Failing to Thrive then Thriving in failure

I just had the funniest notion. Time travel comedy, but the twist is that Palpatine is the one to go back in time. 

So we start just after Kenobi, Palpatine has been emperor for about a decade, he succeeded. The Sith plan is complete, he has everything he had dreamed of and worked toward for a decade…and he is so bored. He never realized that 90% of his joy actually came from pretending to be a benevolent Chancellor and the intrigue of fooling people.  Now he has shown his true colors and could not go back to pretending (it simply would not work). Being the Sith in charge is not as fun as he thought it would be. Even getting to openly torture people has lost its appeal after 10 years.

It’s ok for Vader. For one Vader was never interested in those intrigues in the first place. For two 45% of Vader brain is taken up by trying to resurrect Padme Amidala, 50% is taken up by Obi Wan Kenobi (Palpatine is not sure if Vader wants to kill Kenobi, Kriff Kenobi, make Kenobi tuck Vader in every night and tell him is it going to be alright, Force Kenobi to help Vader resurrected Padme, or make sure Kenobi is eating, taking care of himself, and has a good enough blanket), leaving only 5% for everything else.  

Frankly if this is what Kenobi had to deal with before the war, Palpatine is somewhat impressed he got anything done.

Vader isn’t bored. Palpatine’s assorted lesser minions are not bored, they are living the dream of being as bigoted as their little fascist hearts desire. But Palpatine just could not find joy any longer. 

I do want it clear. Palpatine is not repentant. He does not regret the deaths that he caused, the genocide, the enslavement, any of it. He’s just bored. 

One day Palpatine finds a book, or maybe an artifact, or possibly a scrap of paper with an archaic formula. The title roughly translates to ‘Sith Master Time Travel’ (Listen The Son was also very bored, and being outside of Space Time meant He wanted to see what would happen). Palpatine is able to time travel, but only as far back as when he became a Sith Master. It was also a one time deal, he would not be able to use the method again AND it would destroy his origin timeline (not that that actually factored into Palpatine’s decision at all).  Not to mention he would essentially be possessing and killing his previous, alternate timeline self. 

Of course Palpatine time travels. He goes all the way back to the moment he became the Sith Master (it turns out the Sith titles are not just titles), looking at the still warm corpse of Hugo Damask, just as the Naboo crisis is wrapping up. 

Now Palpatine had already decided to do some things differently.  At first he was still working outward the Grand Sith Plan, if trying to keep his ‘Kindly Politician’ mask a bit longer, however he has decided that instead of Vader (or possibly in addition to Vader, if things get boring again) he will get Obi Wan Kenobi as his apprentice, figuring that there must have been a reason that every Sith Apprentice for 20 years ends up obsessed with the man (also because he thinks it would be funny to corrupt the Jedi’s ‘Guiding Light’). Dooku and all the pieces needed to start the Clone wars are already mostly in place. It is just a matter of maintaining until the clones are the right age.  So he does what he needs to to maintain the Empire building plans and decides to focus on corrupting Obi Wan. 

He fails, utterly. He fails so fully that Obi Wan did not even notice his attempts at corruption. Like he knew it would take time to corrupt a Jedi, he had done before after all, but he still expected at least a little change within the first year. There was nothing. 

And it was not a case of Obi Wan not trusting Palpatine. This is still a decade before the war. Obi Wan is a grieving, freshly knighted,  trying to keep up with a nine year old with somewhat unique trauma. Palpatine knows how to get Obi Wan to feel comfortable and trust him (Palpatine probably knows too well how to get Obi wan to feel comfortable and trust him, between Dooku and Vader). Obi Wan is just, for a given value, incorruptible. 

Now Palpatine’s obsession switch has been flipped. He went into it thinking that corrupting Obi Wan would be a fun side project, a way to pass the time.  He was wrong.  He knows from the previous timeline that torture would not be effective (Listen if the torture mask specifically built to corrupt lightsiders did not make a dent after a month it is pretty well proven that torture will not cause Kenobi to fall, Palpatine knows this) nor would killing Kenobi’s loved work (again, if it didn’t last time we have some pretty concrete proof). 

So now we have Palpatine trying every method he can think of to seduce Kenobi the darkside, always just shy of admitting to being a Sith or being creepy. To the point that he has actually forgotten the Empire building he was doing. He kind of even forgets to be Sidious.  He almost ghosts Dooku, before he remembers that Dooku is Kenobi’s grandfather(that is not the correct term, Dooku tries to correct Palpatine an even dozen times before giving up) and gets Dooku involved in the corruption that is STILL. GOING. NOWHERE.

Dooku basically becomes Grandpa Dooku to both Obi Wan and Anakin, and falls back into the Light while trying unsuccessfully to corrupt Obi Wan to the Dark. Due to darkside vow complications (also because I think it would be really funny) Dooku is not able to say, imply, or otherwise do anything to make the Jedi suspicious that Palaptine is a Sith. Also, to a certain extent he thinks that as long as Palpatine is focused on corrupting his incorruptible grandson, the other Sith is not thinking about galactic domination (To be fair he is correct).  

Palpatine spends most of his time trying to corrupt Obi Wan, while keeping up the act used to maintain Obi Wan’s trust. The thing is Palpatine is fully aware that Anakin in the original timeline was about observant as a particularly dense brick wall and would not have realized that the persona of ‘My friend Palaptine’ did not match the reality of ‘My pal Friendpatine’. Obi Wan would realize if his act was not consistent. 

So Palpatine decided to keep the act up 24/7.  And everyone knows that your actions become your habits become your personality. 

Somewhere in year 8 Palpatine forgets how to Sith. 

Technically he is still a darksider but not the extra layer of fucked up that comes from being an actual Sith. And he still has not even made a dent in Obi Wan’s light. He has also, almost single handedly, derailed the war that had been brewing and fixed about 40% of the corruption in the Senate.  All without killing a single senator.

Palpatine spends most of his time very confused. 

Palpatine lets his term as Chancellor end, having gone down in history as one of the most beloved Chancellors in history.  The Clones are found and mostly are inducted as an arm of the Jedi Order. Jango Fett is given a metric ton of therapy, which helps him see that the Jedi were not actually at fault for Galidraan (Jango had, in fact, been the person to escalate things to violence) before he is allowed to take Boba back into the galaxy. By that point the Clones want little to do with him. 

For the rest of his life Palpatine tries, unsuccessfully, to corrupt Obi Wan (who never noticed). At this point he is genuinely friends with a number of Jedi (He and Mace Windu have a surprising amount in common, including a love of the theater and a mild exasperation for Anakin Skywalker's antics). He is an honored guest at both the CodyWan and the Anidala Weddings (including a Jedi based wedding ceremony).

Honestly he is having the most fun of his life. 

He is also never caught as a darksider. He never figures out how that is possible either.

French Israeli piece of shit: Wanna know why the Arabs don’t protest and break and burn shit in Israel like they do in France? First Arab who walks by gets beaten up. Even the nice Arabs. The peaceful ones with nice corner shops. We beat them up, broke everything did a carnage. It’s the only language the Arabs understand, they think that as long as you’re not in the streets to kill them you’re weak and they can do whatever they want. The war, what we’re doing in Gaza hasn’t been done in a long time. What we’re doing in Gaza… you know what we’re doing. Not a single Arab in Israel is moving not even their ear unlike 2021. Not a single burned tire. Nothing because they know that Israelis, including the leftists, if they do anything we will catch them and hang them to a traffic light.

People in the conversation: That’s good!!!

The same piece of shit: I can send you pictures of Arabs taped from head to feet. Their face, their eyes everything.

Mila a piece of shit: I absolutely want to see this.

A third piece of shit: If you want Mika I have really nice ones from the army.

Mila the piece of shit: I want to see it.

The two pieces of shit who have pictures: Sending you the pics in DM.

Mila: *laughing*

Come again and tell us how “Israel” is nice and how the “Israeli Arabs” are not mistreated. The thing is the three people who were talking are easily identifiable. We all know who they are know their names and faces. Mila is even invited on TV regularly to pretend to be a victim. But none of them was arrested. Let’s pretend a group with white supremacists and Muslims who can easily be identified because they are known and use their picture and full name on social media was calling for the murder of Jews? Do you think for one second it wouldn’t be all over the news and the piece of shit would be in police custody already? But hey it’s just anti Arab racism so nothing to see here. They are just celebrating the death of Palestinians. Fuck Zionism. Fuck every single person who stand with “Israel” in any form or shape even the “neutral” ones and both siders. You’re a piece of shit and I have absolutely zero respect for you or even any empathy.

(The two guys in the conversation are Zionist Jews the girl Mila is a white supremacist. A couple years ago when she was 17 and nobody knew her she insulted Muslims during a live video, idiots answered by insulting her cause she is queer. And she became a symbole in France they started using her to show how the Arabs are savages and saying that blasphemy is a right in France. They didn’t listen to us when we were like “Nah she didn’t insult Islam she insulted Muslims that’s not blasphemy that’s racism” and now years later after being told her behavior was perfectly okay multiple times including by politicians and the medias, she is casually calling for the murder or Arabs and asking for pictures of dead Palestinians.)

isn't banning people based on "vibes" a conservative way of thinking? Idk I feel like forcibly removing people in your community who didn't do anything based on your idea on what's normal & fear that they COULD be dangerous is a justification for alot of right wing politicians & a basis behind xenaphobia.

Its literally a talking point of our oppressors.

First off there's something funny to me about seeing me retweet something on twitter and then going to my tumblr to respond to it anonymously

Second off, you're making big assumptions on what these vibes might be and what reasons streamers and other online creatives might have for removing people.

Here's some examples of people I've banned from my community discord server based on vibes:

Someone who only ever cared about talking to me, and never acknowledging anyone else in the server. They acted far too familiar with me despite me not knowing them, and continuously sent me DMs where they roleplayed things like hugging me. I explained why all of this behavior was not appreciated but they never listened. Classic parasocial behavior but none of it was against the rules. I still removed them based on vibes because they made everyone, especially myself, very uncomfortable and would not listen when told to stop.

A user who made everything about themself. They would derail every conversation to talk about something they did, often unrelated to the current topic, talk over others to praise themself on something, never listen to other people, interrupt others to talk about how they would've done something better, etc. Not against the rules! But it sure is annoying! I removed them because they constantly brought the mood down by making others feel like they had no place to speak.

Multiple users who only spread negativity. Almost always taking worst faith stances on things, barging into perfectly fine conversations with some overly negative angle all the time, sometimes I'd tell them to stop and they'd say it's just for fun, but it's not very fun when all you accomplish is ruining the mood, is it?

Any time something like this happens, Me and my mods make sure to take the person aside in DMs and explain the situation first, make it clear to them what they're doing wrong, and how we'd like them to stop, and if we still remove them then, it's their own fault. There have been plenty of times where someone was told to stop a certain behavior, and they understood and corrected accordingly.

I'm not removing these people because I suspect they might be secretly right-wing, or phobic, or whatever you're assuming when you say "dangerous", I remove them because they're annoying and don't listen, and I don't want annoying people like that in a simple little discord community that I made for people who like what I do to hang out with each other and have a good time. I have to manage that community and if there's too many problems that becomes hard, and it'll just be a less nice place to be. It's not that deep.

Jim Carroll at Flux:

[This piece was originally published at The Hot Screen.] The refusal of not only Donald Trump, but of increasing numbers of elected Republicans, to commit to accepting a 2024 presidential election loss may just be the biggest story in American politics. It’s certainly as important as the intertwined phenomena of the GOP’s evolution into a party of authoritarianism and its increasing comfort with threats of violence to achieve political ends. Advance rejection of adverse election results is a scandal, a crisis, and a challenge to the pro-democracy American majority, pointing to a breakdown in U.S. politics as the Republican Party embraces open defiance of majority rule and the rule of law.

Trump himself has tried to hedge his refusal by qualifying that he would accept the results “if everything’s honest,” but that “[i]f it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.” As we’ve already seen, though, the former president conjures accusations of electoral dishonesty out of thin air, spouting lies about fake votes, illegal votes, immigrant votes, and the like nearly as fast as fact-checkers can debunk them. Let’s not be naive: there is no standard of proof that Trump would accept if he loses in November. To think otherwise is to ignore the evidence of his behavior over the last decade. The rabid elephant in the room, of course, is that Trump not only lied in 2020 about the election being stolen from him, but used that fiction as the basis for both violent and pseudo-legal attempts to undo the election results and so topple American democracy as we know it.

By echoing his 2020 refusal to commit to accepting the upcoming presidential election results should he lose — a refusal that we can see with the benefit of hindsight was the predicate for the first presidential coup attempt in American history — Donald Trump is broadcasting his intention to reject an unfavorable 2024 outcome as well. But he is not doing so out of some self-defeating interest in outing his own insurrectionary intent (although he is in fact making clear this intent). Instead, he’s talking about the need to reject “dishonest” election results in order to sow doubt among his supporters now, to prepare the ground for the same efforts to overturn the results that we saw in 2020. The plan for power in 2024 remains the same as before: Crooked legal maneuvers and incitement of violence.

But a second element that was mostly latent in 2020 is more overt this time around. By intimating that he will not accept the election results if he doesn’t win, and by suggesting he will incite a repeat of the post-election maneuvers and violence of 2020 (for example, in his statement that America will experience a “blood bath” if he loses), Donald Trump is using the threat of future violence to sway Americans’ votes in the present and running up to November — a threat given complete and utter credibility by his staging of a coup attempt in 2020-21. He is telling the American people that he will unleash violence on this country, just as he did before, if they don’t act as he commands them. Too many people are misinterpreting Trump’s threats as lying in the future — they are in fact acts of intimidation meant to operate right now to alter Americans’ opinions and votes.

It is difficult to conceive of a higher crime against American democracy than such threats, short of a second coup attempt by Donald Trump. Threatening the American citizenry to vote for Trump lest they suffer untold horrors is a story that any news organization worth its salt should be pursuing, constantly, key to communicating the darkness of Trump’s refusal to commit to respect the election results. Likewise, the political danger of a president refusing to accept election results, preparing the ground for violence should he lose, and using that threatened violence in the present to sway votes together form a catastrophe in the making that the Democratic Party should highlight, condemn, and confront at every opportunity.

Trump’s attempts to subvert faith in the election preparatory to overturning a November result that goes against him, coupled with his active intimidation of American voters in the present day, should be understood by all reasonable observers to disqualify him from the presidency. This is not a question of specific laws being broken, but of a clear intent to subvert Americans’ trust in democracy, sway the election through intimidation, and lay the groundwork for future violence and sedition by recruiting gullible citizens and dishonest politicians to his insurrectionary cause. He has rendered his candidacy illegitimate.

The menace emanating from Trump is made still worse by the fact that so many of the GOP’s elected officials are either actively or tacitly complicit in his attempts at electoral intimidation and subversion. Those who echo his refusal to accept the election results no matter the outcome, like vice-presidential hopefuls Representative Elise Stefanik and Senator Tim Scott, have made Trump’s cause their own, happy to aid his destructive and violent-minded path to the presidency. But those Republican officials who simply refuse to criticize him are little better, shirking the minimum duty required of elected officials to defend American democracy by affirming its most basic tenet — that when you lose, you accept that the other side has won. By behaving as if Trump’s words and intent are normal, they provide through their silence essential cover to an authoritarian politics that has no place in the United States. In this way, the GOP has been poisoned by the insurrectionary spirit that animates Trump’s campaign for the presidency. I would hazard that this increasingly widespread, even lockstep, Republican position is a major — perhaps even the central — reason why neither the media nor the Democratic Party have responded to the GOP refusal to recognize presidential election results with the appropriate levels of focus and intensity. With Republican pols closing ranks, the media and Democrats imagine that a basic defense of democracy will now appear too “partisan.” But at the risk of repeating myself: in no way can Trump’s campaign be considered legitimate under the most basic understanding of American democracy.

Unfortunately for the political health and even survival of the country, a failure to truly engage the topic of Trump’s relative legitimacy or lack thereof may very well be having the opposite effect — like those Republicans who stand silent while Trump threatens a “blood bath” if he loses, too many in the media and the Democratic Party are normalizing behavior that isn’t just abnormal, but a direct threat to American democracy and the free society it makes possible. For both the media and the Democrats, fear of taking a firm stand on Donald Trump’s illegitimacy also seems rooted in a reluctance to avoid what might be perceived as unnecessary or extreme conflict with Donald Trump, with the Republican Party, and by extension with the tens of millions of voters who support them. Yet the GOP has no compunctions about seeking escalation on its own terms, with the goal of delegitimizing both the free press and the Democratic Party.

Regarding the media, a hallmark of Trumpism — one which the GOP has eagerly adopted — has been to deny any legitimacy to mainstream news sources. Instead, Republicans now actively label them as “enemies of the state,” deserving of scorn and, if necessary, physical violence. Nor do Trump or the GOP any longer appear to consider the Democratic Party legitimate, or its voters to even be real Americans. In just the last couple weeks, we’ve been witness to no less a personage than House Speaker Mike Johnson suggesting that millions of illegal aliens are voting, in line with right-wing propaganda that such voting has been key to Democratic victories. Stop to consider how very shocking this is: the highest-ranking elected Republican is pushing legislation — and signaling to Republican voters — that the Democrats only hold power through fraud and deception, that the party is in fact a criminal enterprise at war with the intent of actual American citizens. Consider as well that this line of attack is of a piece with Donald Trump’s propaganda about stolen elections, so that Johnson is in fact helping Trump make his case that rejection of election results and violence may well be required for a Republican to return to the White House.

Donald Trump and increasingly other Republicans are playing a dangerous game of hot potato by announcing that they'll refuse to accept a loss this fall.

quick blabbering (?)

MAG 102 - Nesting Instinct

doodle 102/200; days left 4/110 22/128

POV: Gertrude Robinson doesn't approve of ur new wife.

I think I've finally put my finger on something bothering me. For months, Israel's stated goal is to "eradicate" Hamas. As in kill everyone involved.

Not just the leaders, not just those with the most power. Everyone.

No arrests, no lawyers, no fair trials. Just kill anyone and everyone the Israeli government has decided is worthy of it.

Don't get me wrong, I think the "collateral damage" is a) disgusting and b) deliberate.

But is it not also horrendous that the Israeli government, with the support of most world powers, gets to act as judge, jury, and executioner here?

would it be okay if u told me why u like aoki😭/gen😭😭😭😭BEEN TRYNA LIKE HIM FOR SO LONG I JUST CANTT but i love ur art so much so i still consume it otherwise lol

i liked tohru adachi in high school and tbh i think that alone is enough of an explanation for why i ended up liking aoki

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i need to post about palestine on facebook but i'm fucking terrified

I remember, during the mike brown protests, when people in power tried to tell us we didn't know real oppression, and the people in Gaza sent messages of solidarity, and also tips for dealing with the tactics the police were using

promised myself that i'm gonna fix up my notes from last sy so i can share it with upcoming humss students but i also keep going 'but what's the point'

‘modern country music isnt conservative!’ i cry, as i press play on a colter wall track for the millionth time

I hope everyone is excited for today

affirmative action struck down. once again asians in the usa have been used by the oppressors to uphold systemic racism. congrats to those ungrateful asians who whine about not getting into some school with a Big Name because of a hypothetical latine or Black person. you just let yourself be played for fools and used as tools. hope you’re happy lmao

it is absolutely insane that we spend our lives basically glued to our phones but some of you still have no sense of media literacy