#Meaning of Political System

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

At your side [End of Season 2]

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[captainjonnitkessler]

I think the issue I'm having with the "you can't blame the average voter, you should blame the institutions that were supposed to prevent those voters from being stupid!" is that it inherently buys into the idea that there's some sort of elite class that's supposed to do the *real* ruling and average people aren't supposed to actually be able to choose their representatives because they're too stupid and ignorant to be trusted.

Like, Republicans already believe that! That's WHY they vote for people like Trump, who vow to take down those establishments, punish those elite, ivy-tower academics and give "the American people" a real voice in government!

And it also presupposes that those institutes have WAY more power over people's opinions than I think they do. Like if Trump had been tried for treason, do you really think that was going to convince his voters he actually did it, or do you think they would have used it as proof that Biden was using the Justice Department to prosecute political enemies? If the news had gone harder on Trump's fascism do you think it would have reached more people, or do you think he would have spun it as "they're attacking us because they know that we're winning and we're going to bring freedom back to America!"

And I don't know the answer! Maybe it WOULD have swayed enough people. I definitely think the courts and the news and the Democrats should have tried harder, just because it's the right thing to do to attack fascism on every available level. But I don't think you can say that we definitely would have won if they had, and I think if we HAD run that play and lost we'd be listening to a bunch of people talking about how obviously we went in too hard and we should have focused more on solidarity and outreach. Hindsight is 20/20, y'know?

[qqueenofhades]

Regarding the EO: aren’t they just trying to get the 14th amendment in front of this Supreme Court in order to redefine it? I’m not sure about the birthright citizenship EO, but that certainly seems the case with the sex at conception one.

I'm sure that this corrupt and criminal SCOTUS will attempt multifarious methods of fuckery to help Trump wherever they can, but they do not by any means have the power to unilaterally rewrite or amend the constitution. There is a defined process to create and pass a constitutional amendment, and the bar is deliberately very high: two thirds of both the House and Senate and something like 38 of 50 states have to ratify it. Notably, the 22nd Amendment also limits presidents to two terms, and there is not an easy way (much as he and the rest of the ratfuckers will try) for Trump to get around that.

Basically, I'm seeing some understandable worry that Trump just has carte blanche to change the American government however he wants, and at this point at least, he very much does not. While SCOTUS and/or other Trump judges will invent contorted legal rationales to provide cover where they can: they cannot unilaterally rewrite or amend the constitution. They can certainly perform said convoluted interpretive hijinks to decide what they think it should say; witness their eager attempts to prove that the Second Amendment actually totally authorizes the use of personal assault rifles, pshaw "well regulated" pshaw! But there is not a lot of interpretive wiggle room in either the 14th Amendment or the 22nd Amendment. Which is why, as I said in my tags, deliberately wild overreach BS just to be dicks is not actually very effective and will not stand up (at least right now) to even the most cursory judicial review. If that situation changes, we will make a note of it, but it is also useful to think about what part of their evil bullshit circus is a realistic thing to deal with/push back on, and which is total hot air, meant as a distraction, and will get justifiably shitcanned.

[gabrielsbubblegumbitch]

I just wrote the scene where Vox asks Valentino if he's a communist, and honestly, I think it would be hilarious if Val were a communist.

Vox learns about it during their fourth sleepover (I assume they started seeing each other not long after Val's death, when he wasn't bourgeois and still held some of his beliefs). That revelation causes Vox's existential crisis because he can forgive being a rapist, murderer, and queer, but a communist? He vents about it to Alastor because you know how angry some people get when you suggest that maybe ten people shouldn't own all the money? And Alastor, who is of course an anarchist, says something like, "But you said he was stupid!" That sends Vox spiraling because apparently, he's weirdly attracted to men who are red in more than one way.

[starry-bi-sky]

pouring one out for luo binghe in my disciple SQQ fic, poor guy has taken a backseat here. we're nearly 30k words deep and he hasn't even shown his face once. it'll be much longer before he even actually talks to Shen Qingqiu.

(i say im pouring one out but in reality im sitting in my director's chair chewing on a cigar and wearing a beret as he tearily and unsuccessfully pleads with me for more scenes with Shen Qingqiu)

[uncanny-tranny]

The bourgeois or "exploiting class" doesn't inherently include the person who gets their nails done biweekly, or the disabled person who has a carer, or the guy who got a $70 video game for full-price, or the person who relies on medication (yes even the ones you don't think they "need"), or anything else like this. None of these people will, on average, have the ability to exploit workers by means of ownership or whatever.

While you are busy fighting with fellow workers, you are still being exploited by your boss, by capitalism, by (potentially) not having healthcare, by being overworked and underpaid, and so are they.

[ranticore]

Can you talk more about homosocial bonding in Ironwall, I'm curious to know how that works. If there are women's only dance clubs, are their clubs for men too?

Yes but it did work differently for men

The womens clubs are a social holdover from pre-Florian times. A herd is always led by a mare (read: a mother), who would be the leader of their entire social group, enforcing a rather strict hierarchy among subordinate mares and younger women. Young colts and geldings (yes babey we have eunuchs too) have their place in this herd so long as they are related to one of the established female members (a son, a nephew, etc), though colts would have been expected to go their own way once they reach maturity.

What happened at the time (traditional era, pre-Florian, middle ages) was that the colts would stick together when they left their group/town/hold/etc and form little roving bands of 17-25 yr olds. They'd prepare themselves for their proper adult life by play-fighting over literally everything, being gay, and caring for the youngest members of their bachelor band. But it was not acceptable to stay in this roaming, half-wild state forever. They would peel off one by one to try their luck in the settlements they passed, arriving as a potential stallion, not a young boy. They were treated henceforth as ticking time bombs ready to go off, as all stallions are (just because it was pre-Florian doesn't mean it was some egalitarian paradise. you know me better than that and i love it when things suck), and allowed to lead 'from the rear' (a protector role vs the boss mare leading from the front, the one who was truly in charge). In a small herd, the stallion would be the only guy fathering kids. In large complex towns and settlements, herds could merge and separate on a daily basis, and a small number of adult men could claim (with the boss mare's permission) the wives who wanted him.

So in their adulthood, men were never expected to seek out male social groups, because those other men were now rivals (for sex, for dominance, for their place in the herd, etc). Why are you as a man seeking friendship with other men? etc

For the young women in the herd, things can be grim. You're not expected to strike out on your own, but you are expected to find your place in the hierarchy and that means going head to head with the other women. And being gay. Friendships were always made complicated by the friends' unbalanced social status, and the fact that your social status was in part decided by the boss mare (so not something you have the ability to change if her mind is set), and your own willingness to fight (sometimes physically) for your place. Not everyone has the guts to assert themselves, but also a lower social status was not always doom and gloom, usually it just meant others dictating your movement by cutting across your path. Social status in a herd was entirely unrelated to material wealth, it was a separate axis kept track of by everyone around you at all times. Unlike the boys, young girls would be expected to grow up in the same herd, living their entire lives among the same social group, and it also meant that acting outside that expectation was discouraged and disrespected; a woman leaving the herd to find another, without the boss mare's blessing, was considered to be acting either "like a man" or like someone who just couldn't hack it in the often very stressful life of a low-status woman.

BUT! That was hundreds of years ago. Following the foundation of Ironwall, the most common herd structure (small groups of subsistence crop-farmers) began to die a slow death. The concentration of a large population in a small area caused a clash that could not easily be accounted for by the new laws and human-style social norms. Early Ironwall was plagued by gangs of unruly feral teenage boys roaming the streets, so a new law was added to the rest. Boys of the right age range would be conscripted into military service during their bachelor era (great for wartime). Homosexual behaviour might have been tolerated as a quirk of youth, and inherently immature, but the governors and lawmakers saw it as obscenity, and cracked down hard on it. It was impossible to impose the nuclear family on Ironwall citizens, but something like it was enforced; emphasising greater parental control, smaller social groups usually limited to one's workplace (hard work was purifying, so people were less likely to be gay at work... maybe...). The herd structure was sublimated into the overall puritan work ethic of Ironwall and evolved.

In later centuries, womens' clubs like the one I talked about briefly became very common. Homosocial activity among women was more acceptable as they were expected to, like, have friends of the same sex, so they frequently made spaces where they could hang out together. Social clubs reached their peak in the Victorian era, becoming so popular that you could almost find one on every street, and they were almost a prerequisite for a lady, but getting into one involved an interview process with the club's matriarch, the contemporary boss mare. Dancing was only one of the activities they were permitted behind closed doors. They could also play cards (gambling was immodest for women and illegal in clubs, so they would play with game tokens and chips instead, and then leave the club with their chips to go to a second location to turn them into money so technically they were not gambling at the club...), they could drink, and they could take occasional tours out to the local sportsgrounds to engage in Womanly Exercise (aforementioned hard as fuck centaur polo, racing, tennis). The invocation of the traditional herd structure was a feature of the clubs, and its proponents believed that imitating the 'natural' way of life for a centaur was good for your health, but it was mostly artifice, and the role of the boss mare was vastly overstated, practically inflated into a Queen-like rulership over her subordinates. homosexual activity in clubs was kiiiiiind of common, but on a club-by-club basis. you had to find the ones in which you could be openly gay.

because of the other laws about immodesty and women needing chaperones, men and humans were strictly forbidden from the clubs. if any men showed up, suddenly it became a mixed social event, and those women had better be chaperoned so help me god

At this time, specifically centaur social clubs for men were not nearly as common, due to the factors i mentioned above. Why are you, as a man, seeking the company of other men? But boys had to gamble somewhere and they ended up doing it in social spaces which did not have such tight security. Any random guy could stroll into a men's social club, even humans. there was not so much of an air of revivalism there, or any fetishisation of the past, but still it was and has never been considered healthy to be gay past a certain age and for men, friendships were part of that. The gay clubs were few and far between and kept secret.

In the 20th century Ironwall saw a cycle of recession, housing market crash, collapse, migration, and unprecedented homogenisation between human and centaur populations. Romanticising the herd structure was old-fashioned and socially regressive. Dance clubs became mixed-sex, and progressive attitudes started to become predominant. There was a backslide in the 90s, however, when Natural Life (tm) became glamourised once again, a backlash in response to increasingly heterosocial spaces and relationships, particularly against young women who (according to natural life proponents), were only going through a rebellious phase by choosing to be friends with men. Human-derived society was seen as the culprit here, a corrupting influence. Rather than "we are half animal and thus we should be ashamed and try to make up for it", the natural movement's tagline was "we are half animal and thus we should not go against Nature". They were quite well-funded and spawned several popular political parties, differing only by whatever parochial bullshit the individual councillors can do for rando citizens, which have been passing around power without letting their opponents get a word in edgeways for about twenty years now.

For people who really take their Back To Nature movement seriously, they have left Ironwall entirely, ironically seeing it as a den of sin for very different reasons than the ones that led to its founding, and tried to revive herd-based societies in their own homesteading communities, creating a hundred tiny little cults perfectly designed to abuse basically everyone in them. But you can be gay there, so long as you're under 25. still gotta dress modest though

[knotboy-dean]

No no no no no because Dean’s evolution of “it’s just me and Sam on this bitch of an earth” to “it’s just me and Sam (and Cas and Bobby and Jody and Claire and Donna and Mary and Jack and Crowley and-) on this bitch of an earth” is so important to me

[runawaymarbles]

Several speakers, Homan included, echoed the opinion of having a deportation system that is run like a business, with assurance that the Trump administration is depending on the private sector for completion of its mass deportation agenda. Many representatives from the military-industrial complex were in attendance.

[old-skyguy]

I'm halfway through FMA: Brotherhood and I'm absolutely obsessed with it. if you know anything about me, you know I am also very much an Ace Attorney fan and I have a habit of assigning characters in new shows I like their own AA alignments and I just had to share this.

Bonus: wow! Cute workplace ship! I sure hope nothing bad happens to them!! :D

(no spoilers)

[dykesynthezoid]

“Don’t obey in advance” not gonna be a problem, I have pathological demand avoidance. Wait. People think of obeying in advance???

[heroes-fading]

thinking a lot about how the last of us and andor almost serve as foils to one another, and andor overall just has so much better execution to me. the last of us presents problems as individual and interpersonal. it's a long string of feuds / revenge / back and forth. whereas in andor that element of infighting isn't nonexistent, but it's able to acknowledge that these problems are NOT just individual, but structural!

tlou presents a pretty fascist, authoritarian government that they COULD do a lot of interesting things with. instead, they're more a backdrop that's accepted and shrugged off rather than reconciled with. characters can find happiness in silos, walled off from the rest of the world (bill and frank, jackson) or accept that community living that is open at all has to be authoritarian and brutal in some nature (FEDRA, KC, the Fireflies).

i've been trying to figure out why tlou 2 just leaves such a bad taste in my mouth beyond the tragedy inherent in it. i loved andor, and andor is inherently incredibly tragic! but it's tragic and earned. there are interpersonal fights and struggles, but there is also an understanding of the systems that oppress us that are worth dying to stop.

whereas in TLOU death is mostly either random or vengeful! bites or accidents or revenge quests. they sort of lampshade what COULD be interesting (FEDRA literally rounds people up and kills them, canonically! people call them fascist but do nothing with it!) but they leave it there as if it's the least interesting thing there! but we're meant to believe that suffering is either interpersonal or random!

the fireflies are meant to be our rebels but they're rendered completely uninteresting and without nuance or competence. you don't believe they could make a cure (even if TBTB say they can) and you don't believe they can accomplish much at all because you're not SHOWN any degree of competence from them! you aren't rooting for them! who cares!

whereas in andor what TLOU tries to refer to vaguely and implicitly is made explicit and front and center. the enemy is a fascist, authoritarian government. people love and lose and do everything they can to stop it. it is tragic and worth it and earned. there are individual evil people but also a very evil system that molds them in its shape.

TLOU -- for as much as it claims to be anti-fascist and "oh get it the one functioning society is kinda communist haha" -- has no teeth when it comes to any of this. you shrug at the system. you kill each other. it's all so incredibly pointless. why dream of better? keep your head down and look out for yourself and your own. nothing else matters.

whereas with andor, it actually asks you to dream bigger, to want more, that sacrifices can mean something even if not immediately and it all feels so incredibly earned. there is something bigger, and it's worth it.

[k2ulhu]

hulu was doing live coverage of the election until 2:00am, at which point my power randomly went out and when I reopened the hulu app on my tv the election coverage was replaced with

[erabu-san]

It makes sense when you have a character you relate to very strongly, that when you see things with that character it sometimes can make it feel very personal and when it’s something that doesn’t match how you feel about the character it is overwhelming and you can’t stand to look at it. I am the same way with my own comfort character, it is hard to look in the character tags even though I want to see art because of the way a lot of the fandom shows them. Especially because one relationship is always shown romantic or sexual but I like it more like friends or siblings or some other close bond. For me, in my head if I see the ship tag I try to just change it to mean a friendship haha, but it is hard sometimes.

Who knows if it’s right or wrong to feel this way about characters but your own boundaries on your own blog aren’t hurting anyone so it isn’t their business. Sometimes things are just bad and you can’t explain it but don’t want to see it anyway.

Anyway platonic shippers deserve to have their own art and content of their characters and relationships, people who act like they are entitled to make every art romantic are just mean.

!!! I know this ask came in my box when I was posting a rant, I am so sorry for taking so long to answer 😭 (sometime I just don't know what to answer, or felt a bit overwhelmed abt the situation kskdkfkzs)

Thank you so much for understanding, anon ! And so sorry you also live through all of this too ! 🥹

[vanity-complex]

Genuinely, I think people are very out of touch with the reality of what a revolution is and, instead, have a romantic vision of what they want revolution to be. I think this is because the word revolution has been entirely removed from the words civil war. There is no such thing as a 'quick' revolution. Revolutions are long and bloody conflicts that address great social inequity at the cost of life. Blood is spilled, life is ended, and people suffer. The reality of revolution is that suffering has grown so immense that war does not feel like suffering in contrast. Revolution is an agreement that the social contract has rotted to its very core, and that the only way to fix it is through violence. It is to risk everything to create a power vacuum where an entirely new society and order is created. Revolutions do not settle in a few months - they take years, decades, centuries. The French Revolution, perhaps the most famous romantic revolution, was not just cutting off the head of a king or queen, it was the indeterminate slaughter of a social class and any who dare question the morality of it followed by centuries of new governments. Today in Syria we see revolutionaries finally take hold of their government after 13 years of intense fighting, and still there is so much up in the air for them as they approach creating a new government. In other cases, a monarchy falls and dictatorship takes root. Perhaps an imperfect democracy falls and a new monarch is found. This is not to discredit revolution, as it is a useful tool of the masses to effect change, but it is a reminder that revolution is a tool that is powered by blood and you must ask yourself: is the blood that rots as people suffer greater than the blood that will be spilled to right those wrongs? If so, then organize and revolutionize, but know that life will change forever and, once you start, there is no going back and no telling what lies on the other side.

[empyreal-lore]

The more I think about the political opinions of the Wrath companions the more I realise Arueshalae would end up having the best ones out of anyone and probably one of the closest things to a anarcho-communist you can get in that kind setting.