Hughes, the DM: You’ve made it to Truth. It looks at you, smiling, and says, ‘If you want Al’s body back, you have to give something up.’
Ed, a gnomish wizard: I. I offer… I offer my magic.
Hughes: Truth nods. Your sacrifice is accepted. You wake up in the real world again, now powerless, but your brother has his body back.
Al, also a gnomish wizard: Aw bro that’s so sweet of you omg
Roy, a human sorceror: lol but now you’re useless
Ed: Fuck. How do I do magic now?
Hughes: well, you can’t be a wizard anymore. But you could always be a cleric and dedicate yourself to a god – if you follow their precepts, they’ll grant you powers.
Don’t be. You’re hearing media do what it does: harp on one person’s lack of enthusiasm and make it seem that that one opinion is held by thousands.
This race went precisely as I thought it would. Precisely.
And it was absolutely a massive success.
So let me tell you why, so that you feel better and can easily put down the annoying crowing that republicans are going to do, because they managed to cling to a few things.
If the votes fall as I believe they will, the democrats will have retaken the house by some 30 seats. This is impressive and somewhat unique in our country’s history. The GOP, upon taking the house originally, jerrimandered these districts in impressively screwball ways. Wherever that rigging has been overturned, the districts have gone blue. Which is, of course, why they did it. Democrats have the house now, 30ish flips in republican rugged districts. 15 of those being female candidates.
That is absolutely impressive.
A few key candidates to whom many people were paying close attention did not perform as people desired. Abrams, O’Rourke, Gillum. Well…I’m not surprised. Abrams faces absolute state wide fraud. Her opponent being the person also in charge of voter registration, withholding some 50k votes of which 70% were black. Voter intimidation. This is blatant corruption. And yet still…her race was very close. So too with Beto. Ted Crews was a presidential candidate! When he took Texas, he did so with a wide margin. Last night in Texas he was fighting tooth and nail. Gillum’s goobenatorial race for Florida was a figurative dead heat. 99% of the vote in—49% Gillum, 49.7% DeSantis. These are CLASSICALLY and FULLY republican regions in which Trump took the presidency by huge margins. That these races, with all those challenges, were as close as they were PROVES that something unprecedented happened.
3-400% voter turnout increases for a midterm election. Mostly with the youth.
But let’s talk about what it means to have the house.
Now I know you’re probably concerned about the federal judgeships that are about to pop up for consideration, and it’s true that the Senate was needed to stop approvals of those candidates, but…
Control of the house means that Democrats now take hold of some critical committees. These committees are the very ones that will be overseeing corruption allegations. Ways and Means, energy and Commerce, Financial Services, Intelligence, appropriations, foreign affairs, armed services, judiciary, transportation and infrastructure, and…government reform.
How do you feel now?
The worst political fallout of a GOP controlled government, the worst sound bites that weren’t Trump’s, the worst slaps across the face? All came from footage of those very same committees. Those committees now belong to Democrats.
Massive policy shifts also occurred in many classically conservative states—legalizing marijuana votes, Florida giving the vote back to former criminals who’ve served their time thus giving the vote back to a HUGE portion of the African-American Community that has been held in check by a racist and classicist policing method, then there were upsets in many small ways too.
I promise you…this is all excellent and it will have truly important and forceful impact. In 2020, if we can keep that same enthusiasm and rage, the entire government will shift. But that can only happen if we keep moving forward, if the candidates who won keep their noses to the grindstone and push back hard, if you and I and everyone on the ground continues to talk about this and force out bigots and greed.
Do not be discouraged. I promise you…this was an amazing election. Don’t focus on a few bright stars and think that all is lost because they fell. There is a great deal happening here, and one thing I know from being at sea—when a wave is building, there is first a terrifying shift, as the water level begins to build. The ship will begin to dip and then of a sudden, the swell will begin. The ship raises and passengers suddenly realize that the were much higher than before, with an incredible view. Then the wave crests and destroys what’s in its path.
We didn’t see a wave crest tonight. So what. That means it’s a much larger wave than we realized. It will crest in the future. But only if that fluid pressure is maintained.
This is good. It is. So long as everyone keeps working. This is good.
Calm down. Have a glass of champagne. A cup of tea. When they Trumpet all their noise…say nothing. Nothing needs to be said. You’re higher than you were with an excellent view of the ending. So relax. Don’t fret.
Oh no, they’re turning on actually published YA novels.
(above submitted by anon)
You heard it here first folks, from now on, there can never be YA novels about teenagers experiencing sexuality. Since pretty much all published authors are adults, this is illegal now. Only teenagers can write stories about teenagers having sex. How dare adults write about their experiences with discovering their sexuality when they were teens, it’s so gross
These people have no common sense, I swear. There are so many horrible issues in the world, and they act like some YA novel is the end of society as we know it
GEE I LOVE HOW ANTIS ARE COOPTING CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIAN LOGIC
Also loving the fact that it’s yet again women in particular that these packs of brain-fried neopuritans are specifically targeting.
Reading the above is sort of fascinating, in a dark way. Because look at how OP twists themselves into a pretzel to provide their ass-pulled, lurid and salacious interpretation of why an adult YA author would write about teenage sexuality. I’ve noticed this thing again and again on here – a small army of teenagers who seem mentally stuck in a paranoiac view of reality, where seemingly everyone is out to get them, where every adult who interacts with them is conceptualized as a Potential Predator and where child-molesters lurk behind every corner and in every shadow. That’s why explanations that most adults who write about teen sexuality are basing it on their own memories and recollections, self-inserting into their own pasts, fall on deaf ears – because it runs counter to the paranoid filter-bubble, where the only reason an adult would write about teen sexuality is an attraction to teens. You can point out that your reaction to you or other adults going after teens is basically
and it’d still fall on deaf ears – because, again, it contradicts the filter-bubble and mustn’t be permitted to break through it.
I’d like to make some scathing quip about a society that detains parents over photos of their babies naked in the tub (we’re still laughing about that here, a decade later) naturally producing a generation of perpetually terrified and tremulous teenagers, with paranoia complexes the size of the moon, but I’ve a feeling it touches too close to the actual truth to be much of a joke.
This is because the antis are fueled by MRAs, 4Ch*n, TERFs, and other extremist groups. The more I see of this shit, the more convinced I am of this. The language is the same, they sound just like the time that 4ch*nners made socks to infiltrate Black Twitter.
These are socks pretending to be teenagers, actual teens who’ve been recruited into bullshit misogyny cults, or both.
I suspect most of it is happening indirectly enough that it’s very hard to track down all the origin chains, as opposed to via direct sockpuppet accounts (though those exist too), but the linguistics make it undeniable that there is at the very least substantial cross-pollination between “anti” circles and right-wing extremist recruitment circles.
Everything. Block any bills they don’t like, make the budget they want, control every committee, subpoena evidence against Trump, call hearings, depose witnesses. They can’t pass their own legislation because they don’t have the Senate or a veto-proof House majority, but other than that, the sky’s the limit.
i'll apple your turnover 