when Blitzo takes Loona there to get her Hellbies shot and the Rehab Center in "Unhappy Campers" where Barbie Wire resides before she was released.

Cartoon Universe theorizes the Belphegor is a Baphomet and represent the bearded lady. In app on Blitzo's phone is called "Sleepy Pillz" which is to help you sleep better. Belphegor's name is alluded on Stolas' Happy Pills in "The Circus".

#helluva boss #hazbin hotel

[zvaigzdelasas]

Israeli airstrikes in Syria “could lead to a region-wide" war, according to Russia, which accused the United States and Israel of chancing a conflict in [Syria]. “These actions by the Israeli side are a gross violation of the sovereignty of the [Syrian Arab Republic] and the basic rules of international law,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. “Such military actions are fraught with extremely dangerous consequences, since they could lead to a region-wide armed escalation.”[...]

Israeli forces bombarded Syrian airports in Damascus and Aleppo on Thursday, according to Syrian and Russian state media. Israel Defense Forces officials have declined to confirm or deny the reported airstrikes. “We do not comment on foreign media reports,” IDF Lt. Col. Amnon Shefler said on Thursday.[...]

Putin has blamed Israel and the United States for the latest Hamas terror attack. “Part of the land that Palestinians have always considered as originally belonging to them has been occupied by Israel at different times and in different ways, but for the most part, obviously, through military force,” the Kremlin strongman said Wednesday. “Also, the settlement policy and certain other aspects have ultimately led to this explosion of violence."

12 Oct 23

[miss-atena]

Twisted Wonderland Headcanons Heartslabyul + Che'nya

I finally have the time to do this post. I've wanted to do this one for a while but life and other stuff got in the way. So... Yeah! All character art used is by me, headcanons may have some basis on friends hcs I like, but overall its very much what I think. More under the cut.

Riddle Rosehearts

Mixed Asian and Latino (if in our world);

has eyebags and moles on his face but hides it with makeup as best as he can;

Red undertone skin, very rosy;

Everything about his appearance is kept pristine and proper. His hair is always combed, his nails are manicured, no body or facial hair, etc;

Probably has undiagnosed autism;

So sheltered from the real world, he has trouble keeping real conversations without overanalyzing everything being said or bringing up the Queen of Hearts rules;

Is not allowed to hold hands because his mom thought that would mean he was gonna skip studies to date. (He "accidentally" forgot about that on NRC);

Tries to keep in contact with Che'nya while on NRC but is afraid of messing things up, especially after his overblot;

Cares more for Deuce and Ace than he lets himself show. secretly defends them during housewarden meetings.

Gender Non Conforming, He/they/xe;

Biromantic Asexual.

Has had a tiny crush on Trey before.

Trey Clover

Blasian;

Strongman body type but less intense;

Softest body around, Heratslabyul Sleepover human pillow;

His hands are a bit rough from dealing with cooking and the occasional kitchen accident;

Always smells of pies. Even when he didn't make any. It's his natural scent;

Is farsighted;

He has 3 glasses with different frames, for different occasions, but only uses the same pair because black goes with anything;

Suffers the "M'lady" and "erm actually" jokes from Cater and Ace;

Still keeps in touch with Che'nya, they text sometimes and during summer break Trey sends baked goods for Che'nya to share with his grandpa;

Claims he is a normal dude but can make any recipe if he read how to make it once before;

Knows how to help during panic attacks and sensory crises due to his siblings needing him before;

Cis man, He/him;

Pansexual.

Has received more love letters than any other Heartslabyul dorm member.

Cater Diamond

Token white friend/j

anyway yeah, he is the whitest person from the Heartslabyul cast IMO

a bean of a boy

wakes up way earlier than the others to do skin care routines trending on Magicam

If something is trendy and isn't too expensive, he is buying and wearing it till the trend ends.

barely passing grades, but still passing.

has had an off with your head for almost failing sometimes, but Riddle had to just accept Cater is not the brightest academically.

if he could, he would pay double to get more piercings but Riddle would probably actually chop his head off for that.

Social butterfly, but heavy impostor syndrome.

has hidden eyebags with makeup before from spending hours doom-scrolling on his phone

Has a crush on Trey but is too afraid of rejection to make a move.

Bigender He/they

Bisexual

flirts with people by accident sometimes.

Ace Trappola

mixed asian and white

besides being mixed, he is the token white guy of the group.

basic af, will crumble if u give him spicy food.

way too comfortable with flirting with Deuce for everyone to think they r just friends.

his brother pierced his ears and they both got scolded (Ace was 12)

way richer than he think he is, can buy really nice stuff without batting an eye and doesn't realize it. Not on Kalim's level, though.

Every week Ace has his head offed by Riddle in some form of way. Sometimes will drag Grim with him on these.

is afraid of thunderstorms and will not admit it.

Cater's protected child, they both do chaos together.

Cis man, he/him.

Omnisexual with female preference

even tho his real preference seems to be Deuce.

Deuce Spade

Asian.

probably autistic, but no one notices cuz he hits the not-noticeable aspects of the spectrum.

Asks for tutoring from Trey, since he is low-key very high-key afraid of Riddle's scoldings

Half of the time on Track and Fiel club turns into hype sessions

If Ace wasn't his closest friend at NRC with Yuu and Grim, it would be Epel

His mom sent him his old jackets so he would feel at home in school. Ace uses them and fakes being a delinquent.

While Ace is protected by Cater, Deuce is protected by Trey. The duality of men.

Helps whoever he can during PE classes, he wants to be seen as reliable like Trey.

Trans man, he/him

Bisexual, no preference.

Doesn't get why people think he and Ace are a couple.

BONUS: Che'Nya

Blasian + Vitiligo

Has Discalculy

They were supposed to be a regular white cat beastman, but they dyed their fur for funsies

Loves arts and crafts, and their pants were embroidered by themself.

Their grandpa taught them arts and crafts.

No one knows why they are in RSA and not NRC, Trey says he thinks they got an invitation from NRC first and a RSA after they rejected NRC, but is not sure.

Uses their magic all the time, and find loopholes to say they can use their magic.

Doesn't hang with the popular kids at RSA, but has a little group of friends.

Texts Trey all the time they can, mostly to share Magicam memes.

They have a planner of dates they will try crashing unbirthday parties at NRC. Only started this after Riddle became a housewarden.

No teacher calls them by their name, it is either their nickname Che'nya or Pinka.

Genderfluid They/it/xe/nya

Omnisexual with a preference for masc leaning.

No one knows how they have not been expelled from how much they sneak around and poke and prod at what they shouldn't.

#twisted wonderland #twst #disney twst #tena ramble #tena writing #heartslabyul #riddle rosehearts #trey clover #cater diamond #ace trappola #deuce spade #che'nya #alchemi alchemivich pinka

[mariacallous]

British exceptionalism means that we do not like to think of our politicians as extremists. Official paranoia, state-sponsored lying, half-mad ideas that play to bigoted prejudices: these evils do not afflict dear, sweet, safe old Blighty.

You need only glance at the press or watch the BBC to know that policies and politicians we would have no problem identifying as radical right if they appeared in Europe or the Trumpian corners of the United States, are treated as mainstream here in the UK.

To be fair, Rishi Sunak is not a typical strongman leader. He is small (5ft 5in) and without physical presence, oratorical skill, or a definable sense of purpose.

Sunak’s manner varies from  wide-eyed chirpiness when discussing his strangely marginal political passions – banning smoking, recruiting more maths teachers – to petulance when confronted with difficulties: “He comes across as snippy, and comes across as thin-skinned — which he is, when people challenge him,” said one former minister.

Labour politicians believe he will fall apart under the scrutiny of a general election campaign.

And yet this mediocre member of the superrich (our modern Malvolio married rather than earned his wealth) who received the best education the Western world can offer at Winchester college and Oxford and Stanford universities, is by any reasonable definition an extremist.

Sunak’s only saving grace is that he is as useless at extremism as he is at everything else and thus there is a limit to how much damage he can cause.

Within the past few hours Sunak passed into law the power to send asylum seekers to the quasi-dictatorship of Rwanda. The deportees will include genuine refugees, the victims of human trafficking, and Afghans who risked their lives serving the British armed forces in the war against the Taliban.

I have no doubt that radical right politicians across Europe would like to possess the same powers. But as things stand only Rishi Sunak has them and is able to set them to the Orwellian task of remoulding reality.

The UK Supreme Court ruled that the government could not deport people to Rwanda because it is not a safe country. It’s a quasi-dictatorship under Paul Kagame, a genuine and genuinely frightening strongman, who is engaged in covert warfare against neighbouring states. There’s no real judicial independence and the Rwandan government breached the terms of a previous asylum deal it had entered into with Israel.

The UK government has got round these objections by announcing that reality is now what Rishi Sunak says it is.

Sunak’s legislation declares that Rwanda is a safe country, even though it isn’t. From now on, an asylum seeker trying to stop the UK deporting him cannot use the actual existing repressions on the ground in Rwanda to challenge the government in UK courts.

Sunak says Rwanda is safe so it must be so. Maybe Sunak will move on to declare that black is white and 2+2=5, but for the time being he is limiting himself to creating an imaginary African republic where all is peace and light.

Lord Anderson, who as a former adviser to the UK state on terrorism is hardly a knee-jerk softie, put it well when he said of the government’s plans to end judicial oversight

“If Rwanda is safe as the government would have us declare, it has nothing to fear from such scrutiny. “Yet we are invited to adopt a fiction, to wrap it in the cloak of parliamentary sovereignty and to grant it permanent immunity from challenge. To tell an untruth and call it truth.”

To insist that lies are the truth is extreme. It is also the logical conclusion of the Brexit policy of concerted lying in the service of political ends, which has been running since 2016.

And speaking of Brexit and before I go any further, I should note that, with the exception of Geert Wilders, no European far-right leader advocates taking his or her country out of the EU. But Rishi Sunak was all for Brexit, and promised that “our nation would be freer, fairer and more prosperous outside the EU”.

We know how that went.

And we almost certainly know how the Rwanda deportations will go. They will fail, and Sunak will be a failed extremist because what he wants is impossible.

Look at it from the point of view of a right-winger who is furious that tens of thousands are crossing the English Channel and entering the country illegally. Throughout his life the Conservatives have betrayed him.  

David Cameron promised to reduce migration from the hundreds to tens of thousands, and failed to deliver. Brexit promised to return control of our borders. Instead, small boats cross the channel in a parody of the Dunkirk evacuation, while legal immigration has gone through the roof.

No pro-European politician would ever say this, but it does not mean that people have not noticed. By leaving the EU, the UK swapped European migrants who were largely white and, if they had a religion, it was Christianity, for migrants from the rest of the world who are largely not white and, if they have a religion, it is unlikely to be Christianity.

Despite all this Sunak is still bellowing that he will stop all the boats, which is as impossible as David Cameron’s fake promise to reduce migration to the tens of thousands.

He is bellowing because Conservatives are terrified that Reform (the latest Farage party) will send the Tories down to a landslide defeat.

They are trying to unite the right by assuming that right-wing and radical-wing voters are stupid, and won’t notice the attempt to con them with impossible promises.

It’s not working. At the moment we are in an unprecedented situation, where Labour enjoys a poll lead on immigration.

For those on left who say there is no difference between Starmer’s Labour and the Tories ought to notice that Labour holds that lead even though it is absolutely opposed to the Rwanda obscenity, when Tony Blair’s Labour party would probably have gone along with it.

In the Commons yesterday, Stephen Kinnock, Labour’s shadow immigration minister, tore into the government.

He pointed out that the cost of the vain attempt to save Sunak’s skin – will be about “£2 million per deportee”. As only a few hundred are ever likely to go, tens of thousands more will be left “in expensive hotels, stuck in a perma-backlog at a staggering cost to the taxpayer.”

Assuming, that is, anyone goes at all.

 Yesterday Sunak made a rather pathetic admission that no plane will leave for 12 weeks. We shall see. Despite the government’s best efforts to rewrite the law and threaten the European Court of Human Rights, there can still be legal challenges which may last until the next election.

Cynics say the government would like nothing better than the flights to be stopped so it can blame left-wing lawyers in the campaign. I think they are attributing intelligence to the prime minister he does not possess.

Put like this, the UK’s failed extremists do not seem so reprehensible.  But look at what they have done. Since David Cameron in 2010 they have never explained the necessity for immigration in an honest conversation with the public.

They have pandered to right-wing and radical right-wing sentiment and then infuriated voters by making promises they could never keep. In doing so they have prepared the ground for genuinely extremist politicians.

We have already paid a price for their trickery with Brexit and I doubt the full bill is in yet.

We are fortunate that Rishi Sunak is too hopeless to be dangerous. We may not be so lucky in the future.

[racefortheironthrone]

Kinda of random but what do you think of Alan's Moore comments about people liking comic book movies could lead into fascism? Seems like bitter old man territory but what do you think?

I think it's fair to say that fascism has been something of an obsession of Alan Moore's and a recurring although not omnipresent theme in many of his works.

While Miracleman is technically an expy of Captain Marvel, I would argue that the series is Moore's most extended commentary on Superman instead and especially the idea of the ubermensch. In Miracleman, our protagonist is initially thought to have been made into a superhero by a benevolent enlightened scientist, but eventually we learn that Miracleman is the product of an Operation Paperclip Nazi science project called the Zarathusa Project designed to create the literal Nietzschean Ubermensch, complete with a fixation on "blond gods" and a eugenicist breeding program. A superhero fight in the midle of London causes mass civilian casualties on the scale of an atomic bomb going off. Ultimately, Miracleman effectively overthrows Thatcher's government and rules as an enlightened despot before eventually leaving Earth for space.

Likewise, I think Watchmen is Moore's most extended commentary on masked vigilantism and thus on Batman. In Watchmen, the phenomenon of vigilantism is repeatedly associated with right-wing politics: Hooded Justice is a German circus strongman who has pro-Nazi politics; Captain Metropolis wanted his superhero teams to target "black unrest," "campus subversion," and "anti-war demos;" and the Comedian is a brutal nihilist who ultimately joins the U.S security state where he cheerfully follows orders to assassinate JFK and Woodward and Bernstein, commit atrocities in Vietnam, kill protesting hippies, etc. Finally, there's Rorschach, Moore's most famous mis-interpreted creation - Rorschach is a paranoid conspiracy theorist who's an anti-communist, anti-liberal, militant and militaristic nationalist, homophobe, misogynist, and avid follower of the John Birch Society-like New Frontiersman.

And then there's V for Vendetta, which I would argue is Moore's attempt to create a masked vigilante superhero with his own anarchist politics. In this story, the vigilante isn't a crimefighter but rather a revolutionary who seeks the overthrow of a fascist state and the creation of an anarchist utopia.

Moreover, his more recent comments about comic book movies being linked to fascism are arguably just part of his much longer-running commentary that superheroes as a concept are at the very least proto-fascist.

Having read a lot of Moore's work and interviews on the subject, I don't find his critique compelling. I think his definition of fascism is far too loose, I think his lens on the superhero genre is overly narrow, and I think his mode of analysis tends to neglect the vital area of historical context.

Definitions

So let's start with Moore's definition of fascism. I think Moore tends to really over-emphasize the whole idea of the Nietzschean ubermensch and the use of force to solve problems, and more recently he's been on this weird kick of saying that nostalgia and a childlike desire for easy solutions leads to fascism. I have several problems with this definition:

the first is that, as I've talked about in the past, fascism is a very complex historical phenomenon that can't be boiled down to a single idea, and in particular the idea of the ubermensch is a pretty small part of the German case (and even then how do you balance it against Nazism's more anti-individualistic aspects, like the mass party and the mass party organization).

the second is that the idea of a larger-than-life individual using physical prowess to solve problems is not unique to fascism. After all, during the 30s, you also had the Soviet Union promoting the heroic ideal of Stakhanovitism and the depiction of the heroic male factory worker in socialist realism. More importantly, the idea of a "larger-than-life individual using physical prowess to solve problems" is basically the same description for any number of literary figures from pulp cowboys to the Greek heroes of the Iliad and the Oddessy to the epic of Gilgamesh.

the third is that I think Moore's definition overlooks the actual drivers of the rise of contemporary fascism. Anti-semitism, racism, homophobia and transphobia, misogyny - all of these are real social and cultural forces that are actually motivating people to join the ranks of the alt-right, to commit massacres, to riot at the Capitol, and so forth. It is incredibly self-involved to think that superheroes and superhero movies are worth discussing in the same breath. At the end of the day, they're harmless entertainment compared to the real political issues that need to be tackled.

Moore's Model of Superheroes

Here's where I'm going to say something that's going to be a bit controversial - I don't think Alan Moore has read widely enough in the superhero genre to make an accurate assessment of its relationship to fascism. If we look at his comics work, and we look at his writings, and we look at his interviews, Moore's mental model of the superhero really only includes two figures, Superman as the representative of the superpowered ubermensch and Batman as the representative of the masked vigilante crimefighter. Notably, Moore hasn't really touched the last of the Big Three - Wonder Woman, a superhero with a strong legacy of radical left-wing politics. I do think we have to mention, given Moore's somewhat troubled history when it comes to issues of gender, that Moore's model of the superhero doesn't include any female superheroes (or for that matter, any superheroes of color or queer superheroes). (EDIT: I should clarify - Promethea is Moore's version of Wonder Woman, but she doesn't really come up in his discussions of fascism, and her thematic profile has more to do with Moore's interests in magic.)

And other than Captain Britain, Moore never worked with any Marvel character and basically ignores them.

To me, this is like having a career as a painter and never working with colors. Moore's model of the superhero leaves out the Fantastic Four and how their flawed psychologies revolutionized the industry and the whole idea of the superhero-as-explorer, it leaves out Spider-Man and the idea of the superhero-as-everyman whose central struggle is about work-life balance and altruism, and most importantly it leaves out the X-Men and the idea of the mutant metaphor.

If as a critic you're going to make grand pronouncements about something as morally evil as fascism, I think it really is incumbent on you to have read and analyzed widely rather than cherry-picking a couple of case studies. Especially if you have something of a tendency to mis-characterize those case studies by ignoring historical context.

Historical Context

So let's talk about Superman and Batman and their emergence in the 1930s. One vital bit of context is that the U.S experienced a significant crime wave in the 1920s and 1930s as Prohibition encouraged the rise of organized crime and then the Great Depression spurred the rise of kidnapping and bank robbery gangs. Moreover, municipal police forces tended to be wildly corrupt, accepting bribes from organized crime to let them operate with impunity, while not letting up in the slightest in their brutal oppression of workers and minorities.

In this context, I think the idea of vigilantism - while it has an undeniably racist legacy dating back to Reconstruction - is not purely a conservative phenomena. It's also an expression of a desire for help from somebody, anybody when the powers that be are of no help. And at the end of the day, unsanctioned use of force can equally be traced back to left-wing self-defense efforts from the Panthers back to the Communist Party's streetfighting corps to unions packing two-by-fours on the picket line - so I don't think we can simply equate punching a bad guy with racist lynch mobs and call it a day.

So let's talk about Superman and the ubermensch. I think Moore has a bad tendency to focus on his nightmare scenrio of a godlike being tyrannizing and destroying hapless humanity, while minimizing the actual ideas of Siegel and Shuster. He tends to take their use of the Nietzschean as a straighforward invocation instead of the clear subversion it was intended to be - rather than a blond god who imposed tyrannical rule with horrific violence, Siegel and Schuster made their Superman a dark-haired Moses allegory, who rather than solely fighting crime acted to stop wife-beaters, war profiteers, and save the life of death row inmates, and whose secret identity was of a crusading journalist who uncovered corrupt politicians.

To be fair, Alan Moore admits that Superman started out as "very much a New Deal American” - but because this kind of does near-fatal damage to his argument, he quickly minimizes that by saying that Superman got co-opted and thus it doesn't count. This is some No True Scotsman bullshit - Moore knows that his example just imploded so he tries to wriggle out of it by arguing that Superman sold out to the Man. If we go back to the actual historical evidence, we can see that at the outset of the Red Scare, the Superman radio show went on a crusade against the Klan, and throughout the conservative 1950s, Superman was used to propagandize liberal values of religious and racial equality:

So much for selling out.

On the other hand, Batman is a tougher case, given that his whole deal is being a masked vigilante who wages an unending war on crime to avenge his murdered parents. So is Batman an inherently fascist figure, a wealthy sadist who spends his time brutally beating the poor and the mentally ill when he could be using his riches to tackle social issues? I would argue that this version of Batman is actually pretty recent - very much a legacy of the work of Frank Miller and then the post-9/11 writings of Christopher Nolan, Johnathan Nolan, and David Goyer - and that there have been many different Batmen with very different thematic foci.

For example, the early Batman was as much a figure of horror as he was of superheroics - he fought Frankensteins and Draculas, he killed with silver bullets, etc. Then in the 40s and 50s, you got the much more cartoony and light-hearted Batman who pretty much exclusively fought equally oddball supervillains in such a heightened world of riddles and giant pennies and mechanical T-Rexes that I don't think you can particularly describe it as "crime-fighting." Then in the 1960s, you have the titanic influence of the Batman TV show, where Adam West as Batman was officially licensed by the Gotham P.D (so much for vigilantism) and extolled the virtues of constitutional due process and the Equal Pay Act in PSAs and episodes alike. You can call the 1966 Batman a lot of things, but fascist isn't one of them.

Conclusion

I want to emphasize at the end of the day that I'm a huge Alan Moore fan; I've read most of his vast bibliography, I find him a fascinating if very odd thinker and critic, I've even tried to read his mammoth novel Jerusalem (which is not easy reading, let me tell you). At the same time, it's important not to treat creators, even the very titans of the medium, as incapable of error. And in this case, I think Alan Moore is simply wrong about fascism and superheroes and people should really stop asking him about it, because I don't think he has anything new to say about it.

#comics #comics meta #alan moore #fascism #superheroes #batman #superman

[batshit-circus-pizza-tower]

~ INTRODUCTION ~

(AND RULES, PLEASE READ BEFORE ASKING THIS BLOG ANYTHING!!)

[You find yourself walking through a forest, walking about the place and hoping to get yourself somewhere interesting.]

[That's when you find it.]

[A large, open trail leading to a brilliantly lit circus tent. Decorated in red and white and yellow, casted in a halo of light and glowing in impressive radiance.]

[Upon approaching the beautifully lit tent, the scene is awfully loud. And out of curiosity, you enter the tent.]

[You find a circus ring surrounded by seats, people being ushered about into the crowds, with you soon following. You step towards your seat. Many people are conversing around you.]

[A tall, lanky man with glasses hands you a piece of paper and a stack of blank cards with a smile. He tells you to write as often as you'd like. You don't know what it means.]

[You eyeball the paper, which has a short note and names written upon it…]

WELCOME to the AMAZING circus of PIZZA!!

These are our cards for requests and inquiries. Please fill out as many as you see fit. But please be responsible. We don't have time to answer all of you.

PERFORMERS:

Gustavo Spumoni - The Clown

Pepperman - The Strongman

The Vigilante - The Sharpshooter

The Noise and Noisette - The Acrobats

The Ringmaster

[Two more names seem to have been added hastily.]

Peppino Spaghetti - The Clown

Bruno - The Clown

ENJOY THE SHOW

(OOC RULES BELOW)

Hello!! I am the owner of this blog, @the-little-knight and I wanted to state a couple of rules before getting into the actual account!!

This is an rp account for my AU, The Batshit Circus (BSC FOR SHORT) 

This is a FUN ACCOUNT!! It's in character, but DON'T TAKE THIS TOO SERIOUS IN ITS OWN LORE!! THINGS MAY CHANGE!!

That being said, here's some ground rules!!

NO NSFW

NO FETISHES

P3DOS, HOMOPHOBES, RACIST PEOPLE DNI

PLEASE BE PATIENT, THE OWNER OF THIS BLOG IS A LITTLE SLOW!!

TAG @the-little-knight OR THIS ACC IN FANART/FANWORKS OF THIS AU, I'D LOVE TO SEE IT!!!

HAVE FUN!!

ENJOY THE SHOW!

#The batshit circus #pizza tower au #pizza tower askblog #ask blog #my au

[wilwheaton]

Eight years ago Will Saletan said “The GOP is a failed state. Donald Trump is its warlord.” There’s probably no short summary, phrase or aphorism I’ve repeated more times on TPM. Because it’s that good. Today we’re seeing another permutation and illustration of that enduring reality. This is more basic than a fractured caucus or any of the personalities involved. It is the logical end result of a party and political movement based on rule-breaking, as a central value and mode of operation. When rule-breaking becomes the norm organizations and polities fall apart … without a strongman. For eight years Donald Trump has been that strongman. It’s Trump’s general indifference to the House Speaker debacle and perhaps focus on his unfolding legal woes that has allowed the chaos to drag on. This is always the relationship between civic democracies and the broken states where strongmen thrive and dominate. Civic democracy operates through an organized competition between different stakeholders in society. It requires a consensus to litigate disagreements through a prescribed set of rules. The breakdown of those rules creates an opening for strongmen who traffic in raw power and sell their ability to impose order. It is both the cause and result of the species of civic and moral degeneracy we see as the mother’s milk of Trumpism.

The Party of Rule-Breaking Trundles Toward Its Inevitable End Point - TPM – Talking Points Memo

#The Leopards are eating a lot of faces in the House #everything trump touches dies #get fucked republicans #the republican clown car

[azspot]

Strongman rule is a fantasy.  Essential to it is the idea that a strongman will be your strongman.  He won't.  In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents.  We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something. But the vote you cast for him affirms your irrelevance.  The whole point is that the strongman owes us nothing.  We get abused and we get used to it.

The Strongman Fantasy

#authoritarianism