The Unusual Memo of Kenneth Spencer and Sofia Haugen, Political Correspondent (Unofficial)

MEMO BIT UP HERE

Director Frost,

Here's the memo on the Three Portlands political situation you were asking for. Sorry about the format. My local source thought she was writing a listicle for the Five Boroughs Inquirer, an anomalous newspaper we set up as a front company a few years ago. I've annotated it heavily for readability. Unfortunately, so has she.

— Spencer

THREE PORTLANDS POLITICAL PARTIES

RANKED BY HOW MUCH THEY SCARE ME

Three Portlands has more political parties per capita than anywhere else in the world,¹ and all of them scare me shitless.²

Cyborgs and Wizards and Cyborg Wizards

The Pan-Portland Pirate Party ("4P")

Leader:
Prominent Members: (The alleged ghost of) Edward "Blackbeard" Teach;
Position & Ideology: Radical left; direct democracy, freedom of information, municipal letters of marque.
Fear Factor:

Maxwellist Democratic Union

Leader:
Prominent Members:
Position & Ideology: Center-left to left-wing; ~~Christian~~ Mechanite Democracy,
Fear Factor:

The Portlands Occult Coalition

yeah yeah yeah it's the fuckin united nations blue helmet wizard death squads. this is basically the ICSUT party.

Leader:
Prominent Members:
Position & Ideology: Centrist;
Fear Factor:

The Elf Zone

The Sidhe Loyalist Union ("Seelie Party")

Leader:
Prominent Members:
Position & Ideology: Center-right; Monarchism, Conservatism, Sidhe Nationalism.
Fear Factor:

The Avalonic Constitutional Front ("Unseelie Party")

The main party of the Unseelie Coalition,

Leader: Gwenhwyfar Thistleblossom
Prominent Members:
Position & Ideology: Center-left; Constitutional Monarchism, Liberalism, Sidhe Nationalism.
Fear Factor:

Sinn Fein (Sidhe)

in an uneasy coalition with the constitutional monarchist Unseelie Party. occasionally picks up a council seat if the unseelie party loses their second seat.

Leader:
Prominent Members:
Position & Ideology: Left-wing; Sidhe Republicanism, Democratic Socialism, Left-Wing Nationalism.
Fear Factor:

Perverts and Sickos

The Libertarian Party

I'm not saying that all Libertarians are pedophiles. But I am saying that way too many of them have strong opinions on the age of consent, and mostly that opinion is that it's too high.

Leader:
Prominent Members:
Position & Ideology: Right-wing; Libertarianism.
Fear Factor:

Pharos, The People Party

Originally a mob front; now that the Lighthouse Mafia is mostly defunct, it's a refuge for bitcoin sickos and tech-bro douchebags who want to "run the city like a business". Fewer pedophiles than the libertarians, but more of them have actually been convicted.

Leader:
Prominent Members: Mallard Wiggins, former candidate for Deer Student Body President;
Position & Ideology: Right-wing; Cryptocurrency, Technocracy, Artificial Intelligence.
Fear Factor:

The Aryan People's National Socialist Sorcerers' League

Fascists.

Leader:
Prominent Members:
Position & Ideology: Far-right; Wizard Supremacy, White Nationalism, National Socialism.
Fear Factor:

The Normal Party

Fascists.

Leader:
Prominent Members:
Position & Ideology: Far-right; Human Supremacy, White Nationalism, National Socialism.
Fear Factor:

The Rest

The Greeen Party (sic)

Weed has never been illegal in Three Portlands, and these guys are going to keep it that way.

Leader:
Prominent Members:
Position & Ideology: Left-wing; Cannabis Legalization.
Fear Factor:

Leader:
Prominent Members:
Position & Ideology:
Fear Factor:

paralaw dossier 2, this time it's a voter guide for 3portlands municipal elections

MTB — Today at 2:00 PM
it's kenneth Spencer writing a memo trying to explain 3ports politics to Frost
and
he also doesn't get it
so he enlists the assistance of someone who does
perhaps. an intrepid reporter
maybe
unless that's dumb

griffin — Today at 2:01 PM
hahahhaha
sofia haugen knows nothing about politics. thankfully, she knows a lot about sports, and in three portlands? it's all the same thing
there are technically political parties. some of them, like the Libertarian party, are actually the same ones we've got in the US.
But it's a small city with an autocratic god-mayor

MTB — Today at 2:04 PM
the unusual memorandum of kenneth spencer and sofia haugen (confidential informant (she doesn't know she's an informant))

griffin — Today at 2:04 PM
and so mostly political parties are a combination of organized crime family and sports club. like the new england patriots

griffin — Today at 2:05 PM
sofia thinks she's been hired to write a listicle
and spencer is annotating it so it's readable

MTB — Today at 2:08 PM
the way they do elections with single transferrable vote also encourages lots of small parties with a network of alliances and agreements
everyone runs their own guy, and tells their people to vote for [allied party] as their second preference
so elections are less like public campaigns and more about candidates courting community leaders and interest groups to get enough support
very old school, machine style politics

griffin — Today at 2:10 PM
Ba'ath Party
Sinn Fein
Libertarian Party
Pirate Party
Privateer Party
Labor Party
Labour Party

MTB — Today at 2:10 PM
Sinn Fein (Continuity IRA)

griffin — Today at 2:11 PM
the Unseelie People's Party and the Seelie Loyalist Party

MTB — Today at 2:11 PM
honestly there's probably not super strong party identities in general outside of the sidhe ethnic parties

griffin — Today at 2:11 PM
most of these parties are like. fifty guys

MTB — Today at 2:11 PM
like, it's personality/bosses

griffin — Today at 2:11 PM
yeah

MTB — Today at 2:11 PM
a dude and his cronies

Lyusternik — Today at 2:16 PM
Other representational oddities to potentially borrow from real life oddities:
some spin on rotten boroughs?
whatever wacky thing Hong Kong always had where groups of corporations/unions/certain lower bodies got to elect their own representative, outside of the traditional apportionment

[REDACTED FOR BREVITY]³

Footnotes

1. With over 400 registered political parties, Three Portlands has one party for every 200 residents. Over half of these parties have between one and five members, and 95% have fewer than 50 members. This excludes the parties registered to a Mr. Georg Attercop, the municipal ornamental hermit, who lives in an artificial grotto on the grounds of City Hall and registers over a dozen political parties every day. He is an outlier, and should not be counted. — Spencer

2. This is a lie, by the way. Most of them are too ineffectual to worry me. I haven't included them in the article. My apologies to Ralph Nader's Ghost and his Consumer Protection Party; we don't have cars here, so you're just not gonna get anywhere running on seatbelt laws.

3. The remainder of this entry was a seven-thousand-word erotic fanfiction in which a thinly-veiled self-insert of Ms. Haugen had sexual relations with a variety of local political figures. I believe the full text is available on Ms. Haugen's Archive Of Our Own page, which is linked on her blog.