Thank you for tagging me @astralhux! 

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no pressure tagging @lovemesomerafael, @thepiper0fhameln, @thewintersoldier (congrats on the name change, bb!), @galaxylentil, @anonymousleekao3, @eris-n @humoristhefirstcasualty, @feralgoblintea, and anyone else who wants it

I was already distressed about the political and social situation in the US, and then this happens. Are there any examples of societies that fought back against fascism and won, without civil or international war breaking out? Surely there must be some success stories in history. How did other societies overcome fascism, are there lessons to be applied to our current situation? Please tell me we're not doomed, because I have no hope for the future.

Sigh.

Okay.

I’ve been through... a lot of the stages of grief by now. That is, rageposting on tumblr, venting to my friends via text, drinking, crying while drinking, lying on my bed and staring at the ceiling, feeling the crushing weight of certainty that we’re all screwed and nothing matters, crying while talking to my sister, crying generally, lying in bed some more, and am currently still in bed while writing this, but am struggling to put on my internet historian aunt hat and offer some comfort to the stricken masses.

First off: This is bad. I’m not even going to pretend this isn’t bad. We all knew RBG had cancer again, but it was pretty fixed in our minds that she would somehow manage to hang on until after the election. 45 days before the biggest presidential election of all time, in the middle of this year, when names including Ted “Zodiac Killer” Cruz and Tom “Time for Roe vs. Wade to go, block federal funding from being used to teach about slavery, send in the military to crush the BLM protesters” Cotton have already been floated as some of her possible replacements? With Trump and McConnell determined to work as fast as possible to steal this seat as brazenly as they can, because they are literal fascists who don’t care about their own example (Merrick Garland was nominated in FEBRUARY of an election year and McConnell held it up for being “too close to the election?”)

Ugh. Anyone who doesn’t get that this is bad or acting like people are overreacting doesn’t get what’s at stake. And when, as we’ve said before and are saying again now, the future of everyone who isn’t a white straight rich Republican man in this country depends on an 87-year-old woman with cancer for the fourth time? Something’s wrong here. RBG’s death did not have to leave us in this total existential panic, and oh yeah, maybe this could have ALL BEEN AVOIDED AND WE COULD HAVE ALSO HAD THREE (3) NEW LIBERAL JUSTICES SECURING PROGRESSIVE LEGISLATION FOR A GENERATION IF SOME OF YOU HAD JUST FUCKING VOTED FOR HILLARY CLINTON IN TWO THOUSAND AND FUCKING SIXTEEN.

(Why yes I am still mad about that, I will be bitter until the end of time that we were consigned to four years and counting of this completely avoidable nightmare because of apathy, misogyny, and Leftist Moral Purity TM, but we’re talking about the future and what can still be done here, not what’s in the past.)

Anyway. Here’s the bright side, which admittedly sucks right now, but it’s been the answer all long:

VOTE.

You have to fucking vote, and you have to fucking vote for Biden/Harris. Everything that we’ve been talking about is no longer a hypothetical; it’s happening right now. This is not just some Awful Worst Case scenario, and it’s not somehow being spouted by privileged white liberals ignoring the struggles of the masses. (Viz: that awful fucking text post with its simpering self-righteousness: “are you punching nazis or just telling oppressed people to vote blue?” I hate that text post with a fiery passion and it’s the exact kind of morally holier than thou leftist propaganda that wouldn’t surprise me if it was generated by a troll farm in Krasnoyarsk.) My dad is disabled and lives on Social Security. Trump’s second-term plan to end the payroll tax takes SSID out by mid-2021, so... I guess that’s my dad fucked then. I’m a gay woman with long-term mental illness, no healthcare, no savings, no current job, and a lot of student debt. My sister has complex health problems and relies intensely on publicly funded healthcare programs. All my family have underlying conditions that would put them at worse risk for COVID (age, asthma, immune issues.) These are just the people IN MY HOUSEHOLD who would be at risk from a second Trump presidency. It says NOTHING about my friends, about all the people far less fortunate than us, and everyone else who IS ALREADY DYING as this nation lurches into full-blown fascism. That is real. It is happening.

Here’s the good news and what you can do:

Democrats are fired up and mad as hell, and they’ve already donated $31 million between the announcement of RBG’s death last night and today, and that number is climbing every second.

You can help by donating to Get Mitch or Die Trying, which splits your donation 13 ways between the Democrats challenging the most vulnerable Republican seats in the Senate. That also has raised EIGHT MILLION BUCKS in the less-than-twenty-four hours.

You can donate RIGHT NOW to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, vote if your state offers early voting, request your mail-in ballot, or hound everyone you know to ensure that they’re registered.

You can call your US Senators (look up who they are for your state, ESPECIALLY IF THEY ARE REPUBLICAN OR YOU LIVE IN A SWING STATE OR ARE UP FOR RE-ELECTION IN 2020) and phone the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 to voice your insistence that they respect RBG’s last wishes and refuse to vote on any Trump nominee until after January 2021.

The other good-ish news is that I woke up to an email from the Biden campaign this morning about how they’re well aware of this and they’re already on it. BUT WE CANNOT COUNT ON EITHER THEM OR THE SENATE DEMOCRATS TO BE ABLE TO STOP IT. Because Joe Biden is not president and the Senate Democrats do not have a majority, if the Republicans manage to rush a nominee and a vote and all 52 GOP senators vote for that nominee, hey presto, tyranny by majority, a SECOND stolen Supreme Court seat, and a 6-3 hard conservative majority for the next generation. Even if Roberts or Gorsuch sometimes defect on procedural grounds, Kagan, Sotomayor, and Breyer (who is also 82 and thus ALSO might soon be replaceable, thus resulting in an EVEN WORSE ideological swing) would be outnumbered on everything. This is terrible. I’m not even gonna pretend it wouldn’t be.

BUT:

If Joe Biden is elected with a Democratic Senate and House, IT MATTERS. It gets us off the fascism track, it gives us the ability to make progressive law and have it enacted without going to die in Mitch McConnell’s Kill Stack, it gives Biden the executive authority to nominate liberal judges and change Trump’s worst outrages on day 1, it stands as a huge example of a nation managing to reject fascism by democratic process, and while yes, we’d still have a terribly rigged Supreme Court, Democrats would control all the other branches of government and be able to put safeguards in place. The other option is outright fascism and the end of American democracy for good. This may sound alarmist. It’s not. It’s literally what the situation has ended up as, as all of us who were begging people to vote for HRC in 2016 saw coming all along.

So yes. That’s what you need to do, and what WE need to do. We need to make as much goddamn noise as possible, protest, contact elected representatives, make sure everybody pulls their weight and ferociously fights the promised attempt to ram through a new justice before Election Day, all that. But even if that does happen, THEN WE NEED TO FUCKING DONATE, ORGANIZE, AND VOTE FOR JOE BIDEN AND DEMOCRATS UP AND DOWN THE BALLOT. ALL OF US. NO EXCUSES. NO MORE TWITTER LEFTIST ECHO CHAMBERS. NO MORE. THEN, EVEN WITH A RIGGED SUPREME COURT, WE WILL ALL BE SAFER ON NOVEMBER 4TH AND CAN TRY TO FIX WHAT’S BROKEN.

The stakes are just too high to do anything else.

May her memory be a blessing, and a revolution.

@humoristhefirstcasualty replied to your post “list of mcu employees who contributed to the...”

I would add Chris Evans in there. He always took Steve's relationship with Bucky seriously.

lol i had indeed included him at first but then removed him bc i decided to only include people who technically worked strictly on bucky, because i ended up thinking that robert redfort also should be included and then i was unsure about including anthony mackie bc i respect him but the movies did little with sam and bucky (and i would have totally gone a different route with the two of them had i been the writers) and i haven’t watched the show, so...

but absolutely, chris is valid ;)

humoristhefirstcasualty replied to your post: Goran Thursday

Are we sure it isn’t Flynn Friday yet? Sure feels like this week has gone on forever.

This week has dragged, hasn’t it?

We need more Goran to help us out...

humoristhefirstcasualty replied to your post: I would have liked to see Callen sassing Whiting....

It was actually better than I expected.

Agreed. Very much agreed. 

When I hear things like what happened on the Southwest flight today, I'm reminded that you have a potentially dangerous job with serious responsibilities. Have you ever been scared during a flight?

Oh my gracious, to the Southwest Crew: my heart goes OUT to them. That’s one of the worst case scenarios that can happen in-flight and I cannot fathom the importance of PAYING ATTENTION TO THE SAFETY DEMO because it rarely happens but when it does, you will want to know that information. 

My job is dangerous and on an average plane there are 3 flight attendants to 150 people. We have to evacuate in under 90 seconds when things like that happen. 

I have had some scares during a flight, but they have been medical emergencies, nothing like a blown engine or a bird strike or lightening. I am lucky on that front, but it will happen one day.

So people, PSA, please pay attention to the safety demo, it quite literally will save your life.

🖤 𝟏.𝟓𝐤 𝐬𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐥-𝐟𝐞𝐬𝐭! 🖤

i hit 1.5k followers and finished my ten-part series!! to celebrate i thought i would spend the next week writing part twos to some of my work!!

i get a lot of comments and messages asking to make second parts to my work so i figured why not make this a celebration?? ♥️

if you don’t have a sequel to request but still want to celebrate with me, my inbox is also open for:

🧶 short drabbles for a previous series

🐝 advice/rants (i am not a professional, so please keep that in mind)

🐌 questions about myself or my blog (keep in mind there’s still some things i would like to keep private)

🌾 celebrity gossip/tea

🪐 smutty thoughts (18+)

🥥 character ships (you send me a short description of yourself and i will ship you with a marvel or stranger things character, whichever you prefer)

🍸 anything MCU related

🎞 anything stranger things related

🧺 unpopular opinions

🧸 a peak at something i am writing

celebration will last from october 4 until october 8 🖤

tagging some hotties (mutuals) under the cut 🖤

@everything-burns-down @itsmeatballworld @thewinnersoldier @babebr @aquariusbarnes @posinhay @peyda @whatinthestyles @humoristhefirstcasualty @lilbabyfaee @bucky-soldat @buckydaddy @80steenmovie @igotnoname4thisblog @strwbrrybucky @mybuck @literate-lamb @luxeavenger

Loki and Bucky Deserve Better

I was going to try to come up with some kind of clever/insightful title, but y'all know me better than that 😂 I suck at titles. I don't do clever. Might as well keep it simple and to the point.

I've gone off on a lot of rants about how Bucky and Loki were mistreated in their respective shows. I've also shared a lot of beautifully insightful posts written by people much smarter and more eloquent than I am. Here's a bunch of Loki rage. And here's some shit about Bucky. And while I'm at it, here, have a bunch of posts I reblogged without adding to. (because I finally learned how tumblr works and how to find old posts 😂) That's not everything. Not by a long shot, but it's enough, I think, to get my point across:

Neither Loki nor Bucky was ever a villain! And, more importantly, the messages their showrunners are sending through the horrific misunderstanding and misusing of their characters and ignoring their previous established arcs are toxic and damaging. By ignoring and trying to erase their traumas, the writers and directors are only adding a fuckton of gasoline to the victim blaming/toxic masculinity bonfire that has taken over so much of this world.

"But what about The Avengers?!" Fuck right off. None of that was Loki's fault. That entire movie happened under duress. Next!

"In Thor 1, Loki was the villain!" Nope. He was the antagonist. Not sure of the difference? Here, I'll help you:

Villain: defined as someone with evil intent

Antagonist: someone who actively opposes others, a rival with different opinions and morals.

Loki was wrong in Thor 1. I have absolutely never denied that. He was wrong to get Jotuns killed, to try to destroy their planet, to try to kill Thor. But he didn't have evil intent; he thought he was doing the right thing, and he was trying his damnedest to earn his (historically violent and racist) adoptive father's approval (by mirroring Odin's past actions and the horrible messages he was raised on)

If anyone wants to even fucking try to come at Bucky over his time under HYDRA control, I will rip you apart. Victim. Not. Villain.

Now, I open up the floor to you lovely people, as that was actually the whole point of this post lol. @humoristhefirstcasualty mentioned the similarity between how Loki and Bucky were (mis)treated in their shows and that they didn't want to hijack the post. So, here, darling. Here's a post specifically meant to be hijacked! 😘😂

I've thought about this for a while and I don't know if other people have already talked about this but I haven't seen anyone do it, so. Here we go.

There has been good discussion about how Bucky's brainwashing/mind control works. To the extent that "Agent Carter" is still canon (which seems to be a ?? sort of thing), there is more of an in-universe answer than I've seen referred to so far. And I haven't actually watched an episode of AC for a while, so bear with me as I rely on TV Tropes to jog my memory.

In S1 E5, "The Iron Ceiling", Peggy and the (known to be alive) Howling Commandos go to Russia to save two scientists being held hostage by Leviathan. One of these scientists is named Ivchenko. When they arrive, they find a little girl who seems dazed and out of it--and then proceeds to shoot two people before escaping. Yeah, the little girl is in training to be a Black Widow.

Anyway, they save Ivchenko and bring him back to the States (Ivchenko, btw, is supposed to be a sort-of handler for the other scientist, who is supposedly insane and Ivchenko is basically the only one who can keep him stable).

Also, at this point/by this point, we learn that Dottie, one of the women who lives in the same building as Peggy, and who supposedly moved to NYC from the Midwest to be a ballerina, is actually a 1940s Black Widow on an undercover mission (she handcuffs herself to her bed by one wrist every night because they used to do that to the girls when she was growing up, the implication being she got so used to it that she can't sleep without it and still has a scar).

Dottie is secretly working with Ivchenko, who has the ability to hypnotize people so they do what he wants without realizing it by making them think they're carrying out their greatest wish; I'm pretty sure he tells a story about using it on a soldier in the battlefield who needed to have his leg amputated but they didn't have any painkillers, so Ivchenko basically put him into a fantasy world where he didn't realize his leg was getting cut off. This might be important.

Anyway, he does this with an SSR agent, getting him to put on a bomb that nobody can take off; I think the agent thinks he's trying to make amends with his wife or something similar. When the agent realizes what's actually going on, he jumps out the window before he explodes.

Ivchenko, aka Dr. Fennhoff, also does this to Howard, making Howard think he's finally found Steve in the ice when he's really flying a bomb and Jarvis almost has to shoot him down.

Long story short (too late), Fennhoff is stopped, imprisoned with a muzzle to prevent him from talking, and guess who his cellmate is?

Zola.

Y'know, coincidentally.

And Zola suggests they work together because, "America is a land of opportunities."

Zola, as we know, joins SHIELD and it's reasonable that Fenhoff went with him ("Agents of SHIELD" also deals with Hydra's brainwashing, and it's directly referred to as the "Faustus method", which is a reference to Fenhoff's alter ego in the comics).

To the extent that AC is canon, what was Bucky's greatest wish and how many times might he have believed he was finally going to succeed, not knowing what he was really doing?

Also, Fenhoff, again, was "rescued" from what was a Red Room location; this means that, to the extent that AC is canon, the Black Widow program and the Winter Soldier program have been intertwined since the 1940s, not the 1990s when Natasha and Yelena were in Ohio.

Tagging a few people to hopefully get their thoughts: @feralgoblintea@luna-rainbow@amarriageoftrueminds@humoristhefirstcasualty@ifandomus@oldgayseasoning@possibleplatypus

Thanks for the tag, @gunshou

(Gah this one really killed my inner INTJ because I need context! And justifications! And exceptions! LOL)

painting or photography // dusk or dawn // spring or autumn // movies or tv shows // chocolate or nutella // audiobooks or podcasts reading // card games or board games (neither) // fiction or nonfiction // cookies or brownies // dragon or unicorns // cake or pie // bath or shower // blue or yellow // rollercoasters or bumper cars // iced tea or hot tea  // left side of bed or right side of bed // zip-up hoodie or pullover hoodie // straight hair or curly hair // gummy worms or gummy bears // rain or snow // rings or necklaces // comfort or style // sneakers or flip-flops // bowling or mini-golf // pasta or pizza

Tagging: @reijamira @humoristhefirstcasualty @anniethelen @mochajay-jay and anyone else who wants to do it 😊

@humoristhefirstcasualty said: I wish I had your confidence. I guess I just feel like the Republicans will steal this election just like they're stealing SCOTUS seats. I'll vote for Biden of course, and vote blue all up and down the ticket, but I'm feeling very skeptical that it will matter in the end. Sorry to be such a downer. 

Look, I.... I don’t have confidence. I really don’t. This is terrifying. I have also often thought that the GOP will also steal this election (as they are OPENLY TRYING TO DO) and that it’s too late to do anything and that we’re just screwed every way you can think of. I have also often had the thought that I wonder how my life, and how everyone’s lives, would be so different if we didn’t have to be afraid of everything, all the time, just going up in flames, and if we weren’t living in the darkest post-2016 timeline. If HRC was president, things would obviously not be perfect, but they would be a far, far cry from.... this.

I answered another ask a while ago, worrying that there would be another civil war in America, by pointing out the scale of the war already happening. The amount of war and militaristic violence (especially race-based violence) happening in this country on a daily basis is out of control, but it also points out what we’ve just already become accustomed to. It’s food for thought about what we already consider normal, and how far we could let the goalposts still get pushed if we did just give up. There are people dead now who never had to be dead. But there are a ton of people ALIVE right now who will be dead if we just give up, and whose lives we can still save by doing everything we can. Every little bit of fighting back and helping the people around you, even if you can’t save everyone, is better than nothing. That matters. Trying matters. Even when it’s hard and sucky and terrible and you can’t really see why.

I don’t have a magic silver bullet. I want to just cry and quit. We’ve been asked to bear trauma after trauma, stress after stress, and it’s understandable that we have no hope and no sense that anything matters. This will mobilize Republican voters who might be leery of Trump but are willing to hold their noses and vote for him again (like they did the first time) in order to control SCOTUS for a generation. They’re sore over all those rulings over gay rights and abortion and everything else, because they’re terrible fucking people. I know they are. You know they are. They will vote. They were always going to vote.

We just have to get up together and do the same. That is what is before us right now. That is what we can focus on. The hypothetical terrible future (and believe me, BELIEVE ME, I have had trouble preventing my mind from going right there) is not here yet, and it can be changed. The election is 45 days from now. That is the next step. After that, we will know what exactly we have to do next. There is no point thinking of it before then (and again, I’m not asking you to do anything I don’t have to do myself, this is a reminder to me as much as you.)

If you (or anyone) have spoons and time today and want to do something tangible, you can phonebank for Amy McGrath, Mitch McConnell’s Democratic opponent in the 2020 Senate race, from home.

Hugs.

Tag 9 people you'd like to get to know better.

I was tagged by @kissedbydragonfire.

Favorite color: Ocean blue.

Top three ships: Garcy, of course, i'll ship them forever. Jamie and Claire of Outlander and Lucifer and Chloe, Deckerstar!!!

Lipstick or chapstick: Lipstick... I'm old fashion...

Last song: "Yolanda" by Pablo Milanès.

Currently reading: "The Alienist" by Caleb Carr.

Last movie: I'm rewatching all the movies of "Dirty Harry"... I'm in a Clint Eastwood mood...

Tagging @stillawake3 @kt-anansi @flynn-it-up @humoristhefirstcasualty @garciaflynnismyspiritanimal @mearcatsreturns @battleshipgarcy @starry19 @queenincrimson

Last Line Tag

Rules: Post the last sentence you wrote and tag as many people as there are words!

Tagged by @squidproquoclarice and @somekindofflowergirl

“There’s a crisis, because of course there is.”

Tagging: @sirjohnsmythe @aloha-4-ever @brooke-to-broch @catty-words @drlucypreston @electricbluebutterflies @feliciacraft @gallifrey-via-pylea @humoristhefirstcasualty

Shoutout to @humoristhefirstcasualty who helped me RSVP in FRENCH.  

You’re a badass and I love you.

Thank you @humoristhefirstcasualty!  I knew we’d seen it somewhere.

I respectfully disagree, @humoristhefirstcasualty.  Not happy with Hetty and the decisions she made but her dislike for Joelle makes sense.  

Hetty and Sam put real effort into making Callen’s relationship with Joelle work.  Despite her mistakes - and there have been many - since we first saw Hetty, she wanted Callen to have a settled life.  A real home (she bought one for him with his money), real friends (I never thought the partnership with Sam, as good and true a friend as anyone could find, was an accident) and a life outside of his career.  Joelle was a chance for putting down roots.  Maybe not the wife and kids set-up Sam has but a sense of belonging.  

Joelle took that.  Callen was attentive and kind when he thought he was the reason she was abducted.  He remembered her favorite comfort foods.  Even though the relationship didn’t work, he had a clue that a relationship like that existed.  

Now Callen knows what Kristen Donnelly knows, what Ray’s first wife knows and what Jada knows - they were an assignment.  And the venom that family and friends feel for people like Callen, Sam and Deeks is real.  Hetty is feeling that for Callen, who took his anger out on an innocent dining room table.

Your mileage may vary.  Most people’s do.