Good Drones Obey: Communism and Kink in Post-Revolutionary America

[Born in the USSA]

Glad to see Roko's Basilisk is still lurking in the cultural ether 😂

 

[RiverDelta]

Glad to see Roko's Basilisk is still lurking in the cultural ether 😂

Click to shrink...

Yeah, Transistor is the 2040s equivalent of a LessWrong kid, and she's also the kind of person who scours the internet for weird bullshit. When she has a bad trip, it leaks in.

 

[RiverDelta]

From: RealKendraOswald@leftmail.wr
To: RSingh@leftmail.wr

Dear Ruby,

Hey. I'm going to be out for a while. They've finally declared LA to be safe for visitation, so I thought I'd go and check it out. I'll see if my mom and dad are still around. That's where they were living last I checked. You probably wouldn't like my dad, but he was a decent guy, mostly. My mom was...I dunno.

Kendra


Dear Ruby,

I found my dad in Malibu. He lives in a former hotel. It's a hostel now, or something like that. He's mourning. He says he's scared that Mom died hating him. I mean, I know that's the case, but I told him she loved him deep down.

Kendra


Dear Ruby,

I was wandering the streets of LA. Most of the buildings are these horrible, twisting spires of burned metal and broken glass. It's like a big junkyard. The people living there look the way homeless people used to before the revolution. There's been some rebuilding, but it's only just started.

Kendra


Dear Ruby,

I saw Anderson's public "apology" for the nuking. Have you ever puked and cried at the same time?

Kendra


Dear Ruby,

I went down the broken streets to the local reconstruction office. I asked where Liza Oswald was. Apparently she died from the fallout. I wish I wanted to choke Anderson to death. I'm not really a poet, but once I finished crying I wrote something.

Kendra

---

Help me, dear God, forgive
those who did me wrong
I wish I had the honor
To sing a loving song

It hurts, I'm dying
To hold her in my hand
Please, no crying
Dad can barely stand

I wish I could feel horror
or rage at her death in torture
I can only plant seeds
In this hateful orchard

The wind, it burned, it cut and severed
four million souls gone forever
Dear god, I still hear her crying
and choking

mother

please, mother

hold me

---

From: RealCalliopeAnderson@amazonmail.com
To: RealKendraOswald@leftmail.wr

Dear Kendra,

Hey. I read the poem you wrote for that magazine. I just want to say that I know there's no way for me to take back what I did. Bombing the Sacramento Government wasn't a good decision. It definitely wasn't the right decision. I could say a lot of things. I could say that war is never easy, that it was life or death, that using the warheads we got was the only way to keep people alive. That's what I told myself. I didn't want to think I was like cowardly Picano or lunatic Strecker. I told myself it had to be done.

It didn't.

I'm so, so sorry about your mother. I killed millions of people, Kendra. I wish I could take it back. I wish there didn't have to be a war. I wish I hadn't been so blind, so stupid to believe that I had some kind of special purpose. At the time, I thought Sacramento weren't strong enough to survive. I knew Miami hated people like us, same with the Christers. The Deads, I got, but...God. I'm pretty sure I'm going to burn in Hell if there is one.

Look, whatever you want me to do, I'll do it. I'll pay for a funeral, a mausoleum, for reconstruction in LA, anything. I have money. I know you guys don't really do money anymore, but I can make something work. Please. I was a real piece of shit, and there's no way I can stop, but I just want to be as decent as a monster like me can. Anything I can do to honor Liza Oswald, I'll do it. If you want me to get your movies shown in Hawaii, just ask.

I'm so tired, and it was all so pointless. Strecker's being tried, Picano's in prison, Ashley's fighting in Canada, I'm in exile, Lowell died in LA...It's over. It's all over. All this time, I thought that if the ChiComs had just given me more nukes, maybe I could have won the war. Maybe I could have reunited the country. I would have stepped out of power, eventually. Look, you spend all your time in Hawaii thinking about how you could have won, until you realize that you lost, that it's easy to kill four million people from afar.

I don't know, something about your poem spoke to me. I guess you gave the victims a voice. I'd been avoiding the news coverage. I don't like to feel sad.

Former President Calliope Anderson



From: RealKendraOswald@leftmail.wr
To: RealCalliopeAnderson@amazonmail.com

Calliope Anderson,

You know what I want? I want to talk to Mom again. I've spent fifty thousand dollars to hire Russian mafiya men to kill you and chop up your corpse—not in that order. You have one day to start running. As you are a war criminal and Public Enemy #1, no Red American jury would possibly convict me.

Kendra Oswald

PS: Send anything to me or anyone I know again, and I'll edit your shitty apology to make it look like you were trying to solicit me.



From: RealKendraOswald@leftmail.wr
To: RSingh@leftmail.wr

Dear Ruby,

So Calliope Anderson saw my poem in a magazine and sent me a personal apology message. I decided to do what my mom would have done: I lied to her.

Kendra

 

[Terra Allias]

Moral of the story, if you're going to use nukes, you better fucking win. What was that one bit from Babylon 5

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oHtLmjKRbE
In the meantime, I'm going to try and figure out how to reconcile the Pacific War with my beliefs.

 

[RiverDelta]

Moral of the story, if you're going to use nukes, you better fucking win. What was that one bit from Babylon 5

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oHtLmjKRbE
In the meantime, I'm going to try and figure out how to reconcile the Pacific War with my beliefs.

Click to shrink...

Calliope Anderson was very much the most aggressive of the Civil War combatants, besides maybe the Christofash. You might not expect that from the progressive military junta, but she is an Air Force general.

So, she sort of bought into the lie of air superiority being the key to winning wars. BosGov had some of the most access to tech and all, but it wasn't enough.

Sort of a mirror image of Strecker, really. Not that he wouldn't use nukes if he got them.

 

[Terra Allias]

Calliope Anderson

Click to shrink...

Speaking of, how old is this person? I can't help but feel that she was a fan of a certain vtuber before they transitioned. I'm assuming all the named characters are zoomers?

 

[RiverDelta]

Speaking of, how old is this person? I can't help but feel that she was a fan of a certain vtuber before they transitioned. I'm assuming all the named characters are zoomers?

Click to shrink...

She was born in 1997, and was actually a fan of Homestuck as a teenager, hence the name.

 

[Terra Allias]

She was born in 1997, and was actually a fan of Homestuck as a teenager, hence the name.

Click to shrink...

Oh I see

Calliope

Canon • Dubiously Canon For the doomed god-tier version of this character, see Alternate Calliope. Calliope is a cherub living on post-scratch Earth, long-since abandoned by humanity. Thanks to an obsession with the troll race, Calliope initially implied that she was one, to the extent of...

mspaintadventures.fandom.com

She's still only a year older than me so it would not have been out of the question.

 

[RiverDelta]

Oh I see

Calliope

Canon • Dubiously Canon For the doomed god-tier version of this character, see Alternate Calliope. Calliope is a cherub living on post-scratch Earth, long-since abandoned by humanity. Thanks to an obsession with the troll race, Calliope initially implied that she was one, to the extent of...

mspaintadventures.fandom.com

She's still only a year older than me so it would not have been out of the question.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, that's fair.

God, I wonder if Anderson being a Homestuck is sort of like Kim Jong-il being a fan of James Bond.

Tragedy and farce, lmao.

 

[Terra Allias]

I will still be imagining her with pink hair, shades and a cowboy hat.

 

[RiverDelta]

I will still be imagining her with pink hair, shades and a cowboy hat.

Click to shrink...

I think she canonically wears aviator shades, but the rest are funny but not really accurate.

Lmao, though.

 

[Vadrigos]

Oswald's awfully eloquent for someone who had their mother killed by a nuke. Personally I would've had just four words:

"Die screaming. Burn forever."

But yeah, honestly, kinda surprised Hawaii isn't surrounded by the Red navy and being shelled back into the sea until Anderson surrenders. Perhaps that will be later down the line.

 

[RiverDelta]

Oswald's awfully eloquent for someone who had their mother killed by a nuke. Personally I would've had just four words:

"Die screaming. Burn forever."

But yeah, honestly, kinda surprised Hawaii isn't surrounded by the Red navy and being shelled back into the sea until Anderson surrenders. Perhaps that will be later down the line.

Click to shrink...

It's easier to be eloquent in email. If it was in person, Kendra would have been a lot less polite. Frankly, she probably took a day thinking over that email. It's not every day you talk to a war criminal.

Unfortunately, the Worldwide Republic is busy with a lot more than threatening the heart of the People's Republic of China's sphere. So, for now, Calliope Anderson gets the luxury of being alive to feel really bad about burning millions of people alive.

As usual, she runs between China's legs whenever she's in danger.

 

[RiverDelta]

I feel like there's probably something to be said for the fact that Ashley, Lowell, Strecker, Anderson, and Picano are named leaders of the various major factions in the Civil War (ignoring the Deads and Atompilz), but that the Reds never actually are noted as having a single leader, just the Congress of Councils.

I figure that speaks to a certain focus on the masses and the people and shows a rejection of a revolutionary-savior kind of figure. There isn't really a Napoleon or a Lenin here, it's a group effort.

 

[Ulmicola]

I feel like there's probably something to be said for the fact that Ashley, Lowell, Strecker, Anderson, and Picano are named leaders of the various major factions in the Civil War (ignoring the Deads and Atompilz), but that the Reds never actually are noted as having a single leader, just the Congress of Councils.

I figure that speaks to a certain focus on the masses and the people and shows a rejection of a revolutionary-savior kind of figure. There isn't really a Napoleon or a Lenin here, it's a group effort.

Click to shrink...

Good - Leninism is the worst thing that could ever have happened to socialism: sure, the USSR's mere presence kind of forced capitalist states to make concessions to the masses, and communist parties in capitalist countries played a key role in their political development, but the USSR also repressed every other kind of communist and socialist thought there was, both inside and outside its borders, and I'm willing to bet that the rise of right wing parties in formerly Warsaw Pact countries has got something to do with the legacy of the Soviet system, too.

Like, sure, the DDR was ahead of West Germany in women's and workers' rights for decades after World War II, for example, but when those achievements are coupled with repression and surveillance, people are going to conflate the bad with the good, especially since you could've passed those laws even without being an authoritarian piece of shit. To be honest, Marxism itself had a seed of authoritarianism in it, and Marx as a person wasn't exactly the most coherent or tolerant guy, either.

While non-Marxist, communist thought has its fair share of gamer moments (you've overthrown and dissolved the state through a violent revolution, sure; but now the charismatic and sociopathic militia leaders that spearheaded your anarchist rebellion aren't going to go away, and by destroying the state without thinking about the implications of such a thing you also destroyed the bureaucracy behind the functioning of basic infrastructure, too) at least they were movements and strains of thought that coexisted, there was no overarching orthodoxy.

 

[RiverDelta]

Good - Leninism is the worst thing that could ever have happened to socialism: sure, the USSR's mere presence kind of forced capitalist states to make concessions to the masses, and communist parties in capitalist countries played a key role in their political development, but the USSR also repressed every other kind of communist and socialist thought there was, both inside and outside its borders, and I'm willing to bet that the rise of right wing parties in formerly Warsaw Pact countries has got something to do with the legacy of the Soviet system, too.

Like, sure, the DDR was ahead of West Germany in women's and workers' rights for decades after World War II, for example, but when those achievements are coupled with repression and surveillance, people are going to conflate the bad with the good, especially since you could've passed those laws even without being an authoritarian piece of shit. To be honest, Marxism itself had a seed of authoritarianism in it, and Marx as a person wasn't exactly the most coherent or tolerant guy, either.

While non-Marxist, communist thought has its fair share of gamer moments (you've overthrown and dissolved the state through a violent revolution, sure; but now the charismatic and sociopathic militia leaders that spearheaded your anarchist rebellion aren't going to go away, and by destroying the state without thinking about the implications of such a thing you also destroyed the bureaucracy behind the functioning of basic infrastructure, too) at least they were movements and strains of thought that coexisted, there was no overarching orthodoxy.

Click to shrink...

Well, the Reds in this timeline are certainly Marxists, but I see your point. I'd also personally disagree that Marxism inherently has a seed of authoritarianism (though Engels certainly was a bit too comfortable with it).

If you're curious, the Reds are generally orthodox Marxists influenced by councilism and left communism, though honestly most people ITTL aren't the sort of people who identify with microlabels. The revolution developed fairly organically as its own set of ideas, which arose from the actual needs of the movement.

I do agree that Lenin and his successors were basically irrelevant to the revolution, which is why we see the tankies being so disappointed in it and bitter that everything they stood for turned out to be meaningless.

Thank you so much for the effortpost!

 

[RiverDelta]

"Wow, pumpkin, that sounds pretty fun," Dane Oswald said, him and his daughter having made the silent agreement to try and maintain what connection they had after the death of Liza Oswald. "So you're telling me this includes latex, bondage, S&M, and gas masks?" he said. He still looked a bit youthful, even in his old age. He was eighty-six, but he looked more like fifty.

Dane's apartment was nowhere near his old penthouse, but he still kept the defaced Norman Rockwell hanging on the wall as if it was. Kendra, clad in one of her usual cocktail dresses that exposed her circuitry tattoo on her arm and shoulder, spoke. "Yeah, Dad, it's really fun. I dunno if it's your thing, though, it's kind of more of a zoomer kink," she said. This wasn't the kind of thing he'd ever talked about with her as a kid. He tried to hide the whips. He might have been Dane Oswald, but he wasn't bad in that particular way.

He nodded, sipping his sherry. "I've always been more into leather and whips, myself. I'm dating this amazing girl, she's a Red, her name's Alexa. Like the Siri knockoff."

Kendra chuckled at that. "Yeah." She supposed that ten years after Liza's passing was enough time for Dane to find another girltoy. Was that a word? Girltoy? If it wasn't, it needed to exist to describe his romantic habits. "How're your projects going?" she asked.

"Oh, I've actually decided to retire. I'm old enough to. I think I made my mark on Hollywood. It's your turn now," he said. "You?"

"Well, I found this depressed ex-cop—"

"Kendra, isn't everyone in your life depressed?" Dane joked. "Didn't the DSA used to talk about how when the revolution came there'd be cheering in the streets?"

Kendra chose to ignore the politics in that statement. She didn't want to get into it. "Dad, not everyone in my life's depressed. Transistor's dad isn't. Anyway, my point is that I found this depressed ex-cop, and she's actually a natural actor, so right now we're kind of giving her a crash course to play Peggy Carter."

"Who?" Dane asked, sipping his wine.

"She's the secret agent that Captain America meets in the 1940s. She's tied into Hydra as a double agent for the Allies. The shitty 2011 adaptation had Hydra be a generic evil conspiracy. They thought that Nazis wouldn't be marketable. Fuck that. We're doing something radical: we're having the Red Skull be based on Reinhard Heydrich."

"Who?" Dane asked, again.

"The guy who engineered the Holocaust," Kendra said.

"Honey, I know you're talented and all, but doesn't involving the Holocaust seem like a bit much for some capeshit flick?" Dane asked, taking another sip of his wine.

"They're the Nazis, you have to depict them as the scum they are, or else you get the Christofash or Atompilz. You can't pull punches. In the Age of Cyberpunk they made Nazis into generic villains, and look where it got them. You have to show the Joy Divisons and the crematoriums. You make people sick so they don't fall for it."

Dane looked down at the floor. "All I'm saying is that people usually expect a Captain America movie to be, you know, a popcorn movie. What if nobody watches it? Won't you get fired?"

"People don't get fired anymore, society isn't organized that way. There are jobs that need doing, people do them, and society recognizes their labor. It...weirdly works out pretty well," Kendra said.

"Sure, but even if you're just allowed to do this stuff—and I still don't know how they keep people from just doing BS jobs that require low effort for high voucher payout—what if nobody sees it? What if you become known as the person who did the Captain America movie with a death camp scene?"

Kendra raised a finger. "Band of Brothers had a scene in Dachau where—"

Dane cut her off. "He wears blue spandex, pumpkin. Who the heck's even writing this script?"

"Oh, there's this up and coming scriptwriter, Andreas Levy."

"Why's he so concerned with the gritty realism of a story about a guy with a magic shield and wings on his head?" Dane asked. "Want some more sherry?" he asked.

Kendra gave it some thought. "I'll just have a merlot," she said. You could count on Dane Oswald to have a well-stocked wine cellar. He nodded and returned with a glass of sherry for him and of a merlot for her. She started to drink, leaving purple lipstick marks on the rim. "Well, um, I guess to answer your question the reason why he wants to write it this way is because his brother was killed by Atompilz in their exclave in Montana, and his great-cousin was shot by the Einsatzgruppen."

The color drained from the father's face. "...Oh. So, you can just...I mean, with all due respect..."

"He wrote the script for Captain America because the character originated as a way for Jews to symbolically fight the Nazis. It's symbolic."

"That's beautiful," he said, finishing his second glass. "I can't wait to see the movie."

Kendra gave him a hug. "Thanks for telling me the truth," she said.

"I'm trying to do that more," he said, choosing to omit that in his eyes it was Liza who was the one who lied more often. Kendra thought she noticed him staring at her cleavage.

"Hey, next time you come over, do you think you could wear something less...boobs?" he asked. "It's distracting." She found herself staring at his chest while he mentioned it.

"Yeah, definitely, I'll have to get a jacket or something," she said.

 

[RiverDelta]

Does anyone else here have a least favorite major character? It doesn't need to be someone who's the most evil, just someone who people dislike.

For me, it'd have to be Calliope Anderson. I'm trying to figure out a way to write her that isn't just a more boring/less viscerally evil/more cowardly version of Jackie Stanton from my Fallout fic, who was basically a trans woman politician who was even more of a piece of shit in some ways.

I just find her boring to write, she sucks, but she sucks in ways that aren't as interesting to me as cynical MAGA politico Picano or fascist manchild Strecker. She certainly isn't as interesting as characters like Dane Oswald who aren't total pieces of shit but who still are extremely morally questionable people.

She's just kind of the Girlboss War Criminal. I mean, I could be wrong, maybe she has a different niche, but I'm just describing how I feel in the moment.

 

[RiverDelta]

"Evening, Tom," Dakota Eckhart said, a light white top on her body and a handgun holstered at her hip. Sitting on the couch of the former South Carolina Governor's Mansion was one Tom Picano. The two had gotten to know each other, her his equivalent of a parole officer and he her charge.

"Evening, Kody." Tom didn't get much exercise with an ankle monitor on, so he'd kept his portly physique.

"How's it going?" she asked.

"Good as it can be," he said. "You sure you can't get them to give me internet access? It's nine years since the end of the Second Civil War. I've served my time, I'm sure as shit not going anywhere, why can't I?"

"Security risk. What else?" Dakota said, sitting down on the couch next to him.

"How're you doing?" he asked.

"Other than working here, not much. Mostly just, you know, thinking."

Tom gave a warm chuckle, the kind he gave at CPAC so long ago. "Thinking about Jesus?" he asked.

"No, the Devil."

"What're you thinking about with him?" he asked, popping some baked potato chips in his mouth. Somehow, they tasted better.

She thought about it. "I dunno, just thinkin'. All the leaders in the Civil War were just people, you know? Lowell was part of the California Machine, Ashley was just an old soldier—hell, a politician, even—and the Reds didn't even have a big leader. About Strecker, well, you know how he is."

Picano chuckled again. "Strecker drank the punch. The point of nostalgia is that you sell it to other people, right?"

Dakota nodded, reminded for a moment about Tom Picano's true nature. "I guess that's the way politics was," she said.

"You're forgetting someone, aren't you?" he asked, popping another chip into his mouth. "Anderson. She was, you know, larger than life." Great, now I've got to refer to that freak as "she". I guess that's the downside of going hard on the trans-baiting and then losing. It's crap that there's laws about pronouns, now.

"She was the goddamn devil herself," Dakota said.

Picano nodded. He had to admit that he had a fairly cushy existence by traitor standards, but he had marks from his time in military prison on his body. "You know what? That actually makes a hell of a lot of sense. Think about it. She pushed all these ideas to destroy the family, she worked with the lefties only to betray them when she thought she could get away with it, she never seems to have any doubt or fear or problems, she never shows her eyes behind those glasses...Hey, you think if she ever took her Air Force hat off we might see horns?" he said.

Dakota shrugged. "Ain't too far-fetched," she said.

"Honestly, I hate to say it, but I'm almost glad the Reds won rather than her."

"Wait, really?" Dakota asked, as he popped another chip into his mouth.

"Yeah. You're a Red, and you're fairly reasonable. Don't get me wrong, I don't like the commie shit, I don't like not being able to buy Heineken anymore or whatever, but most of you Reds aren't these woke lunatics. You're the people I spent a lifetime lying to, but it's a hell of a lot easier to talk to a West Virginia coal miner than it is to talk to some purple-haired freak in Seattle. I'd say New York, but the Punisher-skull people beat it out of most of the wokes there. Obviously, I think it would've been best if I won, but if I had to rank it I'd say Miami, then Sacramento, then the Christian Republic, then the Reds, then Denver, and then finally Boston."

"Really? You'd want to live in the Christian Republic?" Dakota asked. "They ain't Christian. They worked with Atompilz, for God's sake, who have a Satanist cult. Besides, you couldn't watch DVDs or text people."

He gave it some thought and opened up another bag of chips. "Yeah, that's true. Let's say the Reds over the Christian Republic. Besides, the Christers called me a RINO enough times to get me a little scared." His hair was a mess, and he didn't bother to take care of it anymore. Who would see it? "My point is that there are wokes in Socialist America, and there are a hell of a lot of weirdos, but it isn't a government based on woke crap, you know? It's a government based on working people getting shit done, and apparently that actually works reasonably well. Not as well as capitalism, but what can you do?"

Dakota smiled, just a bit. "Maybe I can see if I can get you internet. My usual username on Zodiac is 'SouthernByGraceOfGod', just so you know."

"Got that down. I always had a good memory. You wanna know the funny thing, Kody?" Picano asked.

"What?"

"I think I might be the only deposed leader who isn't a headcase. Strecker's five seconds from a meltdown at any time, Miss Calliope's so much of a coward that she'd rather flee to Hawaii than admit she lost, Ashley's dead, and Lowell's gotten the Puyi treatment. Here I am, though, shooting the shit with a Red Evangelical. I really did think the South was going to go to Hell if the Reds won, but it's still South Carolina, you know? It's still home."

Dakota smiled wide as her entire body relaxed on the couch. "How come you think you adapted while Strecker didn't?"

Picano said it instantly. "Strecker's a fantasist, but I'm a politician. While he was imagining some Stepford wonderland, I was getting crap from the RINOs and the crazies. I learned to take hits, and I learned to get used to the idea that I might not win. All he did was tell himself he was gonna win, day in and day out."

"Maybe," Dakota said. "Or maybe it's just that your beliefs were, you know, flexible, while his he had written in stone."

"Yeah, maybe I am just much more adaptable," he said.

"Vague" or "pandering" could be a mite better, Dakota thought.

 

[RiverDelta]

Spartakiad Wrestling Commentary
The 2047 "Sparting Your Pants" Award: John Cena's Last Match​

Hey, everyone, it's your favorite wrestling blogger-slash-booker for Spartakiad Wrestling, the #1 family friendly wrestling promotion in America. I'm not usually the one who handles the SYP Awards. That usually goes to either VK Cross or to Rick Wu. VK has her dark wit, and Rick's actually got the time to polish these blog posts because he's the ring crew guy. This is my problem, though, and today we're going to talk about something pretty embarrassing.

God, how do I put this?

I bungled John Cena's last match. I bungled it hard. I mean, how could I have gotten it right? A sixty-five year old man who spent the revolution entertaining sick kids wants me to book his last match? Who wouldn't fuck it up? John Cena, the man with a Doctorate in Basic Thuganomics, the man who none of us could see, that John Cena.

I'd say it's like what working with Hulk Hogan must be like, but Cena was super helpful and I'm pretty sure working with Hulk Hogan is like eating glass.

I'm gonna be honest, Cena adapted really well to the new way of doing wrestling. Smaller crowds, no business side of things, just some friends putting on shows, right?

So this one's on me.

However, this isn't some lame apology blog. You're not going to see me (ha!) give some big fake over-the-top bullshit apology. No, I know what you all want.

You want a roast.

So, with permission from Esteban Naranja and John Freaking (See, censored for the kids!) Cena, let's motherfucking roast!

Okay, so, first, Cena comes out to "The Time is Now" and he's got the Worldwide Republic flag behind him. He's running, he's high-fiving, he's giving his baseball cap to a lucky kid in the audience, and he's fucking nailing it. Then, as he's charging like Superman, he slides into the ring. Somehow, he stubs his toe against the side of the ring and GI John just winces. You can see him groan and whimper in pain as he crawls into the ring.

Then, Esteban Naranja comes in to his music. Aisling O'Connor on commentary starts talking about how he's the Bolivian Beast, how he's never lost a match fighting in the special Conquerer's Colosseum show. So she's building up Esteban as this big fucking deal, and it's great. He's our top heavyweight heel, so we have to get him over.

He throws a punch, a big hit, and Cena just no-sells it. So we're back in 2008. Super-Cena is back, and he's more annoying to see than ever. Now, when I gave Cena the direction to no-sell the first few hits when we were doing rehearsals for this match on Colosseum, I kind of thought it'd show that he was still not to be messed with.

What I forgot was that even forty years after the nightmare reign of Super-Cena the Invincible, people still fucking hate Super-Cena. Most of John Cena's best moments are getting his ass kicked: wincing on the ground while CM Punk gave his pipebomb promo, getting German suplexed like seventeen times by Brock Lesnar, getting cold-cocked by Gunther, even letting MJF rant at him while stomping a mudhole in the Marine.

So the crowd's silent, and I'm thinking "Shit, what the hell's going on with this go-away heat?" Then, Super-Cena starts trying to get into a collar-and-elbow tie-up with Naranja. Yes, a collar-and-elbow tie-up, straight out of the 1980s.That was my idea too, I thought it would establish him as a classic face.

So Naranja's stuck in a collar-and-elbow tie-up, and then Naranja goes to pull Cena's arm behind his back. Naranja starts yelling that he hates America. He's improvising. I certainly didn't ask him to go there. That doesn't play anymore. You can do foreign wrestling heels, but they have to be more Del Rio than Rusev, if you get my drift. Arrogant combat buffs proud of their homeland, not dangerous foreigners who need to be defeated by an American hero.

I guess that Naranja was going off-book or whatever, maybe trying to bring back some of that old WWE stuff, the kind of thing you'd see on archived Peacock footage. The crowd didn't like it. They were booing. Then, Cena runs with it and says "I know you hate America, which is why I'm gonna take you out," like America and her boyfriend Big Business didn't try and choke our entire society to death.

As soon as Cena says "I'm gonna take you out", the crowd goes nuclear. When I heard the crowd yell "Eat shit, Cena!" that was when I knew I had fucked up.

Unfortunately, it somehow got worse.

It turned out that Cena was on blood thinners, and apparently he'd told us and we thought it was OK, but his doctor upped the dose? So Naranja throws a punch at Cena's head, and Cena just drops.

Straight down.

We called the EMTs.

Of course we called the EMTs.

We called the match early, too, disqualification.

When they were carrying Wrestling Icon John Cena out on a stretcher for what should have been a match he was booked to win, that was when I realized two things.

Number One: If John Cena isn't OK after this, I won't be allowed to book a birthday party, let alone a wrestling match.

Number Two: Holy fucking shit, what a goddamn botch!

When John Cena texted me in the hospital to tell me that he was OK, I just had to write this up. Funniest shit I ever saw in my life.

If that doesn't win the SYP award this year, I don't know what will. Sounds like that Professor of Thuganomics had an honorary degree.

Click to shrink...

 

[Vadrigos]

Does anyone else here have a least favorite major character? It doesn't need to be someone who's the most evil, just someone who people dislike.

For me, it'd have to be Calliope Anderson. I'm trying to figure out a way to write her that isn't just a more boring/less viscerally evil/more cowardly version of Jackie Stanton from my Fallout fic, who was basically a trans woman politician who was even more of a piece of shit in some ways.

I just find her boring to write, she sucks, but she sucks in ways that aren't as interesting to me as cynical MAGA politico Picano or fascist manchild Strecker. She certainly isn't as interesting as characters like Dane Oswald who aren't total pieces of shit but who still are extremely morally questionable people.

She's just kind of the Girlboss War Criminal. I mean, I could be wrong, maybe she has a different niche, but I'm just describing how I feel in the moment.

Click to shrink...

I too struggle to write hateable villains. Mostly because putting yourself in their mindset can be uncomfortable. For one thing it's so cramped..

 

[Ulmicola]

Entertaining sick kids during a revolution is actually a good thing; those kids probably had it even worse than usual, and trying to stay alive while going from one hospital in a war zone to another hospital in another war zone is no joke, either. Shit, I'm surprised Cena made it to his 60s, considering how short the lifespan of a top professional wrestler usually is. Speaking of which, I wonder what does CM Punk think about the revolution, his anarchist, straight edge gimmick isn't that far removed from his real self, after all.

 

[RiverDelta]

Entertaining sick kids during a revolution is actually a good thing; those kids probably had it even worse than usual, and trying to stay alive while going from one hospital in a war zone to another hospital in another war zone is no joke, either. Shit, I'm surprised Cena made it to his 60s, considering how short the lifespan of a top professional wrestler usually is. Speaking of which, I wonder what does CM Punk think about the revolution, his anarchist, straight edge gimmick isn't that far removed from his real self, after all.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, it is a good thing. Cena's a cool guy. I meant that more to say that he wasn't fighting, not that he wasn't doing something valuable.

As for CM Punk, that's a good question. I suspect he probably has pretty mixed feelings on some aspects of it while generally supporting it.

 

[RiverDelta]

The Seattle Prole
Heist Wars: An Explosive Interview and Arrest
​

Sergeant Botsch uses she/her pronouns exclusively, while Scorpio uses they/them or ze/zir pronouns and identifies as neutrois. The name "Scorpio" is an alias, one that ze prefers to use so as to keep zir former life out of zir current civilian life.

The Seattle Prole (TSP): Good evening, I hope you're all doing well?

Sergeant Botsch (SB): I am.

Scorpio (S): I'm doing lovely, thank you.

TSP: Now, the two of you were on the opposite sides of the law, right, during the Second American Civil War?

S: Hell yeah, I was.

SB: Erm, yes. I spent a long while working in the NYPD. I dealt with many groups of criminals: ideologically motivated and otherwise. They ranged from the Georgia-based Teague Gang who worked for Sacramento to Atompilz wannabe-terrorists and, of course, Zodiac Team under Khemin Vanich.

S: Capricorn.

TSP: Well, Sergeant Botsch, that would make you a former Dead, wouldn't it? How has it been transferring from the NYPD to the Seattle People's Militia?

SB: There's a lot more paperwork, truthfully, and I often find myself unable to get the job done. Crime under the Congress of Councils is even worse than it was in the pre-revolution US.

S: So you're an unrepentant death squad captain?

SB: That is not an accurate way of putting it.

S: How the fuck weren't you shot?

SB: I was rehabilitated. I read my Marx and my Bookchin.

S: You're a fucking Dead. Oh, and I did my research: the NYPD had the single highest instances of police brutality and arbitrary homicide reported in the entire country during the war. You're scum.

SB: This is coming from a professional criminal?

S: Hey, Zodiac isn't the Teague Gang. We knocked over targets with a minimum of bodies. We sure as shit killed a lot less people than the NYPD.

TSP: Scorpio, how has adapting to civilian life been? Sergeant Botsch, how do you feel the law enforcement system in the Worldwide Republic could be improved?

S: It's boring. I've been playing paintball, running these complicated tabletop RPG heists, that kind of thing, but it's not the same. I miss robbing museums and breaking into FBI buildings.

SB: Well, I think that the justifiable reactions to police brutality have rendered the People's Militia essentially impotent, and that in order to defend—

S: Shut up, you're so full of crap.

TSP: How do the both of you feel seeing each other, now after the Heist Wars were over?

S: I feel like we could have gone a tiny bit more Bolshevik during the revolution. I get keeping the Oswald family or Aya Courtney alive, they're just Hollywood types, but the fact that Adalwolfa Botsch isn't in an unmarked grave is a goddamn atrocity.

SB: I only tried to serve my community.

S: Then why did you promote Benji Cross, who became a serial killer after the fall of the NYPD?

SB: My, you did do your research.

S: Always do, and I'm not letting you get away with it.

SB: Only five percent of former Deads made it into the People's Militia, and given that I clearly showed signs of reha—

S: Five percent too many! The only place pigs belong is the slaughterhouse.

TSP: Please, let's keep this reasonably cordial.

S: The SP is a petit-bourgeois organization full of unreconstructed Sacramento and Bostonite liberals.

SB: Well, anyway, I do feel some regret that with the downfall of the prison system perps like Capricorn and Aries will never see justice.

TSP: Sergeant Botsch, how do you respond to those who say that the pre-war prison system was wildly inhumane?

SB: Well, I appreciate their concern, but I think it's more humane to imprison a murderer where they can't hurt anyone rather than to kill them.

S: Hey, Adalwolfa, I actually brought someone to this interview. Mind if I bring them in?

TSP: Sure.

A hard-looking woman with a resemblance to the aging sergeant enters the room. She's younger, her hair is wild and frizzy, and she has a long cut across her nose. This is Lena Wedekind, niece of Adalwolfa Botsch. She's got scars all over her body, and her tank top exposes most of them. She doesn't seem cold.

Lena Wedekind (LW): Hey.

SB: Oh, Lena, erm, how are you doing?

LW: I'm here to tell them the truth.

SB: Please tell me you aren't still dwelling in your childhood. I know it was painful, but you have to move on.

LW: You chased me in the woods of the Catskills with a paintball gun. You made me do biological warfare drills. You refused to feed me some days so I'd get used to starvation. You threatened me with a box cutter when I got mad that you gave me a gas mask for Christmas. You pointed guns at me. Worst of all, you made me think all of that was normal. All I knew for years after Mom died was your house in the Catskills and you.

SB: I understand that's harsh, but don't you think it prepared you for the civil war? I saw it coming. I made sure you were prepared.

Adalwolfa Botsch turns to the interviewer.

SB: This isn't being recorded, is it?

TSP: Lena, do you give consent for us to get the state involved? It seems like she abused you as a child. We can get you therapy, and, if you're OK with it, we can try her for it.

S: She won't get a cushy house arrest like Picano, will she?

TSP: If I recall correctly, the usual punishment for years of child abuse is a restrictive house arrest with efforts to help mitigate the damage encouraged, but she is in the People's Militia and was a Dead, so I'd imagine it would be much more severe.

SB: What, if not prison?

TSP: She's fifty and in good shape, so the penal battalion would be the obvious choice. After all, she's trained to kill. I'm just going by what usually gets done.

SB: Son of a bitch! Please, Lena, don't let them do this. I know I wasn't an ideal guardian, but I tried. I took care of you. I made you strong! Please!

LW: It took me twenty years to realize what you did to me. I'm not going back to being ignorant. Have fun fighting in Canada, Auntie.

Lena sighs.

LW: Maybe you'll learn that fighting isn't as fun for you as killing is.

Click to shrink...

​

 

[Shane_357]

So binged this, and just. Wow. Well written, excellent characters, a touch of comedy and bitterly realistic. I await your next post with great anticipation!