Hello! I'm Meegs, and though this Tumblr is pretty new by Tumblr standards, I've been around for a long-ass time, formerly as audiodrops/thetailgunner.
No TERFs, No Tankies.
As of 03/01/24 my political and I/P posts are at @inlowearthorbit. Old ones will remain for posterity.
Note: This is not a political blog, but if you follow me and I check your blog and it is full of contextless screencaps of inflammatory rhetoric and blatant misinformation, I won't hesitate to block you.
A bit more About Me under the cut
I am in my early 30s, mom to a stupidly adorable dog (see tag "sputnikposting"), and work some kind of job that I complain about from time to time. I'm currently preparing to begin working towards a master's degree, which is, you know, terrifying, but no pressure.
My primary fandom is Hetalia, which I have been in for nearly fifteen years, because something something special interest hyperfixation something something. I'm also on the very edges of TURN: Washington's Spies fandom, though I've mostly fallen out of it. I also reblog from a variety of other fandoms, but as far as fanworks and meta go, it's pretty much all Hetalia from me.
You can find me on AO3 at ~ArtificialSatellite, where I'm currently posting my multichapter USJP AmRev isekai monstrosity Rouse Your Bold Heart. I also draw fanart, which can be found under the tag "my stuff." Hetalia meta is under "hetaposting."
(I also roleplay, primarily on Discord, so if you're interested hit me up here and we'll discuss it.)
Ships include USJP, PruHun, Fryingpangle, FrUK, GerIta, and like literally any other America ship that exists, I'm probably also into, but I live by a very ship-and-let-ship philosophy so it's really all gravy.
In addition to fandom stuff, I reblog a lot of posts about Judaism (under the tag "jewish stuff") and history (under the tag "history stuff"). I am decidedly to the left on most political matters, if you were wondering, and stand in support of those continuing to fight for democracy and peace in Israel.
Over the years I have learned that curating your own online experience is critical to fandom enjoyment, and as such, I block liberally in the face of shitty behavior directed at me or anyone, and that includes supporting or positively interacting with other people's shitty behavior. If you find yourself blocked by me and would like to know why, please see the sentence preceding this one.
Btw, that idea that privilege makes you morally evil and suffering makes you morally good is just repackaged versions of the Christian concepts of the evils of luxury and the holiness of martyrdom. Hope this helps!
Some myths that need debunking because they're being pushed by bots and it’s making me angry:
1. "He's gonna declare martial law!" Okay, so what then? This isn't something you can enforce nationwide on a country of 350 million people with a military that has a combined force of less than 3 million people, including all support and logistics staff. That doesn't equal half the population of Los Angeles. Y'all need to fucking stop acting like we're approaching a mythical point where shit gets "serious." We're already there. People are already being disappeared.
Civilians are already being killed in the streets. We're there. And you know what? They're already getting near the limits of their ability to force compliance. ICE is dedicating a double digit percentage of their manpower to Minneapolis and they're not controlling shit. People are pushing back. Your default response when the administration says "We will force you to do this" shouldn't be "Oh no they're gonna make us do this!" It should be "Fuck you. Make me."
2. "Americans are doing nothing!" I did a post about this recently, but it bears revisiting: I don't know where the hell you're getting this, because everywhere that ICE or other arms of the federal enforcement apparatus go, they are being pushed back on, humiliated, driven out of neighborhoods, and shown the door. People are fighting back on a truly awe inspiring level. Stop assuming that "doing something" looks like an armed mass of civilians storming Washington and fighting the military in a pitched battle. This is movie bullshit. The world has not looked like that since the early 20th century. What you are seeing, right now, is what "doing something" looks like. Stop it stop it stop it. We ARE doing something, in vast numbers.
3. "He's gonna cancel elections!" This one has been pushed by bots for the last year, and big name people have been picking it up, and it frustrates the hell out of me so I'm going to hold your hand and tell you bluntly: He. Cannot. Do. This. There is no mechanism. Elections are controlled by the states, and they decide when they happen. There is no federal mechanism for control of elections. What's Trump gonna do? Post soldiers at every polling place in every swing state? Do you know how many polling places there are in every district? How much manpower this would require? He doesn't have the people to do it. He doesn't have the mechanical ability to do it. There are no tools to execute this plan. Is he gonna try to make elections unfair? You bet your ass, but our elections have never been fair. Voter suppression has always existed and will continue to exist until we fix it... but a blanket ban of elections or even some ability to make them not happen? Lol. He doesn't have the manpower or the means.
But what if he did? Let's game this out: Congress--or at least the House of Representatives--is not a perpetual body. At the end of 2026 the current congress ceases to exist, and the next one isn't convened until the following year. Mike Johnson will cease to be Speaker at the end of the year and wont be Speaker again in '27 unless his party wins a sufficient majority to elect him. Remember if there are no elections then republicans will not have their seats in 2027. There will be no congress, and without congress, Trump does not have a mechanism for governance. I dunno about you, but those Republican reps like having their jobs, their staff, their salaries, and all the perks that come with office. They do not get those if there is no Congress. That is not something they want.
But he said he was gonna! And? So fucking what? He says a lot of things. He issued an executive order at the start of his second term ordering all school districts in the country to immediately cease teaching "DEI" whatever the hell that means. Do you know what most districts that weren't actively kissing his ass said? "That's nice. Make me." And then he didn't, because the states control their own education systems, not Trump. His words don't have the force of law, and are limited by what he actually has levers of power to accomplish. We are **still having elections.** Several happened last week. The States decide this. Trump doesn't.
The Midterms are gonna happen. They're gonna matter and they're gonna have consequences. And you all need to stop acting like he has power over things he doesn't just because he says he does. That's propaganda and you're falling for it.
As with all things Authoritarian, when Trump says "I'm gonna force you to do this," your response should be as I articulated above:
"Fuck you. Make me."
I love you all. Be safe. Don't comply in advance. Don't give them power they don't have just because they say they do.
the worst of Maine's crimes: I was trying to remember the name Gram Parsons (well-regarded musician) and was drawing a complete blank because the only name my brain was supplying was Graham Platner (nazi tattoo). what more will you take from me, Maine?
I do think it's slowly setting in for them that now all of America knows they voted for the Nazi and what that means for them. And their excuse of "We have to get rid of Susan Collins no matter what" is landing flat both because they've been splitting their tickets for decades and Graham Platner himself voted for her three times.
Photographic souvenirs for my research at Gettysburg is always a wild ride. For example, according to these mugs Ulysses S. Grant fought for both the Union and Confederacy...
I remember seeing on this website a post where someone said with the population that fought in WW2 dying out and Steve Rogers having anyone from his time still alive losing its believability, perhaps it was time to reboot Captain America as having come from a different war, like the Vietnam War.
And I totally get the point they were making. Part of what we love about Steve is all the people he runs into who knew him before the ice. Those living connections are important.
But what makes the creation of Captain America work is that folks can generally agree the United States was one of the "good guys" during WW2. It's generally agreed fighting Hitler was the right call to make. After WW2, it's hard to find a war where international audiences can agree the United States was in the right. Every side in every war does horrendous things, but WW2 was the last war where the majority of folks tend to agree going to war was the right call. Any other war, the United States creating a super soldier is going to be a lot more ominous. The kind of ominous Steve wouldn't be signing up for. Steve wants to be a soldier for the wholesome reason of standing up for others. Fighting in WW2 is the best way to keep the wholesomeness of his reasons for being a soldier. That's why I think Steve should remain a man of the 1940's out of his time.
The current Captain America run by Chip Zdarsky actually sorta acknowledges this by introducing a new Captain America that was created for propaganda purposes during the Iraq War! Admittedly I haven’t really been keeping up with that series, but I’m curious about how they’d apply it considering that 1.) the Iraq War is generally considered to have been a pointless conflict drummed up by American warmongers to try and look proactive on the whole “anti-terrorism” front they were pushing, but also 2.) the new Captain America seems to be introduced as a guy who genuinely meant well when he signed on, only to be used as a tool by forces beyond his control. And honestly, that’s the part that makes me agree that Cap can’t exactly be retconned away from WWII.
I’ve written before about how most Golden Age superheroes represent specific power fantasies — Superman’s the desire to single-handedly fix the world’s problems, Wonder Woman is feminist empowerment, etc — and I think Captain America is a great example of that. After all, he was very much explicitly created as antifascist propaganda by Simon & Kirby, and since then he typically represents the fantasy of the “good American” that cares more about the welfare of the people around him than he cares about maintaining his nation’s status as a global superpower. On a political level, the United States’ involvement in WWII was suspiciously-motivated at best (after all, the US spent years avoiding joining the war in order to reap the economic benefits of selling supplies to both sides of the war), but plenty of American citizens joined the war effort simply because they believed that the Axis Powers needed to be stopped.
I’m having a hard time finding the right words for my point, but I think that it’s something along the lines of “Steve Rogers has to be a WWII veteran, because if he was a vet from any other American war, he’d come across as a thug at worst and a sucker at best”. The earnest enlistment of Steve Rogers into the military to fight the Nazis is a direct parallel to his co-creator Jack Kirby’s own experiences from the era, but translating that to any other war would just make Steve’s eagerness to serve seem either concerning or foolish.
Also, from an in-universe standpoint… the dude got frozen in ice until the present day. Seems to me that it’d be much easier to just keep extending how long he was stuck in there, Avatar Aang-style, than it would be to explain how the heck Steve Rogers got frozen in a Vietnamese iceberg
The most important people from his past were either also frozen or are in some ways immortal, or can maybe be explained away as having some level of long life like Magneto. There's no need to change his backstory.
wait wait okay I have discovered people visiting the US for the first time and treating Yellow School Bus like a celebrity sighting and this is so pure and great. Yellow School Bus like in the movies is real.
This just made me remember I am personally such a huge fan of big yellow school bus that I wore a school bus tote bag I used as a backpack in jr high/high school.
I found photos of the same bag as the one I had:
we should start making a ton of yellow schoolbus merch like how if you go to England half the tourist souvenirs are a double decker red bus or a red phone booth.
I have more than one person in the notes of my post saying they did not in fact know that the ACA stopped insurance companies from being able to deny coverage for a pre-existing condition in case you were wondering where we're at. People don't know the ACA and Obamacare are the same thing, they don't know it's why they have healthcare, they don't even know what it does. How do you even deal with that?
"they used it to give you healthcare" ok lol let me stop you right there. They made a bunch of compromises they didn't have to in pursuit of "reaching across the aisle."
We could've had the public option! The individual mandate was some libertarian shit that the Dems agreed to and then suddenly the Republicans had a problem with it! They dragged the debate rightward and Dems let it get dragged and then passed some milquetoast incrementalist shit that still allowed private insurance companies to run rampant the way they are now. Sure there are good things in there but don't give the Dems too much credit when WE COULD HAVE HAD THE PUBLIC OPTION.
We could have had the public option if Massachusetts hadn’t blown it the special election after Ted Kennedy died but they elected a Republican. They didn’t have the votes in the senate for a public option after that. Feel free to piss on Joe Lieberman’s grave about it. They did not make compromises in the name of reaching across the aisle during the ACA negotiations. That’s why they needed 60 votes in the senate. They made compromises to get support from the more conservative members of their own party. Those people are basically gone now, many replaced with Republicans. Democrats got slaughtered in the 2010 midterms over the ACA. I have healthcare because of it. If you have a preexisting condition or you’re on your parents’ insurance in your 20s you do too.
