#breathing's political as they say; for real. being in public. being in private. exchanges w/a rando. exchanges w/a nonrando.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

oh yeah addendum in also the other day seeing someone autistic talking in that context abt what they want from genuine relationships in that they said they don't want to be Admired Or Desired. that one time someone was like, you're one of the best people i know, like well neat compliment sure i'll take it lmao, but also, that's somewhat confusing and even disheartening when it's like, i have no way of knowing this; we don't really interact? or times i have to ""unilaterally"" assess that i don't feel Friends with someone b/c i don't feel like, for one thing, i can just up & message them even lol; the feeling that to whatever capacity there's a relationship, it's been continual "don't mess this up" masking / efforts to "do things Right" from me....whilest also times it's been like, oh someone's apparently choosing to be around me? enjoying interactions? while still kind of confused about it. and then it's like oh it was Romantic Interest apparently lol :( like even if i wasn't aromantic which i so am....where was the [there is anything to feel is genuine] like again we never even got to any part where i wasn't masking and [do things Right] and on edge and certainly not at whatever point i apparently had whatever appeal. much less "when cishet men are just sprinting straight at you" but that's all the more, like, [you as a Person are certainly irrelevant] but not like it doesn't still feel ultimately mostly irrelevant even if people have more discretion / a more considerate approach in general. also that again there would not be a Right way lmfao. it just sure could be a totally neutral expereince rather, please. how i've had too many situations having to try to fling myself out a window figuratively, even w/those theoretically more considerate approaches

or even when people will be talking about what makes someone Deserving outside of the most conservative(tm) approaches like. this person isn't someone who just waits for things to happen :) like well hell yeah for them lol, meanwhile, i sure kinda am. being aware that in any given way i may not impress anyone / may be negatively assessed; only turns into "there go my power levels increasing again. shrugmoji" when correspondingly it's like, and i don't have to care, or certainly then blame myself about it if like oh boy, society when you have to be "objectively" judged as Worthy by randos, whatever their perspectives lol....or when like, the concept of social support is like, get a romantic partner, primarily, an ounce of backup from friends, the Real backup being family, or friends "as good as" family....or the ongoing journey of realizing like; it was never Just gonna be managing to leave [abusive childhood/family house]. the ways that other experiences outside that were Consistent, really, when being around peers means an immediate sense of doing something wrong / not being as good as them; authority figure adults sometimes acting just like an abusive parent does; no ways to regularly exist flexibly and/or less supervised/monitored, e.g. couldn't walk from [home] to [anywhere]....catching on like, ah, outside of That Situation? i'm still not inherently more valued by randos, still not Not liable to be regarded/treated with disdain / expressions of authoritarianism....Aren't We All; for real. but truly like oh hey, i didn't even realize i was getting all this Political experience in that [when you have a one on one personal abuser and You're Responsible For How They Treat You and Their Own Power Is The Whole Thing and You'll Never "Earn" Better But It'll Always Be Your Fault You Haven't] and all those kinds of logics and realities it's like of course this resonates crystal clear with logics and realities re: [political enemies] lmao. ofc they can be as "hypocritical" as they want b/c [you can just say whatever while you do w/e you want and other people have to deal] is an expression of power. of course "for [xyz]'s own good; individually or as a group" is really about ensuring the power to control their existences as property by shrinking the space in which someone can enact autonomous choices: anything For Children is about (conservative) parents controlling children as things they own and can do whatever they want with; like making sure kids Can't be gay or sm shit, it Is about children, just keeping them from being able to exist outside the sphere of control of an isolated Family life. hell yeah when they do anyways / tragically it always turns out people are actually people despite your wanting to disbelieve this / always have the power to ignore it..........but then yknow, the truth is we out here, and ofc it's like [police protect Property; enforce these property/owner relations] but what's Normal yet obviously harmful is also so borne by regular ordinary """harmless""" interpersonal interactions / people who feel supposedly well-intended but that's more superficial than in essence....even merely the Exhaustion in knowing interactions as Just chitchat w/supposedly amicable parties is like, a scrutinizing test that can only go wrong and lead to antagonism / animosity that can easily accumulate &/or compound. much less existence In Public and shit going wrong out of nowhere, and potential stakes....being like Lol at, again, years back thinking like "a horror short should be like, the premise that you might just be at a grocery or some ordinary asf situation but at any given moment, doing Nothing extraordinary, some rando suddenly goes Deeply Hostile Mode for a second. where even then suddenly disengaging from that mode is not a relief in that the [this could happen at any time] is emphasized" like lmfao that's [being in an abusive situation], that's [being autistic], isn't it so Zany that there's so much overlap / resonance.

Not At All being Lol abt how much actual discrete examples of produced horror is just like "what if there was disabled people." this is its own line b/c of the characters per block limit. but also disdainful emphasis

anyways lol wuh oh in conclusion, antifascism....isn't it always

[alexandrereyes]

Wedding Day | Abbi & Andre

Abbi & Andre's Wedding

[aldmerii-blog]

2, 3, 13, 31, 52 for floriel and cirion please!

AHHH ur,, the best 

pulling from here

2. WHAT IS YOUR CHARACTER’S FAVORITE MEMORY?

floriel:

when she was about ten, her father took her and her brothers to one of alinor’s spire gardens, and she got lost. the first person she found was an altmer lady, who she remembers as some ethereal, celestial beauty but can’t quite actually recall her face, sat by a fountain with whatever the altmer equivalent of a lyre is, and they sat together and she showed her how to play until her father came back for her. 

when she’s scared she thinks about that. sometimes she wonders if the lady was real, and no matter what thinks of her as a protector in all times of trouble. 

cirion:

he didn’t serve very long as a soldier (he’s a talented mage but doesn’t really have the constitution to go on martial tours) but he did enjoy it. and he can’t pinpoint exactly where it happened or when, and in fact it might be a conglomeration of a couple different nights, but just. sitting around a table in a tavern on the coast of valenwood, on the supply line of troops being led through the green to continue the assault on cyrodiil, but they’re not thinking about that now, they’re drinking good wine and listening to the other patrons singing and maybe joining in on the songs they know, telling jokes, being generally undignified, young, cocky soldiers. it made him feel like part of something, more than fighting or governing ever did, and he carries that feeling with him always. 

3. WHAT IS YOUR CHARACTER’S LEAST FAVORITE MEMORY?

floriel:

she doesn’t really like violence, first off. she gets things done with words and leaves the torture and executions to other folks (and not at all, if her marks are cooperative). she was holing up with elenwen for a little while and heard some “advanced interrogation tactics” going on in the basement that were very clearly not working, so she stepped in, played kind sympathetic diplomat. and she convinced the man they were interrogating to confess, to give up other talos worshippers in exchange for light sentencing for all of them. 

and then when she called her comrades back in to hear the confession, they just killed him. in front of her. he looked her in the eyes as he died and she’ll never be able to shake that. 

cirion:

he was part of the force that laid siege to anvil. there weren’t a lot of deaths on the dominion’s side of the conflict, but there still certainly were deaths. one of them was a close friend, disemboweled and left to bleed out in the dirt. cirion got to him a bit too late for magic to be able to do any good, and he can quite distinctly remember trying to push his friend’s intestines back into his body so he could at least try to heal him. he can remember how they felt in his hands, and the smell of it. too well. 

he ended up killing him so he wouldn’t have to suffer the slow death allotted to him. 

13. WHAT WOULD YOUR CHARACTER DIE FOR?

floriel:

nothing. her allegiance is to the dominion, sure, and she would certainly tell you she’d defend it to her dying breath, but if someone captured her and held a knife to her throat and told her to inform or die? she’d inform. the words couldn’t come out of her mouth fast enough. 

i think she’d die for cirion, once they’re married. but that’s really it. 

cirion:

he says he’d die for a lot of things. his people, his country, his family. but it’s been a long time since he ever actually had to walk the walk and even when he did, he didn’t walk it for long. still, he did fight for his country, did nearly die for them, so that counts. 

31. WHAT SOCIAL MEDIA WOULD YOUR CHARACTER USE?

floriel:

she would be a social media guru, i’m gonna be real w/ ya chief. she’s playful and cute and really good at uhh holding her cards close to her chest. so she’d post videos of like her little pet monkey and those really peaceful videos of people playing harps out in nature on instagram, and like, skincare routines and vacation shots that look somewhere between staged and candid. and then sometimes she gets real, when something big happens, like she’ll post a picture of her tv running a news reel and add some sort of social commentary. she keeps it mild but you can tell she’s got strong opinions on whatever it is. 

cirion:

he’d have a private facebook where he has like 75 friends, all of whom he knows personally. and he’s decently active there? he recognizes that it’s important to keep his friends and family updated on his life. 

and then he’d probably have a public twitter where he shares news articles and gets into political debates. he’s snarky and while most of his tweets are legit commentary sometimes he quote tweets ulfric stormcloak and just adds “piss your pants” 

52. HOW WOULD YOUR CHARACTER ACT IN GYM CLASS?

floriel:

she’s an acrobatic lil thing. she’s not good at running and not particularly competitive so i imagine her just like. doing stretches and gossiping along the wall while everyone else is playing dodgeball. 

cirion:

he’s...fine, i guess? perfectly adequate, physically. like, yeah, he can run a mile. he get picked sixth or seventh in dodgeball. he doesn’t like gym because it gets him sweaty and he has to completely shower afterwards and doesn’t have enough time between the end of gym and the start of the next period to get properly clean and coiffed but you do what you have to do. 

[kindabraveandlittlestupid]

There is a clarifying question you can ask yourself and others to help you identify where they stand in regards to their feelings on women and women in power which is “Do you think women should be in Politics?” My response is “Yes” but in my head, I also think “ONLY smart women (and for that matter people in general) should be in politics and not every woman in politics is smart.” The spectrum of dumb knows no gender or race when it comes to politics, white men certainly have a corner on the market but in the past thirty years of politics, we have seen some strong contenders from the fairer sex. 

Today we will go by the current numbers in regards to women in politics, examples of their best and worst candidates, (brace yourself, my conservative readers, you have some really dumb women among your ranks) and lastly how I would like to see the US political system in regards to sex and race.

By The Numbers

As we approach the 2018 midterm we hopefully going to have a blue wave so we might be able to fight the Trump Administration and its no holds barred approach to trying to fuck minorities, women, the environment and the LGTBQ community in the United States. It’s clear the Republicans have little to no backbone in stopping the President by why would they? He can take all the media attention off them while they work to give tax cuts to the wealthy and undermine social programs that take care of the sick, old, women and kids. I am getting off on the wrong tangent here. The point is in this election we see the most women running for political office in US history and while I hate chants “Down with Patriarchy” I do like the idea of “Rise of the Matriarchy” which is in my mind a more positive message for young women looking to join politics. 

So here are the numbers as they stand in 2018 before the election and how representative our political landscape is for females in politics.

Governors - Only 6 Female Governers (2 Democrat and 4 Republican) which means they make up 12% of the Governers in the US. Mayors - Only 297 Female Mayors out of 1,365 municipal districts (with a population over 30,000 people) which mean they make up 21.8%. US Senators - Only 23 women out of the 100 seats available in the Senate.  US Congresswomen - Only 84 women of the 435 chairs in the House of Representatives. Which equals 19.3% of all seats. Supreme Court - Only 3 of the 9 Justices are female. This is reflective of the lower courts which is also 33%. US Presidents - Of course, 0 women have been elected the office of President (at least according to the Electoral College and not the popular vote).

Just by crunching the numbers it's easy to see men still have a firm grasp on all the brass rings of power within the United States political landscape. Hopefully, in our lifetime, we will see those number grow and balance out the scales to something more equal (or slightly more than equal with women making up 51% of the population).

Champions and Fools

So we visited the current numbers and with hope, the coming election will shift that spectrum into something more balanced but I wouldn't hold my breath on the changes being dramatic, we will likely see incremental shifts in former male held positions turning female and that is good enough for the moment.

While we are on this subject I want to make the case for women in politics who do a good job and should be noted if only to identify the desired qualities for a candidate in political office. I will also point out female candidates who while bolstering the ‘numbers’ of women in office, are particularly bad at their jobs (once again plenty of stupid men in office as well).

The Champions

Barbara Lee (D A champion of minorities being both part of the Asian Pacific Caucus and  Congressional Black Caucus. She also is a supporter of the LGBTQ community being from the Bay Area (Woot woot). She represents her constituents well and is making headway to become a democratic leader herself. Above all else, I love to see more women with her attitude rise in the ranks of politics. 

Elizabeth Warren (D Among the women listed above, she remains one of the most vocal sniping at conservative policies and being one of the sharpest roasters when dealing with administration nominations for the Trump White House. Don’t be too surprised if you see her name on a political ticket in 2020 because she is one of the few people who isn't afraid to talk truth to power in regards to President Trump.

Hillary Clinton (D Love her or hate her, she was easily the most qualified person to ever run for the Presidency ever about the only other thing she could have done was serve in the armed forces in some way before running. She believed that the American people would not be baited by populism so easily and Democrats failed their party but setting her up to be the next nominee back in 2012. This gave Conservatives 4 years to fashion a Benghazi noose for her inevitable 2016 run. What is a shame is she could have continued to improve on the foundation of Obama’s 8-year term and had the diplomatic know how to strength diplomacy with our allies. I would give up a literal arm to put her in office over Trump... really I would.

Susan Collins (R It’s important to understand that not all conservatives are villains. Susan Collins while holding some Republican beliefs has always stood up against her party when they try to revoke woman's rights or try to remove healthcare from her constituents. This means she breaks rank in her party and becomes that flip vote but that's what I like about her, she votes on her principals and not what the conservatives try and tell her to do.

It should be noted these are far from the only worthwhile women in politics. There are various women who do their job on a local level and take it very seriously with very little acknowledgment for their works.

UPDATE: Sadly Collins has voted to put Brett Kavanaugh into the US Supreme Court. With his history of being against the environment, net neutrality, disability rights, women's health issues (IE Abortion Rights) and being alleged (credible) sexual predator she has proven the above statement to untrue.

The Fools

Betsy DeVos (R It’s a strange scenario to have a woman run the education department while not believing in public education. She doesn't seem to care about minority students, schools that are dealing with poverty, or special education programs. What makes it worse is she has a personal interest in shifting education from public schools to private schools. She would profit from this directly and that kind sickens me that she could lack so much decency as a human being.

Michelle Bachmann (R Where DeVos represented the corporate interest in politics basically twisting institutes to line their pocket with gold or the various least their friends. Palin represents the say anything, know nothing sort of politician of the modern era. Michelle represents the zealots of the religious right. She like so many other conservative politicians believe that God had chosen them for a divine purpose and that any crazy thought that comes thru their head is god inspired. She represents a real danger to the country (along with men and women like her) who want to see this country as a Christian nation expelling all atheists and any other non-christian faiths.

Sarah Palin (R What was scary about Sarah Palin was she was quite possibly going to be second in line from the President had McCain won the election in 2008. At the same time she is probably the Ice Burg that sunk the McCain Presidency in the first place with all the crazy things she said. She has remained a talking head for the far right politics that exist in the US and even throws her support behind the current President. Like Trump, she represented the all talk no substance (or intelligence) sort of politician that now seems to dominate the right end of the spectrum presently. 

Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R While she is only a press secretary she represents the good little soldier in politics who will do as she told and lie when she is told to lie. Michelle Wolfe made a crack at her make-up choice. The punchline wasn't her looks but the fact she breathed lies almost as quick as the Command in Chief. She would be the kind of women to do something terrible and after it was all said in done she would say “I was just following orders” to justify her actions.

It should be noted that while there are dumb women in politics and there are even MORE dumb men. While I encourage us to push our thumb to the scale and balance it more towards women, I would personally vote for another male then risk a bad female politician from stepping into office. I say this only because I have encountered (as rare as they are) a few women who feel that female politicians should always be voted for regardless of policy or views. That is insane to me but I know they are outliers, so I can at least rest assured that most women don't carry that viewpoint.

The Future of US Politics

Countries with more women in politics tend to do better with social programs, education, trade, and diplomacy. Generally, women have more empathy and patience towards these fields but conservative politics has shown us quite clear that those traits are not a constant among ALL women. Naturally, I think we would be better off with more progressive politicians, those who stand up for women's rights and can fight back from the male-dominated political field that constantly tries to undermine women's health care/benefits.  I am clearly advocating for more women in politics but with that caveat of ONLY the smartest women filling the ranks. Those who care about democracy and don’t fall into entrenched views the way that some male politicians have sacrificing honor and loyalty to the country in exchange for party support and allowing Presidents like Trump to be held unaccountable.

I also feel that the political system would be strengthened with a more diverse set of views beyond that of sex. I hope we see more transgender, gay, and lesbian politicians to have a broader view of the ever-changing spectrum of gender orientation and preference. I hope to see more Latinos, African, Asian and Middle Eastern politicians among the seats in the house. I am a white male myself and one day might try my hand at politics but I have no problem in saying there should be less white men involved even if that hurts my own chances in the future.

I admit its a  strange thing to say because I don't think we should vote on skin color or sex (like I said Smart and hopefull Progressive Candidates) but if I was to go toe to toe with a woman who is a different race than me but politically aligned on all the same views as me. I am perfectly ok with losing that hypothetical election because she brings a set of experiences lacking in politics and she might better serve those who might be underrepresented in the US. As always thanks for reading and leave any thoughts you might have in the notes.

Regards Michael California