#cas types

[redfish-blu]

I don’t think Riley gave a god damn about the Fireflies. She loved Ellie, she wanted to protect Ellie. She wanted her to leave with her, and she thought she was capable enough to do it because she had those bombs and a gun and her heart on her sleeve. She was just a kid and so was Ellie. But loving someone as a kid makes you feel like that.

And Riley has no idea she didn’t end up killing the girl she loved enough to literally betray everything.

[starcrossedkaiju]

I wish a happy mcc to the seven and a half members of the Pink Parrots MCC team: Mr. Gaming, Grian, “Tech”, Wilbur Soot, Philza, Wilbur’s Fire Alarm, and (Dream).

[redfish-blu]

This is probably going to be the most “should I even be putting this on the public internet?” post I will ever make but whatever. I voted for Harris in the 2024 elections and she lost, I’ve accepted that factoid and moved forwards with it, so this is not going to be about me lamenting the fact that she DID lose. Don’t get it twisted. What keeps me up at night are some of the reasons she lost and the (at the very least disheartening, and at the worst sinister) means by which these reasons occurred.

Yes, there’s definitely something to be said here about the democratic party of America being about as useful as a chocolate teapot, and blaming things on people rather than the power structure which influences them. I’m not getting into that, I’m talking specifically about online leftist spaces here *shudders*, wherein I personally had to endure five straight months of watching the community into which we liberally throw any “leftist” person dissolve into a flaming dumpster fire as the question became not which of the two candidates to vote for, but whether or not one should vote for Kamala Harris. Donald Trump may as well have not existed anymore in the time period between Biden dropping out of the race and election day. The two candidates of this race were Harris and NOBODY.

Way before the election even happened (like October of 2023), back when old Joe was still possibly in our future, I made a post along the lines of “if you’re advocating for people not to vote for Biden as a leftist* you’re a dumbass and I abhor how willing you are to roll over when the oppressors start winning” or something to that effect. Well I felt like the god damn oracle when that exact thing happened, and not only did it happen, it SUPER fucking happened, almost the instant people started suggesting that Harris should replace Biden as the non-MAGA candidate. The tear down was swift and astonishingly unanimous.

*anyone not MAGA, at this point.

I felt like I was transported to an alternate reality watching the absolute rage that woman produced from people, who justified their renouncement of her candidacy by saying whatever reign she might have had would be just as bad as Trump, and voting for her would make them complicit in a genocide, which got people’s heart rates soaring for sure. Then the accusations of her being a fascist (debatable), and a cop (slightly less debatable, however becomes slightly more questionable when remembering that sentiment being paraded around when she was first running in 2020, as well. Very interesting). Anything people could come up with that would morally absolve them from voting for her was brought to the table and accepted as the absolute truth, for the sake of washing their hands of the responsibility to vote.

What I really think this comes down to is people thinking this: if Harris wins and things don’t get better, I won’t be able to sleep at night because I had a hand in the things not getting better because she didn’t make them better. If she doesn’t win, and I didn’t vote for her, but I also didn’t vote for Trump, then I’m not as responsible for all of the bad things that happened or might possibly happen.

I don’t believe that this “never Kamala” campaign was made up of people who just didn’t want to vote for a black person, or a woman, or a black woman. I do not doubt that this was some people’s agenda, but the prevailing crowd I witnessed spewing this brand of garbage never factored those identity politics into their denouncements in any major way unless they were Trump supporters, so they don’t count. This was not a race issue (well, not textually a race issue), it was a U.S American activism issue that has been plaguing this place for so long I’m not even qualified to speculate on it.

The 2024 elections were a team failure on the part of the people who don’t vote for candidates who’s names would be under the umbrella of “red,” and what really vexed me was that we went from being on enough of the same page in 2020 to put a pinkie toe on the right track, to whatever the hyuck happened in 2024. I believe we have the leftover trauma from the first Trump administration to blame for it, as the fear of actual bonafide fascists led to us ascribing that label to anyone whose agenda even mildly disagreed with us for fear of letting Titler or someone like him pull one over on us again—which ultimately led to. Well. He pulled one over on us again.

I said earlier that the 2024 elections (in leftist spaces) were a competition between Harris and Nobody, but I believe a better claim would be that it was between Harris and people’s desire to stay comfortable with their level of responsibility for violence and evil perpetrated by the power structure they submit to; and this was serious enough in people’s minds that they went out and legitimately advocated, spent time and energy fighting for, and shaming others for not agreeing with them, all in favor of the latter option. You know, wasting all of their passion on that instead of using it to do something constructive (like not telling people the better option is letting Trump win because voting for Harris would lead to their feelings being hurt, and also the fact that now they’d be somewhat obligated to engage in actual activism for the causes they would have voted in favor of).

I think this whole debacle is really just a case study for how useless U.S American activism has been in the past X number of years, and also what I should be pointing to when people ask me why I think nothing is being done about the absolute state of things.

October 2023 me might have put it best:

“I choose to believe they are simply privileged enough to be ignorant towards the reality of what they are preaching about, because if it was anything else I would say the shear willingness to lean into the whims of oppressors is disturbing, and calls into question if these people even really want things to change [at all].”

[redfish-blu]

Did I hallucinate that random week on danger days tumblr like three (four?) years ago where people were going hog wild about killjoys having cartoon logic, like traveling through paintings and straight up roadrunner physics. Or did that actually happen.

[redfish-blu]

Misc Fab Four headcanons:

- Jet and Kobra used to butt heads all the time and their way of resolving it was fighting in the driveway (Kobra’s idea). Kobra always lost and dumped sand in all of Jet’s shoes afterwards. When Ghoul asked him why he keeps doing that if he’s never won, Kobra just shrugged said, “Cuz one day I might.”

- Ghoul was so used to roaming the desert alone that he forgot you’re supposed to treat humans and animals differently. When he met Kobra, his first attempt at friendship was to throw a can of soda down a hill and tell Kobra to go get it. And Kobra actually did.

- The first place Party Poison and Kobra ever lived in the zones was at a Gravel Gertie’s Orphanage in Zone 5. Party was the oldest kid living there, which sucked 90% of the time because they had to share sleeping quarters with twenty 6-year-olds, but they refused to leave Kobra behind; so they worked as a janitor/teacher because they were able to read. And their payment was not getting kicked out.

- Jet knows everyone in the zones. You could go to any function and he’d recognize someone, or someone would recognize him, and they’d spend 40 minutes talking while Kobra made mounds in the sand to pass the time. Jet has known Cherri Cola since he was twelve, he met DJ Hot Chimp when she was nine, and is family friends with Dr. Death Defying. It comes in handy when you want to get into an event for free.

[redfish-blu]

Something I genuinely hate about the Googlefication of the internet is that it has completely replaced the original way of storing information. I’m part of the last generation who was taught how to create file systems and save things to drives/hard drives, however halfway through my school career fucking Google Classroom invaded and now I’m stuck using this absolutely ridiculous platform for everything; so much that I’m actively forgetting how to use the system I was taught before the existence of “the cloud” or whatever the hell Google Drive is. And with mobile phone companies taking over everything else, the need to actually use a computer has become immaterial. Some of my nose hairs literally shrivel up every time I resort to just throwing something in my Google Drive because I’ve forgotten how to actually put it anywhere else (or I literally can’t because whatever it is is also shackled to Google hell) because I know that if Google decides my account should die at any point, or if I somehow loose access to it another way, everything I have in that garbage basket will be gone forever. I never liked using computers in the first place but now the experience is so soul sucking that I’ve almost given into the Google Overlords and just accepted my fate.

[redfish-blu]

Obsessed with how the show made it so unquestionable that Joel had no reason to kill Jerry Anderson/The Surgeon. Out of everyone in the room he had that gun pointed at, he chose to end Jerry. It was a split second, almost instinctual action that was made to get Ellie safe in his arms faster. Jerry was in his way and Joel wasn’t talking things out with anyone (re: Joel shooting the Firefly who was surrendering just a minute before this and Marlene a minute after).

His state of mind was clear: Defy me and you’re dead.

But he let the nurses live after simply telling them what to do (they had to safely extract the needle from Ellie’s arm and Joel knew they were the only ones in the room trained to do that). With a mere second more Joel could have probably made Jerry do the same, he was unarmed and less than dangerous. What was Jerry feasibly going to do about it? Nothing. Joel knew this. He knew it in the moment too; but it didn’t matter.

Everything that happened from there on out would be Joel’s fault alone. No ambiguity, no blurred lines. He sealed his fate.

[redfish-blu]

Wrong turn out of Battery City and you’re going straight to the Backrooms of The Zones.