north america's smallest bird of prey

Nigel Farage is the leader of Reform UK, a far right party who are currently in the process of a serious bid to become the UK government. they are just straight up evil.

Count Binface is an intergalactic space warrior with a bin on his head. he likes to run as a novelty candidate in general and mayoral elections. a big thing he likes to do is run as a candidate against the incumbent prime minister:

(Also pictured: Boris Johnson, Elmo)

Anyway, in brief:

Nigel Farage is currently in the midst of a big scandal about his finances

He has decided to deal with this by 1) making a show of nobly resigning from parliament and then 2) immediately running in the resulting by-election

He has stated that he is letting 'the people' judge his actions and implied that if he wins that will prove that he has been exonerated in the court of public opinion

His goal was presumably to get a big resounding win over the other parties, proving that The People still love him.

the other parties have thus far decided that this is a 'vanity election' and, well, there is one very easy way to ensure that he will not beat any of them, and that is simply not to play.

and as a result the only person who has so far confirmed they are running against him is Count Binface. no matter the outcome this makes Nigel Farage look like, u know, a fucking clown.

things fall apart and there’s anarchy everywhere; falcons fly freely and can’t be compelled.

Dimming the tide there is blood in the water and everywhere customs of innocence drowned.

Held by the worst is a fervent intensity; lacking conviction the best run aground.

Surely there must be some kind of apocalypse; surely epiphany must be at hand!

Visions unbidden from Spiritus Mundi of something awakening out on the sand:

Head of a man with a leonine frame and a pitiless gaze that’s as blank as the sun;

sleep became nightmare by passage of centuries long before eons of slumber were done.

Higgledy piggledy, beast of antiquity, imminent, just as the prophecies warn,

I did make one at some point but I cannot find it now so here are my opinions on who would get divorced in the GCU (based fully on book canon since that’s the only canon we have for everyone besides Shane/Ilya & Scott/Kip)

Scott/Kip: It’s happening. The entire first book happens within like 6 months & they’re both just the worst the entire time. Scott didn’t sign a prenup because he thought true gay love conquered all. Kip keeps the penthouse

I think there’s sort of this idea in the fandom that no one assumes Ilya is gay because he hooks up with women a lot but that Shane isn’t so lucky. But I just don’t think any NHL player would suggest that Shane is gay as anything more than a joke.

Shane is the best player in the league. He’s hockey personified. He can’t be gay in these people’s minds. He can’t be. It’s unfathomable. I mean, when Scott comes out in the books, Carter genuinely can’t believe it at first. We didn’t see Shane come out to the Voyageurs in the books, but I personally think they would have a similar reaction (but less kind)

And Shane in particular is likely reduced to a sexless robot in some of their minds because of anti Asian racism. I think his teammates would be reeling, I don’t think it’s ever crossed their minds as a real possibility that he’s been sucking dick for years. He’s Shane Hollander! He just hasn’t settled down because he’s married to hockey…right?

Like I’ve seen people say it’s an insult to Hayden’s intelligence when fic writers write him as having no clue that Shane is gay, that of course he would know, but…HOW? Literally how would he know? There is no framework for it, there is no precedent, being gay in men’s hockey is just not DONE. It’s a non starter

There’s a reason Hayden canonically connects the dots only after Shane comes out to him. Once he knows Shane likes men, yeah, it’s obvious. But before that? I just don’t think these men are considering it at all. They’ve either reduced Shane to a sexless hockey stick in their minds or they assume Shane is sleeping with women more than he is. And let’s be real, they’re much more concerned with how they’re gonna get off than how Shane is

The Centaurs are playing in New York and Shane doesn’t travel with the team because of some, like, very minor injury, don’t worry, he’s fine. Scott asks Ilya to get a drink afterwards, but not at the Kingfisher, somewhere else, no reason. He is absolutely miserable to be confiding in fucking Ilya Rozanov about this, but he eventually confesses that he and Kip are getting divorced. 

He says that after he came out, there was all this pressure to make sure the story had a happy ending. He was with Kip when he came out, of course they had to get married! Maybe he didn’t really think about what it meant to actually be married, though. Everything just happened really fast. And, like — Shane and Ilya got married right after they came out. Does Ilya ever feel like they rushed into things? Did he feel that pressure to get married to make the whole thing more palatable? 

(For our purposes we are in book canon, Scott and Kip went from getting together to coming out in like six months and Scott doesn’t really know how long Shane and Ilya have been together.)

And Ilya is like, “Cool story, but my relationship has traveled more roads and suffered more obstacles than you could ever possibly imagine. One time Shane had to google because he didn’t know that the word for what he was trying to describe was ‘microagression’ and then he had to get out his Russian dictionary, but there’s no Russian word for ‘microagression’ so he kind of invented one, and then we could finally finish our argument about whether the Voyageurs were being a shitty team and also we were doing all of this over FaceTime because I was in Ottawa and Shane was in Pittsburgh. Actually getting married was a footnote at the end of the 200 page dissertation of things that we did to make that relationship work.” Because obviously a central tenant of Shane and Ilya’s relationship is that they do kind of think their relationship is better than everyone else’s and I don’t know, maybe they make some valid points! 

I also like the idea of Ilya being utterly baffled, like, “I have literally only ever made romantic choices that I knew would make the rest of the world unhappy, you’re asking me if I felt pressured to get married? And you think I would care about that? Grandpa, I cannot relate.”