#Implausible Deniability

[orewing]

[sluggoonthestreet]

Rufus is deeply concerned to hear that you've lost another ball.

[inspectorspacetimerevisited]

‘You trust that bloke, do you?’ – Meir

‘Absolutely, why wouldn’t I?’ – Brooke

‘’Cause he seems a bit of a madman.’ – Meir

‘That’s no reason to distrust him!’ – Brooke

[primeministerofantarctica]

respectfully i still think this is the funniest thing disney's ever done

[beloved-child-of-the-house]

so i'm writing an 8th year fic and h&d are taking a muggle studies class together in which they read one of shakespeare's plays, and i'm trying to write a final project (for which they are partners) but like. hogwarts academics don't seem all that uhhhhh rigorous to me (like we see the students complaining about having to write a foot of parchment which is essentially ONE PAGE HANDWRITTEN) and i'm a little worried that my assignment is too rigorous.

it involves a lot of like. thinking analytically and using your imagination wrt the motivations of people unlike yourself, and that's not rlly something they do much at hogwarts as far as i can see. BUT it is muggle studies, and like. they could definitely all use some practice at those skills, following the recent implosion of their society.

[princessefemmelesbian]

“I’ll never have these feelings for a man” YES YES YES YES YES EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED TO HEAR!!! 👏🏾

I’ll definitely be watching this anime. But not the dub(those voices are shit I’m sorry).

Isekai Yuri series I'm in Love with the Villainess just gave us one of the greatest moments in LGBT anime history!

[cliophilyra]

One two three four five fic tag game

Tagged by the lovely @jamieroyjamieroy and @inawickedlittletown - thank you! ❤️

Rules: Give us the links to your fic with the most hits, second most kudos, third most comments, fourth most bookmarks, fifth most words, and fic with the least words (feel free to interpret however you would like; if not on AO3, can be on Tumblr or FFNET!).

Most hits: Put your mouth where your money is - Spideypool, 21721 hits.

2nd most kudos: Same as above! 1526 kudos

3rd most comments: The Other Shoe - Destiel. 60 comment threads.

4th most bookmarks: Put Your Money…etc. again 😆 - 203 bookmarks

5th most words: Implausible Deniability - Spideypool. 11457 words.

Least words: Kiss Prompts #9: In Public - Saltommy. 510 words. (Technically I do have a couple with less words but they are fragments of unfinished stuff)

Tagging @rdng1230 @bangpop91 @racerchix21 @dum-amo-vivo9 @trombonechurchill @paperyowl @pool-spidey and anyone else who wants to play!

[maximumphilosopheranchor]

"A modest affair in military terms, the Russian invasion of southern and then southeastern Ukraine involved the most sophisticated propaganda campaign in the history of warfare. The propaganda worked at two level: first, as a direct assault on factuality, denying the obvious, even the war itself; second, as an unconditional proclamation of innocence, denying that Russia could be responsible for any wrong. No war was taking place, and it was thoroughly justified.

When Russia began its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2014, President Putin lied with purpose. On February 28 he claimed, “We have no intention of rattling the sabre and sending troops to Crimea.” He had already sent troops to Crimea. At the moment he uttered these words, Russian troops had been marching through Ukrainian sovereign territory for four days. For that matter, the Night Wolves were in Crimea, following Russian soldiers around in a loud display of revving engines, a media stunt to make the Russian presence unmistakable. Even so, Putin chose to mock reporters who noted the basic facts. On March 4, he asserted that Russian soldiers were local Ukrainian citizens who had purchased their uniforms at local stores. “Why don’t you have a look at the post-Soviet states,” Putin proposed. “There are many uniforms there that are similar. You can go to a store and buy any kind of uniform.” (..)

Putin’s direct assault on factuality might be called implausible deniability. By denying what everyone knew, Putin was creating unifying fictions at home and dilemmas in European and American newsrooms. Western journalists are taught to report the facts, and by March 4 the factual evidence that Russia had invaded Ukraine was overwhelming. Russian and Ukrainian journalists had filmed Russian soldiers marching through Crimea. Ukrainians were already calling Russian special forces “little green men,” a joking suggestion that the soldiers in their unmarked uniforms must have come from outer space. The soldiers could not speak Ukrainian; local Ukrainians were also quick to notice Russian slang particular to Russian cities and not used in Ukraine. As the reporter Ekaterina Sergatskova pointed out, “the little green men’ do not conceal that they are from Russia.”

Western journalists are also taught to report various interpretations of the facts. The adage that there are two sides to a story makes sense when those who represent each side accept the factuality of the world and interpret the same set of facts. Putin’s strategy of implausible deniability exploited this convention while destroying its basis. He positioned himself as a side of the story while mocking factuality. “I am lying to you openly and we both know it” is not a side of the story. It is a trap.

Western editors, although they had the reports of the Russian invasion on their desks in the late days of February and the early days of March 2014, chose to feature Putin’s exuberant denials. And so the narrative of the Russian invasion of Ukraine shifted in a subtle but profound way: it was not about what was happening to Ukrainians, but about what the Russian president chose to say about Ukraine. A real war became reality television, with Putin as the hero. Much of the press accepted its supporting role in the drama. Even as Western editors became more critical over time, their criticism was framed as their own doubts about Kremlin claims. When Putin later admitted that Russia had indeed invaded Ukraine, this only proved that the Western press had been a player in his show.

After implausible deniability, Russia’s second propaganda strategy was the proclamation of innocence. The invasion was to be understood not as a stronger country attacking a weaker neighbor at a moment of extreme vulnerability, but as the righteous rebellion of an oppressed people against an overpowering global conspiracy. As Putin said on March 4: “I sometimes get the feeling that across the huge puddle, in America, people sit in a lab and conduct experiments, as if with rats, without actually understanding the consequences of what they are doing.” The war was not taking place; but were it taking place, America was to be blamed; and since America was a superpower, all was permitted in response to its omnipotent malice. If Russia had invaded, which it was somehow both doing and not doing, Russians would be justified in whatever they were doing and not doing."

Timothy Snyder, The Road To Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America

[at0mbehaiku]

And then suddenly

The deniability

Was implausible

[paragonrobits]

anyways I happened upon some thoughts on the in-universe thinking behind the song Marceline ascribes to Marshall Lee in Bad Little Boy

the biggest and most significant thing there is that Marshall explicitly has feelings for Fionna and manipulates her with those same feelings that she has for him; this raises a lot of questions if you assume that this relates to Marceline's own thoughts on Finn.

In Go With Me, she's pretty adamant that she doesn't feel that way about him. Now, of course, that episode was the Finnceline episode for a long time even with that detail because of how much it emphasized how well they mesh together, how akin they are and how much fun they have together. It's also notable in that Marceline at that point denying any feelings doesn't preclude her developing stronger romantic feelings later in life, but I don't think that's the most important possible takeaway.

Instead, consider a more significant bit; Marshall Lee's characterization is something Marceline specifically wrote, for a character she likely believes (for good reason) to be based on her. And most importantly, Marceline has a really low opinion of herself. She thinks of herself as a monster, she drives people away on purpose so she doesn't feel the pain of losing them in other ways, she deliberately acts off putting and scary because she believes she's just as much a monster as her father and everyone will leave her one way or the other.

It's not unlikely that the song she gives Marshall is probably based on her own romantic feelings in the past, exaggerating her own feelings about herself as a bad person, or a manipulator; I suggest that Marshall's entire characterization is Marceline criticizing herself, exaggerating what she thinks she's doing; manipulating the feelings of others for her own amusement or because she thinks its funny.

Now, we know she's not actually like that, and this is just her being needlessly self critical (while also trying to engage with her father substitute and bond with him somehow), but it is pretty significant how she characterizes Marshall as much more callous and even cruel; Marceline even at her most apparently antagonistic was nothing like that.

As an example, consider Go With Me again; when Finn dons the lute suit to try to get her to go with the movies before, Marceline's comment of 'uh oh' and attempts to dissuade him suggests she's at least considered the idea of him having SOME feelings for her and to head them off, and she's surprisingly gentle as possible with him once her attempts to just gross him out or scare him away have no effect on him. Even if she was planning on heading this off, she's remarkably awkward and cautious about it.

The biggest surprise is that we know what Marshall Lee is ACTUALLY like; rather than being a manipulative jerk who toys with his friends feelings even if he DOES have romantic feelings in them as well, he's not that different from her, albeit even more laid back (possibly because he doesn't have a thousand years of trauma persuading him he's a monster too, though in this case he may simply not recall it); given his attitude with Fionna, its not implausible that they DID have a romance at some point before it cooled down (which is, again, something that could well have happened if Finn was older during the on-screen seasons) and they're definitely close enough that he's implicitly crashing at her place with no suggestion that she'd find him walking around in just a towel there surprising.

So again this suggests to me that Marceline's depiction of Marshall says more about her own deep self criticism while playing it off as part of Ice King's fanfiction, airing it out in a deniable way (which is a very Marceline thing to do); from her own views as a cruel manipulator toying with the feelings of her heroic friend, to a bad break up with candy royalty that's complicated at BEST, to that heroic friend being internally tormented by those feelings, it all says a lot about what Marceline THINKS herself as a bad person even against a significant amount of evidence otherwise.

[mercurymusing]

Ha, got blocked immediately as anticipated.

For what it's worth, I was being lazy about references for the numbers I provided. That reply wasn't a callout, which is why the remark about prismatic-bell was left in the tags.

If anyone cares to dispute the claims made, I'll happily eat crow and take the label of hypocrite.

I do think prismatic-bell furnished a tidy example of the kind of misinformation they frequently spread despite apparently sincere good intentions.

Who is saying this? What does "hopefully under 100,000" even mean? It's vague enough in a deniable way to not be worth arguing with, but compare this to the numbers and statements I was making. Even without bothering to paste a bunch of links at the bottom of my response, I made specific claims with specific context for each number.

To be clear, I think the 100k number here is possible but implausible, but it wasn't even what I was responding to.

[asklordcaptaincastronova]

hc + 😶 for a headcanon about a secret they know of / keep

Beyond what's in his head, Amadeus maintains the implausible deniability of the Deathwatch, an organization nearly every Rogue Trader knows about and tend to clean up after they fuck up.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

This is getting ridiculous!

September 25, 2023

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

          Geez! This is getting ridiculous! Trump calls for the execution of the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley and the Washington Post performs a botched poll that is so bad the Post acknowledges it is “an outlier.” Guess which one leads the news on Sunday? Hint: It is not the story that calls for the killing of a perceived political opponent by the leading candidate for the GOP 2024 nomination.

          Let’s get the WaPo/ABC poll out of the way, first. The results were simply implausible. They were so bad that Post included this disclaimer:

[A]lthough the sizable margin of Trump’s lead in this survey is significantly at odds with other public polls that show the general election contest a virtual dead heat. The difference between this poll and others, as well as the unusual makeup of Trump’s and Biden’s coalitions in this survey, suggest it is probably an outlier.

          If you were alarmed by the headlines about the WaPo/ABC poll, the most important thing you can do is read Simon Rosenberg’s post in Hopium Chronicles, The WaPo-ABC Poll Is A Clear Outlier. Dems Are Having A Very Good 2023. As Simon explains, the results are so wacky (my word, not his), the Post should have tossed the poll. But the Post spent the money on the poll, so it published a poll it did not believe. That makes perfect sense because . . . .?

          It doesn’t make sense. If there is anything good to come out of the WaPo/ABC poll, it seals the case that presidential “horse-race” polling is irretrievably broken, counterproductive, and misleading. And yet in the dozen articles I read about the poll on Sunday, all of them treated the poll as a legitimate exercise in polling. It is not. Indeed, the notion that multiple news organizations are conducting presidential horse-race polls more than a year before the election is a sign that they view politics as entertainment—just like sports scores, the daily horoscope, and advice columns. Pathetic.

          Folks, they are trying to mess with our heads. Don’t let them. Reject their infotaintmentization of politics. Ignore the polls. If you can’t ignore the polls, tell irresponsible media outlets what you think by posting comments on offending articles, write letters to the editor, and send emails to the journalists. Ignoring the polls is a reasonable approach to preserving your sanity. But ignoring the polls may give outlets a “free pass” on their irresponsible journalism. The Post’s poll is going to be added to Five-Thirty-Eight.com’s aggregation of polls and will affect the narrative of Biden’s prospects for winning. That is why it is irresponsible and dangerous for news outlets to conduct meaningless and misleading polls.

          The 2024 presidential election features two candidates who are surrogates for different visions of America: Democracy versus autocracy; liberty versus tyranny; dignity versus bigotry; science versus disinformation; personal autonomy versus subservience to Christian nationalism; sustainability versus ecological disaster; safety versus gun violence; global stability versus confrontational isolationism. All of that—and much more—is on the ballot in 2024. The WaPo/ABC “horse-race” poll captures none of that.

          Turning to the real story that should be the only thing any media outlet is discussing is Trump's not-so-veiled threat to execute General Mark Milley. As usual, Trump made the threat on his vanity social media platform and used oblique references to provide deniability that he made the threat. Trump's use of Mafia-style threats is so common that the comparison is becoming stale, but it is the equivalent of mobsters telling a small business owner, “Nice place you got here; it would be a shame if it burned down.”

          In the waning days of the Trump administration, the US intercepted intelligence indicating that the Chinese government believed the US might attack China. In military-to-military talks that are commonplace to avoid accidental conflicts, General Milley assured his counterpart in the Chinese military that the US was not planning to attack China.

Per the book Peril by Bob Woodward and Bob Costa, Milley said the following during the call with his counterpart:

General Li, I want to assure you that the American government is stable, and everything is going to be okay. We are not going to attack or conduct any kinetic operations against you. General Li, you and I have known each other for now five years. If we’re going to attack, I’m going to call you ahead of time. It’s not going to be a surprise . . . If there was a war or some kind of kinetic action between the United States and China, there’s going to be a buildup, just like there has been always in history.

          That call was approved in advance by Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. Trump now claims that effort at “deconfliction amounted to treason. Trump wrote:

This guy turned out to be a Woke train wreck who, if the Fake News reporting is correct, was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States. This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!

See The Independent, Trump suggests Mark Milley should be executed in possible breach of pre-trial release conditions.

          There are two problems with Trump's statement: It is a veiled threat on the life of General Milley and it violates his pretrial release in the two felony prosecutions in DC and Florida.

          For those who believe I am engaging in hyperbole regarding Trump's threat against the life of General Milley, recall what happened in response to this Tweet:

Big protest in D.C. on January 6th!  Be there, will be wild!

          Trump has a feral instinct for urging his followers to action without directly telling them to do so. As his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, testified to Congress,

[H]e doesn’t give you orders. He speaks in a code.

          The response of the media—thus far—has been a collective yawn. Their listless response is due in part to Trump's exhaustive, daily threats against foes (real and imagined) that normalize his incendiary rhetoric to the point of background noise. It is not—as his January 6 incitement reminds us. The political press should be talking of nothing else until Republicans condemn and disavow the first major party presidential candidate to threaten a senior military officer with death.

          Recognizing that the media would rather cover a botched poll than a death threat, another avenue of accountability is for either Judge Chutkan or Cannon to revoke Trump's pretrial release or impose a gag order on him. Yes, a gag order. Trump is already the subject of a motion by the prosecution in the January 6 prosecution to refrain from intimidating witnesses. As the government said in its brief:

“The defendant continues these attacks on individuals precisely because he knows that in doing so, he is able to roil the public and marshal and prompt his supporters.”

          Trump obviously doesn’t care; he never has. He has crossed a line—another one. It is time for federal judges charged with the responsibility of protecting witnesses and jurors to act. Before it is too late.

[spar-kie]

That DeSantis Ad

So, Twitter's up in flames, I wanna start posting more original stuff here rather than just reblogging, so why not do some political analysis? Starting with That DeSantis Ad. If you don't know the one I'll post it here under the cut along with some thoughts on why this is hurting DeSantis

CW: Homophobia, Transphobia, Donald Trump, and Ron DeSantis

Basically, this ad is causing DeSantis one hell of a headache for a lot of reasons. Chief among them being, the Republican party has banked on being plausibly deniably homophobic for a while now (or, implausibly, really, but that doesn't stop some people from falling for it).

These kinds of videos worked for Trump because, truthfully even though they're important, I think Trump only has a vague grasp on what Reddit is, and doesn't really know what 4chan is. So if you saw a video like this for Trump you know it would just be some shitposter and he couldn't really be attacked on it. But thing is, this was posted on an official DeSantis campaign account, meaning that this kind of rhetoric is officially tied to his campaign, which is making groups that are like sheep among packs of wolves like Log Cabin Republicans go "WAIT A MINUTE, YOU'RE ANTI-GAY! I AS A PROUD REPUBLICAN CAN'T SUPPORT THIS!". Which you think would sound obvious, but in a primary where the rest of the candidates are "plausibly" deniably homophobic puts him at a disadvantage.

Also, while your average voter doesn't hold a lot of strong convictions, saying "SIKE!!!" to being positive on gay rights and then comparing yourself to a character who kills hookers generally doesn't play well with the average voter.

[ao3feed-tf2ships]

Implausible Deniability

read it on the AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/61014091

by Wolfgang_Skullboy

Scout considers a new approach to looking his “best”

Words: 2693, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Team Fortress 2

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: Gen

Characters: Scout (Team Fortress 2), Spy (Team Fortress 2), Engineer (Team Fortress 2), Medic (Team Fortress 2)

Relationships: Scout & Spy (Team Fortress 2)

Additional Tags: Spy Is Scout's Parent (Team Fortress 2), Scout Doesn't Know Spy Is Scout's Parent (Team Fortress 2), Eating Disorders, Scout Has An Eating Disorder (Team Fortress 2), Hurt/Comfort, Kinda, Food as a Metaphor for Love, also kinda - Freeform, Food Issues

read it on the AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/61014091

[cliophilyra]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love 💗

Tagged by the amazing and talented @desert--moonchild - thank you!! 🫶

I shall go with Like A Circus Wheel - Saltommy - E - first 911 fic, first Saltommy and so I guess it’s the one that led me to all the amazing friends I have made in this fandom.

Implausible Deniability - Spideypool - E - first multi-chapter fic written as I posted that I actually finished. Canon-typical violence/gore.

Ebb and Flow - Destiel - M - short, sweet and a bit smutty. It’s quite simple but something about it is special to me because it’s based on my memories of swimming in the river on Dartmoor as a kid.

Petrichor - Destiel & Sabriel - E - fluff & smut. Another short thing but again I was pleased with the feel of it.

Calendar Boy - bucktommy - E - smutty one shot that is my favourite of my bucktommy fics so far. Very mild daddy kink

No archive warnings apply for any - check tags for other info.

Tagging - @rdng1230 @bangpop91 @racerchix21 @trombonechurchill @peppermintquartz

@hardly-an-escape @zeraparker @thecarrott @weewookinard @pool-spidey

@paperyowl @jamieroyjamieroy @bucksbignaturals and everyone else I know ❤️