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.
A Letter to the Minnesota DFL on Blackness, Belonging, and the Politics of Approval
Hey, Jumblr! Seeing anything familiar in this piece? (Bolding by me)
So that "no other minority" thing? Not true. Unfortunately, it shows that the problem is bigger and more widespread than is often assumed.
I have spent much of my adult life arguing with the Democratic Party.
I have questioned candidates. I have questioned policies. I have questioned priorities. I have sat in meetings, attended conventions, organized communities, and participated in countless conversations where disagreement was not only expected but necessary. Politics, after all, is not a religion. It is an ongoing argument about how we ought to live together.
Questioning the party is not new for me.
What is new is the growing realization that the questions themselves have become unwelcome.
That realization has been slow and, at times, painful. It did not arrive through a single election cycle, a single candidate, or a single controversy. It emerged through years of watching a political movement increasingly define itself through the language of inclusion while becoming less comfortable with disagreement. It emerged through countless conversations in which difficult questions were acknowledged but not answered. It emerged through the subtle but unmistakable feeling that belonging was no longer rooted in shared values, but in ideological compliance.
As a Black woman, that feeling is difficult to ignore because it carries echoes of a much older story.
Over the last several years, I have watched the Minnesota DFL increasingly define itself through the language of identity. Diversity, equity, inclusion, representation, belonging these words appear everywhere. They are repeated in speeches, campaign materials, conventions, and community meetings. Yet the more frequently I hear these words, the more I find myself wondering whether we have confused representation with liberation and symbolism with solidarity.
The contradiction became impossible for me to ignore as conversations unfolded around Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt. To be clear, this is not an argument against criticism. Public officials should be questioned. They should be challenged. Accountability is not oppression, and disagreement is not discrimination.
What troubled me was something else entirely.
What troubled me was watching people who proudly place Black Lives Matter signs in their yards, who speak passionately about protecting democracy, who insist that we must believe Black women, suddenly abandon those principles when confronted with a Black woman they disagreed with.
The issue at hand was the federal immigration enforcement surge that swept across the Twin Cities. People were angry. Fear was real. Communities were frightened. But what I could not understand was why so much of that anger became directed at Sheriff Witt, a county sheriff who neither created federal immigration policy nor controlled federal immigration enforcement.
Yet as I listened to accounts from those present, I heard story after story of people literally turning their backs as she spoke. Not debating her. Not questioning her. Not engaging her. Turning away from her.
There was something profoundly symbolic in that image. A Black woman standing before a crowd that regularly invokes the language of justice, inclusion, representation, and solidarity, only to be met with a gesture of rejection. And I found myself wondering what happens when our slogans collide with our actions. What does it mean to proclaim that Black lives matter, that Black women should be believed, and that democracy requires listening, only to dismiss the experiences of Black women when those experiences become uncomfortable?
And I found myself wondering what happened to all of the slogans.
Where were the lawn signs?
Where were the declarations that Black lives matter?
Where were the calls to believe Black women?
Where was the insistence that democracy depends upon listening, especially when we disagree?
Because democracy is not tested when we hear voices that affirm our existing beliefs. Democracy is tested when we encounter voices that challenge them.
What unsettled me most was not the treatment of Sheriff Witt alone. It was what followed.
What struck me was not disagreement. Disagreement would have required engagement. It would have required listening, asking questions, and taking seriously the experiences that were being shared. Reasonable people can witness the same event and come away with different conclusions. That is not what troubled me. What troubled me was the absence of any real effort to grapple with what Black women and Black elders in my community were trying to communicate.
In the days that followed, I listened as people shared their experiences of what they witnessed. I listened to Black women describe their discomfort. I listened to elders whose commitment to civil rights, coalition building, and community organizing stretches back decades reflect on what they had seen and why it troubled them. These were not people looking for an argument. They were not demanding agreement. They were asking a simple question: Can we talk honestly about what happened?
That is the question I cannot shake. Not because everyone must agree about what happened, but because so many people seemed unwilling to even examine why Black women and Black elders walked away with the same sense of unease. What I witnessed was not a debate. It was a refusal to engage. And I keep returning to the same unsettling thought: What does it mean to invite people to share their lived experiences if we have already decided which experiences are worthy of our attention?
What troubled me most was not just the treatment of one sheriff. It was the realization that many of the same political spaces that insist Black voices matter often appear uncomfortable when Black people exercise independent political judgment. Blackness is celebrated when it confirms the movement’s assumptions. Blackness becomes suspect when it complicates them.
This is not a new phenomenon. Black Americans have spent generations navigating institutions that welcomed our participation while attempting to regulate our autonomy. Historically, this took obvious forms: legal exclusion, segregation, voter suppression, and discrimination. Today the mechanisms are more subtle, but the underlying question remains remarkably similar: Who gets to determine which Black voices are legitimate?
That question has been sitting heavily on my mind because I increasingly see a form of politics that claims to celebrate diversity while quietly narrowing the range of acceptable thought. The expectation is rarely stated outright. No one hands you a list of approved opinions. Yet the boundaries become clear enough. Certain conclusions are rewarded. Certain questions are discouraged. Certain forms of dissent are interpreted not as disagreement but as moral failure.
As a Black woman, I find that deeply unsettling.
I have spent much of my life watching other people project their expectations onto Black bodies. I have watched institutions tell us who we should be, what we should prioritize, and what forms of expression are acceptable. What I did not expect was to encounter a progressive version of the same instinct. Different language. Different intentions. The same impulse to determine which forms of Blackness deserve validation.
Increasingly, it feels as though support is conditional. Representation is conditional. Solidarity is conditional.
We are told Black lives matter, but I find myself wondering whether what is actually meant is that Black lives matter when they remain politically useful. Black voices matter when they affirm prevailing narratives. Black women matter when they arrive at approved conclusions. Once disagreement enters the picture, the celebration often fades.
The irony is difficult to ignore. Movements that speak passionately about dismantling systems of power can become remarkably uncomfortable when marginalized people exercise power in unexpected ways. Organizations that champion diversity often struggle with genuine diversity of thought. Communities that celebrate authenticity can become suspicious of anyone who refuses to perform the identity they have been assigned.
This realization has forced me to confront an uncomfortable truth. The political tradition I inherited taught me that coalition building requires humility. It requires accepting that people who share your values may disagree about solutions. It requires the ability to remain in relationship with those who challenge your assumptions. What I increasingly see instead is a politics of litmus tests a politics where belonging depends less on shared principles than on ideological conformity.
That is what grieves me.
Not that people disagree. Disagreement is healthy. Disagreement is necessary. What grieves me is the growing sense that many institutions no longer know how to hold disagreement without interpreting it as betrayal.
And so I find myself asking a question I never expected to ask of the Minnesota DFL: If your commitment to Black voices disappears the moment those voices challenge you, what exactly is it that you are committed to?
Because there is a difference between supporting Black people and supporting a particular performance of Blackness.
There is a difference between representation and agency.
There is a difference between inclusion and obedience.
The distance between those ideas may be the distance between the party I once knew and the party standing before me today.
Being a senator, Supreme Court justice, or in any other position of high power and influence isn't a human right, and it's very reasonable to demand higher standards of behavior in those roles than we do for random mechanics, bank tellers, and project managers.
Meme in GIF form showing an exuberant Q (John de Lancie) playing the trumpet in a mariachi band and dancing along to the music, in front of an exasperated Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) on the bridge of the USS Enterprise in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The text overlaid on Captain Picard (who reacts to the spectacle arms akimbo in frustration) reads:
People who follow me for one topic
The text overlaid on Q and the mariachi band reads (in much larger and thus more visually-arresting font):
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.
