#like it's not enough to say 'go vote'

[bubonickitten]

I truly, desperately need the Democratic party to focus at LEAST as much on the undecided progressive as on the undecided right-leaning moderate.

If you really want to earn the votes of undecided people, or--perhaps more importantly--inspire a young generation of first-time voters to vote for you, you HAVE to fucking talk to them and meet them where they are, and then prove to them that you've got their backs.

Like, yes, I'm voting for the Democratic candidate either way because the electoral college two-party system precludes viable alternatives. But forget the discourse about voting, not voting, voting third party, etc. for a minute and just acknowledge the fact that there are going to be people who are not going to change their minds if all you can give them is "not as bad as the other guy." Just, speaking purely in terms of pragmatism and sustainability, "not as bad as the other guy" is a dead end for a large percentage of voters, like it or not. Democrats have got to do better than that if they want to genuinely improve their chances of beating the other guy -- in this election and every other.

(ETA: I should probably clarify that I also don't like or trust the Democratic party, for the record, and this isn't me white knighting on their behalf. I'm just saying if they actually want to court progressive voters, they have to stop being... you know. Like this.)

[moonilit]

Some random stuff

[fusionsprunt]

Hunter what the FUCK-

.

[etherealhoneypie]

hey so any of my friends in the uk or canada or australia or really anywhere that isn’t the us wanna adopt me? i have a lot of thrifted furniture and a big record collection i can bring 🥰

[seagull-scribbles]

ʟᴇᴛ'ꜱ ɢᴏ ᴘᴀɪɴᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ᴛᴏᴡɴ ᴏɴ ᴏᴜʀ ᴡᴀʏ ʜᴏᴍᴇ,

ᴛʜᴇ ʙʟɪɴᴋɪɴɢ ʟɪɢʜᴛꜱ ᴀʀᴇ ʙʀᴇᴀᴋɪɴɢ ʙᴏɴᴇꜱ

[fingertipsmp3]

This is the spiritual successor to Four Seasons Landscaping. To me.

[lillotte17]

..

[onethousxndvoices]

Been working on cleaning up/making my Ko-fi page a bit more robust and found an option for monthly subscriptions. I already have a $1 tip jar tier up just as kind of a test run to see how it works, but it's got me thinking:

Price wouldn't be very high, probably capped to $3 a month (price subject to change, idk yet). I'll be using that space to post page wips, extra doodles, and, when it comes time to start posting the next track, Ko-fi members will get to read 3-4 pages ahead. Or something along those lines. Would that be something y'all would be interested in?

[foundfamilyhq]

[origami-butterfly]

Ok but sometimes the most infuriating political stance a person can have is point blank refusing to discuss social issues with you when you bring it up because they "don't want to get political". Don't open the tags unless you want to read a rant

[good-beanswrites]

Hello! I really really really love your writting, I just got into Milgram and yours is my favourite in the fandom!! I love how much depth and nuance you manage to fit into short stories and your characterization is on point! (Specially for Kazui, but I might be biased since I love him so much)

I'm not sure if you're still taking requests (if you're not, feel free to ignore!), but if you are I wanted to request Tears + Kazui

(I thought about maybe the old man finally having a moment where the mask falls? When keeping up the image he's built gets tiring, how does he deal with it, and is he by himself or is there someone nearby? Then again, just an ideia, have fun and take your time!!!)

Woo welcome to the fandom! And thank you so much omg, that's so kind!! ;--; I really like that concept -- I definitely think he'd only allow himself a break from the masks when he's completely alone, and even then it'd be hard to draw out of him, so I went for an unexpected release and even more unexpected company... (Haruka :3)

Kazui woke from a dream, immediately unable to stop his eyes from brimming with tears. It hadn’t been a nightmare. It hadn’t shown him broken glass, or blood, or screaming. He hadn’t faced another night staring into Hinako’s twisted expression. No, the dream was wonderful. He was happy. He was in love. He was just… himself. As he rolled over in his sheets, he couldn’t tell if it was the longing that made him cry, or the guilt of longing so deeply for something like that.

It was easier, there in the dark. He didn’t have to keep his cheeks raised in a pleasant look. He didn’t have to hold his chin high. He could hug his arms around himself, not worry about all those eyes on him, and cry for the life he would never have.

He’d kept the thoughts at bay for so long, there was something equally painful and relieving about facing them head-on. The more his body shook with sobs, the better he felt about the weight he’d been carrying on his shoulders. The more he thought about who he was, the worse he felt about being doomed in this life. As always, he was split in two.

“K-Kazui?” 

His stomach clenched in both shock and shame. He kept his face away from the cell bars. He coughed, though it did little to hide the thickness in his voice when he spoke. “Haruka? What are you doing out there?”

“Ah, um! I’m sorry! I was just getting s-some water.”

Kazui desperately scrambled for any kind of excuse to explain the sorry state he was in. Haruka continued, though. 

“It’s- it’s okay if you’re crying.”

His throat squeezed. How pathetic he must be, for a kid like Haruka to try and comfort him.

“No, no. I’m alright.”

“I cry in my cell all the time. And Muu comes in so we can talk. I feel m-much better after that.” His feet shuffled outside. “Do you… uh… do you want to talk? I’m not as smart as Muu, b-but it might help.”

Kazui kept his pained smile hidden. It was an incredibly kind gesture, to be sure, but the boy would never understand. He could open up about everything that had happened in the past forty years, and there was no way Haruka would understand a bit of it.

It was easy to dodge the question. When under the spotlight, he’d found it was helpful to place the attention on someone else. “What do you talk to Muu about?”

“Uh! Well.” There was more shuffling, and Kazui realized he was coming to sit right next to the cell. He hadn’t meant it as an invitation to stay... 

He rolled onto his back, hoping his face was still obscured in the shadows of the panopticon.

“I usually cry because… I’m not like everyone else.” Haruka said. “I don’t-don’t know why. I don’t know why everyone else can be normal and I j-just can’t. I try so hard. I try so hard. If I could be like them, m-maybe my mom would’ve loved me. M-maybe she wouldn’t think I was broken all the time. M-maybe,” he got quiet, “no one would have died.”

Kazui stared up at the ceiling. A few more tears slipped down his face. It looked like an old man like him could still be wrong, now and then. “And… what does Muu tell you, to comfort you?”

“Oh, she tells me lots of nice things. Mostly that she loves me very much.” Kazui could hear the smile in his voice. “And she also says that… that it wasn’t my fault. That there’s nothing wrong with being me. That we can’t be anyone d-different, even if we want to more than anything in the whole wide world. She says, she says people were mean to her too, just because of who she was.”

“Yeah?” The younger prisoners had avoided someone as intimidating as him, so he never heard much about Muu’s reason for being here. 

“Mhm. She said they would say all these awful things, b-because there was this one girl in her class, and… and, well… things were…” Haruka stopped. “Ah! I didn’t mean to make you cry again! I’m s-so sorry…”

Kazui sucked in a shaking breath. “No, I’m sorry you have to hear all this from me. It’s good, though. It’s really good.” 

“O-oh…?”

“I just realized, I’m a lot like that too.” 

Kazui didn’t know what possessed him to continue. He’d been hiding things for so long, he thought he’d be better at keeping it in. It must have been something about the darkness of the hour, and Haruka’s complete innocence, and the dream that still lingered around heart. 

“When I was her age, there was someone in my class like that. He was… well, I’m sure you know. My parents also said I was in need of fixing. I’m sorry you had to go through that too.”

Haruka let out a small sound of acknowledgement.

“You should head to bed, now. It’s late.”

“R-right. Sorry, again!”

“Don’t be. I think I needed this.”

Once Haruka’s footsteps had rounded the panopticon, Kazui brought his arm up to cover his eyes. He knew he had plenty of blood on his hands for what he’d done. This was his fault. But regarding who he was…

A sound rocked through his chest, something between a sob and a laugh. It was nice to think there was nothing wrong with that, after all.

[battle-subway-ghost]

// actually- using this bit where Paris is knocked out to slide in for a moment. This blog is coming up on 200 followers soon (which- Holy shit, I still can't process that completely. Thank you??? I never expected this blog to get this big in the first place.)

...But onto the main point.

I've had this idea in my head of a larger scale event- illustrated, different universe, all that jazz, since late October or so. It'd expand on a lot of personal lore, and a shared story between the mod behind @tinkatinktrain that's been in the works for years now.

[ribbonknot]

sometimes i feel like rn it's really understated just how bad things could be if trump wins. like, actually. i feel like it's being forgotten that despite how bad things are right now, they would surely get WORSE.

[keefechambers]

i was hoping to have a piece for work done for this but tumblr hates links anyway so i'll just get on my soapbox without the full force of local journalism on my side i guess

anyway there's a demonstrated, organized, concentrated effort by right wing political groups masquerading as concerned parent groups to overrun municipal and local elections for things like school board candidates

yeah, you know those right wing parents complaining about gender queer and lawn boy and the existence of gay people in a classroom setting? it's absolutely an organized, funded republican psyop

they're trying to flip shit red at the local level in even the bluest areas and they'll succeed a lot of the time because people do not pay attention to local elections

regardless of your own (earned) cynicism about broader federal elections and how much good they do or do not do, not voting is not the solution. i understand the burn out of hearing from out of touch liberals whose only solution ever seems to be saying "vote" and then doing nothing when elected, but here's the thing -- voting is a solution in tandem with other solutions, not just the be all end all.

all that to say: while your life may not drastically change based on who wins your state's senate seat or who is in your house of representatives, it WILL drastically change if your entire city counsel or all of your county commissioners are now suddenly Christian nationalist/Qanon/culture war crusaders.

Elected positions like judge, sheriff, school board members, board of elections members, etc. are elections that people pay absolutely no attention to but actually have some kind of foundational impact on your day to day lives. These elections can be decided by margins of dozens of votes and when bad actors are in the background drumming up controversy and support based on anti-LGBTQ or anti-immigrant hysteria or even just straight up conspiracism (QAnon adherents are targeting secretary of state positions), it can and will affect people.

So yeah, go out and vote. but hone in on those smaller local elections too. sweeping federal change might be difficult to get in the short term, but your cities could be harmed in the short term because the fact is that the right wing is better organized and more unified in their intentions than anyone from the center over and that gives them an advantage in smaller races.

pay attention to who is running for your city council and your local school board. tell your friends and family, too. seriously!

[bmpmp3]

and since im in a musicposting mood you should listen to jellyfish right NOW

[essektheylyss]

Also the bookmark poll just reminded me that I got my spouse two books for Christmas but I bought them while out shopping with the friend we were staying with in New England, and the only reasonable bookstore to get to was Barnes and Noble, and I forgot to take out the little "Join our rewards club!" slip from the receipt they'd tucked into the book, so he opens it up to read it and went, "GASP. You went to Barnes and Noble? BETRAYAL."

This is how genuinely ride or die my household is for indie bookstores.