#to be fair. my willingness to figure out and draw her real self will run my patience dry

[jadequarze]

Astrel’s actual harpy self, aka swooning over this harpy lady

[snowbellewells]

Savior’s Haven {Part One of Two}

Hello there!  I realize I am slipping this in right under the wire for my September 14th posting date, but here is my contribution for the @csseptembersunshine event. I hope it will still be enjoyable despite its tardiness; some real life things caused me to both struggle with my focus and switch from the original idea I had planned to write. I needed some adorable puppy fluff in my life, and it all changed from there. This actually grew a fair bit as I wrote it too, so I have divided it into two parts with the second to follow within the week (hopefully). Thanks so much to @captainsjedi for being so gracious and understanding when I messaged to let her know I was working on my fic and truly hadn’t forgotten it, and to all the lovely ladies on the @CSSNS Discord chat who offered a wealth of name suggestions to me this afternoon - particularly @shireness-says @profdanglaisstuff @snidgetsafan @darkcolinodonorgasm and @kmomof4.  I used one here, but more of them very well might follow in the conclusion!

This is what I call “missing moment fluff”, meant to be taking place sometime post season six in Storybrooke, but before Henry leaves and prior to Hope’s birth.

So without further delay, enjoy this opening!

“Savior’s Haven”

Part One

It began one cool September evening on the way home from weekly dinner at her parents’, Killian offering Emma his arm to wind hers through as they began their leisurely walk back through the darkening streets of Storybrooke. They had nearly reached the street their own two story house by the sea was on, gently arguing back and forth with cheeks flushed by the chill night air about who would have to take the early shift at the station the next morning, when they heard the soft, almost overlooked, whimpers just off the sidewalk.

Coming to a concerned stop at the sound, both sheriff and pirate deputy were alertly trying to locate its source within moments. It didn’t take long, even with the gathering shadows. Peeping around the corner of the lattice gate enclosing the front walk along Mrs. Sprat’s Bakery, it was Killian who located the pitiable, shivering culprit responsible for the troubling noises drawing their attention.

“Swan,” he breathed, barely audible in an effort not to startle the small creature he had already knelt and reached out towards. “Over here, Love.”

Having moved a few feet ahead in her search, Emma stood and came back toward her husband carefully, already aware from the tone of his voice - low and soothing - that he was trying not to frighten a terrified critter of some sort. “I’m here,” she answered quietly, crouching beside him to see into the flowering bush Killian had knelt beside. “What is it?”

Her sailor straightened slowly, pulling his hand and hooked arm back from where he’d reached into the bush, carefully cradling them against his chest with the small animal he had retrieved. In his care and gentility, the way he looked down at the terrified and shivering black puppy Emma could then see in his arms, she was reminded once more of one of the most compelling things she loved about this man who survived a life of harsh trial, challenge and pain. Though once lost and angry, seeking nothing more than his revenge followed by long-awaited death, the darkness her husband weathered alone for so long still had not darkened him permanently. The heart beneath was still tender and open to hope the moment he was offered a way to regain it, and it had made him into the very man who could love her with enough understanding, patience, depth and determination to indeed win her heart, just as he had once vowed.

He showed the same calm restraint in that moment as Emma watched his large, calloused hand stroke along the back of a trembling, undersized and scrawny little dog, and her heart swelled, loving him all the more for it.

“And just what has happened to you here, pup?” Killian murmured, rubbing the soft, silky ears soothingly as Emma leaned in closer to examine the young dog’s protruding ribs and dirt-caked legs and paws. The puppy’s large, soulful brown eyes turned on her as if already begging a piece of her own heart. She wasn’t any more anxious than Killian to turn the little guy loose in the night now that he was untangled from his thorny prison. Both of them could all too easily recall what it felt like to be hungry, cold, and abandoned in a world that felt much too large and uncaring to face.

Her husband’s clear blue eyes met hers over the small canine head between them, and Emma could only smile reassuringly at him, already certain the little guy was as good as theirs as soon as they could get him fed and back to health. “Come on, let’s get him home and cleaned up,” she urged, shivering a little the longer they stood out in the night air, a wistful smile on her face at the thought that maybe they had found an orphan of a different sort to give a home like both she and Killian longed for in their youth. “We’ll make sure he isn’t hurt beneath all that dirt and grime and see what a warm bed and good night’s sleep do for him.”

Killian nodded his assent; the two of them clearly of one mind, as they were quite startlingly often. True, they might find out tomorrow that someone was looking for the sweet little guy, but she still sensed they were bringing home a new member of the family.

*****~~~*****~~~*****

Such events began to repeat themselves rather quickly after that, though their next addition was of the human variety - a young man in the class below Henry, yet clever enough to be in his senior Calculus class - and took much more careful finesse on both of their parts to win over and make feel at ease.

Rolly (a name chosen much more from Emma and Henry’s teasing affection for his tipsy past self in their Back to the Future adventure than by Killian’s choice, though he had good naturedly accepted being outvoted) had only been an exuberant and adored member of their household for about a month in fact when Henry brought the new kid at his school home for dinner. As it turned out, Oliver was a holdover refuge from the Land of Untold Stories, and though he had found lodging with the fairy nuns in a spare room at the convent and took communal breakfasts and dinners with them before heading off to, and after returning from, school each day, many of his hours were spent either studying or roaming the park and woods of the town alone. 

Henry had run into Oliver one day down by the docks, and noticing the way the slightly younger guy watched the weekend sailors with the eye of a skilled pickpocket, and without too much effort in going through his storybook figured out whom the other teen might have been, Henry realized that he’d had a fair bit of experience at it in his former life. Introducing himself and offering the seat next to him on the bench and a share of his cheese fries from Granny’s with the pretext of asking Oliver what he thought of their teacher and the calculus class in general, had brought forth a genuine burst of conversation from the other boy and - Henry had hoped - forestalled the trouble the other young man might have gotten up to.

It seemed that once Henry had witnessed his parents’ incredibly soft hearts for outcasts in person (and having gained a pet out of it, was hardly going to complain) the Truest Believer had felt that they were the perfect people to lend a hand in the situation he had discovered as well, hence the dinner invitation. He came by his charitable outreach honestly - not just from Emma and Killian, but his whole family after all. When Oliver sat down to their table with them that first evening, they learned that while the boy was grateful for the Storybrooke convent’s willingness to feed and clothe him, to give him a room and bed to sleep in, it was a far cry from having a family of his own - something he never even remembered possessing - and a place where he could truly belong.

They learned little more from Sister Astrid when Emma approached her booth at the Miner’s Day festivities that weekend.  Not that the friendly young woman didn’t want to help, but none of them knew more than Oliver himself did, not even his last name. The secretary at the school had merely noticed at the end of the previous school year that he seemed to repeatedly be the first student to arrive at the high school building in the morning and one of the last to leave each afternoon - until it finally became clear he didn’t have anywhere else to go. This had lead to the sisters sponsoring his schooling and offering him a place to stay until he finished.

After that supper, which Oliver thanked them for inviting him to profusely, Emma could tell the young man was reluctant to leave. And yet she could also see he had pride enough not to want to seem needy; a mortifying motivator that she remembered all to well. She and Killian mulled their options for a bit, until one sunny Saturday Killian offered the teen a day’s work helping batten down his ship for the winter months. When he convinced Oliver to return to their house for supper that night, Emma could see long-dried tear tracks on the boy’s face and sensed in Killian’s bearing that his own soul had been bared as well. It was clear the two of them understood each other in a deeper way from their day spent together on the Jolly. When they broached the topic of his living with them for the rest of his senior year and until he decided what he wished to do after, it was clear her husband’s way with words and the heart had allowed this young man who had already charmed them both to accept without feeling shamed or beholden. 

Henry had been thrilled, as had Rolly, since the prospect of someone else to throw sticks and take him for walks pleased the lab mix as little else could. Though Oliver only stayed with them for a little over a year, it allowed their son to feel as if he had gotten to experience having a sibling as he had always wanted, and he enjoyed every moment he got with his foster brother. When Oliver wrote them from his dorm room at the college of his choice, he closed with the best words he could possibly have given Emma and Killian. “...You both provided me the haven I had been missing - the first place I ever felt I belonged until now, settled in at the second. I’ve found where I’m meant to be, and I never would have if not for the two of you.”

They missed their temporary second son, even if he did occasionally come back to visit, but as the weeks and months and years went by, Rolly and Oliver proved to be only the beginning.

Tagging a few who may enjoy, besides the above folks who helped:  @jennjenn615 @searchingwardrobes @whimsicallyenchantedrose @hollyethecurious @thisonesatellite @drowned-dreamer @ilovemesomekillianjones @thislassishooked @resident-of-storybrooke @winterbaby89 @therooksshiningknight @spartanguard @laschatzi

[trbl-will-find-me]

Every Exit, An Entrance (6/?)

There are two (and only two) possibilities: either she led XCOM to victory and they are now engaged in a clean up operation of alien forces, or XCOM was overrun, clearing the way for an alien-controlled puppet government to seize control of the planet.

She’d really like to figure out which it is, but asking hardly seems the prudent option. Read the rest here

She bolts up in her bunk, heart racing and dread weighing heavy on her shoulders. For a moment, she’s not sure where or when she is --- the base or the Avenger, 2015 or 2035. Her fingers find her phone, a certain sign of the times, and she finds 3:42 AM December 5th, 2015 glaring back at her.

It was a dream, she tells herself. It wasn’t real.

The mantra is becoming an entirely too common refrain, something she whispers to herself when she wakes. She’s used to vivid dreams, vibrant ones, dreams that linger long after she’s woken up. But when she thinks back, when she can hold the details up for her waking mind to examine, they all fall apart --- and quickly.

This dream is different. It makes sense. The logic is sound. She recognizes the players, and they behave in believable, predictable ways. No matter how she tries to poke holes, it remains intact. That’s what frightens her.

It’s not real, of course. Dr. Shen is alive; his daughter is a chubby cheeked little girl. The independent nations still reign sovereign over the planet; they have not been supplanted by a fascist puppet government. The base is whole and intact, and not terribly worse for the wear it has suffered, save the memory of loss that infuses its halls; it still stands ready to shelter XCOM’s staff and operatives.

Central does not hate her.

It is this fact she doubts, this one bit that sends her for a loop. Of course Central doesn’t hate her. Why would he?

The word collaborator cuts through her thoughts, the image of massacred civilians and Strike One’s lifeless bodies. She shakes it from her mind. She would never collaborate. She’s not even sure who she would collaborate with. The Sectoids in the freezer? The Thin Men who occasionally reveal themselves? It’s ridiculous.

Besides, she reminds herself. The man would not have asked you out if he hated you. Let’s be rational. He asked you out, on a date. To hell with fraternization. You’re going on a date.

She’s embarrassed at the glee the thought fills her with. She’s an adult woman, not a school girl with a crush. It’s not news that her feelings aren’t exactly unreciprocated. It’s not news that his thoughts on their relationship aren’t wholly professional. But a willingness to do something in spite of it all? In spite of rank? That is news, news that merits a bit of joy.

So, she’d really like to know why there are tears rolling down her cheeks.

Stress. It’s stress, she reminds herself. Of course the dream feels real. You’re all wound up.

She runs her hands through her hair, brushing it up into something approximating a bun, and secures it in place with an overstretched elastic.

She’s not on until second shift. She could get up, get back to work. Briefly, she considers trying her luck, seeing if she’s not the only one awake at this hour; his sleep schedule has been as erratic as hers.

She dismisses the idea almost immediately. She is an adult; she is not going to run to her second in command because she had a nightmare. She is thirty-three years old. Self-soothing is a skill that is well within her repertoire.

Or, at least, it was.

After a few minutes, she resigns herself to being awake. She wraps herself in the uniform sweater, a thin veneer of professionalism, and slides out of her bunk. She’s not going to waste time idly staring into space, not when there’s work to be done.

The idea of a uniform is, at this point, laughable. Over the course of nine months, she’d commanded missions in pajamas, in funeral wear, and on one memorable occasion, in her bathrobe, hair thrown up in a towel. She has always been lax with her men’s uniform requirements; they have repaid her in kind.

No one so much as looks up when she breezes through Mission Control in flannel pajama bottoms, an oversized tee shirt, and the sweater. She is reminded of her college days, the complete and total acceptance of whatever strange outfit you happened to stumble into the dining hall in. Her stomach rumbles at the thought, and she resigns herself to a very early breakfast.

She calls up the activation data on the screen again and hopes fresher eyes will give her some kind of idea.

She lists off the tech they’ve dealt with: MELD canisters, flight computers, Outsider shards, elerium cores, elerium bombs, weapons of all kinds. None of them give off a signal that matches. She knows she’s forgetting something, something that should stand out.

She searches the archive for any mission footage with fifty miles of the most recent set of coordinates and is rewarded with grainy footage from a terror attack in Buenos Aires.

No sleep after this, she thinks.

A few minutes in, vague memories of the attack come back to her. It’d been bad --- a few too many Muton Elites and at least one Berserker, in addition to the squishier Thin Men and Sectoids. Thinking back she’s almost certain it’s the mission where Bernard had deal with a Sectoid attempting to flank him by bashing the creature across the head with his gun, an effective if unconventional means of eliminating the threat.

She chuckles as the attack in question flashes across the screen, partly obscured by the Fog Pod that Hershel had taken cover behind.

Fog Pod.

Opening her datapad, she calls up the research archives, hoping her memory is wrong, that they’d done their due diligence after all.

The Fog Pods. Dropped in civilian heavy areas, and ignored by XCOM in favor of weapons and armor, they’re exactly what she’s forgotten. In the chaos, XCOM had lost track of them, had left Council nations to deal with them. They sit, uncatalogued, in places she can’t name, left alone and forgotten.

“Sonofabitch,” she whispers, frantically tabbing over to their current inventory, hoping to see one in storage after all.

She swallows hard as the realization dawns on her: once again, they’ve been left in the dust, and this time, it’s entirely her fault.

--

The aftermath is uncomfortable for everyone.

The bridge, which in her short time aboard, has always been filled with chatter is eerily quiet whenever they’re both present, as if everyone is waiting for another explosion. Shen and Tygan do their best to defuse the tension, putting aside their own disagreements in hope of facilitating cohesion. 

They run an entire mission without his acknowledging her once. She’s lucky Thomas takes only minor injuries from the trooper’s shot.

There are questions here and there, most of them clarifications. She passes a few towards Tygan, his expertise on the matter outweighing her own, and a few more down to Shen. The men seem to have come to some kind of consensus, both running interference and trying to keep in everyone’s good graces. She appreciates it; she has never liked being alone.

“Commander,” Wallace asks at dinner one night in the mess. “When you said open door, does that mean anything?”

She cocks her head. “Unless you manage to ask something really weird and uncomfortable, yeah. I’m not here to use information for a power trip.”

Wallace looks down at the table, and bites his lip.

“Come on, out with it.”

When he meets her gaze, she can’t miss the fear in his eyes. “Commander, what happened when XCOM fell? How did they hit the base?”

She can hear the other conversations nearby go quiet, the apprehension that comes with asking the one thing no one else dares to.

“Fair question,” she says, nodding and setting down her silverware. “And fair game. Um. I guess the entry in the archives doesn’t really elucidate on the details. And I doubt Central really likes to talk about it. I’ll give you the best recap I can. “

She pushes a stray hair behind her ear. “It was a few months after first contact. We thought things were going … pretty well, actually. We’d downed some UFOs, we’d stopped a fair number of abductions, we’d even managed to capture some hostiles. We were starting to piece their tech together.”

“It was a pretty normal day, and suddenly, it all went to shit. We started showing critical system failures, and then Delta Section took a pretty direct hit from the inside.” She shakes her head. “We’d never seen anything like it. We couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from, how they’d done it.” She sighs. “And then, we realized our people weren’t our people.”

“The aliens are capable of mind control. That’s not news. We’d known even then. In the short time we’d been fighting them, a few of our people fell prey to it. We all assumed it was just control, that they couldn’t … get into someone’s head, couldn’t get the information, the memories they carried. Looking back,” she shrugs. “I’m not so sure.”

“In any case, there were a few of us spared. Central; myself; our chief scientist, Moira Vahlen; Lily’s dad; a few of our soldiers. I thought it was luck, but I’m pretty sure now that it was purposeful. They wanted us to see how outnumbered we were.”

She draws in a breath. “It’s … really easy to shoot aliens. There’s no … moral injury. You shoot it, it’s dead, we all go home happy. But shooting the people you eat dinner with? The people you spend your day around? That’s a lot harder.”

“You didn’t … did you?” Kelly asks from her spot next to Wallace.

The Commander nods. “Yeah. We did. More than a few.” She squeezes her eyes shut. “Anyway, as things in Mission Control went to shit, we got the extreme pleasure of the alarms going off as the engineers started combusting everything they could.  We had a good fire suppression system, and the base was built to withstand a blaze, but …” She trails off. “My point is, we weren’t in a good place to defend ourselves. We were down resources, we were having to shoot our friends, and it was chaos. When the Mutons and Sectopods and Sectoids and Thin Men broke through … we didn’t stand a chance.”

“How?” Wallace asks. “How’d they mind control so many?” She shrugs. “Honestly, I wish I knew. They’ve always had the jump on us, always. But, with all this talk of psionic networks, I’d place my blame there.”

“So, it could happen again,” Krieger ventures, the horror plainly audible in her voice.

“I couldn’t say,” she says, turning to face the other woman. “Logically, yes, but on the other hand, if they had the capability, I’m fairly certain they would have already used it against one of the Resistance networks. It’s more efficient to have people massacre each other than to go and do it yourself.” She shudders. “Our heaviest losses weren’t to the aliens.”

Silence hangs heavy over the table.

“Look,” she says after a moment. “We know what they can do. We know they have a network. That was one huge missing piece during the Invasion. There has to be a way to disable it or at least defend against it. Nothing exists without a weakness. We’ll find it.”

The words sound good. Authoritative, even. They seem to do something towards taking the edge off their collective anxiety.

Ability to bullshit still intact, she notes. Hopefully the universe doesn’t take that as its cue.

Slowly, the conversations around her pick up again.

“Wallace,” Kelly starts. “You have the worst taste in dinner talks, you know that, right?”

“Oh, come on, like you didn’t wonder.”

“I have the sense not to ask at dinner!”

The Commander feels the tension begin to drain from her shoulders, and she picks up her silverware again. “Worse things have been discussed around an XCOM dinner table,” she volunteers.

“What’s worse than being annihilated?” Kelly asks.

She thinks for a minute. “The most revolting thing I ever heard discussed was the mechanics of Thin Man fellatio.”

“…Is that a joke, ma’am?”

“God, I wish.”

[funnythingshere0-blog]

Sacha Baron Cohen's 'Who Is America?' Is Best When It's Not Funny

New Post has been published on https://funnythingshere.xyz/sacha-baron-cohens-who-is-america-is-best-when-its-not-funny/

Sacha Baron Cohen's 'Who Is America?' Is Best When It's Not Funny

The legacy of Sacha Baron Cohen was secured years ago. With Da Ali G Show and Borat, the British comedian pioneered an anarchic, gonzo style of character comedy that itself had clear forebears in figures like Andy Kaufman, but also proved massively influential to the 21st century humor that followed. By creating fictional characters and inserting them into real-life situations, Cohen gave up much of the control and precision that typically goes into jokecraft, a risk that in turn yielded ample rewards. Borat, in particular, is an indelible document of Bush-era Americana, an outsider’s masterful exposé of heartland xenophobia leavened by a hefty dose of gross-out humor. There are visible fragments of Cohen DNA scattered across pop culture, from Conner O’Malley’s dispatches from Trump rallies to Kyle Mooney’s man-on-the-street SNL segments to the entire full-commitment ethos of Nathan for You.

But in the years since Borat, Cohen’s signature style resulted in diminishing returns. Brüno, the completion of an unofficial trilogy based on major characters from Da Ali G Show, was also the least critically embraced of the three, though still handsomely profitable. Cohen subsequently pivoted to efforts like The Dictator, which kept his larger-than-life characters safely apart from the free-wheeling chaos of actual life. Cohen promoted The Dictator in character, but the film itself is a straightforward narrative about a Muammar Gaddafi-like despot adrift in New York with a conventional script, co-written by David Mandel (Veep) and Alec Berg (Barry). Cohen’s co-stars were established comic actors like Anna Faris and Jason Mantzoukas, not unwitting average citizens.

Factors outside of Cohen’s own career have only raised the burden of proof for Who Is America?, the seven-part Showtime series the comedian has spent the past year laboring on in secret. Some details have trickled out in advance, courtesy of free PR from gullible interview subjects like Sarah Palin and Roy Moore and a jarring clip of former vice president Dick Cheney: Cohen is taking aim at the radical fringes of the American right wing, now increasingly synonymous with its mainstream. Given the tone of American politics these days, getting audiences to laugh at their eccentricities is a tough ask. Merely sharing Cohen’s disgust may not be enough for character comedy to play in 2018, when the average internet user is subjected to a torrent of equally outrageous, disturbingly non-satirical figures every time they open their browsers.

Thus far, the Trump administration has been a case study in the limits of Cohen and his peers’ hyperbolic, persona-based approach. Week after week, Alec Baldwin’s Emmy-winning impression and Saturday Night Live’s cold opens in general have demonstrated just how hard it is to come up with fiction that’s stranger than truth. Meanwhile, Comedy Central’s The Opposition with Jordan Klepper, an attempt to update the Colbert Report model of mock-conservative punditry with an Alex Jones-like conspiracy theorist, recently threw in the towel, adjusting to a more sincere approach moving forward: “I figured maybe, right now, the world could use one less asshole,” Klepper said in a statement. So where does that leave Cohen’s coterie of disruptive, precisely observed … assholes?

The first episode of Who Is America?—I’ve seen two, though a non-disclosure agreement prohibits me from disclosing any details regarding the second—showcases many of the Cohen style’s natural pitfalls. But enough of its benefits are on display to make the case that Cohen, at his peak, is capable of eliciting responses no one else can. The typical Cohen scene resolves in his alter ego pushing his scene partner to their breaking point, either asking him to leave or forcing him to. Such a predetermined outcome feels almost routine at this point, and especially when inflicted on people who aren’t public figures, more than a little cruel. But when Cohen’s counterpart goes along with his antics, matching or even raising his lunacy, the equilibrium gets thrown off. And unpredictability is where Cohen’s comedy thrives.

Cohen introduces not just one new character in Who Is America?, but a whole cast of them. The first to be introduced, and arguably the weakest, is Dr. Billy Wayne Ruddick Jr., the wheelchair-bound proprietor of Truthbrary.org. The opening shot of the series is part mic drop, part statement of purpose: Ruddick sits across from Bernie Sanders, a parody of this country’s right wing sparring with the most visible symbol of its left. Debating the finer points of Obamacare with a sitting senator, Ruddick’s delusions feel a bit too innocuous considering the extremists he’s modeled after. Ruddick buffoonishly grandstands about fitting the 99 percent into the 1 percent, a harmless troll that elicits nothing stronger from Sanders than some light condescension.

Ruddick’s liberal counterpart, Dr. Nira Cain-N’Degeocello, exhibits the polar-opposite ideology, though many of the same weaknesses, as Ruddick. A self-described “cisgender white heterosexual male, for which I apologize,” the pussy hat-wearing NPR correspondent bikes across the country in an attempt to discover where things went wrong for “President Hillary Clinton.” While a fair representation of liberal shell shock, the character avoids insight less surface-level than a caricature of performative tolerance. Cohen aims for the low-hanging fruit, going to dinner with some wealthy conservatives and shocking them with tall tales of free-bleeding onto the flag and dating a dolphin. The scene is funny, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before at Borat’s dinner party: using a person’s willingness to believe the worst of those unlike them for shock value, unveiling their ignorance in the process.

Who Is America? takes a noticeable turn when Cohen’s subjects refuse to take his bait. The sole apolitical interlude in the Who Is America? premiere centers on Cohen’s Rick Sherman, a skinhead ex-con presenting his prison art to a gallerist. The paintings, Sherman informs his patient interviewer, are made of human fecal matter and ejaculate, a revelation clearly designed to unleash a torrent of disgust. The surprise is that she rolls with it, demonstrating a sincere curiosity about the work that could make her look credulous but instead produces a role reversal: It’s she who looks open-minded and up for anything, and Cohen who seems played by his own assumptions about the gallerist’s propriety. By scene’s end, she’s pulling her own pubes for the character’s collection, having successfully out-Cohened the man himself.

The end credits reveal that Nathan Fielder worked as a consulting producer on Who Is America?, and the premiere’s most effective gimmick is also the one that would feel most at home on Nathan for You, a demented stunt that highlights the depravity of its participants. Cohen’s Israeli operative goes to various right-wing lawmakers, media personalities, and gun advocates with a modest proposal: to stop mass shootings, don’t arm the teachers, the NRA’s ridiculous anti-solution of choice. Arm the children.

To ask whether what follows is “funny” feels almost besides the point. I can’t blame anyone who decides that a nauseating illustration of America’s psychosis is not what they want out of their Sunday night entertainment. Those who stick around, however, are treated to proof positive that the world has finally caught up with Cohen’s oeuvre. The twist is that Cohen’s guises no longer feel hilariously out of place when inserted into everyday life. They feel right at home, baring what ails this country better than any anthropological trend piece about Trump supporters. Just don’t expect a barrel of laughs.

The moment Republican congressman Matt Gaetz tells Cohen that most legislators would have to carefully weigh such a radical proposal before signing their name to it, you can sense what’s going to happen next: Former senator Trent Lott, former congressman Joe Walsh, and current congressman Joe Wilson all gamely throw themselves into a grotesque PSA introducing kindergarteners to their new best friend, “Puppy Pistol.” No one ever draws a line in the sand; no one ever calls Cohen’s bluff, a fact made all the more ridiculous by the distractingly obvious nature of Cohen’s facial prosthetics. It’s not so much satire as proving the people who currently run our country are beyond satire, in real time.

In these moments, the objects of Cohen’s derision currently holding the levers of American power actually works to his advantage. The utter lack of shame or compunction on display here is chilling, all the more so for its presentation in a style as absurd as its substance. When someone confidently spoke into the camera about the pheromone “Blink-182,” I giggled; when Cohen says, mid-banter with a gun lobbyist, “It’s not rape if it’s your wife, right?” and the man sitting across from him simply laughs, I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach. These are people who can’t even be bothered to hide their worst impulses, or think through the consequences of their actions—why would they, if it’s gotten them this far? As mixed a bag as it may be, Who Is America? hasn’t left my thoughts since the moment I saw the credits roll, several days ago. It’s art for the age of kakistocracy.

Source: https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/7/15/17574396/who-is-america-sacha-baron-cohen