Hypothetically what do you think would have happened if the january 6 rioters had gotten to pence or pelosi before they got safe?

At this point, I almost dread answering questions like this anymore because I know the kind of hate mail it will unleash for the next few days, but it's important to keep talking about what happened on January 6, 2021 since so many people are trying to normalize it. That includes many people whose lives were in danger that day, as well as the former President who tried to hold on to power by encouraging his supporters to launch a violent insurrection and is now referring to those who have been brought to justice for attempting a coup as "patriots" and "hostages".

I genuinely believe that there were people in that crowd who would have killed Vice President Pence, Speaker Pelosi, and certain Congressional leaders if they had reached them on January 6th. I think there are people in that crowd who were ready to hold lawmakers hostage. Why else did they have handcuffs and zip ties? To help the Capitol Police maintain order? (Oh yeah...that's right, thanks for reminding me: they violently attacked the police -- some even beat police officers with the "Blue Lives Matter" flags that they brought with them.) Now, I do not think that everybody who was at the Capitol on January 6th -- or even the majority of those who took part in the insurrection -- were willing to go that far. I think a lot of them got swept up in what was happening and went with the flow. That doesn't excuse what they did. The flow that they got swept up in was still a fucking insurrection, and anyone who took part in that deserves to be held accountable. But I think there were certain elements embedded throughout that crowd that were much more organized and prepared to fully execute their plans for a coup after disrupting the certification of the Electoral College votes.

I actually think Vice President Pence was probably in more danger than even Speaker Pelosi or some of the Democratic leaders because Trump was so actively calling him out in the days and hours before the insurrection. I think that's why Pence is so adamant now about not supporting Trump. I mean, think about how disgustingly loyal and subservient Pence was to Trump throughout those four years until basically the first few days of January 2021. But even as other Republican leaders are crumbling and offering their allegiance to Trump again in 2024, Pence is standing by his decision not to endorse or support Trump, and I think that's because he realizes that Trump absolutely almost got him (and his family, who were with him in the Capitol on that day) killed on January 6th. Shit, even Mitch McConnell has folded and endorsed Trump again despite the fact that Trump has spent the last three years not only insulting him but also making racist attacks and questioning McConnell's wife's loyalty to the United States all because Elaine Chao had the audacity to resign from Trump's Cabinet in the wake of the insurrection. Yet Mike Pence -- who spent the better part of four years following Trump around like Paul Heyman follows Roman Reigns...

...THAT same Mike Pence is steadfastly refusing to endorse Trump because he has personal experience about how real of an existential threat Trump is. Some of those people at the Capitol were very serious about following through on their chants to "Hang Mike Pence", and not only does Pence realize that, but he also knows now that Trump -- who refused to take actions that would have helped clear the Capitol more quickly -- said "he deserves it" when hearing about those chants.

That's what is so scary about the insurrection, its aftermath, and the Trump Republican Party's redefinition of what happened that day. It almost worked. They stormed the United States Capitol and invaded both chambers of Congress. They carried Confederate flags into the United States Capitol -- even the fucking Confederate States of America didn't successfully invade Washington, D.C. and plant their flag in the Capitol. They were willing to hurt and probably kill some of America's elected leaders. And the people who helped plan and instigate the events of January 6th have spent the three-plus years since then learning from their mistakes and figuring out how to be successful next time. And guess what? "Next time" is only a few months away.

hirakagi fans do we think kagi would be an olympian

listening to the tua s2 soundtrack rn to pregame tomorrow's tuamre episode and it's so nostalgic. this soundtrack is the epitome of summer 2 me <333333

bro im gonna cry my phone screen is SO broken as in like missing pieces but it still works but if i ask my dad if we can try to get it repaired he'll just be like "ah just replace it" but he doesnt understand it is my Phone..... like. holder of music and the precious headphone jack... the single good writing app i have ever had (with like 2k separate files i still haven't backed up yet).... LARGE ACCESSIBLE FONTS.... the ability to download things easily.... an mp3 library even. if i have to get a new one i will be crying man UGHHHHH THIS SUCKS BUT. it does still work technically like everything is fine but i hate hate hate the thought of having to get a new one

do you have a way to like. upload all ur stuff into a computer? so that you can keep all ur stuff on a new phone

Idk how to readmore on mobile,,

Sometimes I feel like such a fake adult. Like I know it isn't true (disabled experiences aren't childish etc) but like . Instead of gaining independence I got more dependent than I was even as a child. Whenever people talk about what Being An Adult Means they'll talk about independence and things you can do and having more Life Experience and I suppose I have more Life Experience but it is distinctly different to the normal More Life Experience that other 23 year olds have. I can't drink and very much couldn't by the time 21 rolled around so I never have. Instead of getting more independence I became super dependent bc of the symptoms and such. I got a lot of experience learning to sit on hold with doctors offices like every other day and figuring out myself if the incredibly painful symptom was serious and if the seemingly innocuous one was. And now I'm really good at figuring out if The Bad Symptom is coming back but hopefully that's a useless skill because I have my medicine now? but other 23 year olds are like, here is my College Graduated Skills and my Work Experience Skills and my Living Alone Skills. (And my Relationships skills but I'm not sure I'd have managed to gain experience there even without illness fubdhbdjbhv) And I'm like. Ah. We have....so little in common.... Idk just. Grggrhrgrhggh

“What if society made everyone immortal and made having kids illegal?” I’d be all for it, I literally cannot comprehend how people are younger than me and will always continue to be

Merry Christmas people and things and everything or Happy Holidays for those who don't celebrate Christmas hope you have or had a wonderful day and hopefully 2024 treats us all well (lets be honest it wont but we can be delusional)

Have to keep reminding these dating apps that if I “missed a match” it’s because I wasn’t interested and therefore was not a match, my desires have meaning also, ya bastards 😂

ok april u need to calm the fuck down because i've had it

gesturing speechless bc i love to talk about how much i hate dragon age games because i do hate them so much but then i do also sit around and remember like no words to describe the way it felt to play them for the first time and there are a couple of other stories that have brought up similar feelings in my life but this is obviously a more demanding time commitment than any book or tv show so its unique in many ways for just like that level of immersion in something and im not sure i will ever experience that feeling about anything else which is okay but also damn that's crazy and depressing to ponder ajshdbf

in prime earth canon, jason todd (NOT red hood) was* publicly known to be alive

red hood: outlaw (2018) #32 (ID in alt text)

considering that jason todd was the official owner of the iceberg lounge during this time, it's likely he acquired the lounge legally and thus can be inferred that he had to be declared legally alive to do so

which brings me to my point:

i've seen a lot of people writing/speculating the difficulties and limitations jason experiences bc he was declared legally dead after ethiopia, which is all well and good, and is fantastic fodder for angst

but i've been wondering if this was bc people are actively ignoring canon (valid) or simply didn't know that at one point* jason was publicly alive (also valid, bc following comics is a shitshow lol)

please reblog to increase visibility! the whole point of this poll is to gauge how many people know this, so i'd love to see this post reach as many people as possible. thank you~! 😅🙏

(* big disclaimer under the cut!)

note: all of this info is as of may 2023. i am only one human so it's impossible for me to read every comic jason has been in since rhato (2016) and remember every single thing that happened. if anything i said above the cut is incorrect now, i apologize! /o\

for reference, as of creating this poll i've read:

red hood and the outlaws (2016) #1-26

red hood: outlaw (2018) #27-52

task force z (2021) #1-12

batman: urban legends (2021) #1-6 – cheer pt.1-6

the joker: the man who stopped laughing (2022) #3-5

i haven't read a lot of other important runs like death metal (2020), three jokers (2020), robins (2021), etc. if jason (NOT red hood) was declared dead once again in any of those, that is the reason why i used "was" in the very first sentence of this post and reiterate that he was alive at least for a limited period

my bad that i missed his second legal death tho LOLLL

i'm also aware that red hood (NOT jason) was known as "dead" by others after task force z (even though he clearly didn't die). that said, in the little i've read of tj:tmwsl, it seems that 1) not everyone knows red hood is actually alive, and/or that 2) red hood died at all. again, if red hood is generally known to be alive after tfz, that's on me

if there's anything else i've missed, let me know!! i'll update/reblog this post for as long as the poll is up (-u-)b

We are one Iowa caucus into the absolute shitshow that is going to be the US 2024 elections, and I'm already sick of seeing takes downplaying the risk that Trump and his fascist followers represent.

Look. Around 1900, my mother's grandparents immigrated to the Lower East Side of New York City. They brought with them children born in Europe (Poland? Ukraine? which country they were in depends on what year we're talking about) - we're not 100% sure they were THEIR children, even, but there were three, and they were young, and they came. But my great-grandparents had siblings, parents, cousins, uncles, aunts, huge families. And while my understanding is that an attempt was made to convince those folks to move to the US, none of them ultimately opted to.

They all kept in touch as they were able, exchanging letters and pictures, but through World War 1, through the 20s, through the Great Depression, through the worsening situation in Europe in the 1930s, my entire extended family who chose not to immigrate...continued to stay.

I think we all know how this story ends.

I have an entire family photo album of people whose names I will never know, because after every single one of them died in the Holocaust, my great-grandparents and grandparents couldn't bear to even label them. And they were PEOPLE, poor, vibrant, eager to maintain connections with their loved ones abroad. One was a Klezmer musician, and we have photos of him with all the different instruments he played. They're so real on the page, and they all ended in ashes.

And you know how that started? Fascism started with every inch allowed, with every well-intentioned moderate who tried to maintain a middle position even as the whole ground shifted right beneath their feet and even "middle" became extreme, every "no that change isn't coming fast enough, I want instant full improvement NOW" liberal who felt that doing nothing was better than accepting a slower improvement in the (truly awful!) post-World War 1 living situation in Germany.

Most of the members of my extended family also downplayed the risks. They never imagined that the worst could happen to them. They never fathomed how bad things could become.

And now I have their example always before me to know and to scream:

I KNOW HOW BAD THINGS CAN BECOME. I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO MY FAMILY THEN.

I WILL NOT LET THAT HAPPEN TO MY FAMILY NOW.

People look at me like I'm crazy when I say I've got our passports ready (and have had since before the 2020 election).

Look. I don't know what will happen if Trump is elected, but there's a very real possibility he will, and he's been extremely clear about saying what he'll do. He did a lot of the things he said he'd do last time. I expect he'll continue to do the things he says he'll do. And the things he say he'll do will lead to the deaths of more people than we can imagine - in the US, in Palestine, throughout the world.

Don't tell me there's a middle ground here. Don't tell me I'm over-reacting. Don't tell me the worst won't happen. Don't tell me the risk is mild. Don't tell me we're safe.

We. Are. Not. Safe.

The lives of dozens, hundreds, of members of family were lost in the 1940s amid the horrifying statistic "6,000,000 dead Jews."

I will not let my life (as a Jew), my wife's life (as a disabled woman), my son's life (as a biracial boy), my daughter's life (as a biracial trans girl), be part of the statistics that come from our a second Trump presidency.

If you won't vote like YOUR life depends on it, vote like someone ELSE'S life depends on it, because IT DOES.

And if you can't even do that much, at least shut the fuck up and stop spreading your poison around. You're wrong. The danger is real. Downplaying it now won't make your conscience feel any clearer when it actually happens, and comforting everyone else downplaying it will just make you that much more complicit.

we get it, you hate hlvrai. how about instead of being bitter you let people enjoy things. fr whats the point of gatekeeping a 20 year old game?

Look, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you didn't live through the 2020 fandom bullshit, because if you'd witnessed it, even peripherally, you would not have felt compelled to send this ask. So, a few things you should know:

I don't actually hate hlvrai! I genuinely enjoyed the series and still quote it regularly. I even used to enjoy some of the fan content, before the fandom exploded in popularity and there was a huge influx of mostly of very young fans (fine, but not my scene) who wanted me and most of my friends to die (bad; see below).

I'm not dreading more hlvrai content; I'm dreading the potential fallout within the fandom. Canon tags flooded with unrelated content. Wildly OOC characterizations of canon characters based on similar characters in an unrelated series. Endless racism discourse that somehow manages to affect everyone except the tiny fraction of fans who are actually being intentionally racist. Pushback against mature content for an M-rated game because "there are kids here now!!" Ship discourse. Death threats and endless harassment related to the ship discourse. Being accused of being a child predator and threatened with doxxing for shipping two grown adults in a different fandom.

A lot of really lovely people were driven out of the canon HL fandom because of bullshit instigated by hlvrai fans who either didn't know anything about the canon series, didn't care, or were learning incorrect information through "fandom telephone" and decided to take it upon themselves to rid the internet of anyone who didn't ship canon Gordon with their benrey-fied version of Barney "the right way." Can you really blame anyone for not wanting that to happen again?

Honestly, as long as the new content doesn't include too much conflicting lore/characterization related to canon HL characters and the fandom manages to behave itself, I'm excited to see more people get into Half Life. A lot of my current favorite HL artists and writers got into HL through hlvrai. This doesn't have to be a shitshow, but I don't think it's unreasonable to worry that it might become one.

TL;DR: Nobody really wants to "gatekeep" a 20 year old game series. We just want to be able to continue talking about the series and creating fanworks without being bombarded with unrelated content, death and doxxing threats, and baseless accusations that could ruin our actual, offline lives.

Before next Friday...

....and in anticipation of the 2024 MPC's partner charity reveal by S on his Insta, something I just received (thank you, sweetheart, forever indebted to you 😘) and which (again) I am not sure has been discussed at its time:

This is Blood Cancer UK's best wishes to S on his rather tormented birthday, in 2020. There is no need to replace it in context, but still: this was right in the middle of the second (and worst) Ha-wa-wee Gate, with 🐰 and many of the sopranos across the street going ballistic with each day that was passing. That was, IMHO, one of the most inglorious, violent and gratuitous hate sprees in this fandom. With dire consequences.

I would just have one single question to all of these women who so eagerly and savagely went on to draw blood at all costs out of someone they never met. Coincidentally, pretty much the same women who even today cackle and hate online and then go on with their respectable, quiet and thankfully obscure lives:

Do you really think that a big UK charity, such as Blood Cancer, would still want to have its name, brand and reputation associated with someone who, according to you, is:

a closeted, coward homosexual - we know who started this and why

a crook, pushing unsuspecting women consumers to alcoholism, by some questionable promotion of his spirits

a COVIDiot, overstaying in Hawaii past his welcome date (again, no evidence about length of stay, but sure...)

a manwhore, dating much younger, mediocre women (despite complete lack of concrete evidence or even lack of proper shitshow narrative pointing towards it since, well... since at least August 2022)

a borderline cretin, with no serious acting skills and no future in the industry?

Do you?

Because if you do, maybe it's time for me to tell you that this kind of attitude shows me more than I would like to see about just what kind of people you are.

It's not a good look.