First off I’d like to state that all previous leaks about GTA 6 is a hoax. All of the leaks regarding GTA 6 taking place in any other area than Vice City, is a hoax.
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Grand Theft Auto VI is designed to be the most developed video game in history, and redefine open sand box games, letting the player fully immerse in the world and storyline.
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In Grand Theft Auto 6 the game will take place in Vice City, but the previous storyline leaks etc, is all fake. The plot is completely different,. The game will host 3 protagonists, one being a middle aged white man named Johnathon Brooks, but is often referred to as John. John is going thru a mid-life crisis, and lives on the returning area called Starfish Island. John essentially is a life long career criminal, and exposes the player to a new crime element, fraud. John was born in Carcer City, and moved to Vice City at age 17, after running away from his foster parents, not much is known about his previous life before then, except he was in a very poor family.
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John got into the fraud game in the early 2000’s, and he is 38 in game. he earned his money thru many fraudulent activities like credit card fraud, bank fraud, and did a few small bank jobs, and laundered his money with his own car wash business. He lives in a $1.8m mansion that he bought with his illicit gains, and the FIB are on to him. He borrows money from the local gang in Little Haiti, where fraud is very prevalent, and he starts getting back into his older habits to pay off the gang. The FIB notices this, and he ends up doing dirty work for the FIB, in order to keep his freedom.
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The second character is Samuel “Shotta” Stevens, who is a member of the Haitian gang. He is a black, Haitian based character with more character development, than Franklin from GTA 5. He is 26 in game. The game also focuses more on crime, and the gang element. The player will experience the brutal reality of the gang life in Vice City, in the slums of Little Haiti, from loan sharking and repossessing the unreliable clients, to brokering the sales, that being kilos of cocaine, for the South American Cartel. Samuel lives in a Section 8 apartment, in the Little Haiti Neighborhood with his grandmother, Amy.
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Samuel just wants to move out of the hood, but loves the gang lifestyle, and this gets him caughtup in the FIB drama with John. The FIB cuts him a deal also, if he can snitch out his gang, which the player can choose to cooperate, or refuse. This will change the storyline of Samuel dramatically.
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The Third Character is a man named Xavier Gonzalez. Xavier is a latino man born in Vice City, he is 40 years old, and a cocaine kingpin. He lives in Downtown Vice City in his lavish $1.5m penthouse. Xavier is friends with John from the beginning of the story. Xavier is apart of the story no matter what option you choose, providing cocaine to John to sell, OR, Providing cocaine to both John AND Samuel, to sell together, and to strengthen the gangs funds. The gang system is similar to Red Dead Redemption 2’s system, and also has elements of GTA San Andreas. Xavier is also tied in directly to the nightclub business as well, having stakes in the returning Malibu Club, now run by the Jimenez Family, a latino Mafia, who has ties directly to the South American Cartel.
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Each Character has a different personality and lifestyle, and will be a exceptional experience for the player. Former characters from past GTA’s will be making appearances. Luis WILL be returning, being a manager of the Malibu Club, Stranger and Freaks missions are returning with a more in depth story for every one of them
The map of GTA VI, will be bigger than GTA V and RDR2 combined, having several counties, having Vice City, based on Miami, the Vice Keys, based on the Florida Keys, The Everglades, based on the swampy Everglades in Florida. The game will also feature Orlando, which is named Corlado, and Tampa, named as Gulf Shore City, but downsized a bit. The game will feature sprawling countryside outside of Vice City and Corlado, with countryside towns, named Canisville, Centura, and Sentinel Point, along with towns along the Vice Keys. There is an Air Force Base, based of off Eglin Air Force Base, named Fort Sentinel. The Ocean is the Atlantic Ocean, with more shipwrecks to discover, plants and animals, and more. The game itself has as many animals as RDR2, and the player can hunt if they choose, although this is just a more of a minigame. Vigilante Missions will be back, along with Taxi Missions.
Character Customization will be better, from the belt on your waist, to the socks on your feet. Choose to your liking of luxury watches, rings, chains, earrings, featuring plain jane, to diamonds and rubies, emeralds, and more. Belts can be worn along with hightops, to lowtops and boots, and dress shoes. Pantlegs can be tucked into the footwear you choose, if the option is available. Tattoos will be back, along with hair customization. John is white so he can tan, or be sunburned, and the core system from RDR 2 is back aswell.
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Tattoos will feature opacity and can also fade over time. You will be able to adjust the size of the tattoo. It will be able to be placed on over 10 different area of the body depending the size.
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Since the core system is back, you will have to also bathe, to stay clean, otherwise you may notice changes in your cores.
You will have to eat to replenish cores, so you can cook in your safehouse, or go eat out in a restaurant, whether it be fast food or upscale. All characters can have relationships with women, similar to GTA 4 and GTA San Andreas. You will be able to buy extra safehouses around the map, and the amount of vehicles will be the same amount that are in GTA Online, and more. Every vehicle will be returning, and first person mode will be more enhanced, with more realistic vehicle interiors to immerse the player into every aspect of the game. South America will not be apart of the game, only Vice City and surrounding Areas.
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Skills from GTA V is also being integrated back, along with exercising, to boost strength. Agility is a new added skill, and Strength will affect how hard you punch, kick, or melee in general.
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Special Abilities so far, will not be coming back. This may be tweaked before release, but if they return, it will not be a major part of the game.
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Car Customization is more advanced, different leather trims can be changed colors, along with wood trims and marble trims. You can add satellite radio, which lets you listen to radio stations in Los Santos, and Liberty City, but so far there is only two stations from each of those cities. You can also listen to all the radio stations across the counties. Neon is back, new spoilers and liveries as well, Along with different colors of tint. Subwoofers will be a standard upgrade as well.
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Los Santos Customs is gone, and Pay and Spray is back, along with Viceland Kustomz, and Sentinel Bike Shop. You can also modify certain parts at the car dealerships.
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The drug dealing system from GTA: China Town Wars is also returning, but a bit revamped. This is where the post office system comes in, from RDR2. Pounds of Marijuana sourced from Los Santos delivered by mail, to a post office near you. From weed to tabs of LSD, all the way to meth, heroin, and cocaine, you can reap major profits.
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Casinos will be returning as well, one being a resort, others being small-time casinos. You will be able to rent a room in the casino and resort. The casino is named as the Malibu Casino and Resort.
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Gunplay is improved with new realistic sounds. Interiors are just as detailed as GTA V or RDR2, if not more, I’d say. The insurance system from GTA Online will be integrated into GTA VI’s story mode, so losing a vehicle will not happen.
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There is an abundance of new and old activities, that being over 50 strangers and freaks missions, drug supplying, or drug running, similar to GTA TBOGT’s drug missions. You can hunt, as stated before, but is more of a minigame than a money maker. You can fish as well, as fishing is a very popular sport, in modern day Florida.
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There will be four strip clubs scattered around the map, one of them named Vanilla Unicorn South East, which is owned by Trevor Phillips, who is planned to make a cameo, only to be featured in a cutscene so far.

I'm trying to start playing in the pre-made worlds with the pre-made sims with all EPs installed, so I want to have a complete experience in every single world. Community lots are an essential part for this, but unfortunately the worlds can't have every single type of lot in them: either for lack of space (in Sunset Valley, for example) or because one kind of lot assignment doesn't really add anything that other lot assignment add.
With this post I'd like to comment on how neccessary I think each lot assigment is, and I'd like to hear your opinions. So this post is partly a request for some suggestions on what's "the best thing to do", but also as a resource for those interested and to share what you personally do in your games (make your own lots? use the default lots? add them when you start to need them? It really depends on your playstyle).

Base game

They are included in every world, so nothing to comment here. In older worlds it could help replacing the default rabbitholes with multi-purpose rabbitholes (such as Hospital+Lab), but I personally don't want to do that because I don't really want to remove/replace lots, just add.

World Adventures

• I don't really know the details about this kind of lot, but Market can be an interesting lot assignment to make mall-type lots with different registers (from WA and other expansions and the Store). Not really an essential lot, but interesting to add at certain point if it correctly works, or to save space by combining different shops in one lot.
• Nectary isn't really needed as every world has access to France. But nectar is a cool feature to have, so building one at some point can be interesting.
• Academy, unlike Nectary, doesn't seem fitting for most worlds. I'd leave them to China only. Same for Chinese garden (just a park that gives a special moodlet).

Ambitions

• Consignment store, Fire station, Salon and Junkyard are automatically placed on every new save for a reason, as they introduce many basic features from this EP. The only problem is where the game places them in most worlds and that they didn't include a variety of lots, so they have to be built or (what I do) downloaded from other players.
• Laundromat isn't essential, but to get the most of the laundry system there should be one.
• Hangout doesn't really have a purpose (that I can think of) with the lot types that other EPs added.

Late Night

• This is a bit complicated, since there are 9 types of lots and in the end maybe only having one type of Bar, Lounge and Club is enough to start. Of them all, Dive Bar, Dance Club and whatever kind of Lounge are the most useful as they allow the Showtime careers gigs if a scenario is added.
• Film studio is needed for the Film career. The rabbit hole is big, but at least creating a lot for it doesn't really require much effort.

Pets

• Equestrian center is another required lot for basic features. Thankfully, like the Film studio rabbit hole, they are easy to build. The small default version is good enough (its default placement in most worlds is the main problem, but that can be easily fixed in Edit Town).
• Pet store is a cool open shop to have.
• Dog park and Cat jungle are just special parks that attracts those animals, I guess. I don't think they are essential. Horse ranch seems the most useful of these lots, as a community place to learn horse skills. Still only needed when there are playable horses, I guess, for those that have horses in their houses but not a big yard.

Showtime

• Since other lots can be used like these if they have a scenario, there is flexibility whether to add a Coffeehouse, Live show venue and Private venue. What they do is essential to get the most of this EP, and the game acknowledges this by adding them to any newly created world (again, they are copies of Starlight Shores' venues from the lot bin and their placement is awful). To save space, the best idea is to add the scenarios to compatible lots that allow the specific gig types (like I mentioned in the Late Night section, but there are more possibilities).
• Adding a scenario to a park is also required for gigs (the game also places a park with a stage from the lot bin).
• The Big show venue is also cool to have for the highest level gigs, but it's not essential. It's a very big rabbit hole that doesn't look good or fit most worlds. But to get the most from this EP this is needed, so... I've read that, as long as the lot is assigned as Big show venue and has a stage it doesn't matter if the rabbit hole shell is added. I have yet to confirm it.

Supernatural

• The rabbit hole Arboretum, Vault of Antiquity and Gypsy wagon are also essential for many basic features. They are small rabbit holes, so they don't really need a new lot, they can be inegrated on existing lots in most worlds.
• Elixir consignment store is another useful shop to have.
• Supernatural hangout is useful if there are enough supernaturals living in town. I guess it's special enough to be worth having besides the LN venues.

Seasons

Thankfully, EA created Festival grounds for every world and they made it so they are automatically placed in new saves. Saves a lot of work.

University Life

• Arcade, Nerd shop and Rebel hangout are interesting on their own and also as lots that attract the specific social group sims. I'd add them to the worlds.
• Java hut is very useful as a non-rabbit hole café. If this lot assignment can be used as a Showtime Coffeehouse venue (I'm not sure, can someone confirm?), then it can be a good replacement for the Flying V's rabbit hole Coffeehouse (that's just a bistro with a stage). With the bakery Store content this lot assignment gains even more relevance.
• Student union, University hangout and the university rabbit holes don't seem useful outside the university sub-neighborhood, even if they are allowed in the home world.

Island Paradise

• Resorts are good for every world. Even if you don't own them, I think they are cool to have. Better with the rugs mod to not need the rabbit hole towers, I guess. Definitely I'd add more than one resort to each world.
• Diving areas are needed for the scuba diving skill, but the problem is that most worlds don't have space for them. I've read that, of the non-store worlds, Sunset Valley is probably the only one with space for them (besides Isla Paradiso, of course).
• Ports are needed for houseboats, but again most worlds don't have enough sea space for them. I'll see where I can add them (only one per world). Definitely Riverview, Twinbrook, Bridgeport and Appaloosa Plains aren't places for them (either for the space or thematically).
• The Lifeguard chair is not a lot, but is worth mentioning here as an item that needs to be manually added to each beach in every world in order to have access to the Lifeguard profession (I also have a mod installed to allow this profession on pools, so I add them there too).

Into the Future

• Business park, Dried up beach, Wasteland and Future lounge only make sense in Oasis Landing, I think. If anything, in Lunar Lakes from the Store.
• Bot emporium isn't really needed in the home world and can also break the immersion.
• Cafeteria could have its uses. But then again, we already have Hangouts, Coffeehouses and Java huts to make a place to drink coffee / eat...
• Gallery shop as a clothes store can be interesting to have. I don't know the details of this lot, though (if it's like TS2's clothes shops or limited to futuristic clothes).
• The Plumbot competition arena and Stellar observatory add careers and skill classes, but the rabbit holes aren't really fitting for any world outside Oasis Landing. I think there are rabbit hole rugs for these as well, but I need to look further into these careers to know if they properly work as "normal" jobs in the present timeline.

The Store

• None of this is essential, but I wanted to mention it anyway as there are premium items that allow some interesting places that may be worth adding to some worlds. For example: casinos, open restaurants, any kind of shop, open spas, bakeries, sport centers, the skydiving center rabbit hole... And some other items can be added to existing lots, such as public showers, dance floors, ballet barres, wave stations...

Hi /EnoughTrumpSpam, let's make a list of incorrect/outrageous things Trump has said and done that made you not support him or added to your animus. I'll format all your responses with a table with the quote/action and a good source. Thanks.
Edit: Thanks for the gold heterosis

Quote/Action	Source
"You take this little beautiful baby and you pump ... " he said, referring to mandatory childhood vaccines. "We had so many instances, people that work for me, just the other day, 2 years old, a beautiful child, went to have the vaccine and came back and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic."	Washington Post
"The Obama administration was actively supporting Al Qaeda in Iraq, the terrorist group that became the Islamic State."	Trump's Facebook Account
"If we didn't remove incredibly powerful fire retardant asbestos & replace it with junk that doesn't work, the World Trade Center would have never burned down."	Twitter
“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”	Twitter
Ted Cruz’s father "was with Lee Harvey Oswald" before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.	Politifact
[Of Kim Jong Un] "And you've got to give him credit. How many young guys — he was like 26 or 25 when his father died — take over these tough generals…. It's incredible. He wiped out the uncle. He wiped out this one, that one. I mean, this guy doesn't play games.”	Business Insider
“I know more about ISIS than the generals do. Believe me.”	Washington Post
“We don't even really know who the leader [of ISIS] is.”	Fox News interview with Bret Baier
"An 'extremely credible source' has called my office and told me that @BarackObama's birth certificate is a fraud."	Twitter
“Don’t tell me it doesn’t work — torture works… Waterboarding is fine, but it’s not nearly tough enough, ok?”	YouTube
“He’s [John McCain] not a war hero,” said Trump. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”	POLITICO
Donald Trump spent 10's of thousands of dollars on an ad campaign in 1989, urging New Yorkers to bring back the death penalty and execute five minority youths who were suspects in a brutal rape case. Decades later, the youths were completely exonerated when DNA evidence proved they had nothing to do with it. Upon hearing about the settlement, Trump wrote a lengthy editorial in the New York Daily News calling it a "disgrace" and "the heist of the century". In this screed, he complained that the youths were still certainly guilty and that the city was "stupid".	The New Yorker
Said that Judge Curiel should not preside over his case because of his "Mexican heritage"	Mediaite
Blamed the Tiananmen Square massacre on the protesters for a "riot" while being impressed at China's brutal "show of strength"	The Guardian
He withdrew medical support that he promised for his brother's grandson with cerebral palsy because he was angry at the boy's parents	New York Times
Trump University targeted students who 'hurt' and 'had problems'	TIME
“Look, he [Barack Obama] was born Barry Soetero, somewhere along the line he changed his name.”	Fox News
Students at Trump University were coerced to give positive reviews	New York Times
Censorship on the Internet: "We're losing a lot of people because of the internet," Trump said. "We have to see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that internet up in some ways. Somebody will say, 'Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.' These are foolish people."	ABC
A former Trump University sales manager testified that he was reprimanded for not pushing a financially struggling couple hard enough to sign up for a $35,000 real estate class he knew they couldn’t afford.	New York Times
Mr. Nicholas, a sales executive, recalled a deception used to lure students — that Donald J. Trump would be “actively involved” in their education. “This was not true,” he testified, saying Mr. Trump was hardly involved at all.	New York Times
Ms. Sommer, an event manager, recounted how colleagues encouraged students to open up as many credit cards as possible to pay for classes that many of them could not afford. “It’s O.K., just max out your credit card,” she recalled their saying.	New York Times
[Of Trump's tax plan] The plan would reduce federal revenues by $9.5 trillion over its first decade before accounting for added interest costs or considering macroeconomic feedback effects.	Tax Policy Center
[Of Trump's tax plan] Unless it is accompanied by very large spending cuts, it could increase the national debt by nearly 80 percent of gross domestic product by 2036.	Tax Policy Center
Tax cuts largely focused on the top 1% like Mr. Trump, both in dollars and as a percentage of income. The tax plan costs $11.2 trillion, more than any other candidate, and $4 trillion of that comes from tax breaks to the top 1%	Tax Policy Center
Wants to bomb Iraq's oil fields	CNN
When giving testimony before the Congressional Subcommittee on Native American Affairs, Trump spoke angrily about the Pequot Indians, whose new casino had just surpassed his Atlantic City casino as the most popular in America. ‘They don’t look like Indians to me and they don’t look like Indians to Indians,’ he complained.	Mediaite
[About foreign policy] “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things...my primary consultant is myself”	POLITICO
[About a protestor] 'I'd like to punch him in the face"	CNN
"If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them," Trump said. "Just knock the hell — I promise you, I'll pay the legal fees."	Business Insider
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”	Washington Post
“Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on.”	Campaign Website
Donald Trump's "trade wars" would lose around 4 million jobs, and another 3 million jobs would not be created that otherwise would have been, had the country not fallen into a trade-induced downturn	Washington Post
Wanted his 1-year-old daughter to grow nice breasts	NY Daily News
Doesn't think Muslim judges can do their jobs	POLITICO
Called Geneva Conventions 'the problem'	POLITICO
Gets his military advice from watching television	Politics USA
Seemingly doesn't know what the term 'nuclear triad' means	Rolling Stone
Flipped Flopped on Abortion (5 times in 3 days)	Washington Post
Said that Bill Clinton had intimate knowledge of Vince Foster's suicide	Washington Post
Anderson Cooper: Saudi Arabia, nuclear weapons? Trump: "Saudi Arabia, absolutely."	CNN
Has never held public office	Britannica
Has attacked/insulted people countless times on Twitter	New York Times
Flip Flopped on the War in Afghanistan	CNN
Has declared bankruptcy four times	Politifact
Has refused release his tax returns, even though it is a tradition. When asked why not, he said "It's none of your business" after being pointed out that being audited doesn't prevent you from releasing them.	New York Times
Has flip flopped on tax returns	Washington Post Video
When he released his tax returns in the 80s, it showed he didn't pay anything in taxes	Washington Post
“We don't really need NATO in its current form. NATO is obsolete… if we have to walk, we walk.”	MSNBC
Flip Flopped on Japan nukes	CNN
Wants to abolish the EPA and cut Education spending	Mother Jones
Said he would eliminate the "Department of Environmental," which doesn't exist."	IBT
“You know, it really doesn’t matter what the media write as long as you’ve got a young, and beautiful, piece of ass.”	1991 interview with Esquire
"Our great African American President hasn't exactly had a positive impact on the thugs who are so happily and openly destroying Baltimore!"	Twitter
"If Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her"	YouTube
Flip Flopped on Muslim ban	POLITICO
“We have to be very strong with our military, with our security,” Trump said. “We have to be extremely strong, we have to be very strong in terms of looking at the mosques, which a lot of people say ‘oh, we don’t want to do that.’ We’re beyond that.”	Mediaite
"I am being proven right about massive vaccinations—the doctors lied. Save our children & their future."	Twitter
Flip Flopped on Torture	IBT
“If Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her husband what makes her think she can satisfy America.”	DailyMail
“A person who is flat-chested is very hard to be a 10."	New York Times
The unemployment rate may be as high as "42 percent."	FactCheck
Flip Flopped on Hillary Clinton	The Hill
"The Mexican government ... they send the bad ones over."	Politifact
Flip Flopped on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict	NBC
Trump's “plan” to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants would shrink the economy by about 2 percent. The sudden subtraction of 7 million workers would cause an immediate shock to thousands of businesses, triggering a GDP collapse ranging from $400 billion to $600 billion in production	The Atlantic
[To Californians] "There is no drought."	ABC
Mocked a disabled reporter	CNN
Flip Flopped on the Iraq War	Fortune
[Of Megyn Kelly] "You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes," Trump told CNN's Don Lemon on Friday night. "Blood coming out of her wherever."	CNN
[About Carly Fiorina] "Look at that face!"	USA Today
Was endorsed/praised by North Korean State Media	POLITICO
[Of Vladimir Putin] "I will tell you, in terms of leadership, he's getting an 'A,'	Washington Post
Flip Flopped on Banning Assault Weapons	Politifact
[About his penis] "I guarantee you there's no problem. I guarantee."	CNN
Says the families of terrorists should be killed	The Hill
Is seemingly okay with Vladimir Putin killing journalists	Business Insider
Flip Flopped on Libya	POLITICO
Has banned The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, Politico, BuzzFeed, the Daily Beast, the Des Moines Register, the New Hampshire Union Leader, Univision and others from campaign events	NPR
Has exaggerated his net worth by at least 100%	Forbes
Tried to bulldoze an old woman's house so he could build a limousine parking lot	The Guardian
“She’s a brilliant judge,” he said during the Houston debate last month. Cruz has been “criticizing my sister for signing a certain bill. You know who else signed that bill? Justice Samuel Alito, a very conservative member of the Supreme Court, with my sister, signed that bill. So I think that maybe we should get a little bit of an apology from Ted. What do you think?”	Washington Post
Debt strategy is: Print more money	CNN
Partially helped put Atlantic City into turmoil while benefiting himself	New York Times
Tried to connect President Obama in the recent Orlando carnage	Washington Post
Lawyer: Donald Trump called me 'disgusting' for request to pump breast milk	CNN
Said there should be "beyond databases" for Muslims.	Politifact
Said women should be punished for abortions	YouTube
Wants to 'open up libel laws'	POLITICO
Has been endorsed by far right politicians including a war criminal (Vojislav Šešelj) who comitted genocide against Muslims in the 90s	Rolling Stone
Several of his business products have failed	TIME
While frequently criticizing illegal immigrants and saying they should be deported, he hired them to make way for Trump Tower then denied the accusation	New York Times
"Obama’s attack on the internet is another top down power grab. Net neutrality is the Fairness Doctrine. Will target conservative media."	Twitter
Trade relations with Canada would be severed	The Guardian
His anti-Muslim rhetoric is being using as ISIS propaganda	Politifact
Had to be shamed into donating to veterans after promising to do so in January but was caught not giving anything	Think Progress
"I watched in Jersey City, N.J., where thousands and thousands of people were cheering" as the World Trade Center collapsed.	Politifact
Claimed the movement to remove asbestos—a known carcinogen—was actually the handiwork of the mafia.	Mother Jones
He bulldozed pristine and ecologically sensitive Scottish beachfront for a golf course then later went on to complain to a committee of the government of Scotland that the wind turbines off its shores ruin the view for his course	The Guardian
"When I come home and dinner's not ready, I go through the roof"	Vox

First chapter here: https://www.reddit.com/HFY/comments/cbg4gs/damage_control_chapter_1/
So, this one's going to be a deep cut. If you haven't read the novels I've done before, this story throws you in at the deep end, and it spoils at least one major plot point from the 6th novel, Skin Hunger, as well as several other major plot points from other novels. If you want to catch up with that stuff, https://hellskitchensink.com/ check it out here.
If you'd just like to jump into things, this is what matters: There are Atlanteans, an apparently fish-like race who have recently revealed themselves to humans, who have a population of approximately 50,000 and who are on the verge of extinction, and who were recently partially responsible for a near-catastrophe involving a war between a psychotic god of dreams and a primordial entity of stasis, and are trying to make amends. There is supernatural craziness. There is a top secret branch of the US Military- or possibly intelligence services, or maybe even just running loose- referred to as the Esoteric Forces of the United States.
There's a lot of damage to control.
----

Chapter 3: Hel

USEF Report Dagon, section C (Culture), Paragraph 5-11, Rank HEL-6
Almost all of the 'threat' posed by the Atlanteans is, fundamentally, cultural. It is also largely unintentional. While the Atlantean capacity to develop gods is formidable compared to individual humans, their population is .001% that of humanity, and their rate of population increase is hovering at just shy of 0%. They cannot meaningfully invade us, and they sacrificed the element of surprise that could- conceivably- have let them conquer us. They are not a threat directly, and any genocidal actions on our part would not change that- The damage the Atlanteans can do has already been done.
Obviously, the reverse is not true. The Atlanteans are a very small, discreet, and largely insular minority. These have historically been poorly treated in America, and literally every other nation. While legislation has been passed to recognize them as a protected minority, the current administration has shown a certain disregard. The survival of the Atlantean culture is threatened in a number of ways, not least the possibility of a repeat of the Neanderthal extinction.
There is substantial evidence that humans and Neanderthals crossbred. This no doubt contributed to the gradual extinction of the Neanderthal. The possibility that someday the only sign remaining of the Atlanteans will be a certain cast of the eyes, a certain hair color, or a few dozen introns on the end of a DNA strand, is disconcertingly likely.
Back to the issue of culture. Atlantean culture is broadly monarchic. Because of its small population and strained resources, collectivism has been endemic. These traits are likely to fade, but because of the long lifespans and conservative attitudes of older Atlanteans, this fading is likely to take place over decades, or even centuries. Many younger Atlanteans have begun to emigrate, many of them to other countries. This is a pain in the ass for security purposes, as almost all Atlanteans have access to information that is destabilizing, but the most we can hope to do is mitigate cultural harm by encouraging their integration.
Large Atlantean populations- a thousand or more- have settled in the mouth of the Amazon River, the Thames, on the eastern shores of Puerto Rico, on the coast of New Orleans, and off the shore of Kyushu. Smaller populations- a hundred or more- have taken up shelter off Australia by Rottnest Island, the Vietnam coast near Hai Phong, in the Mozambique Channel by Madagascar, south of the Canary Islands, the Strait of Gibraltar, Copenhagen's bays, in the Baltic Sea, the Caspian Sea, and a sizable population in Lake Erie, right by Buffalo.
The largest political push that the Atlanteans have been showing is for renewable energy sources and less water pollution. The Atlantean Queen, Ku-kaili-moku-polemo, has made a dramatic push for intervention in the Pacific Trash Gyre. There have notably been no Atlantean populations settled in India or China, possibly a commentary on the state of their ecological systems and water pollution; Unfortunately, this has also been a cause for increased tensions between the two nascent superpowers and the USA.
More domestically, Atlanteans have managed to tap into the 'Crystal Spires and Togas' new age movement. While not fitting the classical Greek image of Atlanteans, their spirituality has attracted adherents to a number of small schools of meditation. While these might be uncharitably referred to as cults, the Atlantean attitude towards divinity and free will has largely kept them on the 'church' side of the divide. While the media has questioned the wisdom of Atlantean teachings being spread in the wake of the near-catastrophe last September, the EFUS attitude has been that creating a home-grown population of human divingeneers is worth the relatively small risk; We can't get this genie back in the bottle, but we can ask it for a few wishes.
Chief Researcher Cherry H. Verne
The helicopter was a misery. Loud, suspended above the ground, uncomfortably exposed. The jet, on the other hand, was a wonder. It moved through the air with only the most modest occasional turbulence, high above the clouds. I stared out of one of the windows, my breath caught in my throat as I watched the clouds drift far below, like sand dunes deep beneath the sea.
Even the fastest currents of Atlantis had been limited compared to this speed. Atlantis had been small, and centralized. The humans lived across the vast and desiccated skin of their world, and sometimes they had to get from place to place quickly. Without the advantages of being able to leap between worlds with the intercedence of their gods, they came to novel solutions. It was not as convenient, but it wound up pushing them to greater heights. We travelled at speeds where the air itself became a kind of fluid, thick and turbulent, full of currents and doldrums. It was glorious.
"Fucking son of a bitch," growled Miller. "The news got out. The Exquisition and the Peers are sending a delegation to join us. Using the goddamn Concorde. They'll be there before we will." His eyes flickered over to Smith, narrowing.
"I know you like to think of us as having our lips fastened thoroughly to the royal teat, you metallic fuck, but I loathe those imperialist assholes. Not least because we both know they will demand the death of the Archmage. I didn't leak word, and nobody I told would. On the other hand..." Her eyes drifted over to Pagan. The Major sat on the far side of the aisle in the small craft, silently listening to the conversation.
"The official policy of the Mexican Government is that any supernatural being found to be contravening the law in aid of organized crime, or taking the life of a human, is to be executed."
The unspoken subtext in that statement was clear to everyone. The Mexican authorities would not want anyone to find out about any deals they cut. They would have good reason to keep the mission a secret. So, had someone betrayed one another? Or was the presence of an Archmage just that difficult to hide? How on earth had everything devolved so quickly?
Miller groaned. "It gets worse. Chatter suggests that the Tongxinheli and the Indian Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation have learned about this, too. They're likely to get involved."
"And they are hardly known for throwing away a useful resource," said Smith, teeth gritted. "Fucking arrogant pricks. What are they thinking?"
"That the United States is unlikely to go to war over a man who, according to official statements, doesn't actually exist. They'll be out of their environment, though. They won't have access to heavy equipment- I don't care how secret the supernatural is, East Asian ordinance going off on U.S. soil is going to go over like a lead balloon. Their supernatural advantage will be..." He chewed the words for a moment, frowning. "Harder to judge. Both are capable of substantial, if inconsistent, supernatural power multipliers."
"I am sorry," I said, finally pressured by sheer curiosity. "But- these groups-"
"The Tonxinheli is a grab bag of mainland hick priests, Hong Kong triads, Tibetan monks working under duress, and Mongolian shamans, all being pressured- financially, diplomatically, or personally- by the Chinese government. The Ministry..." His face darkened.
"They feed people to monsters," said Smith. "Usually poor, or undesirable."
"No actual evidence of that," grumbled Miller, but not very loudly. "They've got some nasty alliances in the supernatural world. Blood's a lot closer to the skin, down there. Her Majesty's Most Loyal Exquisition is British. They mostly deal with faeries, because the fuckers are thick as flies over there, but we usually have close relations with them. The Peers started as an old knightly order descending from Charlemagne, and rose to prominence after World War 2 turned the Franco-German border into the largest source of Undead ever. There are rumors of a 'Bloody War' that they were involved in before that, but mostly, they're a bunch of overly religious technology-obsessed freaks."
"You are playing an incredibly brave card there, metal-boy," said Smith, an eyebrow raised.
"I did this to myself because I was suffering from severe PTSD, quadrapalegia, and had been manipulated by a psychotic monster. They did it because they thought pacts were unholy." He looked out the window, his brow wrinkled. "This is bad. This is fucked up on a scale that defies simple Murphy's Law. Everything's coming together too quickly." He shook his head. "Hope we're not putting our foot in another hornet's nest."
I tried to think of something comforting to say, some way to encourage my superior officer. None were obvious to me. I settled for patting his shoulder companionably. "What is our plan, Sergeant?"
"Twofold. We need to strike fast and hard when we get in, which means dividing." He gritted his teeth. "I hate to do this to you, not least because I want you close by where you can watch for ambushes, but I need you to check out the hotel. See what you can find out there. Any chance you can track down what supernaturals were in there?"
"I can promise nothing, but if anyone can..."
"Good." Miller nodded to the two foreign officials and the four men who had stayed silent in the back of the plane, dressed in heavy black fatigues, masks covering their faces, heavy weapons sleeved over their shoulders. The men were anonymous, but I could read them beneath those masks. Pulses of belief both strong and weak- One nostalgia, one fear, one anger, one loathing like I'd never seen, one joy and innocence, one ambivalent melancholy. I could see such things in the unguarded, and often, those who wore masks left their souls very bare indeed.
"What will you be doing, Sergeant, if I may ask?"
"The mission profile says that our man was bilking a local casino, the Treasure Chest, using... Well, they weren't entirely clear, but he'd won enough money to be odd. There's a possibility he may be going for one last big score there. Major Pagan, Jissika Smith, and I will be keeping an eye there. Privates, you'll be keeping an eye on the local traffic and making sure he doesn't rabbit without us knowing about it. If we don't find him in the next few hours, it's going to be damned near impossible to figure out where he goes. And if he goes to ground..."
He didn't have to finish the statement. This was a man who could afford to spend decades in hiding.
The plane landed in New Orleans, where we were studiously ignored by the locals. On the streets, I drew more than a few surprised glances as I walked, and even the occasional venomous look. There were a handful of Atlanteans in the city, but I did not keep my eye out for them. I slipped through the crowd without notice or care, making my way towards the hotel where the scene had been found.
The police had not yet been notified. The scene of the crime was untouched. As I entered, I was struck by several things. The lack of blood, for one thing. The fact that, aside from the now-clearly-severed arm, there was no sign of the men supposedly murdered in this room. The lingering aroma of divinity. And finally, a slender, hard-knuckled fist.
I awoke, in a large metallic room. A slender young man who nonetheless had wrinkles around the corners of his eyes from too much smiling was studying me. "Are you alright?" he asked, softly, in heavily accented English. "Sorry about the blow. Are you well?"
Had I been a person entirely unlike myself, I might have responded violently. Sent current surging through the metal walls, fried every other person within, fought and struggled. Instead, I nodded. "You didn't strike anything particularly vital. Blow to the head, but I do not feel murky, or concussed." I studied him for a moment. He was slender, not very old, and his head was shaved bare. His warm brown eyes twinkled, and he wore a loose saffron robe. He had hit me at least as hard as Miller could, and he blazed with oddly tinted belief. Practically a furnace.
The others... Three of them were humans. One of them was tall, broad-shouldered, a pair of black sunglasses over his eyes, dressed in a white business suit. A gun sat in a holster under one armpit, and a leather bag under the other. The second was dressed like a tourist, a colorful T-shirt, shorts, and sandals. He sat with the same ramrod stiffness I had seen in Pagan. The third had his hair up in a bright white turban, wrapped elegantly, with an impressive mane of black hair surrounding his face on all sides. I knew something of the significance of the garment to certain religions, but I did not recognize this specific variant off hand. This man was- I studied my memories- Latino, or Indian, judging by his features. The others were East Asian, I thought. Chinese, I decided, from the context of who was expected to get involved.
The last person in the truck was not human in the least. Nearly seven feet tall, skin black not like a human's but like a burn victim's. Wiry but with muscles like coconuts stuffed into a stocking, her proportions were almost comical, massive tusks forcing her mouth open, growing in place of her canines. A long, red tongue hung out of her mouth, dripping reddish saliva onto the floor almost constantly.
"" said the man in the tourist's clothing, "" He was speaking Mandarin Chinese. I had taken the time to learn Mandarin. The tonal nature of the language was unusual, but I had mastered it quickly.
"You are safe," said the young man who had hit me.
"What are you?" I asked, frowning as I studied him. That belief- Was it belief? Or divinity? He did not feel like a god, but he was not entirely human, either. I had read files about the human phenomenon of 'Heroes'- those who were, in a sense, gods made out of still-living humans. Was this what they looked like?
"A humble monk," he said, bowing his head once.
"" said the man who I now strongly suspected was the leader of this small group.
"Does he speak English?" I asked, feigning lack of knowledge. Their assumptions were a useful tool.
"He understands it," said the monk, giving me a warm smile. "I am more proficient, so he asks me to translate his words, so they are not misinterpreted. We are aware that the Atlanteans have made many agreements with the Americans. You more than many. We wish to offer you an alternative."
""
"You have a choice in the matter, of course. We do not intend to abduct you. But if you should wish to explore your options, to experience what another government may be willing to offer, you can."
He was elaborate. Eloquent. Trying to confuse his compatriots, whose English was not as good. I wondered about the wisdom of sending only one man who understood English so well.
"Monk," said the man in the white business suit and the sunglasses, and his English sounded like he'd spent his entire life in the south, "don't go scarin' the lady by acting all vague and odd." He stepped forward, and settled down on his heels, coming level with me, eye to eye. "The monk's in this job because the government leans on his people, because that's the only way he'll work. The Political Officer there is here to make sure that he doesn't go AWOL. But I'm here because the PRC pays damn well. What you're looking for, what you want, they can provide. You just have to be willing to work together with them."
"" asked the black-skinned creature, in some ancient and esoteric dialect of Hindi.
"" murmured the man in the turban, in the same near-forgotten language. ""
Alright, perhaps I cheat a bit in learning languages. Being able to read the soul of a man makes understanding them much easier when they speak. It was not the kind of talent I would ever broadcast. People were far more honest if they believed you could not understand them. I would hate to take that comfort from them.
"What do you want from me?" I asked, allowing a tiny hint of the trepidation and fear I felt ease into my words.
"" said the man in charge. ""
"Nothing serious. We were alerted by contacts in the US government of a..." The man with the sunglasses paused, and frowned at the monk.
"Bodhisattva?" asked the monk, amusement flickering in his eyes.
"Of a very potent being," said the man in the sunglasses, forehead wrinkled in an obvious glare at the monk. "Since your people ain't been interested in joining the PRC, they've been... understandably tense. We find out about something that could give the Americans a greater advantage. Understandably, we want to avoid that." He smiled. "And if we can persuade you to give us a greater advantage, as well..."
"I... I'm not sure. If I were to betray them- There could be repercussions. Strikes against my people."
"" said the man in charge. ""
"We just need a distraction. A chance to help this guy- Victim of at least a couple of genocides- escape from the governments that perpetuated those genocides." The man in the glasses smiled. "You know about the Westerners’ history. We never did anything like that."
I did not correct him. "How will I contact you?"
"Don't worry about that. We will know." The man in sunglasses winked as he patted me companionably on the shoulder. "Magic."
I did not detect magic. I did detect the faint spark of electricity in the tiny thing he'd planted on my shoulder. It had sunk into the slick material of the raincoat.
"" asked the political officer. The man in sunglasses smiled.
"Consider it. Whatever you're looking for, we can certainly offer it."
"I'll think about it," I said, letting the nervousness flow through my words. Disguising the planning, the certainty, that hid beneath.
I would not switch sides. There were a thousand reasons, but they all condensed down to one. The game of sides was just that: A game. It was a distraction, and in the face of annihilation, a lethal one. These humans were positioning themselves to have the strongest position on the chessboard after it had been set on fire. The most logical solution to this was to destroy them, utterly, giving them no choice but to throw their efforts behind the EFUS. It was my side- By chance, but that was reason enough.
As they stopped the truck- We had apparently been in the back of an 18-wheeler- and allowed me to return to the city, I strategized internally. If I simply alerted Miller or destroyed the scrying device, it would scare them off. Let the prey know that they had been scented. But if they committed themselves to the conflict, they would be forced to see it through. I studied the bug, and my brows knit. It was delicate, finer than an eyelash. That such a small, inconsequential thing could be used to track me, to transmit sound, was... impressive. Also annoying. I would have to avoid discharge. There was no question that something so delicate would be destroyed by the shocks I could produce.
The phone in my pocket rang. I took it out, fumbling with the interface. The phone was a phenomenal device, though a strange one. An invisible network of oracles, allowing people across the world to speak, find information, plan things. I had seen the way humans cared for theirs, placed so much belief and thought into them. The only thing that kept them from awakening was that they were fragile, and not built to last.
That was a terrible crime, to me and my people. To make a tool that was disposable. To create a tool that was never meant to be more. You built to last, because that was how you made a tool truly great, growing more potent with the years. This... I tried to think of the words to describe it. Child soldiers. Cancer-ridden fetuses. A thousand dark images.
Then I hit the 'answer' button, because it had been ringing for nearly half a minute while I stared blankly. "Yes?"
"Yeagerta! It's nearly sunset, I've called you three times, what's the news?"
I shook my head. Strategy. "I was-" I let the silence hang for just a moment, as though I was planning to tell Miller. Showing the foreign agents what they expected, a self-interested person who thought themselves loyal, who had to talk themselves into betrayal. "Distraction. It took longer than I thought to sniff out the crime scene. I'm on my way now, and I've got bad news."
"Shit. How bad?"
"Your men might not be dead. They might just be hostages."
"Aaaaah, double-shit! We tracked him down to the Treasure Chest Casino, but... Well, things are a little bit fraught here. Get here as quick as you can, I could use a voice of reason, or alternatively, another pair of fists."
"Yes, Sergeant."
I made my way to the address, up the stairs into a cheap motel, and into a doorway. I knocked twice, and the door opened. Major Pagan had a large machete in one hand, standing halfway out of her chair. She settled as she recognized me, and the ivory-handled machete disappeared like smoke in the wind. Jissika Smith had been holding a slender bone needle, carved in scrimshaw. The other three members of the room were somewhat less calm. The man and the woman in elegant evening dress were in a pact, I could tell- And the woman was visibly not human, her skin the color of silver, tall, thin, elfin, almost as tall as me. She stood with her long, delicate hands folded in front of her, the man with a drink in hand, the scent of sharp alcohol filling the air.
The last... Well, I couldn't guess at their gender... was actually quite like Miller. The lines of electricity were not as all-encompassing as in him, but still encompassed the limbs, and significant portions of the torso. They sat at the corner, a weapon still drawn. I didn't recognize it, precisely, but it hummed softly, and clearly had a right side and a wrong side. The wrong side was aimed at me.
"Fuck's sake, Anseis, you crazy bitch, she's more human than you or I am."
The weapon was slowly raised towards the ceiling. The woman, superficially, did not look particularly odd. She was delicately built, slender, with skin as pale as milk, and rich golden hair, blue eyes piercing and cold. She was androgynous to the point that Miller's description of her was the only reason I could settle on 'female', and the long leather jacket she wore seemed wholly inappropriate for the hot, muggy environs. "You were studying the crime scene. Any sign of their assailants?"
"Four demons. The archmage himself was not there. All of the demons left substantial traces of power. I'd say centuries old, at least, maybe more. I don't know what they were exactly, but..."
"Four?" said the British man, an eyebrow raised. "You could distinguish them? Hell's bells, the man has four pacts?"
"I suspect so," said Miller. "The mechanics aren't well-known, but being able to make and raise your own supernatural flying monkeys is probably going to make it simpler. So, one big, fat target, and at least four unknown bogies." He looked up. "I bet you've got a solution in place already."
"The Heinlein is within firing distance, isn't it?" said Anseis. "An obvious solution suggests itself. Archmage or not..."
"I'll accept any solutions that don't involve firing a weapon of mass destruction at a riverboat full of American citizens," said Miller.
"I'd suggest coming up behind him and slitting his throat," said the British man, a slender stiletto appearing in his hand as quickly as Pagan's machete had disappeared from hers. "But if he were that easy to take down, I suspect someone already would have."
"Three teams," said Miller. "One team evacuates the ship. That's Jissika, Punk Barnes, and Lady Featherbottom. One team confronts him- That's you and me, Anseis, we've got the best chance at surprising him or being able to take whatever he's got waiting for him. If there are any civilians hurt as collateral damage, I'm ripping you limb from limb. Then the last team- Major, and Yeagerta- You commandeer the ship. Once it's empty, you take control, move us away from the docks and out into open water."
"He may be able to escape the ship regardless," said Anseis, her eyes narrowed suspiciously.
"Yes. But he'll also be where a round from the Heinlein won't kill anyone I care about."
This brought a smile to Anseis' lips, though not to her eyes.
It was interesting, the way time skipped. It could move at a snail's pace as adrenaline and fear and violence made the brain rush, made it record every moment in brutal slow motion in the vain hope that it could make the right decisions. It could speed by like a shark through a current when nothing was happening and too much awareness would drive you mad with boredom. I observed the way the time passed, fast as lightning, until the moment when Pagan pushed open the door.
"Department of Homeland Security," I said, holding up a forgery so good that the government didn't realize it was a forgery. "We've got reports of a lone wolf terrorist on the ship. You need to evacuate immediately while we get the situation under control."
The men in the boat’s wheelhouse didn't argue. They looked happy enough for the unexpected vacation, if slightly worried about their prospects for employment tomorrow. Pagan checked the ship's controls, while I watched the screens. The British man and his fairy lady, along with Jissika, guiding the last of the passengers off of the ship. Unmooring it. The people on the ship were slowly streaming off, Miller and Anseis pushing through them, watching the crowd.
"So," said Pagan, conversationally. "You joined the EFUS. Why?"
"Chance," I said, checking for any sign of our target.
"That doesn't seem like a very good reason," said Pagan, an eyebrow lifted.
"It's why every patriot does what they do."
“Really?” She smiled. “But you were not an American. You had a choice. You came into this world, and you chose them.”
“Geographical convenience. And… I suppose… a lingering debt.” I smiled half-heartedly. “It was an American who saved our queen, and another American who offered us shelter. I am confident that any country would have done the same.”
“Optimist,” she said, and there was a wry smile on her face. I realized I was seeing her amused.
And there, in the main casino floor, in front of an unfamiliar but colorful table, a very short Native American man stood with a grin, one leg crossed in front of the other, leaning back against the table, cornered by Anseis and Sergeant Miller. He was dressed in an extremely fine black suit.
I flicked a switch, and sound came through from a black grill beneath the screen. The man- I had to assume the Archmage- was speaking. "-already in place, ready to carry out simultaneous strikes throughout Washington D.C. You're already too late to stop me. I might remember it under torture, if you want to try."
"My heart weeps," said Aneis. "I invite you to tell us, or I will shoot you-"
It was amazing how quickly things went wrong. The entire ship lurched, throwing the three agents on the ship's edge onto the dock, tearing it free of its burdens. On screen, Aneis let out a single sharp scream of rage as something huge and sharp-toothed latched onto her leg, and then she was gone, water gushing up through the jagged hole in the floor. Miller was wrestling with a small, slender girl, built like a waif, who was also apparently overpowering him in a bear-hug, while a big man with bizarrely long and well-groomed facial hair, sticking out like whiskers, lunged at him from the side. The Archmage laughed, and was gone like a shot, running for the deck.
"Things are going downhill," I said. "I'm going to go stop him from getting away."
"Hey, if you run off with him and the US starts fielding a bunch of Archmages, I'm going to gut you," Pagan said, her voice calm and matter-of-fact even as I set out onto the deck.
The short man was glaring down at the water, his arms crossed. "You are under arrest," I said.
"I don't think I am," he responded, and I blinked.
"I'm sorry to hear that. Would you rather be dead? Several of us want you dead." I studied him quietly. Were those listening to me already moving in? Had they taken the bait yet? If I could capture him...
"You know, what I don't get is, you Atlanteans were being wiped out by humans. That's why you left, right? Ever since you came back, I've been turning it over and over in my head. Why would you come back? Why would you side with the people who genocided you before?"
I blinked. "Because times change."
"Really?" He grunted. "Give me another ten thousand years to think about it, maybe I'd be ready to make peace too. But I'm not quite there yet." He judged the water again.
"I really am much faster than you in the water," I said. "Even if your abomination tries to stop me, I am definitely going to kill it, and catch you."
"My! You're very certain about that." He looked over his shoulder at me, and grinned. "I've been doing this for a very long time."
"So have I. Why?"
"Why what? There are a lot of answers."
"Why did you leave the spider there? She didn't have orders, or training. She was just an abandoned thing."
"She was a tool," said the man, still distracted. "A thing to be used, and disposed of. That's what they all are."
"Demons?"
"People." He looked up, and his grin was wide and a little bit frightening. "Oh, those two bought the 'I'm fighting for my poor benighted people' thing, but fuck my people. Fuck them all. They thought that they knew what I was. Words like Yeahnáglóshii, Skinwalker... They thought they knew what I was. They thought it was simple. That I was neglecting my duty, that I was a monster, a freak, because I didn't believe that a simple accident of birth meant that the tribe was owed my power." He looked up at me, his head tilted. "God, all of this is going right over your head, isn't it? You're like me. A freak of nature. And because you're guilty about it, you'll spend your life trying to make up for the gift you were given."
"It is funny," I said, though it was about as far from funny as it could be. "I never even considered that. I was always grateful that I could do something, anything, to help the people I loved. And while I hate demons, I could never imagine treating a tool so carelessly." I tilted my head. "Why do you do all of this?"
He grinned. "Why not?"
It was about the least heartening answer I could have gotten. “Are there really demons set to terrorize Washington?”
“Yeah. They’re called Senators. I was just fucking with those two, seeing how they’d react under stress. It’s always interesting, isn’t it? Being above them all. Watching them play their games, and knowing that you’re playing a far more interesting game.”
"Get down on the ground."
"You know, I'd fight you, but-" He winced. "Looks like three of the four demons I spent centuries cultivating, strengthening, have just died. That's a blow." He shrugged. "I can always make more, though." He turned towards me, grinning. "I can still take you on with just one."
"I'd like to see that."
He straightened his shoulders, and grinned cheerfully, lifting one arm theatrically, his sleeve slipping down to the shoulder, exposing the bronzed, wrinkled skin. "Nothing up my sleeve, and presto change-o!"
He blurred. I was already in motion as he jumped into the air, and I felt him slip through my fingers. Conservation of mass and energy did extremely strange things as he rocketed up nearly twenty feet in the shape of a small, very fluffy white bunny. A massive owl swept down out of the darkness, its divine energy muted so that I hadn't noticed it above me, and then was gone again, winging towards the swamps along the river with the archmage. I brushed my arms as I stood up, annoyed that I hadn't caught him, but watching. The ship was already shifting to follow him at a fast clip, and there was only so long a bird like that could fly.
Sergeant Miller stepped onto the ship's deck, looking well-worn. He was missing an arm, and I stared for a moment. "Sergeant, are you okay?"
"Fine, fine," he said, absently, glaring around the deck. "Tell me he didn't get away while I was putting down that fucking goonch."
"What? Oh, no. We are in pursuit." I looked forward, narrowing my eyes. "Swamp village. Old, looks abandoned. We're maybe five or six miles away from it, going at ten knots."
"Yeah?" said the sergeant, and he frowned. "Oddly detailed."
"Just keeping my eye out, Miller," I said, and hoped he understood what I was saying.
"Couldn't taze him?"
"Not at the moment, Miller."
"Huh." He nodded, his eyes on me for a very long moment.
I hated the games.
USEF Report Pallas, Appendix B (Known Accomplices), Paragraphs 69-76 Rank HEL-8
Not all of Athena's contacts and accomplices are as celebrated as the Cat of Paris. She is, after all, the Patron of Heroes, and this sometimes involves choosing people who no one would ever take for exceptional.
Atina LeRoux is on the lowest end of these. Middle-class family, relatively unremarkable childhood marked only by a brief hours-long visit to a mental institution after she told a classmate she wanted to kill herself in high school, and three years of homeschooling from the age of eleven to fourteen that apparently permanently warped her social development. She took the LSATs twice, scored surprisingly well the second time, went to a mediocre law school, barely avoided failing out, passed the Bar, and then drifted.
Her life up to this point has been marked by a distinct lack of focus or achievement. She's never done anything worth noting in the mundane sphere. She worked part-time legal work, keeping her head above water in New York City, until she moved upstate and tried starting her own practice, apparently resigned to the fact that she would spend the rest of her life in the same state of mediocrity.
When the Jiang-shi known as Li Fang Fen (See USEF Report Hsien-Ko H1 and remind me to smack whatever moron convinced me that was an appropriate code-name) walked into her office seeking defense on a murder charge, it should have been a short path to an early grave or making a pact. Humans who discover the supernatural inevitably drift towards one of these two.
Atina's only apparent talent is for paranoia. She has, in fact, managed to survive at least a handful of assassination attempts from supernatural creatures she has pissed off royally. Mostly by becoming a hermit. 90% of her socialization is with supernatural creatures at this point, with her only known pure-human contacts being her family, and some fry cook she's in an apparently unpredictable relationship with.
This is all in keeping with Pallas Athena's strategies. In chess terms, Atina is a pawn. She's capable of very little, but is also generally below notice. The chances that she will figure prominently into one of Athena's schemes is extremely low, but the whole thing about pawns is that they take you by surprise, at an angle.
Her resources are largely a surprising number of favors and control she's acquired in Binghamton, but she's still yet to put it to any particular use. As in the rest of her life, Atina LeRoux seems largely at loose ends. Aside from her connections with Jack Knife (See USEF Report Ripper FJ-5) and the Camazotz Jenny Nishi (See USEF Report Sparkly Vampires FJ-4), she has no notable power.
One lingering concern remains: The Fishbelly incident. We still don't know what exactly happened in there, and no one in Binghamton is talking about it. The working theory is that Athena intervened directly, as she's occasionally wont to do. This in spite of the complete lack of any evidence of her presence. The mummy we interrogated after the fact claimed it was the work of a dragon, apparently traumatized by the encounter and prone to confabulation. We've combed the city from top to bottom, and there's no sign of anything that could be called a dragon. Every supernatural creature we interrogate about dragons gives the same answer: They’re extinct. I’m inclined to chalk it up to trauma.
For now, I'd suggest stepping down surveillance to an occasional check-in. Given her position, means, and inclinations, Atina Leroux is a minor player.
Chief Researcher Cherry H. Verne

You’ve been asking for it, Credible Leak for GTA VI.
spoiler
Everyone has been waiting, a credible leak for Grand Theft Auto 6. I will not be stating my name or anything, this is a personal throwaway account, But I do work at Rockstar North. This next addition to the title will be keeping the tradition of roman numerals, ( GTA VI ) but I will often refer to it as GTA 6, to make things easier.
be sure to read everything, as I have taken the risk and time to leak a lot of vital information.
—WARNING— *
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IF YOU DO NOT WANT A SPOILER ON THE MAIN PLOT OR FEATURES OF GTA VI, DO NOT READ THIS POST *
First off I’d like to state that all previous leaks about GTA 6 is a hoax. All of the leaks regarding GTA 6 taking place in any other area than Vice City, is a hoax.
I will be breaking down the characters, storyline, and more.
Grand Theft Auto VI is designed to be the most developed video game in history, and redefine open sand box games, letting the player fully immerse in the world and storyline.
In Grand Theft Auto 6 the game will take place in Vice City, but the previous storyline leaks etc, is all fake. The plot is completely different,. The game will host 3 protagonists, one being a middle aged white man named John Brooks. John is going thru a mid-life crisis, and lives on the returning area called Starfish Island. John essentially is a life long career criminal, and exposes the player to a new crime element, fraud. John was born in Carcer City, and moved to Vice City at age 17, after running away from his foster parents, not much is known about his previous life before then, except he was in a very poor family.
John got into the fraud game in the early 2000’s, and he is 38 in game. he earned his money thru many fraudulent activities like credit card fraud, bank fraud, and did a few small bank jobs, and laundered his money with his own car wash business. He lives in a $1.8m mansion that he bought with his illicit gains, and the FIB are on to him. He borrows money from the local gang in Little Haiti, where fraud is very prevalent, and he starts getting back into his older habits to pay off the gang. The FIB notices this, and he ends up doing dirty work for the FIB, in order to keep his freedom.
The second character is Samuel “Shotta” Stevens, who is a member of the Haitian gang. He is a black, Haitian based character with more character development, than Franklin from GTA 5. He is 26 in game. The game also focuses more on crime, and the gang element. The player will experience the brutal reality of the gang life in Vice City, in the slums of Little Haiti, from loan sharking and repossessing the unreliable clients, to brokering the sales, that being kilos of cocaine, for the South American Cartel. Samuel lives in a Section 8 apartment, in the Little Haiti Neighborhood with his grandmother, Amy.
Samuel just wants to move out of the hood, but loves the gang lifestyle, and this gets him caughtup in the FIB drama with John. The FIB cuts him a deal also, if he can snitch out his gang, which the player can choose to cooperate, or refuse. This will change the storyline of Samuel dramatically.
If you choose Option A: Snitch on the gang, You will snitch on the gang and work with John, who will show you the ropes of Fraud, and you both will defraud the bank of Schlongberg Sachs, commit multiple heists, and become a protege of John. Or of course you can choose, Option B: Refuse. Refusing will make Samuel a target of the FIB, and this causes him to gain more respect from his gang. The respect system from San Andreas is back, but new and improved. Samuel will expand his gang operations from Little Haiti, all the way to the Vice Keys, and beyond.
The Third Character is a man named Xavier Gonzalez. Xavier is a latino man born in Vice City, he is 40 years old, and a cocaine kingpin. He lives in Downtown Vice City in his lavish $1.5m penthouse. Xavier is friends with John from the beginning of the story. Xavier is apart of the story no matter what option you choose, providing cocaine to John to sell, OR, Providing cocaine to both John AND Samuel, to sell together, and to strengthen the gangs funds. The gang system is similar to Red Dead Redemption 2’s system, and also has elements of GTA San Andreas. Xavier is also tied in directly to the nightclub business as well, having stakes in the returning Malibu Club, now run by the Jimenez Family, a latino Mafia, who has ties directly to the South American Cartel.
Each Character has a different personality and lifestyle, and will be a exceptional experience for the player. Former characters from past GTA’s will be making appearances. Luis WILL be returning, being a manager of the Malibu Club, Stranger and Freaks missions are returning with a more in depth story for every one of them, and Michael De Santa and his wife, Amanda, will be returning also, living in a beach house, although their children will not make any appearances. The both do not play a VITAL part in the storyline, but will have stranger and freaks missions for any character, with all different outcomes. For example, passing by the state penitentiary, you may just recognize Lamar Davis, in a bluish grey jumpsuit, embellished with a pair of handcuffs wrapped around his wrists, demanding for a ride.
The map of GTA VI, will be bigger than GTA V and RDR2 combined, having several counties, having Vice City, based on Miami, the Vice Keys, based on the Florida Keys, The Everglades, based on the swampy Everglades in Florida. The game will also feature Orlando, which is named Corlado, and Tampa, named as Gulf Shore City, but downsized a bit. The game will feature sprawling countryside outside of Vice City and Corlado, with countryside towns, named Canisville, Centura, and Sentinel Point, along with towns along the Vice Keys. There is an Air Force Base, based of off Eglin Air Force Base, named Fort Sentinel. The Ocean is the Atlantic Ocean, with more shipwrecks to discover, plants and animals, and more. The game itself has as many animals as RDR2, and the player can hunt if they choose, although this is just a more of a minigame. Vigilante Missions will be back, along with Taxi Missions.
Character Customization will be better, from the belt on your waist, to the socks on your feet. Choose to your liking of luxury watches, rings, chains, earrings, featuring plain jane, to diamonds and rubies, emeralds, and more. Belts can be worn along with hightops, to lowtops and boots, and dress shoes. Pantlegs can be tucked into the footwear you choose, if the option is available. Tattoos will be back, along with hair customization. John is white so he can tan, or be sunburned, and the core system from RDR 2 is back aswell.
Since the core system is back, you will have to also bathe, to stay clean, otherwise you may notice changes in your cores.
You will have to eat to replenish cores, so you can cook in your safehouse, or go eat out in a restaurant, whether it be fast food or upscale. All characters can have relationships with women, similar to GTA 4 and GTA San Andreas. You will be able to buy extra safehouses around the map, and the amount of vehicles will be the same amount that are in GTA Online, and more. Every vehicle will be returning, and first person mode will be more enhanced, with more realistic vehicle interiors to immerse the player into every aspect of the game. South America will not be apart of the game, only Vice City and surrounding Areas.
Skills from GTA V is also being integrated back, along with exercising, to boost strength. Agility is a new added skill, and Strength will affect how hard you punch, kick, or melee in general.
Special Abilities so far, will not be coming back. This may be tweaked before release, but if they return, it will not be a major part of the game.
Car Customization is more advanced, different leather trims can be changed colors, along with wood trims and marble trims. You can add satellite radio, which lets you listen to radio stations in Los Santos, and Liberty City, but so far there is only two stations from each of those cities. You can also listen to all the radio stations across the counties. Neon is back, new spoilers and liveries as well, Along with different colors of tint. Subwoofers will be a standard upgrade as well.
The drug dealing system from GTA: China Town Wars is also returning, but a bit revamped. This is where the post office system comes in, from RDR2. Pounds of Marijuana sourced from Los Santos delivered by mail, to a post office near you. From weed to tabs of LSD, all the way to meth, heroin, and cocaine, you can reap major profits.
Casinos will be returning as well, one being a resort, others being small-time casinos. You will be able to rent a room in the casino and resort. The casino is named as the Malibu Casino and Resort.
Gunplay is improved with new realistic sounds. Interiors are just as detailed as GTA V or RDR2, if not more, I’d say. The insurance system from GTA Online will be integrated into GTA VI’s story mode, so losing a vehicle will not happen.
There is an abundance of new and old activities, that being over 50 strangers and freaks missions, drug supplying, or drug running, similar to GTA TBOGT’s drug missions. You can hunt, as stated before, but is more of a minigame than a money maker. You can fish as well, as fishing is a very popular sport, in modern day Florida.
There will be four strip clubs scattered around the map, one of them named Vanilla Unicorn South East, which is owned by Trevor Phillips, who is planned to make a cameo, only to be featured in a cutscene so far.
Nightclubs as I stated before, will be a thing. There will be 3 nightclubs, where you can take part in a few activities, like dancing, where you can meet your date in game, or drinking and smoking.
Bounty hunting will not be a thing, but dirty work for the FIB throughout the story will be similar. Pool and bowling is returning, along with player skills, exercise and working out also is a thing, as stated above earlier.
Convenience stores and gas stations will feature many products you can purchase. Snacks, that being Phat chips, (different flavors yield more health and core restoration) candy bars, ( EgoChaser, Meteorite, Zebra Bar, and more) drinks, (E Cola, Sprunk,) Alcohol, (Pisswasser, Champagne, Logger) Redwood cigarettes, and cigars. The stores will be setup similar to RDR2’s store system. You can rob the stores, and also start a protection racket, and extort them.
Pharmacys will be in the game, to purchase portable med kits, or you can rob the pharmacy for drugs and money.
The way you eat can also affect your character’s health, and weight. Similar to GTA San Andreas’s system.
Merryweather will return, but won’t have the same presence as it did in GTA V. Merryweather ends up not being able to operate on U.S. soil, and goes out of business as a hit is put on Don Percival, by one of the returning characters from GTA V.
An advanced parkour system is integrated as well, similar to GTA IV’s.
Gun stores will be prevalent as this is based off of Florida. The homeless man who found the diamonds, from GTA TBOGT will also make an appearance as a gun store owner, as he has proceeded to purchase and start a gun shop in the area of South Vice Beach.
The black market for weapons is featured in this game as well, similar to fences in RDR2. You can also craft bombs/projectiles if you have learned to.
Realism is a goal of this game, without being too overwhelming. Guns and weapons will need to be cleaned. If you shoot a gun, you will smell of gun powder, this may be noticed by civilians or police officers, and they will make comments about it. If you have not bathed, you may just get absurd insults slurred at you. If you have blood stained on you, and you smell of blood, people may give you weird looks, or may just make a call to the local Law Enforcement.
As for those who DM me or ask about Strangers and Freaks, or mysteries and riddles, the paranormal world will be featured in GTA VI. You may encounter serial killers, or creepy sightings in dreary areas. Strangers and freaks will all have its own unique storyline.
The weather system is IMPROVED SIGNIFICANTLY aswell. Hurricanes do take place, but only during certain parts of the storyline, and floods may occur in marshland areas and anywhere away from mainland.
Melee Combat system is based off of strength, and Agility, which is a new skill, as stated above, and is improved heavily. Hand combat is influenced by strength and agility. Based on how hard you hit the opponent, you may bruise them, and bruise yourself. The chainsaw is returning as well. The limbs and gore is back from RDR2
Dialogue System from GTA San Andreas and RDR2 is back, and improved, with different responses every time.
GPS and Navigation System will be improved, showing the quickest routes, from alleyways to the freeway. Every street will have a name, and the GPS voice from GTA IV is returning as well, get ready to hear “Turn Left in 500 yards, Bing Bong.” Planes will have autopilot, and you can fly to each city with plane tickets, or on your own.
Driving mechanics will be similar to GTA IV’s, but combined with the smoothness of GTA V’s mechanics. Damage to the vehicle will be more detailed then ever, featuring airbag damage as well.
Six star wanted level is back, with FIB being the 6th star. There is multiple law enforcement agencies. VCPD, GSCPD, CPD, SPPD, Highway Patrol, FIB, IAA, Viceland State Patrol, as well as the NOOSE.
Being arrested results in you serving time, similar to RDR 1’s Jail time mechanic, showing you all of your charges while you sit in a cell. The first time you get arrested it will show your character being booked, and you will have to take a mugshot and be fingerprinted. Depending on the county or city you’ve been arrested in, you will be known to local law enforcement and even law abiding citizens, depending on how severe your charges are.
Random events are more realistic than ever. depending on the wanted level you’ve attained, there is a system similar to the bounty system of RDR2. The more crimes you’ve commited that have gained attention of law enforcement, you have a chance of getting your hotel room getting kicked in by noose, your safe house getting staked out by undercover FIB, even being pulled over if you have commited a number of crimes in the same vehicle. You may witness muggings, or even be mugged yourself. You will encounter situations with homeless people to the rich and famous, with all different outcomes.
Real Estate as stated before, will be available to all three characters. Businesses will be available, illicit and legal, from businesses to launder cash for the gang, to illicit businesses like credit fraud rings, to counterfeit cash.
Safe houses will be available as well. A penthouse in Corlado, a modern mansion on Starfish Island, a beach house on Ocean Beach, a small quaint house in Canisville, a traditional house in Gulf Shore City, a vacation-style home in the Vice Keys, to small apartments in small towns like Centura or Sentinel Point. Each character will be able to purchase any of these properties, but it will be tied to just the one character that purchased it.
Hotels and Motels will also be available to rent rooms and bathe in, one being the Gulf Shore motel, a dingy motel room for cheap, perfect for someone wanting a cheap stay. The Malibu Casino and Resort near Vice Beach, a 5 star luxury stay, with a two-story penthouse with a jacuzzi the player can bathe in, with views of Vice Beach, and the nearby Ocean Beach. There is 4 hotels and 2 motels scattered across the map, each with unique interiors and different amenities.
Purchasing vehicles you can enter a dealership, or purchase online and have it delivered to a garage. Pegasus Concierge is returning. Certain stolen vehicles will have trackers, and will not be able to be modified, same as GTA V.
The stock market is also returning, BAWSAQ and VLSM ( Vice Land Stock Market ) and can reap heavy profits as well.
Character customization is not just clothing, tattoos, jewelry and hair customization. You can also purchase 3 different phone models. an iFruit phone, based on the iPhone Xr, a Badger phone, or a Whiz Wireless. You will also be able to purchase ringtones, as you were able to do in GTA IV. You can also purchase an iFruit watch, based on the apple watch, which you can take calls on, if you change your settings.
As stated above, NPC’s will notice the clothing you wear, the way you look or smell, the car you drive, and the jewelry you wear, and will make comments on it.
The game is set in the summer of 2018 to 2019 as the storyline proceeds. This game WILL BE PS5 Exclusive, for the first month. It is projected to not release until mid 2020, BUT MAY BE DELAYED. I have broken down the storyline, key elements of the game, and if anyone has anymore questions I will be happy to answer. I know so much about this game as I’ve been working on it since the start, and I’m not afraid to get in trouble, as this is a throwaway.
I will not be responding to negative comments, claiming this is fake, because I will not waste my time with non-believers, only true questions.
all content is confirmed unless it has been mentioned by me to not be officially confirmed already, and anything may be scrapped before release as cut content, but is unlikely

Preface

For context, this is for the actual AH portion of Overheaven - the stuff which happens after the primary 1967 POD, where the Outer Space Treaty isn’t signed, and as a result, space is opened up to military and commercial interests. By the 1990’s there are growing colonies on the moon (the Americans and Soviets landed there in 1969), Mars (the Americans land the first man on the Red Planet in 1976), and Venus (the Soviets establish the first aerostat colony in the “Yellow Planet’s” upper atmosphere in 1978); large rotating space stations with increasingly-permanent populations; mineral exploration of Near Earth Asteroids and the Main Belt; and preliminary manned missions to Mercury and Callisto. This does not refer to events in the FH portions of the setting.
However, this TL also has a bunch of smaller POD’s littered around it. Mostly for fun, but also to build up towards the timeline’s “current year”: 2185. And the South African Civil War is an event which does have repercussions stretching into the late 22nd century. And after much back and forth on the issue, I’ve decided to place the war in 1999-2005. I probably would have preferred to keep all of this under wraps until I had written up the TL into an episodic, chapter-by-chapter format, but I’m sure the actual chapter for this conflict will be much more interesting and engaging than what I present here.
So, with that preface out of the way, here are some of my rough ideas for the South African Civil War:

The Juicy Stuff

Not intrinsically linked to South Africa or its civil war, but my motivation for having it where it is in the timeline is based somewhat on the state of the USSR at the time.
In 1999, the US and USSR are close enough diplomatically that at the start of the year, they opened up the International Peace Bridge connecting Alaska to Siberia. Gorbachev rolls all sixes on the New Union reforms in the early 90’s, and by 1999, I think the USSR should be in a position to go on overseas adventures again. Due to overriding concerns at home, they would have withdrawn from international military engagements for much of the 1990's. For the most part, at least. There’d be some guns going off in the "Near Abroad" periphery as the Soviet deck got reshuffled in the early 90's, probably in Moldova and/or Georgia, which break away from the newfangled Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics along with the Baltic states. Moscow also likely backed up the Americans and South Koreans during the Second Korean War in the early 90’s as well, or at least played a role there diplomatically. However, the 90's mostly sees the Union focus on revitalizing itself and jump-starting its new post-communist economy, changing the world's perception of what the Soviet Union represents, bringing in American, British and Japanese investment and the like, and perhaps resetting their relationship with China; there’d also be a big scaling back of the USSR’s orbital weapons, as well as probably a bit of a fire sale on Soviet extraterrestrial real estate (though they’d hold onto their Venusian colonies for the most part), in order for Moscow to remain financially solvent back on Earth. Intervening in South Africa would be the Red Army's first major engagement overseas since Afghanistan.
At the end of this alternate Cold War, the US withdraws from NATO, which more or less collapses. To replace it, a slightly different European Union (including Switzerland and Norway by 1999, but not the UK) sets up a post-NATO “Joint European Defense Force” (or some better-named organization). And South Africa ends up being their baptism-by-fire, assuming I don’t have it instead be something slightly earlier, maybe involving the Balkans or Morocco. I expect they'll mostly play rearguard and support roles, simply because they won't have the logistics to send in tens of thousands of troops on the other side of the world.
I'm unsure how exactly Apartheid can be made to hold on a little longer, though. Nelson Mandela having a close encounter with a flight of stairs (people conveniently falling down the stairs and dying instantly is a recurring theme in Overheaven - Khomeini and William Proxmire being notable victims) may be a start, but I don't think that's enough to seal the deal. Sanctions will be the bigger issue, though perhaps the huge advances in spaceflight might hog airtime that might otherwise have been spent on raising awareness of Apartheid, thereby making it less of a prominent Western political cause for activists? After all, humans have fairly limited attention spans.
On a somewhat-related and somehow less-ridiculous note, I do quite like the idea of South Africa building a Von Braun wheel to help bolster confidence and moral in the government, and perhaps help turn a profit for the country via some combination of zero-g research and perhaps a space hotel service for unscrupulous millionaires? Maybe some shady spy dealings also take place on "Overbeek Station". So that's canon now, because it’s fun.
Anyway, by the 90's, I'm sure people will become very aware of what's happening in SA, so maybe the stiff sanctions of the 1980's which helped bring down the regime OTL will come into effect in the 90's. The Pahlavis are still running Iran, and by the late-80’s have developed both a manned space program and a domestic nuclear power grid (putting them less than half a turn of the screwdriver away from nuclear weapons), and they’ll probably continue to support South Africa right up until things start getting super-gross. Ditto with regards to Israel. Rhodesia might still continue onward in some form, though I’m still unsure of that bit, or of what role they might play in the Civil War.
Maybe one of you is more knowledgeable about SA history and can help me figure out what political factions would fill the void left by Mandela, or how we could push Apartheid's lifespan a little further.
Anyway, a flashpoint sets the South African tinderbox ablaze in the summer of 1999. The rebels can't defeat the SADF on its own terms, but make it bleed when they bring the fighting to the cities. Foreign volunteers come in to back up either side, and end up radicalizing both. You have white nationalists, Neo-Nazis and extreme anti-communists from the Americas and Europe, along with apolitical mercenaries from odd corners of the world, backing up the Apartheid regime. And black nationalist and Marxist volunteers from Africa and the Caribbean come in to back up the ANC and its allies. Gadaffi wholeheartedly backs the black rebels; perhaps KPA remnants from a collapsed-in-the-early-90’s North Korea show up; Palestinians might get involved in the name of international solidarity; Iran and Israel might try something squirrelly (the latter might wash their hands of South Africa when they notice the Neo-Nazi militants gaining influence there); and, again, things get really interesting if Rhodesia is still around (or if Mugabe rules Zimbabwe).
A cease-fire is declared New Years Eve, at the dawn of the new millennium, and peace talks begin in Bloemfontein. In February of 2000, after much tension, cool heads in both camps (very wary of the extremists who've shown up on the battlefield) end up prevailing and an election is announced for May that year.
In March, however, psychotic Neo-Nazi volunteers from Canada, led by Wolfgang Gröge, hijack the government's nuclear weapons and vaporize Bloemfontein (a neutral zone and a symbol of the South African government’s unwillingness to stand up to “Jewish Bolshevism” or whatever weird conspiracy theory they’re running with) and a few black-majority cities in 45-kiloton mushroom clouds.
The ceasefire instantly breaks down. Everyone is confused and angry. One side is no longer interested in compromise, the other is fearful of being exterminated. Things get, in a word, MESSY. The nuclear detonations of course shock the world and are roundly condemned, as are the racially-motivated killings committed by both sides.
The South African government fortifies itself in Pretoria, executes every last national socialist they can find, and uses chemical weapons to narrowly fend off a major offensive by the ANC. They threaten to use their remaining nukes if the rebels try anything else against Pretoria. Yes, I am referencing RoboCop here, BTW. While the SADF forces and the mercenaries among their ranks hold onto cities like Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban, many of the more far-right and racist types end up deserting and forming roving gangs of genocidal fascists, who make up for their lack of numbers compared to the black nationalist and Marxist rebels, with sheer ruthlessness, skill and higher-tier weaponry. At this point, the Libyans have shipped in heavier weapons left over from the Cold War, and are sending in more and more troops to South Africa; Gadaffi’s regime is the only country to recognize the “African People’s Socialist Republic” - a state best described as a black supremacist Khmer Rouge.
Overseas, nobody's really sure what the Hell is going on. Nobody's sure whether or not the South African government is being honest about Canadian Nazis hijacking their nukes and using them against their will, but the optics of turning Pretoria into a nuclear-armed "final redoubt" willing to use chemical weapons - yeah, those optics could not be any worse. Nobody's sure about what the facts are, but everyone - Washington, Moscow, London, Brussels - agrees that the situation has gotten out of hand and someone needs to step in and kick some ass. The UN then authorizes them to do so.
American and Soviet space-based ballistic missiles hit APSR and SADF positions, while an unprecedented joint SEAL/SAS/Spetsnaz operation infiltrates Pretoria and secures the city’s nukes, before Soviet and American airborne troops drop in to capture the Pretoria and Johannesburg in the early hours of the morning, securing both cities by the evening. High above the Earth, Soviet and American space marines board and occupy Overbeek Station without incident. European, British and American troops take Cape Town; Soviet, Australian and American troops grab Durban.
The Libyans began to withdraw when the Americans announced their intention to intercede, though it was the Soviets who were ultimately successful in convincing Gadaffi to pull out; Moscow convinces their new friends in Washington to hand over an item of very deep importance to the Colonel, which was sitting in a box somewhere in Langley since 1982. While the Libyans are not successful in retreating with all the hardware they flew in, it’s mostly outdated crap from the 70’s and 80’s anyway; Libyan T-55’s and South African Olifants ultimately proved no match for the high-tech M1 Abrams and T-90, and the South African Civil War brought deadly aerial and orbital weaponry to bare.
It takes around two months of fighting before the rebels and government forces come back to the peace table.
The Cape Town Talks go on for over a year, and are far less productive or measured this time around than the ones in Bloemfontein, dragging on into 2002. Insurgents cause trouble all over South Africa, and despite the international coalition's best efforts, foreign volunteers are still bringing weapons and fighters into the country. However, most ordinary people are sick of the killing by 2002. Violence, the average South African realizes, has solved nothing and brought naught but destruction and ill will to the whole land.
A peace deal is eventually brokered, which probably results in the partial dismemberment of South Africa. Control of Overbeek Station I see being transferred either to one of the South African successor states, being annexed by the US or UK, or perhaps going independent; it would be interesting if large numbers of white South Africans decide to make Overbeek Station their home and declare independence as the first extraterrestrial country.
In 2004, the Treaty of Cape Town is signed, partitioning South Africa into the Cape Republic (comprising the former Cape Province), the Mzansi Federation (the old Transvaal, Natal and Orange Free State provinces), Republic of Ciskei, Bophuthatswana Confederation and the Free Port of Durban - that last one dominated by South Africans of Indian, Chinese and Malay descent, like a weird African Singapore.
Even stranger is the independence of the Republic of Overbeek Station in 2005, the very first extraterrestrial nation-state, and a bit of a refuge for rich white South Africans. They’re not into Apartheid (that would just be bad PR), but the limited space available on the space station means they can justifiably be more...discriminating in who they allow to live on Overbeek. It wouldn’t be easy for a space colony to secede from Earth, but they’ll land on their feet. I can see them opening a casino, and maybe operating an off-shore (well, off-world) server for various “convenient” services and enterprises. If they play their cards right, perhaps Overbeek might evolve into a Stanford torus in the long-term.
The international coalition sticks around and continues fighting the insurgency, while gradually withdrawing from the region, until the last foreign troops leave around 2005, when the new security forces in the region take over.
Over time, these new countries (minus Overbeek) gradually begin to grow closer economically, as the wounds of the civil war begin to heal. The Association of South African Nations (ASAN) eventually becomes the foundation of the much larger Confederation of Azania, one of the Earth’s leading superpowers in 2185.
In the short term, however, South Africa’s “place in the sun” as a functional African economy is instead filled by Nigeria, and eventually the East African Federation; the latter especially after the collapse of the UK in the 2030’s, and the nationalization of the Royal Space Agency’s prestigious Kilimanjaro Spaceport makes East Africa a big shot in the space game.
Refugees from the South African Civil War (black and white) arrive in Europe, Canada, the United States, and to a far lesser extent, the Soviet Union.
There will of course be war crimes tribunals. The culprits behind the nuclear attacks will of course be tried and executed, as will the crimes of the Apartheid regime and the crimes committed by the black nationalist factions. The ANC might run Mzansi post-war, but that was a position they had to pay for with a good pound or two of flesh, and they had to throw a bunch of dudes under the bus to avoid much more severe consequences. While it may be tempting to have Apartheid war criminals in space, Overbeek is unlikely to even humor the idea of bringing them onboard; a space station has all the downsides of being an island and a landlocked country, so they can’t afford negative press. With regards to Gadaffi, he follows the ANC’s lead and probably throws some people under the bus to save his own ass. Maybe he gives up his WMD’s, or maybe he stops just short of that, or goes for the “nuclear ambiguity” route.
The South African conflict sees the US Army and Red Army (rivals in a yesterday's war that never happened) grow pretty chummy with one another, the blood of one mixing with the other on the battlefield. And while the Europeans start out as the dark horse of the coalition (multiple languages, roughly standardized equipment, lots of inexperienced troops, limited logistical ability) as the war goes on, they improve in leaps and bounds. This causes the Pentagon and the Kremlin to look at each other, and then at the blue cancer metastasizing and federalizing across Europe, and then back at each other. They then gulp nervously at the same time.
So, those are some loose ideas I have. I'd love to hear feedback and suggestions, to help me beef up the lore.

Age: 0 years I was born a male in Ottawa, Canada. I was a product of morning sex.
My name is Arthur Smart. My father is Samuel Smart, an insurance agent (age 51). My mother is Alexandra Smart, a photographer (age 39).
Age: 1 year Residents of China have largely converted to pig bone marrow-based protein as their main source of nutrients.
Age: 2 years I am suffering from the flu.
Age: 4 years I am suffering from the chicken pox.
Age: 5 years An unforseen tsunami devastates a surfing competition in Japan, killing 29 people and causing irreversible damage to surrounding areas.
Age: 6 years I started elementary school.
I broke my parents's camera and then lied about it.
Age: 7 years I reprimanded my mother for trying to take me to play tennis.
Age: 11 years I told the cool kids at school I wasn't interested in going to see Michele's Dragon with them.
Age: 12 years I am being bullied at school. I assaulted the bully! I flattened his cheek. I loosened his ear.
Age: 13 years I started high school.
Age: 14 years My father retired.
I chose to be gothic at school.
Age: 15 years I have been diagnosed with tonsillitis.
Age: 16 years I graduated from high school.
I am cured of tonsillitis. I applied to university and was accepted. My application for a scholarship to university was rejected. My parents refused to pay my university tuition. I took out a student loan to pay for my university tuition. I started university.
Age: 17 years I passed my driving test and got a driving license.
Age: 18 years I tried PCP.
Age: 20 years I graduated from university with an undergraduate degree in mathematics. I have to start paying back my student loan for university.
I applied to business school and was accepted. My application for a scholarship to business school was rejected. My parents refused to pay my business school tuition. I took out a student loan to pay for my business school tuition. I started business school.
Age: 22 years I graduated from business school. I have to start paying back my student loan for business school.
I was hired for the position of Business Analyst for Kayak Systems with a salary of $62,730.
Age: 23 years I kept a money clip that I found. It contained $375.
Age: 24 years Laughter yoga sanctuaries are all the rage in Sweden.
Age: 25 years Violent oceanic storms combine to spawn a deadly hurricane off the shore of Mexico. While many manage to evacuate, 103 people are injured and 70 more die.
My best friend, Francois, confessed that he was the perpetrator of a hit & run accident. I offered him my unconditional support.
Age: 26 years My mother retired.
Age: 27 years I complained to the manager after receiving bad service at a restaurant.
Age: 28 years I have been diagnosed with migraines.
Age: 29 years I fully paid off my student loan for university.
I went to a basketball game with my company on a team building exercise. Dr. Benjamin Reid said I am suffering from migraines. My migraines was treated by Dr. Benjamin Reid. I am cured of migraines.
Age: 31 years I fully paid off my student loan for business school.
My father died of complications from old age. I paid my respects at his funeral.
Age: 32 years I took my mother strolling around town.
Age: 34 years I went with some friends to Ottawa Nation Casino. I won $5,000 in a hand of blackjack at Ottawa Nation Casino.
Age: 35 years I decided not to complain after the chef botched my steak dinner at a restaurant.
Age: 36 years I refused to join social media.
Age: 39 years A major typhoon terrorizes the citizens of South Korea and floods the streets of Daegu.
I went clubbing at The Lincoln. I tried reefer.
Age: 40 years I was fired from my job as Business Analyst for Kayak Systems after failing a drug test. I called my supervisor a bitch on my way out. I applied for the position of Jr. Business Analyst at Titanium Technologies but was rejected because I failed a drug test. I applied for the position of Jr. Business Analyst at Family Motors but was rejected because I failed a drug test.
Age: 41 years I was hired for the position of Business Analyst for Willow Designs with a salary of $81,545.
Age: 43 years I tried to take a a wallet that I found but the owner started arguing with me. Someone started arguing with me after I took his wallet. I walked away from the situation.
Age: 44 years My mother died of cirrhosis of the liver. I paid my respects at her funeral. I inherited $1,271. I went clubbing at Illumina Lounge. I said no to magic mushrooms. Dr. Benjamin Reid said I am in good health. A witch doctor offered me toad. I used the dating app. The dating app paired me with an architect named Camille Poulin. I bought 10 lottery tickets. I didn't win the $26,713,358 lottery jackpot. I went to Ottawa Public Library. I meditated. I worked out at Allegiance Fitness.
Age: 45 years I decided to have a one night stand with Myriam Cox. I practiced safe sex. I am now dating Jenna Buble. I took Jenna to hold up signs outside the TV network studio.
Age: 46 years I argued with a call girl who was hollaring at me and she walked off. I took Jenna to dinner. I took Jenna to build a pillow fort. I took Jenna to pick flowers. I proposed to Jenna and she accepted!
Age: 47 years I saw someone call Jenna a slunt! I called her a jumpoff. I married Jenna at a drive thru wedding chapel. Jenna and I went to Brisbane, Australia, for our honeymoon. Jenna decided to keep her name. I took Jenna to catch butterflies. Jenna and I tried to have a baby but failed to get pregnant. Jenna and I tried to have a baby but failed to get pregnant. Jenna and I tried to have a baby but failed to get pregnant.
Age: 48 years Jenna and I tried to have a baby but failed to get pregnant. Jenna and I tried to have a baby but failed to get pregnant. I bought a townhome for $220,774! I adopted a 4-year old boy named Adam Lee. I changed his name to Adam Smart.
Age: 49 years I took my adopted son, Adam, canoeing.
Age: 50 years My adopted son, Adam, started elementary school.
I asked for a promotion but was rejected. I stopped showing up to work for my old position as Business Analyst for Willow Designs. I was hired for the position of Business Analyst for Kayak Systems with a salary of $96,833.
Age: 52 years I gave my adopted son, Adam, $13 to buy a football. I took my adopted son, Adam, for a swim.
Age: 53 years I saw a man threatening a bank clerk at gunpoint. I looked the other way.
Age: 54 years Dr. Benjamin Reid said I am in good health. A witch doctor offered me dill weed. I had colon hydrotherapy. I worked out at Allegiance Fitness. I am suffering from E. coli. Dr. Benjamin Reid said I am suffering from E. coli. My E. coli was treated by Dr. Benjamin Reid. I am cured of E. coli. I took Jenna and my child, Adam, on a business class vacation to the United Kingdom.
Age: 55 years I went to a hot dog eating contest with my company on a team building exercise. I took Jenna to watch sumo wrestling. I took my adopted son, Adam, to troll people on the internet.
Age: 56 years The first ever gaming Olympics have been organized in Turkey.
I took my adopted son, Adam, to a soccer match. My adopted son, Adam, and I had a heart-to-heart about our least favorite word. I took Jenna to an arcade. I took Jenna to play paintball. Jenna and I tried to have a baby but failed to get pregnant. I took Jenna to blow bubbles.
Age: 57 years Jenna and I have been married for 10 years. My adopted son, Adam, started high school.
I took Jenna longboarding. I took Jenna to watch toy unboxing videos.
Age: 58 years I took Jenna to rake leaves into piles and jump into them. I took my adopted son, Adam, to an indoor trampoline park. I asked for a promotion but was rejected. I applied for a car loan to buy a 5-year old blue Subaru Outback. My application was accepted. I bought a 5-year old blue Subaru Outback for $20,381!
Age: 59 years I took my adopted son, Adam, to the movies. My adopted son, Adam, and I had a conversation about whether or not students should wear uniforms.
Age: 60 years My adopted son, Adam, graduated from high school.
I agreed to pay for my adopted son, Adam's, college education.
Age: 61 years My adopted son, Adam, began studying psychology at university.
I have been diagnosed with ulcers. Dr. Benjamin Reid said I am suffering from ulcers. My ulcers was treated by Dr. Benjamin Reid. I am cured of ulcers.
Age: 62 years My adopted son, Adam, moved out.
I went with some friends to the horse races.
Age: 63 years I fully paid off the car loan on my Subaru Outback.
Age: 64 years Jenna retired.
I saw someone call my son, Adam, a little bitch! I called him a pansy.
Age: 65 years My adopted son, Adam, graduated from university with an undergraduate degree in psychology. He started a new position as School Psychologist for Ottawa Public Schools.
Jenna and I discussed our least favorite word. Jenna and I talked about whether or not frosting a muffin makes it a cupcake. Jenna and I had a conversation about the best place to have sex. We got into an argument but I apologized. I took Jenna rollerblading. I took my adopted son, Adam, to watch figure skating. I took Jenna to the library. I took Jenna to a concert. I took Jenna to do some gardening.
Age: 66 years I turned down a chance to take a package to Argentina for $11,300.
Age: 67 years Jenna and I have been married for 20 years.
Jenna cheated on me. I forgave her. I took Jenna swimming.
Age: 68 years I took Jenna to watch Bad Bunny music videos. I took Jenna to the water park. I took Jenna shopping.
Age: 70 years 262 people lose their lives as China's quest to drill deep tunnels results in a magnitude 5.3 earthquake.
I said no to opium. Dr. Benjamin Reid said I am in good health. I meditated. I bought 10 lottery tickets. I didn't win the $262,196 lottery jackpot. I worked out at Allegiance Fitness. I worked out at Allegiance Fitness. I went to Ottawa Public Library. I meditated.
Age: 71 years I took Jenna to a baseball game.
Age: 72 years Jenna and I had a chat about why some BitLife players haven't turned off the ads since it only costs $2. I took my adopted son, Adam, to a baseball game.
Age: 74 years I saw someone call my son, Adam, a sucker! I called him a bozo.
Age: 75 years I said no to appletinis. I retired from my job as Business Analyst for Kayak Systems.
Age: 77 years Jenna and I have been married for 30 years.
Age: 79 years I took my adopted son, Adam, to watch a play. I took my adopted son, Adam, gambling. I took my adopted son, Adam, bungee jumping. My adopted son, Adam, and I had a chat about whether or not duck faces are sexy. I took my adopted son, Adam, to hold up signs outside the TV network studio.
Age: 80 years California’s geological land mass has split from the United States. The body of water between the two is now known as the American Strait.
Age: 81 years Explosives testing in Chile loosens underlying earth, producing a magnitude 6.7 earthquake, killing 207 people and injuring 4,081 more.
Age: 84 years Jenna cheated on me. I forgave her. I took Jenna to a food festival. I took my adopted son, Adam, grocery shopping.
Age: 85 years I had to scrap my Subaru Outback. I bought a 1-year old burgundy Volkswagen Jetta for $17,480!
Age: 86 years Jenna called me a freak! I forgave her. I took my adopted son, Adam, to the museum. I took my adopted son, Adam, to a baseball game. I took Jenna canoeing. I took my adopted son, Adam, to pick flowers. I took my adopted son, Adam, canoeing.
Age: 87 years Jenna and I have been married for 40 years.
I took my adopted son, Adam, to play in the rain.
Age: 88 years Dr. Benjamin Reid said I am in good health.
Age: 89 years Egypt's space program has successfully begun to colonize the moon.
Age: 90 years My adopted son, Adam, married Andrea Moore, a 52-year old trucker.
I said no to horse meat sashimi. I took my adopted son, Adam, to post BitLife screenshots on Instagram. I took my adopted son, Adam, to write poems. I took Jenna to the symphony.
Age: 91 years My adopted son, Adam, and his wife, Andrea, have adopted a 5-year old girl named Evangeline Grant. My granddaughter, Evangeline, started elementary school.
Age: 92 years My adopted son, Adam, was widowed after Andrea Moore died.
I took my granddaughter, Evangeline, to watch a play. I took my adopted son, Adam, to the amusement park.
Age: 93 years Jenna and I had a conversation about the dark net.
Age: 95 years A data breach in Sweden has caused the personal information of 389,365 residents to be leaked onto the dark web.
I took my adopted son, Adam, kayaking. I took my adopted son, Adam, to a basketball game.
Age: 96 years My Volkswagen Jetta has a broken ignition coil. I repaired the broken ignition coil on my Volkswagen Jetta.
Age: 97 years Jenna and I have been married for 50 years.
Age: 98 years My granddaughter, Evangeline, started high school.
I said no to valium. I took my granddaughter, Evangeline, gambling. I took my granddaughter, Evangeline, tire swinging. I took my granddaughter, Evangeline, for a walk. I took my adopted son, Adam, to a boxing match. I took my adopted son, Adam, to the library.
Age: 100 years My Volkswagen Jetta has a busted windshield wiper. I repaired the busted windshield wiper on my Volkswagen Jetta. I took my adopted son, Adam, to a yoga class. I took my adopted son, Adam, to fly a drone. I took my adopted son, Adam, to do Keith Urban karaoke. I took my adopted son, Adam, to dinner. I took my adopted son, Adam, to do some gardening. My adopted son, Adam, and I had a heart-to-heart about good versus evil.
Age: 101 years My granddaughter, Evangeline, graduated from high school.
Jenna died of cirrhosis of the liver. I paid my respects at her funeral. I inherited $729,102.
Age: 102 years My granddaughter, Evangeline, began studying political science at university.
I have been diagnosed with hearing loss. I took my adopted son, Adam, to write poems. I took my adopted son, Adam, to rake leaves into piles and jump into them. Dr. Benjamin Reid said I am suffering from hearing loss. My hearing loss was treated by Dr. Benjamin Reid. I am cured of hearing loss.
Age: 103 years I died of complications from old age. My net worth at the time of my death was $2,585,357.

The formatting below is pretty ugly so here is a direct link to a PDF of the document.
Disclaimer: I am not majoring in philosophy. It is an upper division general education course. I started doing research about a week before but realized on Sunday that I did not actually completely understand the dialectic process. I’m still not sure if I have correctly. I started writing Sunday at 12pm, wrote until 6am, slept, continued at 10am and submitted it at 4pm on Monday. If I had done this a week ago, I could have asked my professor for feedback but I am taking the class credit/not credit so I just needed to pass. Also, I’m a terrible procrastinator.
Feedback is welcomed!!! :)
edit: I just realized I was braindead upon finishing and didn’t proofread. Sorry for the mess. I will fix it tomorrow. ~~
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 – 1831) was a predominant figure in 19th century German philosophy. He contributed widely to German Idealism, a philosophical movement spurred as a reaction to Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Generally, idealism is the theory that fundamental reality is made up of one’s thoughts or ideas. It holds that one cannot be certain that any matter of the outside world exists and that the only thing truly knowable is consciousness. Hegel achieved significant renown in his day, given his first book, Phänomenologie des Geistes, was his most thoroughly discussed philosophical work. Since the German word ‘geist’ is understood through multiple definitions, the title may translate to either The Phenomenology of Spirit or The Phenomenology of Mind. In this book, Hegel applied his three-stage dialectical method as an interpretive schema to understand and analyze the life of one’s spirit. According to The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “‘Dialectics’ is a term used to describe a method of philosophical argument that involves some sort of contradictory process between the opposing sides.” In Plato’s Republic, he presented a basic form of a dialectic as a back-and-forth argument between Socrates and his students. Socrates posed the question, “What is justice?” and goes on to refute each student’s answer; forcing each student to refine their belief by adopting Socrates’ refutation and forming a more sophisticated view. A central term in Hegelian dialectics is the verb ‘aufhebeng’, which, in this context, translates to ‘to sublate’ or ‘to cancel and to preserve at the same time’. In Plato’s example, each of Socrates’ student’s original belief is sublated with Socrates’ challenge to adopt the more sophisticated view. The students cancel parts of their original belief while simultaneously preserving sophisticated pieces to combine with Socrates’ challenge. This process of ‘aufhebeng’ may happen multiple times within a single ‘dialectical conflict’.
The fundamental premise of Hegel’s dialectic method is to understand history as a sequence of ‘dialectical conflicts’. The purpose of the Hegel’s dialectic method is to achieve spiral evolution of higher thinking by using the process of ‘aufhebeng’. Each conflict begins with what is called the ‘in-itself’ moment. This ‘in-itself’ moment is merely potential for a reality to be actualized. The reality one is concerned with is implicit, or implied, in the moment. The German phrase Hegel used, ‘an-sich’, directly translates to ‘in-itself’, but is better understood when colloquially translated to ‘by-itself’. The reality is ‘by-itself’, or implicit, in this moment. The reality must be exteriorized, or made explicit, so one can actualize it. In Plato’s The Republic, reality was the adoption of a more sophisticated view. If a student provided an answer to Socrates’ question, the reality would be implicit, or ‘by-itself’, and not explicit to the student. Without additional information, a student would be unable to form a view more sophisticated than that of their own answer. Additionally, it would be impossible for Socrates to negate the student if the student never initially provided an answer. When Socrates negated their answer, he exteriorized the reality of adopting a more sophisticated view by explicit telling them the more sophisticated view in the form of an argument. The moment in which reality is exteriorized, or explicit, is called the ‘for-itself’ moment. Since dialectics rely on a contradictory process, the ‘for-itself’ moment must negate, or contradict, the ‘in-itself’ moment in order to exteriorize reality. Once reality is explicit, the process of ‘aufhebeng’ starts and creates an ‘in-and-for-itself’ moment by eliminating flaws from the first two moments and leaving behind ideas and elements that hold true for both. For Plato, the student forms a new, more sophisticated view by disregarding the flaws in their own view while preserving the sophisticated elements in both their own and Socrates’ view. Once complete, the ‘in-and-for-itself’ moment serves as the ‘in-itself’ moment for a new dialectical conflict. Hegel believed that by allowing the ‘in-and-for-itself’ moment to serve as the next ‘in-itself’ moment, the dialectical process would result in the spiral evolution of higher thinking because the newly actualized reality would contain potential for another ‘new reality to be actualized’. For example, once a student adopted the more sophisticated view, Socrates refuted it in the form of an argument, effectively exteriorizing the implicit reality contained in the new ‘in-itself’ moment. A student would proceed to form a more sophisticated view point from an already formed ‘more sophisticated viewpoint’. Using more simplistic terms, one can understand this process as: problem → reaction → solution, where the problem contains an implicit solution and the solution provides a new problem that contains a new implicit solution. Going forward, these three moments will be referred to in accordance with Johann Fichte’s commentary, which uses thesis, antithesis and synthesis in place of ‘in-itself’, ‘for-itself’ and ‘in-and-for-itself’. The most effective way to understand Hegel’s dialectic method is to use it to analyze the progression of history.
Hegel’s dialectic can be used as an interpretive schema to understand and analyze the events that led to the demise of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire. In 100BCE, Gaius Julius Caesar was born into a patrician family that politically aligned itself with plebeian politicians (Watkins). In 84BCE, after his father’s death, Julius Caesar married the daughter of revolutionary Gaius Marius, a Roman general and statesmen who held office of consul seven times. When Lucius Sulla, opponent of Marius, gained control of Rome, he ordered Caesar to divorce his wife. Caesar refused, irrevocably committing himself to the plebeian-popular side of politics in Rome. Caesar fled the anti-revolutionary forces and served in the Roman army until Sulla’s death in 78BCE (Watkins). Once free from Sulla, Julius Caesar returned to Rome and served in government as a prosecution attorney. Caesar’s first major case was against an associate of Sulla but the court was composed of senators who sympathized with Sulla’s anti-revolutionary movement and did not charge the associate. Over the next years, Caesar asserted himself into Roman government, organized a private army to defend attacks from Mithridates VI and worked with Pompey, a former lieutenant of Sulla, to repeal constitutional reform enacted by Sulla himself (Watkins). From 69BCE to 61BCE, Julius Caesar served his term as quaestor in Farther Spain, was elected to the office of aedile and held public festivals in order to solicit support from plebeians. Most importantly, by 59BCE, Caesar had formed an unofficial alliance with his old political friend, Pompey, and another former lieutenant of Sulla, Marcus Crassus (Bishop, 7). Caesar was a popular politician who was known for favoring the common peasant. Pompey was a political and military leader renowned for his victories in Italy and West Asia. Lastly, Marcus Crassus was a property speculator, the largest landowner and richest man in Rome. Angered that the senate constantly threw out their proposed bill, the alliance aimed to overcome the senate’s opposition by influencing Caesar’s election into the consul (Bishop, 7). Despite the senate’s efforts, Caesar is successfully elected in 59BCE and his entrance into the consul marked the beginning of the dialectical conflict.
By challenging the senators, enacting reform and expanding the Republic’s borders, Caesar asserted himself into government and gave potential to actualizing the reality of establishing a new government in place of the Republic. Since this reality was still implicit, as nothing had yet exteriorized it, no one was able to create an entire, new government. As a member of consul, the first law Caesar introduced distributed government owned land in Italy to the landless poor for the purpose of farming. This law did not receive explicit opposition from the senate, but neither did it receive explicit support (Bishop, 7). In 58BCE, Julius Caesar was designated governor of Cisalpine Gaul, Transalpine Gaul and Illyria for five years. Wanting dramatic military success, Caesar found an excuse to invade Gaul and earn what he always sought. In 53BCE, at the Battle of Carrhae, Marcus Crassus perished in war, effectively disbanding the alliance and deteriorating the relationship between Caesar and Pompey (Watkins). With Caesar still fighting in Gaul, Pompey revealed to Rome that he was truly ambivalent toward Caesar and proceeded to ally with Caesar’s enemies. The Roman senators demanded Caesar turn over his army’s control to the government, but Caesar chose a civil war over laying down his command. After forcing Pompey to flee and defeating the rest of his troops, Julius Caesar became the prominent figure of the Roman state, where he enforced his power as ‘dictator in perpetuity’ (Bishop, 7).
A group of senators feared for the safety of the Roman Republic so in 44BCE, they conspired against and successfully assassinated Julius Caesar at a senate meeting. Caesar’s removal from government served as the antithesis, or negation, to his assertion into government. Just like Socrates’ refutation, this antithesis would be impossible if Caesar initially failed to assert himself over the government. Caesar’s murder caused prominent figures still remaining in the Republic to fight for the right to govern it (Bishop, 8). The potential to create a new form of government had now been exteriorized by Caesar’s death because the remaining figures realized that whoever came out victorious, would govern the Roman Republic and be able to form an entire new government. Finally, fifteen years later, in 29BCE, Caesar’s great-nephew, Gaius Octavianus, returned to Rome as the unchallenged ruler of the Republic and started the process of ‘aufhebeng’. Octavianus maintained old republican political institutions by preserving the Senate, popular assemblies, and magisterial offices (Bishop, 8). On the contrary, him and his successors removed parts of the original government and built a system of imperial government that would tend to the empire’s vast territories and connect them with the capital (Bishop, 8). The government Octavianus created, which would come to be known as The Roman Empire, served as the synthesis for Caesar’s assertion into and removal from government by actualizing the original, implicit reality. Just like the politics in the Roman Republic and Empire, the legislation of United States presidencies can be analyzed and understood using Hegel’s dialectic schema.
Barack Obama was born in 1961 in the state of Hawaii, just two years after it was officially inaugurated. After graduating from Columbia University in 1983, Obama enrolled in Harvard Law School. He became a civil rights attorney while teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago and representing the 13th District for three terms (“President Barack Obama.”). Obama gained national attention from his landslide win during the November 2004 Senate election. Four years later, on November 4th, 2008, Obama defeated John McCain in the general election and became the first African American elected to serve as president. Obama was inaugurated on January 20th, 2009 and within the first few minutes, his Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, issued an order that suspended last-minute executive orders and regulations signed in by outgoing President George W. Bush (“Obama Halts All Regulations Pending Review.”). Additionally, he aimed to strengthen relations with the Middle East by immediately calling for what was to be a “new beginning” between the United States and the Muslim world (“Obama in Egypt Reaches out to Muslim World.”). To do this, Obama pursued a military strategy in the Middle East that emphasized drone strikes, special forces and diplomacy over large ground troop operations (Sanger). Just like his first few minutes in office, Obama’s eight years were characterized by significant accomplishments.
In November of 2009, President Obama announced the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an agreement between the United States and 11 other countries, which would bring jobs back to American soil and boost economic trade between the United States and Asia by increasing American exports to the Asia-Pacific region. The Asia-Pacific region is responsible for forty percent of global trade and includes some of the most robust economies (“Obama Administration Accomplishments”). The Trans-Pacific Partnership would eliminate 18,000 different tariffs placed on exporting goods produced domestically. Ninety-five percent of the world’s customers exist outside of the United States’ borders. The United States Trade Representative used a Vietnamese auto parts buyer as an example of a customer. A Vietnamese person would have to pay a twenty-seven percent tax on a part made in the United States but only a five percent tax on a part made in Thailand because of the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (“TPP Chapter Summary”). Obama was an advocate for free trade agreements because they allow a country’s exports to increase while creating additional jobs domestically.
Many times, during his presidency, Barack Obama described climate change to be the greatest long-term threat facing the world (Davis). In 2013, Obama bypassed Congress by directly ordering the EPA to place limits on carbon emissions. Additionally, in 2015, Obama unveiled the Clean Power Plan, which seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by twenty-six to twenty-eight percent by the year 2025 (Davenport). Obama’s campaign to fight climate change ended up finding more success at the international level than the national. At the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, nearly every country in the world agreed to a climate deal in which each nation committed lowering their greenhouse gas emissions. This deal, the Paris Agreement, was adopted by over 195 countries and attempted to create the, “bridge between today’s policies and climate neutrality before the end of the century” (“Paris Agreement”). In September 2016, toward the end of Obama’s second term, the United States joined China in participating in the first-ever, universal, legally binding global climate deal (Somander). Collectively, the United States and China contribute to over forty percent of global emissions so successfully entering into this deal with China was a major accomplishment for the Democratic Party.
One of Barack Obama’s most controversial actions during his presidency was when he established policy by a memorandum issued from the Department of Homeland Security. This policy allowed certain immigrants to escape deportation and receive a two-year work permit that was renewable if the applicant displayed good behavior. Those who were under the age of 31 on June 15, 2012, had come to the United States when they were younger than 16 and lived in the United States since 2007 were eligible to apply (Napolitano). This policy came to be known as the ‘Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals’, or more commonly, ‘DACA’. Many republicans opposed this program and denounced it as an abuse of executive power. In 2013, the House of Representatives voted 224 to 201 in favor of defunding the program, but since the program is almost entirely funded by application fees, Congress did not have the power to do so (Werner). DACA continued to be an active program until the end of Obama’s second term. Barack Obama wasn’t elected into the White House because of his experience nor for his role as a party leader. Obama hadn’t served as a governor of a state or as a general in the army. He didn’t even inherit the presidency because of an impeachment or death. Obama was elected purely for himself: his message, his persona and what he symbolized.
Donald Trump was born and raised in the Queens borough of New York City. After earning an economic degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Trump purchased his family’s real estate business and expanded it to involve the construction and renovation of skyscrapers, hotels, casinos, and golf courses (“Donald J. Trump.”). He went on to start various side ventures while making sure he remained in the light of the media. Donald Trump co-authored several books and produced and hosted The Apprentice, a reality game show on television. Over his years as a businessman, Trump gained notoriety for his racist and sexist views, which he made obvious during his campaign (Baker). Trump entered the 2016 presidential race as a Republican and defeated sixteen opponents in the primaries. Like Obama, Trump didn’t win because of his experience in government. Donald Trump was elected purely for himself: his message, his persona and what he symbolized. In his announcement speech, Trump drew attention to illegal immigration, offshoring of American jobs, the U.S. national debt, and Islamic terrorism (Trump). After defeating Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump became the oldest and wealthiest person ever to assume the presidency, the first without prior military or government service, and the fifth to have won the election despite losing the popular vote.
Once his position as the 45th President of the United States was secured, on November 21st, 2016, in a video message, Trump introduced an economic strategy that negotiates “fair, bilateral trade deals that bring jobs and industry back onto American shores.” (“Trump Says US to Quit TPP on First Day in Office.”). As part of this plan, Trump confirmed that the United States intents to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership on his first day in office. Two months later, on January 23rd, 2017, President Trump signed an executive order to withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Though Trump’s actions were criticized by other politicians like John McCain, Senator Bernie Sanders applauded Trump for pulling out of the partnership. Sanders believes that the Unites States participates in too many free trade agreements, “that cost us millions of decent-paying jobs and a ‘race to the bottom’, which has lowered wages for American workers.” (Smith). As recently as January 9th, 2018, the United States Environmental Protection Agency announced an agenda for the year that is set to replace Obama’s Clean Power Plan and Waters of the United States rule (Reuters Staff). Additionally, according to the fiscal 2019 proposal released on February 12th, 2018, the United States government plans to reduce the EPA’s budget by $2.5 billion, almost twenty-three percent (Dennis). On March 8, 2018, Donald Trump signed an order imposing import tariffs of twenty-five percent on steel and ten percent on aluminum, with exemptions for Canada, Mexico, and possibly other countries (“Trump Tariffs: US President Imposes Levy on Steel and Aluminium.”). Lastly, on September 5th, 2017, Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, announced that the ‘Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals’ program was being repealed. Sessions claimed that the DACA eligible individuals were lawbreakers who adversely impacted the wages and employment of native-born Americans (Smith). Sessions also attributed DACA as a leading cause behind the surge in unaccompanied minors coming to the United States from Central America. Regardless of whether the Trump administration’s decisions were correct, it’s legislative actions are negations of Obama’s implementation of the law.
The implementation of Barack Obama’s policies served as a thesis for this dialectical conflict. Donald Trump’s complete removal and replacement of Barack Obama’s policies will serve as an antithesis for this dialectic. Just like Socrates’ refutation and Caesar’s murder, Donald Trump’s complete removal and replacement of Barack Obama’s policies would be impossible if Barack Obama had initially failed to even implement the policies. Currently, the reality one is concerned with is still implicit because it has not been fully exteriorized yet. For reality to be exteriorized, the thesis needs to be fully negated by the antithesis. For example, currently, the Trump administration is having legal issues with the rescission of DACA as it is being challenged in court by fifteen different states. Once the Trump administration is able to completely repeal the actions of the Obama administration, the antithesis will have formed, and reality will become explicit and able to be actualized. If President Trump is able to fully repeal Obama’s policies, the general public should be able to realize that electing a president from the far Right directly after a president from the far Left will make no progress. The general public should understand, in order to make progress, they must elect a president that is able to serve as the synthesis for the dialectic. The general public must elect a president that is moderate, not democratic or republican. The reality one is concerned with here is of a presidency that is a synthesis of Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
If Donald Trump is successful in completely removing Barack Obama’s policies, according to Hegel’s dialectical method, what should result with the next presidency is a synthesis that removes the flaws from Obama’s policies while preserving the superior ideas. The process of ‘aufhebeng’ would sublate Obama’s superior ideas with the policies of Trump in order to form what should be a more sophisticated president. If Trump’s modifications to the Environmental Protection Agency results in an overall worsening of the United States’ environmental quality, then the original restrictions placed by Obama would be captured in the synthesis of the next president. Contrarily, if Trump’s repealing of DACA resulted in a lowering of unaccompanied minors coming to the United States from Central America, then Trump’s repeal of DACA would be captured in the synthesis of the next president. This careful analysis would be done for each legislative action taken by either president. Additionally, according to Hegel’s spiral evolution of higher thinking, the next president would serve as the thesis for another dialectical conflict. Through Hegel’s spiral evolution, one is able to eliminate less critical thinking, but must depend on an antithesis to exteriorize reality and actualize higher thinking. One is unable to conclude whether the action taken by the thesis is best serving the country until an antithesis is able to negate that action and exteriorize the implicit reality. The next presidency will be a synthesis of the past two only if President Trump is able to fully negate President Obama’s policies.
Works Cited
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