#electing not to put this in any major tags. just in case
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Has Roxy or any of the others ever attempted to actually kill Gregory for real after everything, be it for shattering them or allegedly trying to kill Cassie or something else? If yes, how? How did it go? What or who stopped them? How was the aftermath of the whole thing?
Kill Gregory? No. Severely tempted, but no attempts.
Freddy however? Yes. Absolutely.
This got long so I'm putting it under a cut.
I think it would be really funny if DJ accidentally almost killed him. Least likely you'd think to do it, but he saw him near the others in the Fazcade and saw red. And by saw red, I mean he kinda just slapped Freddy across the room and wasn't paying attention to how much strength he put into it lmao. That or he picked him up and yeeted him, also not paying enough attention to how much power he used. Roxy checked him and was genuinely disappointed it just almost killed him
On that note, Roxy has made an actual attempt. If Freddy did his fucking job none of them would have had their parts taken, the Plex may not have gone to ruin, and Cassie may not have even gone to the Plex looking for Gregory to get to be dropped like she was, nevermind the fact if Freddy was with him he should have stopped him again. She's mad. Baby on the warpath lmao
She said she wanted to have a real conversation with him about what went down and he agreed to meet her at the salon maybe. Or maybe the room where Bonnie's body was for the added meaning if this is a timeline where Roxy was forced to deactivate him in there. Like "this is the room I had to deactivate your boyfriend in." and he's like "wot" and yeah that'd be dramatic as fuck. Anyway, she tricks him into meeting her, she beats the everloving shit out of him, targetting the areas the rest of them were hurt in the most (including Cassie), then rips his battery out for Bonnie. Of course, he deactivates with no power source and that's when she has the opportunity to actually kill him but she genuinely can't bring herself to do it. She's not a killer at heart, she couldn't do it.
Instead, she drags his ass down to parts and services and if it's doable, she removes the upgraded parts from him and replaces them with the old ones he had. Lets some automated repair thing do its job and fucks off. He's fine. She barely had a scratch on her despite him obviously fighting back so it's easy to brush off.
Oh you know what actually? Imagine that, but Bonnie did it.
Can you imagine that? Bonnie loved him. He's realised what's happened, what really happened, and that Freddy did nothing. The utter betrayal, the sheer grief of what he's done... if he still has the parts, it makes him boil to look at him and see Roxy's eyes looking back at him, hear the slight clicks from Chica's voicebox when he speaks, and Monty's claws waving at him.
He does the same as I mentioned. He doesn't say a word to anyone. He says he wants to talk to Freddy alone about everything that's happened and Freddy, of course, agrees. He still loves him after all. He'd do anything Bonnie asked of him, making it a little too easy to get him by himself.
If the bit about Roxy deactivating him in that room behind the bowling lanes is true here, that's where he takes Freddy. He tells him what happened here and Freddy doesn't really know what to say. Clearly, he's upset that Roxy did that though. He'd assumed it was Monty. Bonnie tells him that he's caused enough pain and it's about time someone put an end to it. Freddy doesn't understand until Bonnie jumps him. He yells that this is for Chica as he goes for the voicebox, this is for Monty as he breaks his wrists, this is for Cassie as he struggles and rips his leg out of the socket, and this is for Roxy as he destroys his eyes.
He puts his hand on Freddy's battery through the ruined stomach hatch doors. "And this is for me." he growls, tears falling fast. Freddy goes still when the battery is removed. Bonnie moves to his head where all of his personality chips are stored. "This... this is for us..." he says even though he can't be heard. He tries... but he can't do it. He's been screaming and crying this whole time as he gives him what he feels he deserves, but this hurts more than before this so called justice was served.
He can't do it. Freddy's face is stained with tears too. He just can't bring himself to do it. Everything hurts so much.
Finally, Roxy and her Minis show up. Either they only just saw him through the walls, or Helpi alerted her to something being up if she doesn't have her fancy eyes now. She finds him on his knees, clinging to Freddy's head and scream sobbing into him. She doesn't know what to do for a long few moments, but eventually goes to his side to offer the most support she can.
She doesn't exactly cover up what happened. She just makes sure Freddy ends up in parts and services and doesn't say a word. Not like anyone's gonna ask. She does alert the others that Bonnie could do with some love and they have him buried in support before he can blink. Cassie gives him doctor's orders to stay in the Fazcade with everyone and he ends up camping out there for maybe a month or two minimum. He says he wishes he'd done it, but he also cries about how he had no idea why it would help. He tells them what happened, even though Roxy doesn't mention it and yeah he's not leaving their sight for a good while now. Not cause he might try again, but so they can make sure to be there for him when he's struggling instead of letting his emotions fester into this.
On another note, I think the Minis could make an attempt. There's enough of them to overwhelm Freddy if need be and it would be incredibly unexpected. Poppet the one leading this one, Freddy is disabled somehow by them but not deactivated. Poppet's reaching for his chips to destroy them, when Roxy barrels in with Bobbin and Tippy. They were set to distract her but they both cracked like eggs and she came to put a stop to it. They don't understand why she'd do that or why she'd care about whether Freddy lives or dies, and the truth is, she doesn't. But is Freddy worth having blood on their hands forever? Is he worth having to deal with that for the rest of their lives? Wouldn't it be more satisfying to not let him take the easy way out of this? Is he worth robbing Chica, Monty, Cassie, Sunny, Moon and DJ of their own justice?
If this works, Freddy thanks her... and immediately gets punched hard enough his head does a full 360. She didn't fucking save him. She just made sure her oldest friends knew he wasn't fucking worth it. If he goes anywhere near the Minis again, they're gonna be the least of his fucking worries.
Anyway, the aftermath of all of these (except DJ's since he recognises that was an accident) is that Freddy realises he's not safe here. Be it because of Roxy, the Minis or Bonnie, he no longer feels safe. Or maybe he does because he believes they've got it out of their system and/or was deactivated before he realised they were gonna kill him. Bonnie's hurts the most though. The betrayal hurts like hell and he wonders if this is what all the others felt when he left them. He just now considers that maybe he deserved this... I mean he doesn't, but he's gonna start Thinking about it at least. I think Bonnie is the only option that would really upset him. He could expect this kind of shit from Roxy and the Minis, but Bonnie? Never.
It was supposed to be Freddy and Bonnie, forever and ever... but apparently, forever doesn't last as long as he thought it did.
Anyway, Gregory would be furious, I don't think that'd go over well at all, and Vanessa would.... probably also be a little mad, but incredibly torn cause like. Yeah. She can see why. She really hates being stuck in the middle of all of this...
That's just some ideas to chew on though. I'm not sure it would ever come to this kind of thing, but you never know! Could be a fun story! Especially for pain and misery!
#it's 6am now my nightshift at the haunted pizzeria is over now lmao#anyway#pop rox answers#electing not to put this in any major tags. just in case
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After reading your tags on the culture shock poll, I'm shook. I always thought southern states were basically 90% conservative and everyone else there should just leave. Feeling kinda stupid now after I looked some stuff up. I didn't realize Texas has one of the highest populations of trans people in the nation. I feel so bad for them :(
Ah, that was more or less a personal ramble but I'm always glad to hear my words had a positive effect on someone. Good on you for being willing to learn and use that information to evolve your views. Don't feel stupid, that required a lot of humility and I'm glad you cared enough to say something about it.
I hear a lot of people expressing sentiments that imply or outright say Southern red states are a lost cause. After coming of age as a queer person in Texas, I don't accept that. The South has a very complicated, often ugly history and a lot of the current culture is still influenced by the far-reaching effects of the Civil War, among other things. Texas in particular is a special case, due to its very messy origin story.
But ultimately, it's important to remember that the population of any red state is made up of real, diverse human beings. These places aren't monoliths of gun-toting, Trump-loving, alt-right Republicans. Hell, a surprising amount of Southern folks are liberal, and even more are "moderate" enough to be reasoned with and are capable of changing their views, when given the right opportunity. Just look at Texas' recent elections--Beto O'Rourke, a Democrat, won 43.8% of the latest vote for governor. Almost half the voting population voted for a pro-gun control, pro-choice, pro-LGBT+ candidate. Let that sink in.
These states are largely controlled by Republicans and their political maps are drawn by Republicans, which means the right can almost always manipulate things in their favor. Texas has an almost total abortion ban now and they're a huge participant of the current wave of anti-trans legislation. That doesn't mean the majority population wants that and a number of people are experiencing real pain, suffering, and even death as a consequence. When I talk about these things, I'm often asked why I didn't stay and fight. My answer usually comes back to a simple "I didn't like the weather." I moved for my health to a climate my body is better suited to handle. That just happened to come with the benefit of living in a state that protects my civil rights as a trans-spectrum individual capable of pregnancy. Meanwhile, my new state has taken multiple steps to become a refuge for reproductive freedom and gender-affirming care. We've not only protected those rights, we've also recently passed a bill that bars state officials from cooperating with other states' investigations when their residents come here to access those services. I couldn't be happier about it. Yet, I still miss so much of the culture I grew up with. I miss the food, the music, the wildflower meadows in the spring, the fireflies and dewberry vines in the summer, the autumn bonfire parties where we'd tack up the horses and watch the kiddos' faces light up when we put them in the saddle, the winter afternoons eating hot chili and listening to everyone complain about the forty-degree cold as if it were the end of days--without a speck of snow to be seen. "Y'ain't" is a common word in my vocabulary and I still wear cowboy boots built for riding. I grew up rural Southern and I loved a lot about it, it'll always be part of who I am.
Now, if I were still in Texas and my health wasn't a concern, would I move for political reasons now that things have gotten so bad? Absolutely. I don't need to justify that. Texas doesn't just have one of the highest populations of trans people in the USA, it also has one of the highest trans homicide and suicide rates. The things I love about my home state don't outweigh the danger of losing my life for expressing my genderfluidity or the risk of being forced to have a child I don't want. In fact, we're seeing the start of outreach efforts to railroad at-risk trans people and people needing abortions out of red states, to states where they can safely access the care they need and escape dangerous environments. That illustrates the crux of the issue: not everyone can "just" leave. My cross-country move cost almost $5k up front. Leaving requires money, finding suitable work and housing, traveling a long distance, and it often means leaving family and friends behind, sometimes pets too. Relationships will weaken or be lost under the strain of long-distance communication. Moving means uprooting your entire life to establish a new one somewhere else, and a positive result isn't guaranteed. Then there's the fact that not everyone wants to leave. Saying the only solution is "just leave," is not only inconsiderate and a cruel demand that people leave their entire support system behind so they stop complaining, it's also inherently classist. Poverty is a driving factor for the politics of Southern states. The minimum wage is $7.25, workers' rights are practically non-existent, food deserts are all over, the education system is underfunded, and the infrastructure is barely holding itself together. I grew up impoverished and I've even been homeless. I only got out of poverty because I married into the middle class. Remember: Republicans in power want to keep their constituents poor and under-educated so they're easy to control. That's how fascism operates.
Southern states need members of the left-wing to stay and work to change things. However, at-risk populations shouldn't bear that responsibility alone, and they shouldn't feel pressured to do so at the risk of their own lives. We've had enough martyrs for a lifetime. Don't slip into the mindset of blaming victims for the fascism they've suffered, as not one of them asked for this. Next time you hear about a horrible bill out of a red state, please respond with support and sympathy for the people who'd do anything to change it, but can't.
Anyway, this turned into a huge post. That tends to happen as a result of me being a sociology student who's very invested in politics. Additions to this post are quite welcome, if anyone else would like to contribute to the conversation.
#anon#logan answers#us politics#texas#red states#american south#antifascist#on politics#vampirepunks lore
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I'm going to write a long ass thing about the Hudson and Rex show through the seasons, inspired by the rewatch posts that I've been seeing. It's not a review, though. It's just how I saw it from my point of view. Also, I reserve the right to make "The Great Hudson and Rex Rewatch of [insert year]" tag if and when I rewatch it and review episodes individually then.
So, if anyone followed this blog circa early 2020 (pre pandemic), I'd probably made a "Oh my god there is a new Rex adaptation and this time it's in English!" post. I don't remember it, but I know I'd told quite a few people online and off when I had found out. Also, so lame that I found out when they were already in S2 but anyway.
Right off the bat, I realized that the people making Hudson and Rex had not quite understood the assignment. The premise of the show and the cases were never meant to be light and fluffy like the dog. Instead, the dog was supposed to be the counterweight, the uplifting part. Most cases were supposed to be grimy and dark. Creepy. With bad guys that would make your skin crawl. Instead, Hudson and Rex mostly had bad guys that were pretty tame, aside from a few notable exceptions. And they put a guy on the helm of this show that was previously scripting kid shows, I mean, that's enough to tell me they weren't meaning to get deep into it.
It's also why for me the show got way better after S2 (when they changed showrunners). Which was, let's face it, ginormous and never ending (not having any info on when it was supposed to end also had made it seem that way from my part, as literally no tv scheduler of mine had that info back then). To be fair, another reason was because I wasn't invested at the time, and I wasn't invested because I'd seen how light the show was and how unwilling everyone involved was to go a bit deeper into it (from the writers to the producers to the cast). And I think I initially noticed a few signs that that was changing in S3, which allowed me to get more invested into it. [Note: I still maintain that the last few episodes aside from the finale of S2 were pretty good, but they aired at a point where I was already wondering where the hell the season ended.]
Onward to season 3. For a season that had been produced in a difficult period of time under difficult circumstances, with Covid and the crime shows being accused of copaganda, a few, let's say, unusual choices were made. Still, that season was better and way more interesting than the other two. And not as long, which helped. Again, the premise of the show was never supposed to be 20 episodes per season, it is very taxing on the cast, on the dog, and to everyone who has to perform and do their best in a shorter amount of time. So, S3 had 16 episodes, and it fared better. There were stakes, they played a bit more with the romance between Charlie and Sarah, things were moving. Somewhat.
Kudos to them for electing not to put Covid in their world. I'm not necessarily against that but I didn't need it to be inserted into every show I was watching. Also, kudos to them for Charlie's new house, it's really nice (although I will repeat that I'm not sure how exactly he could afford it).
And then we get to season 4, and boy oh boy, have I ever misjudged a season so much. I mean, if it hadn't been so poorly executed, I'd have said that it was all my fault for being impatient. Do you ever see how things will turn out early on, guess all the major plot points that would happen, and then say to yourself, "No, that's not it, because there's no way they'd do such and such and such to make that happen, it's so stupid"? This is what happened here. And I'm not sure what had frustrated me more back then, that I had thought I'd been wrong about where S4 was headed or that the more we were hitting the plot points that I had anticipated would happen, the more disjointed the story was becoming. Like an orchestra that was playing a known score out of tune the entire time. I'm not sure whether I'd choose the word dissonance or discordance for it, but if we were to isolate the moments, they were actually good. The angst was good. The pining, very good. But as a whole, it didn't always make sense and that was frustrating, as it made it hard to guess everyone's intentions and motive behind their actions.
A lot of my issues had to do with how they were writing Sarah's character as well in that season because as an audience, I should know whether she had actually truly tried to move on from her crush on Charlie or she was dating because she didn't think her feelings were reciprocated and Michael was just... there. That would have made a difference. But I suspect that it was very intentional to not give anything away, though that doesn't mean I have to like it or more importantly that it was executed in a sensible way. Charlie's spiral into what in other shows would have endangered his career (not here, though, no, sir) was great and I would have liked to have seen way more of that, and more of his friends worrying about him, and more of him pulling away from everyone and having that acknowledged. I'd have liked to see him more upset too. More importantly, I'd have liked to see a real reason for his character regression other than "the girl I like doesn't like me back :'( " like for example, the dozens of times he had been in a traumatizing situation. That, combined with what he assumed was unrequited feelings, would have made a perfect cocktail of explosive emotions.
To be honest, I don't understand why the perception of the fandom to this day is the same as it was when we were going through the episodes of S4 because post season clarity offers a different perspective entirely. It's understandable to be upset when you watch it unfold in real time. That's what the rewatches are for, to see the season as a whole. Yes, a few decisions on the script were hare-brained [I still don't understand how Sarah went from "I forgive you Michael for lying to me about important stuff and we're good and making headway in our relationship" to "I don't know where this is going" in two episodes, and the only logical (non-episode shuffling) explanation is that she was just waiting for Charlie to express his feelings, whom in her place I'd have punched and refuse to call a friend anymore if he had waited to find the courage, or more like the audacity, to express his feelings just as he thought he was losing the woman he wanted to another man when said woman was free a few months ago]. But to me, the emotions the episodes elicited regarding their relationship were always more like "oh these damn fools don't see what's right in front of them" and not "I want to stop watching this bullshit right now". It is actually very similar to Castle's S4, although the execution on Castle did not make me want to cuss Andrew Marlowe. With Peter Mitchell, well, I can't say the same thing.
Anyway, as we can probably safely assume right now, a lot of their relationship and whether it would progress or not had been hanging on a wire. The actual cliffhanger and some of the interviews pretty much confirm that theory. And I assume that probably influenced the execution too. So, I'm giving it a bit of slack.
Going on to S5, we flat-lined and I'll explain that. I'd have liked to be able to say that it was better than S4 but it wasn't. It wasn't worse either but it was really bland at times. And it gave me the impression that they were given more episodes than they could handle. I'll say it again, this show should never have 20 episodes ever again, it puts a big strain on everyone.
What was good about S5 was that it gave characters other than Charlie and Rex, mainly Joe and Jesse, a few more moments to shine. It also had one of the best season finales of the show so far. No, I don't need a character in danger of dying every time to call it a good finale, but I do need the season finale to be intense and high stakes. Which did not happen in S2, S3, and damn, I don't even know which one to call season finale in S1. Imagine that.
They wasted two perfectly good episodes for me by making up an entire set of new characters for a two-parter that I could have sworn was serving as backdoor pilot, but wasn't. I still don't know what that was. Again, the only logical explanation was that they were given episodes (and money) that they didn't know how to put to good use. Those were two pretty good episodes that could be a part of most crime shows, but they were not Hudson and Rex episodes. Not if we consider the premise of this show. Everyone was separated, Charlie was off doing his own thing (I won't get into availability issues, as a production it is most embarrassing to not be able to find a viable schedule for your main lead and I refuse to cut any production slack for that), and Rex was literally thrown to the wolves.
The most bland part for me in S5 was the middle. The pace of the episodes really struggled there. And then suddenly it moved in what I saw as an accelerated pace, the two-parter and the last four episodes seemed like they had come out of a different show or different season, if you were to look at the mellow pace of the season up to that point.
Again, I must note the lack of transferability of emotions, consequences, experiences, etc., from one season to the next. However, I must also say that they made a bit more of an effort to bring back people, characters, and storylines in S5 to remind us of past seasons, even though they mainly stuck to the small things.
For me, it was a big mistake to make Charlie be the perfect guy again after S4. He had been struggling, and no one can convince me that behaviors such as what he had exhibited before were only because he was feeling rejected and was "cured" like magic in the next season. And it shouldn't be that way, he has gone through some serious stuff, which the show is trying to downplay all the time.
Also, the cop's "white whale" case is a pretty common trope. It should be decided by the writers before the scripting of S1. Otherwise, we have them not reacting appropriately to the dozens of similar cases that they come across until the writers decide what the cop's white whale case is supposed to be. Taking a couple of seasons to write it is usual. Deciding that in S5? I've personally never seen it happen and I've been watching crime shows for more than two decades now. Retconning is a huge favorite with the writers of this show.
Charlie and Sarah's relationship development was a big feature in S5, and it was mostly good stuff. I didn't like that they didn't have one fight but their stability was also nice. And when I say one fight, I dislike manufactured drama that comes out of nowhere but there are so many significant reasons, especially when they keep getting in danger, to have a fight. Now that I'm thinking about it, the tagline of S5 should be "stability".
Jesse growing up and going for detective was something I wasn't expecting, and you can also see the progress of that storyline somewhat in S5, and Joe coming to terms with the fact that Jesse can do this. He was pretty much the last one that needed to be convinced of this, the way I see it.
I'm refraining from making comments about S6 since we've only watched 6 episodes. I want to see where that ends up. The only comment I'll make regarding that is that I don't think the production company cares much about anything other than Charlie and Rex, it's basically up to individual writers and the showrunner to write anything else, and, regardless of how fans perceive S4, we should be glad to have had someone like Peter Mitchell at the helm of the show, who made any kind of meaningful change between Charlie and Sarah, because it doesn't seem like anybody else was willing to put their ass on the line for those two.
All in all, this is a show that it seems to me like from the start, not a lot of people believed in it, despite evidence that people in the other side of the world had once loved it (and since it already had another adaptation, I'd have called it a safe bet). It's certainly in a better place now than it was when it had its first season, it terms of production, performance, and creativity, and I think that sometimes we forget that because we've watched like 90 episodes. No, it doesn't always meet my expectations but maybe I also shouldn't compare it to the dozens of shows I've watched which certainly have a bigger budget than this one, which don't depend on dog tricks to get people's attention (I don't say this to make fun of the show, dog tricks is what they do, it's like half of the show). But I also cannot refrain from criticizing mistakes that could have easily been avoided, had they made a little more effort.
#hudson and rex#holy shit that got away from me#not my best work in terms of cohesion#also not much rex in there and that's because I never have an issue with their partnership or the dog stunts and such they are good#the issues are like everything else lol#the 'human and dog solve crimes' aspect is usually pretty good#but you need to blend it well with the rest of the ingredients to make something nice
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the sun has not yet fallen
pairing: bakugou katsuki x gn!reader
word count: 2.2k
excerpt: You look back towards the setting sun just once. You don’t really know why. Perhaps to find some bravery in the beauty of it, to steal yourself a few extra seconds of this limbo you’ve found yourself in. Where everything is hazy and beautiful and hurts so bad you can hardly breathe.
a/n: me: i hate angst
also me: writes this fic
tags: angst, hurt/comfort, sometimes love requires work
in case you want to read it on ao3!
Katsuki is in a bad mood. He was uncharacteristically quiet when he walked through the door which is more often than not a sign he was trying his damndest to hold back saying something just a bit too cruel. And you appreciate the effort, truly you do.
On any other day, you would’ve let him be to work through his shit alone. He usually does that by cooking up something far too elaborate for a weekday night, and then after decompressing for a bit, he tends to slink back into whichever room you’re in and lay his head on your lap so you can work your fingers through his hair.
You’ve found over the last two years that that is what tends to work best. Giving him space and letting him come to you.
But today you’re feeling just as raw as he does. You can’t remember the last time you spent quality time together. You can’t remember the last time he didn’t go to bed so exhausted he was out before his head hit the pillow. You can’t remember the last time you didn’t feel this heavy cloud hanging over your head. You can’t remember a moment where there wasn't a timer counting down and down and down while you do nothing but wait for it to hit zero. You’re not quite sure what will happen when your time is up.
It’s selfish, probably, to want to be with him right now when you know he’s so weary, but you won’t even bother him, is what you tell yourself. You just want to be around him for an hour (or two) you want to stand so close to him you can smell the ever clinging scent of caramel and help him with dinner and think of brighter days. Better days.
(You want things to go back to the way they were before. You want to cling to him, just for a short while, stuff your face into the crook of his neck while he tells you everything’s okay. That you guys are okay.
But that’s for another day. It has to be.
How many times have you told yourself that?)
You follow him as he stomps towards the kitchen.
He aggressively grabs the ingredients for whatever he’s making and slams them on the counter, grumbling under his breath the whole time. You stand in the doorway worrying your hands, feeling awkward, and hating that you feel awkward in your own kitchen with your own boyfriend.
It makes that awful nagging voice in your head grow just a bit louder.
You approach him slowly while he sets up a pot filled with water and turns on the stove. He’s still grumbling to himself by the time you place your hand softly on his forearm.
He jerks away immediately and narrows his eyes. You viciously stamp down exactly how awful that makes you feel. How small and unloved.
“What do you want?” he says bluntly (and a little cruelly but a part of you says just ignore it, maybe if you close your eyes and cover your ears you can pretend that everything is fine, that you guys are fine) .
That was part of his charm when you two first started dating. You loved that he was blunt, that he got to the point, there was really no guessing what Katsuki was thinking because he’d simply tell you and if it were any other day perhaps his words wouldn’t have bothered you as much as they did now.
And it’s partly your fault, or maybe even mostly. Because you let it get this bad. You could have told him something was bothering you, that lately, you’ve been feeling a little insecure in this relationship. Katsuki was blunt but very rarely if ever cruel with you or your feelings. He would’ve understood, probably.
But anytime you thought about broaching the subject with him, he always looked so, so tired. Bone tired. And you thought maybe it was selfish, to want him to comfort you over something this dumb. Over something as frivolous as this. He just needs time.
(How much time, you wonder. How much more can you take? you ask yourself.)
“Are you fucking braindead or something,” he snaps, dragging you out of your spiraling.
“I was just wondering if I could help. It’d be nice to cook dinner together.” We use to do it all the time, you almost say. Now you can’t even remember the last time you did.
“You’re a shit cook,” he says.
It’s true, and on another day, a brighter day maybe, you would’ve laughed. Or at least smiled. Because it was true. You are an awful cook, a shit one, as he so eloquently put it, especially compared to him. But that never mattered to Katsuki before.
He always let you cook with him, always wanted you to cook with him, even if the majority of the time you ended up sitting on the counter swinging your legs and watching him do all the work.
To be fair, afterward, you always cleaned the dishes. It was a lovely, simplistic give and take, one you wish you had again so, so dearly.
“Yeah, I am,” you agree. You try to smile, but it feels forced. You’re tired, you realize, bone tired.
You don’t say anything else and he turns away. You know that’s technically a dismissal but you elect to ignore and start unwrapping the vegetables.
Just as you reach for a knife he grabs your wrist.
“What the fuck is up with you right now?” he grounds out.
“I just want to spend some time with you.”
Your voice sounds frail, even to your own ears.
And before he even opens his mouth you know what he’s about to say is going to bring all this to a head. And from the look on his face and the awful, gnawing in your gut, you know you’re not going to like it. You know that more likely than not, it’s going to break your heart.
(A part of you can’t help but wonder if maybe your heart has already been broken. That it’s made up of haphazardly glued together pieces. Perhaps that’s why you feel so fragile. Perhaps the damage is done and you’ve just been waiting for Katsu to bring down the axe. To scatter the pieces. To finish the fucking job.)
“God,” he spits out. And it’s like a dam has been broken and every hateful thing he’s ever thought about you can’t help but come pouring out.
“You’re so fucking needy, you can’t do a fucking thing by yourself. It’s like all you ever do is breathe down my fucking neck and tell me everything I’m not doing for you.” Distantly, you wonder if that’s true. It might be. Maybe it’s that ugly selfishness you’ve never really been able to hide. You thought you’d done a better job of tucking it away. You were wrong, it seems.
“So I can’t spend every single fucking second of every single day with you, sue me. I’ve got my own shit to deal with, my own problems, or have you forgotten that I have a life outside of you?”
No, you think. I haven’t. Or maybe you have. You’re not really focusing so hard on his words. You tune them out as much as you can. You’re staring at his face, taking in all the details. The deep red of his eyes, the pale blond of his hair, the sharpness of his cheekbones, the slope of his neck, the little scars peppering his face. You used to sit on his lap and kiss each and every one, no matter how faint.
You’re so weird, he’d say as you did it, but the tightness of his arms around you always spoke a different story.
You’re going to miss that, you think. Holding him. Loving him.
It takes you a while to realize he’s still yelling. It’s all hateful and cruel and so sharp. Like he’s taken a knife to your skin to flay you open, exposing every crack, every vein, every shattered piece of heart that makes you. You let it wash over you, like a particularly violent ocean wave.
“Sometimes,” he says, his voice finally quieting to a bearable level, “I wonder why I’m still with you.”
The breath you let out is shaky. No matter how ready you thought you were, there’s simply no amount of time that prepares you to hear those words from him. From the person you thought you were going to spend the rest of your life with. From the person you wanted to spend the rest of your life with.
The silence between you two is deafening. And heavy. So heavy it feels as though your chest will cave in from the pressure.
“Yeah,” you say at last, though you have to force the words around the burning iron poker in your throat. And then you laugh, you can’t help it. It’s all so fucked. You hate that it’s come to this bitter monstrous ugliness.
When had this all started to fester, to rot? you wonder. Is this really all that’s left?
“I can’t help but wonder the same thing.” It comes out more bitter than you'd like. A small jab to try to even out the gaping wound he’s torn open in you.
But it’s also true.
You can’t see his reaction through the tears clouding your vision. You don’t really want to anyway. What’s done is done. What’s said is said.
You grab your phone and keys and walk through the front door, closing it softly behind you.
He doesn’t say a word.
You think if there was any part of your heart left unbroken, his silence has shattered it to oblivion.
+
You walk for an hour or two. Until the sun has dipped almost completely below the horizon and it’s surrounded by hazy blood-red waves.
It’s a good place to think. To set your jumbled thoughts in order.
It takes a special kind of selflessness to love a hero, you realize. A type you don’t possess, not even nearly. You’ve always been just a little selfish when it came to love. But there’s no room for that when with people like Bakugou Katsuki.
And that’s okay, you tell yourself.
It’s a lie. It’s not okay. And the hollow aching in your chest that beats in time with your heart agrees.
You look down at your phone.
33 missed calls from Katsu
You look back towards the setting sun just once. You don’t really know why. Perhaps to find some bravery in the beauty of it, to steal yourself a few extra seconds of this limbo you’ve found yourself in. Where everything is hazy and beautiful and hurts so bad you can hardly breathe.
It’s not long before you’re biting the inside of your cheek, turning on your heels, and heading home.
+
You don’t even have your keys fully out of your pocket before the door swings open, with Katuski on the other side looking a bit worse for wear, though you doubt you’re one to talk.
His eyes are bloodshot and his nose is a bit pink. He’s been crying. You can’t remember the last time you saw him cry.
(That’s a lie, you realize. You had gotten in the crosshairs of a particularly brutal villain versus hero showdown. The resulting injuries you suffered were severe. You’d apparently been a bit touch and go for a while. When you opened your eyes for the first time after everything, Katsu was right there, looking like hadn’t slept, showered, or eaten for days. Later you found out it’s because he hadn’t left your bedside since you returned from surgery.
Katsu, you’d croaked out weakly, stretching out a shaking hand toward his face.
He broke down into sobs so violent they wracked his whole body. It took him over an hour to calm down.)
You got about half a foot through the door before he threw himself at you. Wrapping his arms around you so tight it bordered on painful. He sinks down to the floor. You sink with him.
He’s sobbing into your shoulder repeating a mantra of, I’m so sorry and I didn’t mean it. Please, please. I didn’t mean it.
You think about that old saying. What a person says in anger is how they really feel. You don’t necessarily believe that. You yourself have said things out of anger that you in no way meant, that were purely thrown to hurt the person on the other end.
You want to believe he didn’t mean it, more than anything you do. Because you love him. Because you really do think that Katsu is it for you. That he’s always been it for you.
You pull away about as far as he’ll let you.
“Do you love me, Katsuki?”
The words hang in the air. You feel raw. Like you’re the one who has taken a knife to your own skin and flayed it all open for him.
You don’t quite know vulnerability until you ask someone if they love you. It’s a different sort of weakness.
“Yes,” he responds. His voice rough from his tears. “More than anything.”
You watch one last tear fall from his eye.
You hold his face in your hands and wipe it away. Softly. Gently. Lovingly.
+
You guys are not okay and now that you’ve accepted that you think there’s a chance that one day, you will be.
#bakugou x reader#bnha#mha#bnha x reader#mha x reader#bakugou katsuki#bakugou imagine#bakugou katsuki x reader#vicwritesbnha#bnha imagine#mha imagine#i’m thinking a shinsou hitoshi fluff drabble next 👀#vicwrites
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“Don’t Threaten Me With a Good Time” Dean Winchester x F!Reader
Summary: When Sam and Dean need help on a case, they reach out to Rowena who sends you, a hunter, to help them with a ghost problem. Dean however, may have just met his match in more ways than one.
Word Count: 5265
Warning: None
Song I Wrote To: “Don’t Threaten Me With a Good Time” by Thomas Rhett
Note: Dean Winchester has my heart! Feel free to request! Also, I am not exactly sure where I set this, but it’s before the fall as Cas still has his wings.
---------
“Of all the people we know, Sam, you called Rowena.”
Dean looked over at his brother in the passenger seat of the Impala with narrowed eyes. Sam sighed, shaking the hair from his face. “You said we needed help and she has connections,” explained Sam. “Besides, she said she was sending someone to help, not that she was coming herself.”
“Great so we don’t get the Head Bitch Witch, just one of her friends,” Dean said.
“Rowena said she’s a hunter, not a witch,” Sam said as he tapped away on his phone. Dean didn’t bother to respond as he turned his eyes back to the road in front of him.
The Winchesters had gotten word of a case just outside of Omaha. There had been previous witch activity in the area years before so Sam had reached out to Rowena in hopes of getting some insight. However, the woman was currently busy trying to wrangle her son and since she didn’t believe the case had anything to do with witches, she passed along the message to you, a hunter she knew that was in the area. You had told her that you were going to meet the boys at a motel off the highway and Rowena had sent the message along to the Winchesters.
“I just don’t get it,” Dean said after a few more minutes, “why is she helping us all of a sudden?”
“When it comes to Rowena, she’s probably only doing us this favor so we have to do her one in return.”
“What? Does she think we’ll be at her beck and call?”
“Seems like it.”
“Well if this goes South,” Dean said, “I’m tracking down her broomstick and making her fix it.”
“Fair enough.”
-------
When the Winchesters arrived at the motel, the parking lot was nearly empty except for a dark truck in the corner.
You leaned against it, tapping away on a cell phone. When you heard the rumble of the Impala you looked up and lifted your hand in greeting. “I really don’t like new hunters,” Dean grumbled as he pulled into a spot across from you.
“I bet they think the same thing about us, Dean,” Sam countered.
“No, no they don’t,” Dean said with a sly smile at his brother, “because we’re awesome.” Sam rolled his eyes as he shoved open the door and stepped out. Dean followed quickly after. Both men kept their weapons close as they approached you.
You were calm and casual as they walked over. If this was any other night, Dean would have thought you were just a normal girl waiting on a friend, not a hunter with a specialty in ghost possession.
“Sam and Dean?” you asked. “Though, I don’t know who else would be driving a car like that.” Sam smiled first, moving forward to reach for her hand. “I’m (Y/N),” you said as Sam grasped your hand in his.
“Nice to meet you,” Sam said pleasantly as you turned to Dean. He gripped your hand tight as well.
“So, you’re the ghost girl?” Dean asked, trying to get a feel for you.
“That’s one way to put it,” you said with a small laugh. “I’ve been called worse. Come on, I already got a room.” You nodded your head towards the motel room not too far where you had parked your respective vehicles. The boys followed after you and out of the corner of your eye, you could see that both were keeping their hands near their weapons. You rolled your eyes at the movement. “You know,” you said as you dug the key out of your pocket, “if I was going to kill you, I wouldn’t do it at a motel frequently visited by hunters. That would be a bit too cliche.” Looking over your shoulder you sent them both a wink.
Dean blinked at you as Sam awkwardly coughed next to him. With another quick laugh, you pushed into the room and tossed the key on the small table by the door. “So,” Sam said as Dean closed the door behind you, “how exactly do you know Rowena?”
“She and I worked on a problem last year,” you explained, leaning against the wall, observing the two flannel-clad hunters before you. “Rowena was helping out another witch. Some kind of dark versus light turf war, I guess.” You shrugged. “Bystanders were getting caught in the middle and it got pretty messy.”
“I bet it did,” Dean said, crossing his arms as he stood by the garish partition. He was looking at you as if he was trying to see the tumblers of an unbreakable safe. Every move you made, he clocked. You had heard the stories of the Winchesters.
Sam and Dean, they were legendary within the hunting world. You were surprised to see that they were traveling with just each other as you had heard of a winged companion that tended to tag along at times as well. Regardless of the Angel, these two were some of the best and you were hoping to make a good first impression. As Rowena had said, “it never hurts to have a Winchester owe you one”.
“She warned me about you,” you said to Dean as you took a seat at the table and kicked your feet up.
“Is that so?” he asked. “And what did the witch say?”
“That you’re impulsive and have major trust issues while Sam here, is the smart one with a knack for magic and the books,” you said, recalling the last conversation you had had with the Scottish witch. “Though, I am still not sure if she was saying those things out of kindness or annoyance.”
“Knowing Rowena, it was probably the latter,” Sam said as he took a seat across from you. You nodded in agreement.
“So, show me what you got,” you said.
“Over the past couple of weeks there has been an increase in drownings in the area,” Sam began, digging his laptop out of his bag and placing it on the table.
“Accidental?” you asked.
“That’s what the cops think,” Dean said, sitting down on the bed next to you and Sam. “But four people drowning in the same place like this doesn’t seem like an accident to me.”
“Where did it happen?”
“A local spot,” Sam said, turning the screen toward you. It showed the front page of the local newspaper. A local fishing hole that apparently had a history of its own.
“What’s with the creepy statue?” you asked, pointing in the background of the main photo.
“That was the first thing I noticed too,” Dean said, leaning back on his arms. Sam enlarged the photo and zoomed in. Just behind the main swimming area was an old stone statue of what looked to be an old man reaching towards the murky water. It was a bit too ominous for your liking.
“We’re not sure,” Sam said. “Apparently it’s just always been there. Some people think it was put there by the first person to own the land, but now it’s all owned by the city.”
“And this is where everyone had been drowning?” you asked and Sam nodded. “Sounds to me like spirit doesn’t want the Living hanging out their spot. What are the details behind the deaths?”
“All strong swimmers and they just calmly walked into the lake and then didn’t come back to the surface until their bodies were discovered.”
“Does this sound like your kind of thing, Ghost Girl?” Dean asked. You slowly looked over at him and then grinned. Digging into your pocket, you produced your fake FBI Forensic badge and showed it to him.
“Why do you think I brought this?”
---------
You elected to ride with the Winchesters over to the crime scene.
Leaning towards the front seat, you rested your head on your forearms. “Yeah... I could never do the suit,” you commented. Dean looked at you in his mirror with a brow raised.
“You do realize you’re posing as FBI too, right?” he asked.
“But I’m a tech,” you clarified. “All I need is my trusty windbreaker,” you said, shaking the collar of the jacket that was wrapped around your shoulders. “I have found that people tend to overlook an extra tech at the scene rather than another agent.”
“That… is actually very smart,” Sam said, looking back at you. You winked at him and settled back into your seat. You listened to the boys talk about the case and as Dean drove, as you mulled over theories of your own.
The statue was the biggest clue, but you weren’t sure how it all fit. However, Rowena had been right when she realized this wasn’t witchcraft. If a witch wanted to kill someone, drowning wouldn’t be the way to do it. The combination of water and witches never really worked out in history so they tended to avoid it.
You had perhaps thought it was demon possession, but then it didn’t really fit with the usual motivation behind demonic activities. Also, there weren’t any omens in the area so you were back to your comfort zone, ghosts. Ghost possession was something you had focused on after you, yourself, had become possessed at age sixteen, and then both of your parents years later. You had inked up shortly after discovering the world of hunting and now were impervious to their body jumping, but not everyone was a hunter and so you had to help clean up the messes whenever you could.
As you went over a strategy in your head, you didn’t even realize Dean was talking to you. “Sorry, what was that?” you asked, leaning forward again.
“I asked if you needed any weapons,” Dean repeated as he turned down the final street and pulled over by the entrance to the trail that lead to the water.
“Oh, no, I’m good,” you said, lifting your shotgun that was placed in your bag along with salt rounds and then the iron brass knuckles you kept on an iron chain around your neck. Dean whistled low at the sight of your accessory.
“I gotta get me some of those,” he said with a charming smile and then pulled the key from the ignition and stepped out of the car. You followed after the boys, scanning the area. It was crawling with squad cars and you knew it wouldn’t be long before the press showed up.
While Sam and Dean headed to speak to whoever was in charge, you hiked your bag up on your shoulder and ducked through the branches to get to the water’s edge. Nobody gave you a second glance as you walked the shore of the swimming hole. Divers were still in the water collecting evidence as you made your way towards the statue. That is where Sam and Dean met up with you.
“Sheriff is clueless,” Dean said as he approached you.
“As always,” you agreed, walking around the statue, eyeing it closely.
“A deputy thinks these are all suicides,” Sam revealed.
“He might not be that far off…” you said as you took out your pen and dragged it along the side of the statue. When you pulled it away, black slime coated it. You held it up for the boys to see. “Ectoplasm.”
“Great,” Dean sighed. “So spooks are doing this?”
“Yep,” you said, shaking off the ecto. “For some reason, this ghost is possessing people and drowning them. It explains why they just walked into the water. Somebody really doesn’t want people here.”
“What was this place before it became party central?” Dean asked, kicking an empty beer bottle.
“Just old land,” Sam said, “there isn’t much in the county records and when I asked the cops, everyone shut up like it was taboo or something.”
“Oh, I love a good town scandal,” you said with a smile at the boys. As you went to grab your bag, your eye caught something glinting in the sun. Kneeling down, you dug it out of the mud. Holding up to the light, you turned it in your hand.
“What is it?” Dean asked.
“I’m not sure,” you said as you held a small locket in your hand. It looked as if someone had dropped it recently, breaking the mechanism on the side. It was tarnished and caked in dirt as if it had been underground. Popping the seal, you nearly gagged. “And I’m not sure I want to know,” you said turning to show the boys. Nestled in between the two metal sides was a tooth, the root still attached. Dean did gag at the sight.
“Okay, that’s just wrong,” Dean said. “Oh, what are you doing?”
“It could be evidence,” you said as you slipped into a small bag you kept in your fake forensic kit.
“Or it could just be someone’s necklace where they keep grandpa’s final tooth,” Dean said. You stowed it away anyways.
“Look all I know is that a ghost is drowning people and this locket may have something to do with it. Can we continue debating this or can we go get a drink?” That last sentence had Dean grinning.
“See, Sammy, this is how you solve a case,” he said, clapping his hands and gesturing everyone back to the car.
---------
The three of you sat in a local dive bar, swapping war stories.
“You really took out a fully grown skin walker on one of your first hunts?” Sam asked you as he sipped his beer. You laughed.
“Okay, don’t make me sound like some big badass,” you said, swirling the whiskey in your glass. “The guy was drunk off his ass. I just got lucky with him.”
“Still, that’s pretty damn impressive,” Dean said with a smile. You gave him one of your own. At first, you weren’t sure about Dean Winchester, but now? He was definitely one to keep an eye on. “Alright,” he said, trying to steer the conversation back to the task at hand. “Sam, what did you find?” Sam took out his computer and fired it up.
“I looked into the tooth locket that (Y/N) found and I think I got something,” Sam said, turning the computer so you and Dean could see. On the screen was a photo of a young woman, dressed in white, and around her neck was the same locket you had found by the statue.
“Who was she?” you asked.
“Melinda Manns,” Sam explained. “She was the wife of Thomas Manns, the man who owned the land the swimming hole is on. And get this, her grave was recently robbed.” Sam flicked to the news article that reported on a series of grave robbings nearby. “That necklace was one of the things missing.”
“So then who is our spook? Melinda or Thomas?” Dean asked.
“I don’t know,” Sam said.
“How did Melinda die?” you asked. Sam grabbed the computer and began typing away.
“Oh,” Sam said, “she drowned under mysterious circumstances.”
“Which in my book means murder,” you said downing the rest of your drink. “My bet? Old Man Manns killed his wife and buried her with that locket of hers. Maybe he felt remorse, maybe he didn’t, but one thing’s for sure, he didn’t want people digging her up.”
“So, he’s drowning people out of revenge?” Dean asked.
“Ghosts have had stranger motivation. He’s tied to the swimming hole. Doesn’t know who disturbed the grave so he’s just taking who he can get. Sometimes spirits get confused and a lot of the times they can’t help but possess people to try to get answers.”
“Well, I scanned for EMF and didn’t get much of a steady reading at the lake,” Sam said with a sigh.
“Don’t frett, Sammy, we’ll figure it out,” Dean said with a wink and his brother rolled his eyes.
“Ya’ll want another round?” you asked as you stood up from your seat.
“You guys go ahead, I’m gonna head back to the room for a bit,” Sam said as he gathered his stuff.
“Ah, come on, man,” Dean said, but Sam shook his head.
“I’ll see you two later,” Sam said with a slap on his brother’s shoulder. You waved to him as he slipped out of the bar.
“What about you, Winchester? You want another beer?” you asked Dean, leaning towards him.
“Make it a double tequila and you got yourself a deal,” he said with a wink. Shaking your head, you got up to get the next round.
Dean watched after you and he couldn’t help but think of the way you had walked around the crime scene earlier. There was something so...natural about the way you searched for the clues and how you were able to put the pieces together quickly. You were born for this life, but there was also something underneath the surface, something dark that prompted you to become a hunter in the first place. While he was curious, he knew he didn’t want to push. He knew about inner demons and he wasn’t about to force you to reveal yours.
When you came back to the table, you had a grin on your face. “Flash a smile and a badge and look what you get, free booze!” You handed Dean his tequila and took your seat again, sipping on the smooth whiskey. You smiled as you leaned back in your chair. Dean watched you for a second before placing his drink down and leaning forward.
“You are an odd one,” he said, narrowing his eyes a bit.
“Is that bad?” you asked, trying to read the man before you.
“I’m not sure yet,” he said with another grin. The night went on with many more shots and a whole lot more laughter. You and Dean exchanged more stories and soon, the two of you were leaning against one another in a booth, watching the patrons of the bar stumble around and play pool. Taking off your jacket, you relaxed further into your seat.
Stretching your arms over your head, Dean noticed something on the side of your neck. “What happened there?” he asked gently. Your hand went to the scars on your neck and covered them with your hair. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you...uh, sorry,” he stuttered.
“It’s fine,” you said. “Just a hazard of the job. I was, uh, possessed by a ghost when I was sixteen,” you explained. “I managed to get control for a few seconds and we had this old iron tool at our farm and I don’t know how I knew to use it, but I just grabbed it and,” you mimed raking something across your neck.
“Damn,” Dean said. “What happened to the ghost?”
“Local hunter took care of it, I guess,” you said. “Some guy showed up on my doorstep a day later with an obvious fake badge and I never had a problem with it again. Until two more possessed my parents later on. I guess I don’t have the best luck when it comes to spirits.”
“That’s why you’re the ghost specialist,” Dean figured.
“We all have our things,” you said. “I know yours is Angels and Demons.”
“Well, that was not really my choice. When an Angel saves you from Hell, you sort of owe them,” he said with a shrug.
“You’re not the only one who owes them,” you said with a small smile. Dean’s brows shot up as he caught onto your meaning. “Sorry was that way too forward?”
“Not at all,” Dean assured you, draping his arm across the seat behind you. “Although, and this may just be the tequila talking, I wasn’t exactly sure about but you when we rolled up.”
“Because I know Rowena?” you asked, leaning slightly into his arm.
“She hasn’t always been the most...helpful of people,” he said. “I mean she’s a witch with the King of Hell as a son.”
“Fair point,” you said with a small laugh, “but Rowena has helped me in the past. Not just the witch turf war, but she has looked out for me for a while. Don’t ask me why because I don’t know, but she’s never let me down. So, when she calls, I answer.”
“There seems a lot to unpack there,” Dean said.
“It’s a story for another time, Winchester,” you said with a smile as you shuffled out of his arm and threw some bills on the table as a tip. “Walk me home?” Dean rolled his eyes, but grabbed his coat and followed you out of the booth.
You and Dean stumbled from the bar, still quite tipsy from your night of drinking. Sam had taken the Impala back, so you two began the short walk back. Dean slung his arm around your shoulders as you leaned into him. The two of you walked the dark street back towards the neon sign in the distance. He kept you tight to his side as cars rushed past on the street and you didn’t mind the feeling at all of his strong arm wrapped tight around your waist.
When you finally got back to the room, you leaned against the side of the motel, trying to gain your bearings. Dean stood in front of you, resting his hands on either side of you. As he leaned in, you didn’t object. You smiled as Dean pressed his lips against yours. You leaned into the kiss, enjoying the feeling of his chest against yours, but eventually, you pushed him back.
“Easy, Winchester,” you sighed, “we’re working and I am not sober and neither are you.” Dean smiled, but stepped back, raising his hands in surrender.
“Breakin’ my heart, Darlin’,” he said but kept his hands to himself.
“I know, I enjoy it,” you said with a small smile. Dean laughed, running a hand through his hair.
“Now I see it, the reason Rowena likes you so much,” he said and you pursed your lips.
“I’m going to take that as a compliment,” you said. He winked at you and elicited another laugh from you that brought another smile to his own face.
“Okay, since we are working, any more theories?”
“I think it was the maid,” you said with a serious expression.
“(Y/N), there is no maid,” he said.
“There isn’t?” you asked, feigning confusion. It was only a few seconds before both of you began laughing. Suddenly, the door to the motel burst open and Sam came out. He stared at the two of you for a second before shaking his head.
“We have another body,” he announced and you and Dean sobered up quickly.
“And I was just starting to have fun,” you whined as you pushed off the wall. You approached Dean and patted him on his chest. “Rain check, Winchester,” you said.
“(Y/N)” Sam said, “Dean and I are going to go to the Coroner’s Office. Can you check the swimming hole? We’ll meet you there in a bit.”
“Aye, aye, captain,” you said as you headed to the Impala, sliding into the back as you waited for the boys to change into their suits and grab their badges. As soon as Sam slipped into the driver’s seat seeing as he was the only one equipped to drive at the moment, you headed out.
-------
Sam and Dean dropped you at the entrance to the swimming hole and you crept through the trees.
Forensics were packing everything up and soon, you were alone with the neon yellow crime scene tape and the light from the moon above. Pulling out an EMF reader you had snagged from the trunk, you turned it on. It lit up immediately as you scanned it back and forth. “I know you’re here somewhere…” you said, slipping on your iron knuckles. Realizing you left your salt gun back at the motel, you hoped that there was actually only a single ghost and not two.
It was another half hour before you finally spotted something. It was flicker at first, but then you made out the full figure of one Thomas Manns. The spirit stood by the statue of himself, watching out over the water. Pulling out your phone, you silently dialed Dean’s number.
“What’s up? We’re on our way already,” Dean said as he answered.
“Thomas is the ghost,” you whispered into the phone.
“How do you know?” he asked.
“Because I am looking right at him, genius,” you said, but then the ghost disappeared. “Dammit, I lost him.”
“Okay, listen to me, (Y/N),” Dean said. “We finally have a connection for the victims. They’re all suspects in multiple grave robbings. Most likely Melinda’s too. That’s why he’s killing them.” Suddenly, your pocket felt very heavy. You slipped your hand into the pocket of your jeans and felt the cool metal of the locket.
“I think I screwed up, Dean,” you said and as you spoke, your breath was very visible.
“What’s wrong?”
“I still have the necklace. The one from Melinda’s grave.”
“Get rid of it!” Dean yelled, but it was too late. A coldness swept through you and as you turned over your shoulder, the very angry face of Thomas Manns appeared. He lashed out at you, tossing you through the air. You hit the ground with a grunt, your phone leaving your hand as Dean yelled your name on the other end.
You scrambled for your knuckles, but they were too far from you as you struggled to get to your feet. However, Manns was faster. He took hold of you and fear entered your gut. You knew your warding protected you from being possessed, but nothing could stop him from killing you.
You fought as Mann threw you into the water. The coldness shocked you immediately as you struggled for breath. Swimming to the surface, phantom hands pulled you back under. You kicked out at nothing as you tried your hardest to break the surface. When you finally got a breath of air, Manns was there. In his hands was a knife that you were positive he used to injure his wife before drowning her in the very lake.
Your brain struggled to remember a banishing spell Rowena had taught you, but it was too cold and the fear was overwhelming. As Manns went for you again, his hands freezing your blood, you finally heard the shouts of Sam and Dean. Manns tried to pull you down again, but Dean arrived at the shore.
“Hey, Old McDonald!” he shouted. “Hands off!” Dean raised his shotgun and fired. The salt hit Manns and then entered your shoulder. You shouted as the ghost disappeared and then Dean was running through the murky water to get to you. You weakly met him halfway, tossing your arm around him. “I got you,” he said in your ear.
“Ouch,” you whined as your shoulder bled. Dean hauled you back onto the shore and checked you over, pulling your jacket aside to see the wound. It wasn’t deep and the salt wouldn’t do any permanent damage.
“Sorry,” he said, “hard to aim from that distance.”
“Thanks for the save,” you said as Sam wrapped his blazer around your shoulders, “but next time? Let’s make sure that the salt is accompanied by tequila.” Dean smiled down at you and pressed a kiss to your forehead.
“Don’t threaten me with a good time.”
--------
The last thing to do was salt and burn the body of Thomas Manns.
You leaned against a nearby tombstone as Sam and Dean dug up the grave of Manns. “Who knew grave robbing was going to bite us in the ass one day?” Dean asked, tossing his shovel down.
“It’s technically not grave robbing when we salt and burn bones,” Sam said from inside the grave. “We’re not taking anything.”
“Oh, well that makes me feel a whole lot better,” Dean said with a roll of his eyes.
“Sam,” you said, gaining his attention. The younger Winchester looked at you and you tossed him Melinda’s locket. “Better safe than sorry,” you said and he tossed it into the coffin.
Sam had wrapped up your shoulder before heading to the cemetery in your respective vehicles. You watched as they soaked the bones with lighter fluid and then Dean lit the matches and dropped them into the pit. The grave was set ablaze and you finally relaxed.
Sam and Dean stood over the burning bones, watching it with the same calmness as they did with everything. Rowena had said that they were becoming numb to the idea of monsters, but you didn’t think she was right. Sam and Dean weren’t numb, they were just used to the ugliness of the world and knew how to process the emotions that came with it.
Even in the short amount of time you had known them, you realized there was a reason Angels watched over them. The Winchesters were what the world needed and you had only wished that you had known them when your parents had died. Dean’s eyes flickered to yours over the flames and he nodded to you. You sighed, offering him a nod of your own. Whether you saw him again after this, he was going to be leaving your mind any time soon.
-------
You said goodbye to the boys at the entrance to the graveyard. Giving Sam a big hug, you said, “Don’t hesitate to call, big guy.”
“I won’t,” he said, stepping out of your hug. “Tell Rowena thank you for me.”
“I will,” you promised with a smile. He squeezed your shoulder once more before heading to the Impala to wait for his brother. Dean approached you, his hands in his pockets.
“So, this is goodbye?”
“For now,” you said. Dean smiled, awkwardly staring down at his boots. You rolled your eyes and grabbed him by his jacket. He fell into you and didn’t waste any time in connecting his lips to yours. His hands went into your hair as you gripped him tight. You sighed into the kiss, trying to memorize every touch and caress from Dean Winchester.
He pulled back for a second before kissing you again and then once more. You smiled up at him. “Are you gonna call me?” he asked, his thumb stroking your cheek.
“Maybe,” you said, “only if you need my help.”
“Well, I’ll need something,” he said with a smile. You rolled your eyes but mimicked the smile.
“Don’t worry, I’m not done with you yet, Winchester,” you said. “I’ll see you around.” You reached up and kissed him one more time, letting your lips linger on his for just a bit longer before pulling away. You waved to him as you got in your car and drove away.
Dean watched after you, feeling like you would keep your word and he would be seeing you very soon. He waited until your taillights were out of sight before joining his brother in the car. “Sammy, I think I just found my future wife.”
Sam snorted, “Great, maybe Cas can officiate,” he joked.
“Officiate what?” Sam and Dean jumped at the sudden voice. Turning around, Castiel was sitting in the back seat of the Impala, looking between the brothers.
“Dammit, Cas!” Dean yelled, trying to get his heart rate down.
“Sorry,” Cas said and then looked at Sam who just burst out laughing. “Am I missing something?”
“I’ll fill you in on the way,” Sam said.
“On the way where?” Castiel asked, confused. Dean revved the engine and hit the gas.
“We’re going after a girl, I got a date.”
#dean winchester#dean winchester imagine#dean winchester x you#Dean x you#Dean Winchester x reader#Sam winchester#castiel#hunter!reader#rowena#spn imagines#supernatural#Supernatural fanfic#supernatural imagine
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Dark Pleasure.
A/N: This AU is between my two all time favorite books Bloodbound and The Royal Romance! It is the crossover to end all crossovers.
A/N 2: This fanfic will be dark! And sexy! And violent! And delicious! And will quickly become your guilty pleasure.
Rated: Mature. | Contains sexual content and strong language. (You know? The usual from me. 😁) | Bolded and/or italicized words are conversations and thoughts of the characters. | Main Characters: Tristan Rys (LI) and Latisha Tucker (MC) x Adrian Raines and Tiana Reynolds-Raines | All Characters and names: (except MC and original characters created by me) are property of Pixelberry.
Current Word Count: 1,210 words. (more or less. I stop counting after editing and re-editing. 🤷🏾♀️)
Prompt Time! Today I’ll be using @wackydrabbles prompt #87 “No offense, but I'm not interested.”! It’ll be in bold in black.
If you’d like to be added to my tag list. Just reblog or dm me and I will gladly add you! 😁😘
Series TW: drug use, violence, murder, mentions of torture, prostitution.
This series is rated Mature. It is NOT reading material that is safe for those under 18. Reader discretion is STRONGLY advised!
(MAJOR SHOUTOUT TO @secretaryunpaid!!! SHE GAVE ME THE KICK IN THE ASS THAT I NEEDED TO START THIS SERIES! I DON’T THINK I WOULD’VE HAD THE BALLS TO WRITE THIS IF SHE HADN’T HAVE PUSHED ME IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION!)
Chapter 1.) Into The Shadows.
Tristan Rys has everything any man could ever want. Money, power, cars, girls, homes you name it, he’s more than likely got it. As President and Chairman of Rys International Group, it’s his job to provide his clients with every luxury their hearts desire. After all he’s known all around the world as The King Of Cordonia.
His late father Constantine started the company with just one small hotel and when he turned the business over to his youngest son, Tristan turned it into a powerhouse that rivals Marriott and Hilton. He has his Le Roi de Cordonie hotel group, his Lotus spas and The Underground nightclubs all over the world.
And now he’s looking to expand to the US. After scouting possible headquarter locations in California, New York, Miami, Boston and Chicago, he settled on Washington D.C. He took a liking to the busy city vibe. With D.C. being the home and hub of American politics and the potential growth of his client list, he was sold on the location. Because what better way to grow his true business than to be in a city that thrives?
What is his true business you ask?
Tristan isn’t just the owner of Rys International Group, he’s also one of the biggest drug lords in the world. No one has ever been able to touch him.
And right now he’s about to have the biggest investment meeting of his life. If he’s able to make this deal it would mean he’d truly be unstoppable.
He’s about to meet with Senator Adrian Raines.
Adrian has known Tristan since he was a kid. He and Constantine were great friends and eventually Adrian became one of Rys International’s biggest clients. After all, they hosted Adrian and Tiana’s wedding. So when Adrian heard that Rys International was coming to D.C., he had to see what brought Tristan to town. Although Adrian doesn’t run the day to day of Raines Corporation he was still willing to meet.
Both arrived to an empty Ocean Prime Steakhouse for their meeting.
“Adrian! It’s good to see you!” Tristan said as he stood to greet Adrian with a handshake.
“It’s good to see you too Tristan. It’s been a long time. I haven’t seen you since you were a kid.” Adrian replied, returning his handshake.
“Thank you for meeting with me, Senator.”
“Please you know you can always call me Adrian.”
“I know but I want to respect you and your new position.”
“Thank you. What can I get you? Scotch?” Adrian asks.
“Whiskey if you don’t mind.” Tristan replies.
Adrian signals for the waiter to bring them a couple bottles and glasses.
“Now before we get down to business, I gotta ask…how’s that spitfire wife of yours?” Tristan asks.
Adrian snickered.
“You know how she is about you. She won’t shut up about the new spa you opened up in New York. I can’t keep her out of there.” He replies.
“Yes I know. Still the best sex I’ve ever had.”
“You’re a liar but I’ll take the backhanded compliment anyway.”
The two shared a laugh as the waiter brought them two bottles of whiskey.
“I don’t know about you but I’m starving! So shall we order?” Tristan asks him.
“Of course let’s order.”
They placed their orders and while they waited for their food to be delivered, they started to discuss business.
“So let’s get down to it. Why am I here Tristan?” Adrian asked.
“I have a business proposal for you Adrian.”
“Oh? And what is this business proposal as you put it?” Adrian asks.
“Consider it a bit of a ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’. I’m new to town and I know how cutthroat D.C. can be. And I’m a small fish in this very big pond.” Tristan replies.
“Meaning?” Adrian asked with an eyebrow raised.
“Meaning you give me protection here in D.C. and I fund your entire senatorial re-election and future presidential campaign.” Tristan replies.
Adrian scoffed.
“No offense, but I'm not interested.”
“Come on Adrian! You can’t seriously be passing this up!”
That’s when their food arrived.
“Need I remind you that you are one of the biggest drug dealers in the world? You’re a danger to my campaign!”
Tristan shrugged.
“Suit yourself Senator. I was actually looking forward to working with you but I’m sure your opponent in New York will be happy to take the deal.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Oh no? Why not? Because you’re an old friend of both me and my father?” Tristan asks.
Adrian smirked.
“You’re an asshole. You do know that right?” Adrian asks.
“High praise!” Tristan replies.
“If I agree to this, what do I really get out of this?” Adrian asks.
“Like I said, a fully funded re-election and future presidential campaigns. On top of the perks of being a valued member of Rys International’s platinum club and a few other personal perks and favors, of course.” Tristan replied.
“All while you get to set up shop here in D.C. and run your legal and illegal business, correct?” Adrian asks.
“A win-win situation if I do say so myself.” Tristan replies before pouring himself a drink.
“And how would we go about this…business?” Adrian asks.
“Very simple. Your head of security Jax will meet with my head of security Drake Walker and coordinate.” Tristan replies.
“Jax won’t agree to that.”
“Why not?” Tristan asks.
“Jax doesn’t like working with people.” Adrian replied.
“Neither does Drake. Unless it involves sex and liquor.”
“Oh well in that case, they’ll be great together. They’re both brooding, moody and love liquor and women.”
“Now you’re getting it.”
“What about your brother Leo?” Adrian asks.
“Simple. While all that happens my brother will work with Raines Corporation on the business side of things.”
“And what about us?”
“Just two old friends working together to make sure that you are re-elected and my business flourishes here in America.”
“And no one will know about your cartel?” Adrian asks.
“Nope. Hell I’ll even throw you a cut of the profits…and a few of my finest girls.” Tristan replies.
Adrian sat back and thought about Tristan’s words.
“Come on Adrian. I know you’re considering it.”
“You’re an egomaniac!”
“And you’re the vampire who is married to the most powerful woman in the entire universe. And together you and I will become the two most unstoppable men on the planet!”
Adrian just shook his head then grinned.
“Damn you’re good…”
“That’s the nature of my business. So what do you say? Do we have a deal?” Tristan asks.
“This goes against everything I have believed in! I am better than this!” Adrian hissed. “And yet…this is too damn good for you to pass up.”
Adrian took a deep breath and Tristan rolled his eyes.
“Just say that you accept the damn deal old man!”
“Fine! You’ve got a deal! I can not believe I’ve been talked into this.”
“Wonderful! I’ll have my legal team contact yours and we’ll hammer out all the fine print.”
“You truly are ruthless, Tristan.”
“Jay-Z said it best. I’m not just a businessman, I’m a business…man.”
Adrian snickered.
“Here’s to a very lucrative partnership.”
“Finally!”
The two toasted to their new deal.
#choices#choices stories you play#pixelberry#khoicesbyk#choices fanfiction#fanfic#bloodbound#the royal romance#dark au
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The Detective and the Teacher
A/N: This idea kinda came out of nowhere, but I needed to get it out of my head (like most of my stories). It’s a two-parter, and I’ll post part 2 tomorrow. If people are interested, I could make it into a longer series, but I also am kind of ok with it being short. Also, idk how to write dates, sorry
Tags: None for this part, next part will
Words: 3k+
I have a meeting with a cute guy in my class. You should come, meet him
You rolled your eyes at the text your friend sent you. She was a professor at Fordham University, teaching Risk and Crisis Communications to undergrads and graduate students. She, however, was happily married. But that didn’t stop her from finding cute guys in her class and trying to set them up with you. “They’re college students; they’re going somewhere in life,” she would argue. Besides, her idea of “cute college guys” wasn’t totally off; the main problem was waiting for someone around your age to be in her classes. You were a teacher yourself, in your early 30s, and most people taking her classes were right out of high school; way too young for you.
It was the beginning of summer in New York, so you didn’t have classes, instead volunteering at the library. Your friend, Professor Stafford, was teaching night classes this semester; sometimes she stayed after class to help a student if they asked…and they couldn’t make her office hours. So, it was 8pm by the time you were walking the halls of the University, a coffee in your hand—an excuse to meet with a friend. It was her idea; if there was a potential date for you, she’d text you, you’d come to the University with a coffee or food to deliver it to her before the meeting, then casually “bump” into the student. You made it to her classroom, handed her the coffee.
“So, what’s his name?” you asked, grinning.
She took the coffee gratefully, taking a sip before replying. “Andrew Wise. He’s one of my top students; I think you’ll really like him.” She gave you a playful wink and you rolled your eyes.
“You said that about the last three guys, and they were all snobby jerks,” you laughed.
She opened her mouth to respond when there was a soft knock on the door, a man poking his head in. “Uh, Professor Stafford? Should I wait outside?”
“No, no Andrew. Come in. This is just my friend, dropping off some coffee,” she said, beckoning him in.
You looked Andrew up and down briefly; he seemed nice, and there was nothing really wrong with him, but just the vibe he gave off had you instantly thinking, nope. You gave a smile and wave to your friend before heading out, letting them have their meeting. You didn’t feel like waiting, like trying to come up with a reason to wait, to talk to Andrew after his meeting. Instead, you wandered through the hallways, looking out the windows to the trees, the sky darkening. The sunset was slowly fading, the sky changing from the bright pinks and oranges to the pale blue of evening. You were so engrossed with the picturesque beauty of it all that you walked face-first into another person, the side of your face fully connecting with their flat, warm chest.
“Oh god, I’m so sorry,” you said, pulling back to steady yourself, looking towards whoever you had just stumbled into. You looked forward and your eyes met chest, covered in a plain, Fordham U shirt. Your eyes travelled upwards into his face and you had to stop yourself from staring; he was, well, cute.
“It’s fine, really. I shoulda been watching where I was going,” he replied back, a small smile pulling at the corner of his lips. His dirty blonde hair was slicked back, his brow was furrowed, though his bright blue eyes hinted at amusement.
You smiled up at him, and he returned it, a goofy grin pulling easily across his face. “No, I was definitely admiring the view,” you gestured out to the landscape. You noticed the backpack slung over his shoulder, “and now I’m holding you from your next class.”
“No, no, I’m done for the night; just heading home actually.” He readjusted the backpack, as if your gaze had shifted it. He glanced over the balcony and towards the sky. “It really is a pretty view, huh?”
Your eyes never left him as you agreed. God, you’re acting like a teenager in a shitty romance novel, you thought to yourself, trying to snap out of whatever trance you were in.
“So, uh, do you go here?” he asked, eyes sliding back to you.
You shook your head. “I don’t, no. Uh, Professor Stafford is a friend of mine. I was just stopping by to say hi,” you explained.
“Professor Stafford? Hmm, doesn’t ring a bell. I dunno if I know them,” he said, contemplating. At some point during this conversation, you both fell into step next to each other, both heading towards the parking lot.
“Are you taking any Communications courses?” you asked.
“And that’s why I haven’t heard of them; I am not,” he grinned. “I’m a law student.” You nodded in understanding; while you thought Communications could be beneficial to a law student—to most students, if you were honest with yourself—most people didn’t take classes outside of their majors. Especially in a field that was so dependent on passing an exam.
“Well, if you ever need an elective, I highly recommend her class,” you smiled.
He chuckled. “I’ll keep that in mind.” You walked in silence for a moment. “My name’s Sonny, by the way. Sonny Carisi.”
It had just hit you that you never introduced yourself; with the shock of literally walking face-first into someone, then the easy conversation, it had completely slipped your mind. It was like you were old friends already. “Oh, [Y/N] [Y/L/N]. Nice to meet you, Sonny.”
“Pleasure’s all mine,” he gave you that goofy grin again, and you swore that you swooned right there. How did he do that with just a smile? You made it to the parking lot and found that you were parked semi-close to each other. He followed you to your car, something that you initially thought should raise alarms in your head, but something about him was calming, unthreatening.
“So,” he started as you unlocked your car. You opened the driver’s door, then leaned on it, him standing near the front of your car. He suddenly looked nervous, bashful, and it made him look even cuter. “Can I maybe buy you a coffee sometime? To, uh, make up for running into you,” he quickly added.
You felt your face grow warmer as you blushed, your heart fluttering. Did he just ask you out? “Uh, yeah. I’d like that,” you replied, unable to stop yourself from grinning broadly at him.
He smiled himself, seemingly happy that you agreed. “Great! How about tomorrow, say 10am, Cuppa Beans on 6th street?”
You quickly thought through tomorrow, made sure you had nothing scheduled in the morning. “That sounds perfect. I’ll see you there, Sonny.” With that, he made his way to his car while you got into yours. Once he was out of your line of sight, you flailed your arms in disbelief—you got a date with a super-cute law student!
*****************
You woke up the next day early, wanting to shower and pick out something cute to wear. While you got ready, you thought back to the information you had found last night. You weren’t stupid enough to go into a date blind; you googled “Sonny Carisi” the first moment you could the night before. And when that came up with nothing substantial, you asked Professor Stafford for help. Turns out, Sonny was a nickname; his real name was Dominick. With that knowledge, you were able to find that he was a detective for the NYPD, specifically for Manhattan’s SVU department. That gave you a little bit of a pause; you couldn’t imagine having to deal with those kinds of cases, what kinds of things Sonny had probably seen on the job. You wondered if that did anything to his mind, weighed on him at all. You hoped so; someone would have to be a monster for it not to. Maybe that’s why he was a law student, maybe he wanted out. Maybe he wanted some sort of revenge against the predators that he couldn’t get as an officer; some sort of control by being the prosecutor tasked with sealing them away rather than seeing the crime scenes.
You pushed the assumptions out of your mind; you didn’t know this man, not yet. You had met him less than 24 hours ago, had a small chat. He seemed nice enough, and he was definitely attractive. You resolved to judge him based on what you gained from first-hand experience, and to shove everything you learned online, all the conjecture out until you knew more.
Cuppa Beans was relatively close to your apartment, and it was a bright, sunny day in New York, so you opted to walk. Besides, you loved the fresh air of the city, the warmth of the sun on your skin, the soft breeze playing with your hair, the cacophony of sounds that others most likely found annoying or monotonous. You wore a simple, navy blue sundress that had a white tie around your waist, a big, white bow on your hip. You made your way through the crowded streets, full of people hurrying to whatever their destinations might be. You were early; you always were. But you didn’t mind; Cuppa Beans was set up for either those who wanted a coffee and to move on with their day, or for those who wanted to sit and relax, a shelf of books on their counter for anyone to read while they enjoyed their beverage. You ordered then sat, skimming the worn spines of books until a familiar one stood out to you. You picked it out, looking at the familiar cover. Remembering one of your favorite scenes, you opened the book, flipping the pages until you found it, then you quickly got lost in the text while waiting.
“[Y/N],” a happy voice greeted, pulling you out of the book.
You glanced up, Sonny standing in front of you, his trademark grin on his face. He pulled out the chair across from you as you closed the book, putting it back on the shelf.
“Hey Sonny,” you smiled. Right then, the barista brought you your coffee and you thanked her.
“Ah, I thought I was going to buy you a coffee,” Sonny said, jokingly offended.
Your smiled widened. “You have to order something to sit here, sorry,” you explained, taking a sip. Sonny ordered his coffee, and the barista left to make it.
“It’s fine; maybe I can convince you to let me buy you lunch instead.”
You raised an eyebrow, amused. “Are you asking me out on a second date before we’ve even had our first?”
His cheeks reddened and his eyes widened slightly. “Well, it doesn’t have to be…I mean, it can be an extension of this one?” You laughed, and he tried to switch the subject. “So, what were you reading when I got here? You seemed really into it.”
You nodded, grabbing the book once more. “It’s called Wind from an Enemy Sky by D’Arcy McNickle. It’s very good; I’m thinking of using it in my class next year.” He furrowed his brow at this. “Oh, I’m an English teacher at Townsend Harris High School…I know, I’m not a college professor at Fordham like my friend, but I like teaching high school.”
“High school, huh? I couldn’t imagine trying to teach a bunch of teenagers anything,” he smirked.
You nodded; that was most people’s reaction. But it was also that reaction that made you want to teach high school more. “It’s not as bad as people seem to think. They are people, you know. Just treat them with respect, and they’re pretty receptive. I mean, you’re going to have those class clowns, but you just have to know how to deal with them. Stimulate their minds in other ways,” you explained.
The barista gave Sonny his coffee, and he sipped at it appreciatively. “So, what’s the book about?” You started off slowly, explaining the main plotline of the book; how it followed Bull, the leader of the Little Elk tribe, and how it talked about how homesteaders came into the West, encroaching upon their land. But you couldn’t stop yourself from diving in, talking about the inherent cultural appropriation that the main antagonist has, how from the first page, you know how the story will end in tragedy, how the ecocentrism worked, and ending with how important it was for teenagers to read and understand books that were written like this; from the other side, from people other than white men.
By the end of your monologue, Sonny was blinking at you, a dazed look on his face, though something else underneath, something that looked a lot like admiration.
“I’m sorry; that got a lot more in-depth than I thought it would,” you said, cheeks turning red. Sometimes, you couldn’t stop yourself from getting into a text you really liked. Your students usually picked up on that and took advantage of it; many classes ended without the students talking because you had steamrolled over the conversation.
“Hey, don’t apologize for your interests. You just know…a lot more about themes and novels than I do,” he smiled.
You sat up at the praise but were still feeling embarrassed at the word vomit that had occurred. Taking a page out of his book, you decided to switch topics. “Tell me about yourself; how is it working as a detective and being a law student?”
Sonny’s brow furrowed, “how’d you know I was a detective?”
You face felt even warmer, and you knew you were fully red now. “I, uh, googled you last night…nothing personal, just wanted to make sure you weren’t, you know, a serial killer or something,” you laughed nervously, and he smirked.
“No, I get it, that’s smart, really. Can never be too safe.” He took a sip of his coffee. “I’ve wanted to be a lawyer for a while, now, but the timing just never seemed right, ya know? So, after high school, I just kinda went into the academy; I knew I wanted to help people, and I figured that was a good way to do it. It wasn’t until recently that I figured ‘why not’? So, now I’m taking the night classes to try and get my license, pass the bar.”
You nodded along with his story; you yourself changed your major a couple times before settling into where you were. It was definitely normal, and you believed wholeheartedly that anyone could go back to school at any point in their life, learn anything they wanted to.
“Are you going to switch out of law enforcement when you pass the bar, then? Become a prosecutor? Or are you just taking law classes to help you in your detective work?” you asked. The idea occurred to you while in the shower; knowing more about the law could help in the interview rooms, when he interrogated suspects. You knew he said he wanted to be a lawyer before, but that didn’t mean he was going for it.
“I’m…not quite sure, yet. I really like being a detective, ya know? I like helping people. I guess at this point, I just want to pass the bar; that’s where my focus is…when it’s not at work,” he explained. “I can figure out where to go after that.”
You nodded again. “I couldn’t imagine trying to work full time in…that department, and then also take college classes,” you commented. You shuddered remembering your time going to school full time and working retail at the same time.
“It can be…taxing sometimes. But at the end of the day, it’s nice knowing I’ve helped somebody.” There were unspoken words in the air, and you could hear them as if he had said them. You noticed it in his eyes, the flash of sadness as he thought about the ones he couldn’t help. But the moment passed, and his bright blues were clear once more.
That answered your other question; some cases did hit him hard. But, as you had also decided, that was a good thing; cases like that should pull on heartstrings. You noticed he had a hand on the table, and you reached up and slowly, so slowly, put your hand on his in comfort. That goofy grin reappeared on his face, and he interlaced his fingers with yours.
You both finished your coffees, then left the shop together, Sonny holding the door open for you, his hand never letting yours go. By some unspoken agreement, you both started walking down the street, hand-in-hand, arms swinging slightly. You asked Sonny about his semester and listened as he rambled on about some theory he had to memorize, or some law he had to apply to a fake case for a class. You realized that you enjoyed listening to him talk; he was very animated, dropping your hand to gesture in front of himself, then taking your hand again, before dropping it to gesture again. You smiled, then laughed as he described one of his professor’s insane expectations for how much he expected his students to read and write, wondering in awe how Sonny managed to juggle all that schoolwork plus his job.
“Do you sleep?” you finally asked, causing him to chuckle.
“Some nights,” he replied, and you couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.
Maybe because you were feeling bold, or maybe because he did already kind of ask you on a second date, but you replied with, “maybe I can help with that sometime.”
He stumbled a step, his hand gripping yours tighter as he struggled to stay standing, and you giggled. His cheeks were red, and he opened his mouth to say something, but then his phone rang. He dug it out, answering with a terse, “Carisi.” It was interesting watching him go from a flustered mess one moment to focused detective the next. He nodded against the phone, even though whoever was on the other end couldn’t see him. “Yeah, alright Lieu, I’ll be there in 20.” He hung up then gave you an apologetic look.
“Duty calls?” you asked.
He nodded. “Yeah, just got some new…developments on a case I’m working. I’m so sorry about this—”
“Don’t be, I get it,” you cut him off, giving him an understanding smile. If you wanted to try and continue seeing him, then this may become a habit…and you did want to try and see him, even though you’d only been on one date. You already felt a closeness to him that you couldn’t quite explain.
“I parked over at the coffee shop; I can walk you back there,” he offered, extending his hand back to you. You took his, interlacing your fingers once more, and hurried back towards the shop. Before he left, he handed you his card—you struggled not to laugh at the fact that he carried these around on his day off—and you put it in your purse, vowing to text him later that night, to set up that lunch that he offered to take you to.
“So, you do want a second date?” he asked, hopeful. You smiled; he was all in a hurry to head to the station, to get into whatever work awaited him, but he had stopped dead in his tracks at the prospect of another date.
“Of course. I had a great time today, Sonny.”
He grinned back at you, making your heart flutter in your chest. “I had a lot of fun, too. Hopefully our next date won’t be cut short.”
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Rumors About Ospreay + Unrest In The NJPW Locker Room; Government Adds Okinawa to State Of Emergency, Another Extension Possible; Quick Review of DSOTR Collision In Korea; Shota Umino News!; Ren Narita on Dark Elevation; Satoshi Kojima In Impact Next Week
Strap in because this is going to be a long one.
There are rumors and reports coming out now (mostly from one source, the Voices of Wrestling website, from behind a Patreon paywall) that Will Ospreay's injury may not be what it seems, and there is growing discontent to the point of "mutiny" among the non-Japanese wrestlers regarding the state of emergency, the last-minute decision to resume touring when some were already travelling out of Japan, and the constant need for quarantining when coming back into Japan. Unfortunately this is as much as I can say, because this is behind a paywall, so until it gets made for public consumption I’m kinda limited in what I can say.
I can totally buy that all is not well within NJPW, especially after the COVID-19 bubble has burst. I've already discussed the creative malaise happening in the company right now. That there seems to be backstage dissent shows possible signs of trouble ahead for the promotion, and this golden period that we've been accustomed to is well and truly over. (I mean, it already was once lockdown happened, but they did the best they could, in my honest opinion, including a Pretty Good if not great WK15. Right now, creatively, we are below 2nd-half 2018 levels of poor.) But NJPW has weathered these storms before, although not with a global pandemic looming over everything.
I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that Ospreay is indeed injured, because a) they haven't exactly been shy about wrestlers being injured and needing to vacate titles before b) if Ospreay is legit injured, he is far more likely to receive treatment as a citizen of the UK from the (somehow still alive if not totally hobbled by Brexit) NHS, as opposed to Japan's healthcare system which is far more like the US model. Some wrestlers are swearing up and down he is injured, from the rumors. Ospreay certainly hasn’t said anything in his own words, beyond RTing NJPW’s announcement of his injury and vacating the title, and posting a pic of himself kissing the belt. RevPro kinda sorta said something but were also pretty vague. But for an injury suffered on 5/4/2021, this pic posted on 5/18 does not look like someone who just had such a severe neck injury they need to fly back to the UK (mind you, it COULD have been taken much earlier than that). Indeed, Ospreay’s still-active Twitter is more focused on Hana Kimura at the moment*. All this said, professional wrestling by it’s very nature has a baked-in amount of bullshit as part of it, so that this injury might be phony is always a distinct possibility.
It is utterly believable there is conflict between wrestlers and management, and communication is piss-poor at best. It is also believable that NJPW and Bushiroad are only taking their cues from a government Hell-bent on holding an Olympics an overwhelming majority of those polled are against, and who are treating the extended state of emergency as a vague suggestion rather than as a, you know, state of emergency. Pretending everything is hunky dory hasn't worked so far, so not sure why NJPW, nor the Japanese government, think eventually it will. (And NOAH is on my shit list right now too.)
On that note, the government has now officially added Okinawa to the state of emergency. There is also talk that it will be extended further, as a government subcommittee member is quoted in the article as saying “it is difficult to think” that it will be lifted on 5/31/2021. Among that talk is word that Tokyo particularly will be under a stricter lockdown if this goes on. On a piece of actual GOOD news, it has been announced that the government has approved both the Moderna and AstraZeneca versions of the vaccine, so perhaps the vaccination rates will start to go up at last.
* - The anniversary of Hana Kimura’s tragic death is tomorrow (5/23/2021). I still sometimes struggle with the idea she is gone. Tonight at 10:30pm EDT (which is 5/23/2021 12:30pm in JST), FITE TV will be showing a live Hana Kimura tribute show put on by her mother, Kiyoko Kimura. Have a look in if you can
I was able to watch the Vice Dark Side Of The Ring episode on Collision in Korea, the two-night joint NJPW & WCW show from May Day Stadium in Pyongyang, North Korea, on 4/28 & 4/29/1995, as it aired Thursday. It will hit YouTube here pretty soon. I am working on a podcast project about this documentary, and the (WCW version of the**) show itself, with the good lads at the Days Of Thunder podcast, so I won't talk too much here, but I will say a few things about it:
I did appreciate the detail here, as well as being able to get an interview with Antonio Inoki for this, especially as he was the principal driver of this show happening. I did also like that they took time to detail Inoki's mentor, and the "father of puroresu," Rikidozan, who himself was a North Korean national by birth. I did not appreciate the mythical pathos they added to the death of Rikidozan, which by all accounts was a random street fight with yakuza over a perceived insult (stepping on Rikidozan's shoe). I also felt they could have done a better job explaining the situation between Japan and North Korea at the time. When the event was first proposed to the NJPW roster, Scott Norton recounts Masahiro Chono telling Norton that "they want us dead," but it took until introducing former CNN foreign correspondent Mike Chinoy nearly halfway through the documentary to (briefly) explain the brutal colonialism that Japan wreaked on North Korea in the first part of the 20th century.
Also, as salacious as DSOTR can get, I am very surprised one of the most famous rumors/stories about this show did not get discussed, the internet wrestling legend that Kensuke Sasaki and Akira Hokuto were, erm, Quite Vocal when they were together, which of course did eventually lead to their marriage four months later which continues to this very day. But that was also part of another critique I had, which is, they mainly focused on the WCW part of the events, when this was an NJPW promoted show. The way it was told on DSOTR, the only Japanese wrestlers there were Antonio Inoki, Shinya Hashimoto, Akira Hokuto and Bull Nakano. I'd love to hear more from the NJPW side of things, besides how proud Inoki was of this political stunt that did not get him re-elected to the Diet anyway.
Overall, I do recommend watching this when and how you can, because it is absolutely bonkers. I will definitely keep you posted on when the podcast project for this drops.
** - I've tried looking for the NJPW version and have failed so far. NJPWWorld only has two matches from this, Antonio Inoki v. Ric Flair, and Akira Hokuto v. Bull Nakano. The WCW version is not officially released, even on WWE Network, so yeah search the internet to see it.
We finally have an update on Shooter! That is, Shota Umino. Earlier in the week, RevPro's official Twitter had a tweet saying This Summer, showing Umino in not only his white/pink Tanahashi-esque tights, but holding his Death Riders jacket from Jon Moxley, that Shota retweeted, making this his first tweet since September 2019. Two days later, a hype video appeared with footage of Shooter, including performing Death Rider. Now a Sports Illustrated article is claiming that Shooter was supposed to have reunited with Mox on the NJPW Strong episode that had Mox & Chris Dickinson face Yuji Nagata & Ren Narita, but Umino had an unspecified injury preventing that. (They further say that Mox v. Nagata’s IWGP US title match was originally set for Strong but Tony Khan convinced NJPW to hold it on AEW Dynamite.) Umino's last match listed on Cagematch was on 3/14/2020 in ATTACK! Wrestling in Cardiff, Wales, on the winning side of a 6-man tag match with Kyle Fletcher & Kid Lykos II defeating Shigehiro Irie, Chief Deupty Dunne & Los Federales Santos, Jr. It's great to have him back wrestling again, and I hope we get that reunion with Moxley soon enough too.
As an update to an item from an earlier post, it appears that the Ren Narita v. Royce Isaacs match that was teased but then not aired on AEW Dark this past Tuesday will actually be on AEW Dark: Elevation this coming Monday instead. Also part of that will be approximately 35 other matches (I only slightly kid), one of those being Rocky Romero v. JD Drake. This usually drops on YouTube at 7pm EDT / 6pm CDT Mondays.
This past Thursday on Impact, a video package showed that Satoshi Kojima would be appearing on next week's episode. This will be Kojima's first time ever wrestling in Impact under any name, as the last time NJPW and TNA were working together, Kojima was still away in All Japan Pro Wrestling. No word as to what he will be doing or whom he will be wrestling.
Also on Impact, Juice Robinson & David Finlay Jr. successfully defended the Impact World Tag Team titles against Ace Austin & Madman Fulton... before getting blindsided by two members of the Violent By Design unit (in this case, ECW veteran Rhino and former AJPW Triple Crown champion + cancer beater Joe Doering) with whatever Impact's version of a Anytime Anywhere Challenge is, and took the belts from FinJuice. They claimed FinJuice were going back to Japan, but, erm, who knows if that's the case or if it was for a time period when Wrestle Grand Slam was still a thing that was happening.
Also also, it seems Don Callis is no longer in any executive capacity at Impact. This is a little significant as it seems it was Callis who opened the negotiations back up for Impact to work with NJPW. Of course, lately he's spent more time as an on-screen heel manager for Kenny Omega, the Good Brothers and now the Young Bucks on both AEW and Impact programming. We'll see how much longer Kenny Omega's belt collector shtick goes on for with Callis no longer part of creative or management.
And that is actually it for now! Yipes!
#NJPW#new japan pro wrestling#Will Ospreay#IWGP World Heavyweight Championship#COVID-19#dark side of the ring#collision in korea#scott norton#Masahiro Chono#Antonio Inoki#Rikidozan#kensuke sasaki#akira hokuto#shota umino#ren narita#AEW#Satoshi Kojima#juice robinson#david finlay jr.#impact wrestling#joe doering#don callis#Kenny Omega#rocky romero#hana kimura
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Forensics babbbyyy
Okay so I’m gonna nerd out here so keep scrolling if you don’t want to read this lol
So I asked if you guys would be interested in me talking about my major, and a couple of you did! @drowninginsideofmymind and @staffyouresobadatrunningawebsite (I cannot tag you for some reason)
I’m now a junior in college working towards my bachelor of science in forensic science. I chose this path because A) yes, I do love all the crime shows and have watched most of them, but B) I just think it’s really cool and really fun!
This major is really tough, I’m not going to lie. BUT IT’S GOING TO BE SO WORTH IT!!! If you guys are interested in forensics these are some of the classes you may be taking---
Some more forensic-heavy classes I’ve taken so far include crime scene processing, forensic photography and reconstruction, and physical evidence analysis. I’ll be taking toxicology, body fluid and DNA analysis, and more in the future.
Last year, I had a bunch of boring gen ed classes like university foundation, english 1 and 2 (even though I had taken AP englishes in high school already, smh), precalc and calculus (already took those in high school) and a general science course. I also took advanced biology (again basically just a repeat of the AP bio I had taken in HS, but whatever). This year, however, was entirely different and seriously challenging.
First semester, I had general chemistry 1 and its corequisite lab. I also had crime scene processing and the corequisite lab for that, and anatomy & physiology and the coreq A&P lab as well. I took a communications course as well, but only to fill the gen ed communication credit lol.
This semester, I had general chemistry 2 and the lab, statistics, forensic photography and reconstruction (a lecture/lab combo class) and physical evidence analysis and the coreq lab for that class.
Next year, I’m going to be taking Organic chemistry and lab (level 1 first sem, level 2 in the spring), Molecular and cellular biology, and physics and its lab (again, level 1 physics in the fall, level 2 in the spring). I’ll also be taking biochemistry and its lab in the spring.
Senior year, hopefully, will be much easier! I only have a few classes: Instrumental analysis and lab, genetics, toxicology, body fluid & DNA analysis, a couple electives, and my senior capstone (BIG senior project basically).
My eventual goal is to become a CSI, a crime scene investigator/processor. I’ll be the person that rolls up in the crime scene van, searches the scene for evidence, packages it, and documents the scene. I’m so excited for the future.
For now, I’m in Phoenix, AZ. The summer RIGHT after graduation (class of 2022 anyone?), I’m going to move across the country to the east coast-to the beach. I love the beach, and there’s a TON of CSI positions open on the East coast. Man I cannot STAND this freaking desert haha. I’m a beach person, and I’m stuck in the hottest state in the country. YUCK.
Each of the classes in my major are vital to the world of forensics and will prepare me in different ways:
-Any of the biologies: forensic biologists collect and analyze biological evidence found on clothing, weapons and other surfaces to determine the time and cause of death.
-Any of the chemistries: Chemistry is used in forensic science to uncover information from physical evidence. In criminal cases, chemists analyze substances such as blood, DNA and gunpowder residue to attempt to determine when and by whom the crime was committed. In civil cases, chemists analyze DNA to authenticate valuable products and to identify fraudulent activity. Chemists also determine information from unsolved crimes and mysteries of long ago through other means of DNA analysis.
-Physics: Important, for example, when analyzing movement through crime scenes. Shootings, blood spatter, and more are common applications of physics in forensics.
-Forensic photography/reconstruction: I learned how to photograph crime scenes and how forensic units (in coordination with detectives) recreate the scene through theory and science.
-Physical evidence analysis: This is the other side of forensics-the job that I want only involves collecting the evidence. This class is about how different types of evidence are tested in the lab after I collect it. For example, how we can piece back together broken glass, and how arson evidence, body fluid evidence, and more are examined.
-Crime scene processing: EASILY my favorite class. I learned how to walk through crime scenes and identify evidence, take notes, collect evidence, and document the scene. So much fun!! My final in this class was a mock homicide scene where we had to walk through and mark and find the evidence, collect it, and photograph the scene.
-Others: Genetics (typing DNA in the lab, etc), instrumental analysis will help with how to work in a lab, and body fluid&DNA analysis is crucial in biological evidence.
Here’s a fun vlog that really shows what my day to day life will be like in the future, if you wanna watch it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3HW4m2KQV8
This major is putting me through a lot, to be honest. However, I love forensics, so I’m going to put myself through this degree-even if it kills me lol.
If you guys love forensics or are interested, DON’T be discouraged! It is tough, but you learn so much and it’s so worth it. STUDY STUDY STUDY!! It kind of is a niche major, but it feels like a family to me. At my college, we all know each other because there are so few of us. There are a ton of resources out there for you. Please feel free to message me, even! (Message me on my main blog, @bossninja1 I can’t message people on here).
There are so many different jobs you could get with this degree: CSI, lab analysts, detectives, criminalists, and more. (And they pay really well too hehe 😉)
I graduate in the spring of 2022 and I’m so excited for my future. I can’t wait to be a CSI and to finally be independent and move to my first apartment. I’m going beachfront babyyy! I don’t have a lot of money but I’m saving up and I know where I want to live already and I can’t wait.
Here’s to the future, and here’s to the nerds!
#crankgameplays#my post#forensics#please feel free to message me any time you want to talk as well#if you need someone to talk to I'm here#STAY SAFE!#(Message me on my main blog @bossninja1 I can’t message people on here).
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Drops in a Bucket, Splashes on the Ground
Also available on AO3!
Tags: Mature, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Gen, Whirl (Transformers), Implied/Referenced Abuse, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Whirl is Primus AU, Angst, would you believe me if i said i didnt set out to write another angst fic, whirl's just like that
Wordcount: 4202
Notes: I would highly recommend you read "Bullets" or at least be familiar with Whirl's abuse of Rotorstorm before reading this fic. The scene containing graphic violence begins with "Tacticians always struggle..." and the scene referencing abuse begins "He shoves his way..." Please feel free to reach out if you need any further information.
~*~
“And I guess old Primus makes five.”
“Hah! No, no, no. That’s not Primus… you’re Primus.”
~*~
Whirl has never been intimidated before. Not so intentionally, not by bots whose forged bodies have been piled on with armor and weaponry, no expenses spared by the ganglords. The Heavies rolled up on treads that left gouges in the streets, painful marks that tomorrow’s taxes will go to fixing, and their transformations took a full five seconds as excess plating moved out of the way while their protoforms tried to bend per their original configurations. They wear identical red visors and dark gray masks: faces, certainly, but only in the barest sense of the word, enough to separate them from lowlifes without affording them identity. It is impossible to tell one from the other and Whirl knows, intrinsically, that it will not matter.
~*~
Rung is the only one who doesn’t flinch. Whirl stands over Adaptus’ body, freshly relieved of what they can all agree was a spectacularly ugly head, and puts away his gun.
“Right,” he says, with a meaningful glance out the window. “Want to agree none of us heard that?”
“Whirl!” Rodimus shouts. “You can’t just kill a god!”
The body explodes into a pile of dust.
“Sure I can,” Whirl says, shaking it off his foot even as he leans down to inspect the scrapple. “Hey Ratch, can you rig me to explode next time I get shot?”
“Is it true?” Nautica asks, doing her intellect a massive disservice by stepping in front of the unhinged bot with a blaster.
“Obviously not,” Ratchet says. “He was lying.”
Whirl nods.
“Yeah. You think I would keep it a secret from any of you if I was a god? You think Cyclonus would ever hear the end of it? Nah.” He stands, kicking pile and sending a spray of metallic dust into the air. “Awesome way to go, though, can’t say I’m not jealous.”
“That doesn’t mean you had to kill him for it.”
“So, you’re not Primus?” Nautica asks. She hasn’t moved, her arms crossed in front of her. If Whirl had been her creator (and he isn’t, he already has his claws full with a nest of scraplets), he would have been pretty proud of her right now.
“Nope!” he says. “I’ve never vouched for the universe before, but that kind of joke would take on an extra level of cruel, don’t you think?”
“Got to agree with Whirl, here,” Rodimus says, a hand on Nautica’s shoulder drawing her back. “I could buy pretty much anyone else. Maybe not Rung, but, say, Velocity? She could be Primus. Or Roller. I guess not Megatron, since we saw him come online, but—”
“The point, Rodimus,” Ratchet deadpans.
“The point is, not Whirl,” Rodimus said, sweeping his hands up to gesture at him. “I get Primus is disappointed in us. We are a textbook example of why a race of sentient war machines should never be left to their own devices, combined with a case study on how to avoid learning from every mistake you’ve ever made. But I really don’t think that disappointment would translate to actively hunting us for sport. Isn’t Primus supposed to be all about forgiveness and loving your cellmate?”
“Right,” Whirl says, clacking his pincers together in his approximation of a snap. “An angry god is so cliché.”
“I don’t think anyone knows what Primus believed,” Rung says. Oh no. He’s taken off his glasses. “I don’t see any reason he couldn’t be Whirl.”
“How about we start where the part where gods don’t exist, and Whirl does?” Ratchet suggests.
“I… I am Solomus, though.”
The whole group turns to the offending voice. Whirl goes for his gun and Rodimus knocks it out of his hand, a stern finger silently telling him not to kill any more gods. As if being an ex-Matrix bearer gives him some sort of say.
Tyrest has not stopped touching his gaudy mantelpiece, poking at the holes. It wouldn’t be so disturbing, except he’s staring at Whirl while he does it.
“Primus, don’t you remember?” he asks.
“Hey, let’s watch the fragging language.”
“Adaptus wanted to send our creations to pointless war,” Tyrest goes on. “Violence for the sake of violence, conquests built on the backs of others. We fought him.” He steps forward and reaches for Whirl. “Together, we—”
Whirl jerks back with his claws extended out.
“I will cut your hand off, I swear to—I swear.”
He is saved from any more interrogation by the ground violently rumbling underneath them.
“Okay, so regardless of whatever’s Whirl’s deal is, we do still have at least one Primus to worry about,” Rodimus says, looking out the window at the approximation of what Whirl, personally, had always assumed god would look like. “Solomus, you still got your teleporting rigged up?”
~*~
No one ever considered giving The Institute a waiting room, so Whirl stands to one side of the hallway while the butchers discuss his case. He knows his proposal intrigues them: they have never had an opportunity to shadowplay a willing subject before. What is there to learn from a brain that does not fight them every step of the way? What backdoors exist that every other victim kept hidden? Whirl does not care about the potential scientific advancements his offer provides. He just wants to stop dreaming of gears, lose the phantom aches of his fingers. He wants to look in a mirror and see nothing: not himself, not a monster. Just an object, fulfilling its purpose.
The scientists who walk by him in the halls stare. Everyone stares, but the look they give him is different. They do not find him exceptional, nor do they feel for him pity or contempt. He is no marvel. He is a creation, perfectly engineered to suit its purpose, every detail minded with care to ensure it all works together as an ideal mechanism. He wishes he could see himself through their eyes.
The door beside him slides open and a bot he has never seen before steps out. His helm comes up no higher than Whirl’s waist and his large yellow optics do not look up from his datapad.
“Whirl of Polyhex, the panel has elected to reject your petition,” he says. “I am to remind—”
“What?” Whirl startles; his new head shoots upward, forcing him into an angle that is both unnatural and instinctual. “Why? Ice Pick said he could—”
“I am to remind you that you have signed a nondisclosure agreement; failure to comply will result in penalty of death.” The little bot flares his plating, the click of a motor lock setting it in place. “You will now submit to full stasis and be escorted back to your home.”
The jack comes from behind.
~*~
“This is my hab suite.”
Whirl knows the tonal difference between a bullet hitting living metal and a wall. He scowls and gives up, waving Cyclonus inside.
“My room’s a mess,” he says. “Think I’m gonna crash here for a while.”
Cyclonus comes in and sits beside Whirl on the berth. When the door slides shut, they are visible only by their biolights: Whirl closed the shutters when he came in, the stars too much like blinking numbers. Cyclonus is a surprisingly quiet machine. His presence comes with none of the usual hisses and clicks one would normally get with their kind, like each component was designed specifically to work with those around it. Compared to Whirl, whose body is a wreck of pieces that almost fit together, clinking and scraping through their standard functions, he practically doesn’t exist.
“This is slagged, huh?” Whirl asks.
Cyclonus thinks on it a moment, then there is a shift of plating as he nods. Is it an admission, a confession? Pri—frag, Whirl doesn’t want to have to start thinking about that.
“Sorry,” he says.
“You don’t need to—”
“Scrap, you’re right. What am I doing?” Whirl laughs. “I’m infallible now, right? It’s all been part of my grand plan for Cybertron. I should be saying you’re welcome; you should be thanking me.”
Cyclonus sighs, a rush of air out his vents.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asks.
Whirl pokes and pinches at his own plating, trying to make sense of it.
“Yeah,” he says. “Start praying, and keep Megatron far away from me.”
~*~
He’s spent two days in the holding cell before he realizes no one else is coming for him.
That Orion Pax… he’s good, and Whirl’s not sure whether it’s the kind that gets people hired or gets people killed. Not that it matters, not that he cares. The Senate’s going to crush all of them one by one, like little cans of oil under a rolling tank. He thought being a tread would come with some measure of relief; instead, it just landed him in a hole.
He digs a claw tip into the wall, another score among a small collection. He has been trying to reconstruct the miner’s face, what it looked like in the split second between recognizing he had been struck and realizing there was more to come. He can’t relish a memory if he can’t keep it, and he’s already struggling well enough to accomplish the former. This assignment was supposed to be a release. Look down at the big thinker and imagine in his place Senator Proteus, Sentinel Prime, the faceless Functionist Council. Tell himself that this is what it would feel like to rip their plating open until their priceless energon spilled onto a dirty floor.
The face, though, it’s escaping him. How can he fell anything about a person with no face? What relief is there to be found in beating the slag out of a nobody? He is trying so hard to adapt, but it’s like his processor is working against him, reminding him how far he got before he was reeled back in. The silhouette of his sketch is familiar.
His claws hurt where he has worn the tip blunt, and the portrait is still incomplete.
~*~
“I don’t make Matrixes,” he insists. The group was polite enough to knock once they found him, but they’re failing to pick up the hint that he wants all of them to go away, right now, and leave him alone forever.
“Well, Epistemus says you can,” Rodimus says, dentae blocked together. “Why do all the other gods have their memories back, but not you?”
“I dunno, maybe Needles can stick me and figure it out.”
It’s almost cute, the way Rewind steps protectively in front of Chromedome.
“Rodimus,” Rung says, trying to get between them, “this isn’t helping.”
“Thank you,” Whirl says. “Now can we get to the part where we storm the planet, guns a-blazin’?”
“That won’t help either.” Rung turns to look at him. “Your memories haven’t been deleted, Whirl. Somehow, there should still be some part of you that remembers creating the Matrix.”
“The Functionists probably took it out,” Whirl says.
“That’s not how mnemosurgery works.”
“Says the dropout.”
“You told me once about your earliest memory,” Rung says. Whirl should be furious that he’s doing this here, in front of people who have no business knowing what’s in his head, but he’s more interested in the way Rung has taken off his glasses and is squinting up at him. “What happened just before it?”
They did not bring Ratchet, a testament to the fact that they will not leave before he gives them answers. He could start lying again, or find another way to forgo the question, but something about Cyclonus’ presence at his back helps him settle down the compulsion. Everybody lies about their forging. Everybody wants to say it was overseen by the Prime, or that they settled into their form like resin poured into a mold, instant and perfect. Whirl has a set of seven stories he deploys on rotation, ranging from heroic to beautifully tragic, and he spends a moment picking through them, trying to remember which was the real one.
“I showed up at the Functionsts’ place to get my docs in order,” he says. “I was… I was trying to get Polyhexian citizenship.” Awful city, but he had always sworn the energon tasted better there than anywhere else.
“But you said you were forged in Polyhex,” Rung says.
“Yeah. It was easier that way.” Whirl puts a claw to his head. “I… augh, nope. No, this is stupid.”
“Whirl—”
“No, I’m done,” he says, pushing Rung away. “Fully done, Rung. That’s right. You were god’s therapist, and he fired you. I’m gonna go take out a planet.”
~*~
Tacticians always struggle with where to put Whirl on a battlefield. On the one hand, he’s an attack helicopter, equipped with long-range cannons and advanced aiming modules. Keeping him in the sky is the perfect way to set up a terrible surprise for Cons on the ground. On the other, he’s Whirl, and facing him head-on can be just as chilling and or fatal.
In the end it rarely matters which call they make because, as stated before, he’s Whirl. He will do whatever he damn well feels like. Right now, that means skimming over the top of the battlefield, sights trained on the odd dot who tries to disgorge themselves from the fighting mass. He is supposed to be providing support to the ground troops, peppering the Decepticon line so they can break through, but no one is going to complain about a few more dead soldiers.
A truck breaks free and he pitches down, giving chase, machine guns firing before he’s got a lock on. The ground explodes in shrapnel as they try to serpentine out of the way, but he keeps firing and soon enough their paths cross.
He riddles them. Their roof is already a puckered, punctured mass of warped metal before their back tires blow and they go skidding and flip onto their side. Their plating shuffles, uncoordinated, as they try to transform, and Whirl goes for the underbelly, shattering the exposed protoform in a burst of pink energon. They slump with their legs disengaged. There is a buzzing, crunching noise as the dying t-cog tries to settle into either mode, then a jet of smoke erupts from the body. The engine has seized, locking it in a permanent limbo.
Whirl spins around to track down his next prey. He loves his job. The Autobots have a need, and he fills it with a gusto that only occasionally gets him in trouble. He’s no hitmech: he lacks the finesse, the style. But he can rain irreverent murder down from the sky, send Cons fleeing just long enough to make them think they had a chance, and he can do it without questioning an order. The war needs people like him.
Two soldiers are trying to escape together, one with their arm over the other’s shoulder, a sparkling stump of a leg between them. Whirl gets low, following them until the roar of his rotors is unmistakable, until they cannot help but turn and he sees their optics. Then he fires.
The wounded one falls first, knocked onto their front and grasping uselessly until their hand is blown off and they go still. The other gets their legs knocked off and goes spinning, landing on their head with a crunch. Whirl keeps advancing, keeps firing, tearing open their plating and reducing their inner working to molten slag, spattering the ground with used energon. They flop, over and over, until Whirl gets bored of the show and hauls off, leaving them almost indistinguishable from the carnage of the land itself.
Whirl hovers over the fighting and looks down while he scans for a target. This high up, visuals are useless for determining Bots from Cons. Little Cybertronians run around, whacking and shooting at each other, falling down, down, down. The metal under their pedes is slippery pink with energon. It splashes against their plating, over their insignias, until they are all just little wandering targets.
Whirl has his job, and he loves it, and he does it well.
~*~
He should feel something, but his spark is a void as he tosses the rest of the guns into the shuttle, all the stuff he held off using because he wasn’t ready to get kicked off the ship. He is not coming back from this. He knows it, so better to take it all.
He’s just fastened the locker when he hears the footsteps on the hatch and looks up. It’s Tailgate, of course. Tailgate, who has a pack hanging from one shoulder and a gun holstered at his side. It’s a shrimpy thing, something Cyclonus taught him to shoot in case they ever got separated, more useful for making noise than taking down an aggressor. It has room for one round of ammo and Whirl doubts he brought a bullet more.
He comes aboard without saying anything and stops beside world, continuing to say nothing. The hand on his pack is clenching: he’s being brave. He’s also waiting for some grand speech, some sacred insight to the nature of their quest and their places in the universe. Well, tough. He should know Whirl better than Primus.
He lifts a claw to shove Tailgate backward and down the hatch, but it stops an inch before Tailgate’s plating. What does it matter? Cyclonus can’t kill him where he’s going and Tailgate himself is just a drop in the bucket. Standing there with his chest puffed out, optic band steely and focused, he looks like any other Cybertronian, never mind a few years left behind.
Whirl retracts his claw. Tailgate nods at him.
Another drop in the bucket.
~*~
He shoves his way to the front row, slamming himself into his chosen seat just ahead of a little spy plane who had been angling for the same spot.
“Buzz off,” he says. Never mind the spy plane outranks him. This is his big day! He got here early so he could get this seat, right in front, though he can barely hold it as the audience fills in around him, so many Bots he does not know and who do not matter. The only one he cares about it up on the stage, smiling with an air of detached cooperation, off in his own head again like he always was. Whirl thought they had made progress on that, but some habits were just too hard to break.
The opening speech is long and predictably boring, lots of talk about this base he has never been on before. Whirl’s engine clicks in agitation. When bots give him dirty looks, he sneers.
“Chronic fanbelt lockup, ever heard of it?” he hisses at them, adding in a few extra ticks for good measure. They go back to minding their own business, but Whirl still catches the optics glancing at him, and his engine goes from annoyed click to angry hum. He knows what they see.
Luckily, the speaker eventually gets over himself and moves on.
“Rotorstorm, will you please step forward?”
Whirl is on his feet before the other copter has a chance to rise, his cheering rising well above the swell of the crowd. He shouts, he stomps his feet, and he bangs his claws together until the bots on either side of him wince, and he gets even louder when he knows Rotorstorm has noticed him.
“Go on, get up there!” he shouts. “You earned this, didn’t you?” The rest of the crowd has calmed down, but he stays standing, arms dropped to his sides. He stares at Rotorstorm as he crosses the stage, shoulders pressed back, each step placed so precisely in front of the last that it must be calculated. He waits until Rotorstorm has reached the edge to sit back down, and then still his optic is pointed, refusing to let Rotorstorm look anywhere else. Rotorstorm’s own optics are wide, though the rest of his expression is slack. His biolights are steady, his ventilations manual and even. He’s perfect.
“Rotorstorm,” the presenter says, “I hope you will forgive us; this is an honor that is long overdue. During the Simanzi Massacre, you singlehandedly scouted a pass through Mount Helix that allowed for the rapid evacuation of the 9th Battalion. Your commanding officers estimate that your decisive actions saved upwards of one thousand Autobot lives.” Whirl’s engine is silent. He’s drinking in every word. “Today, we present you with the Novic Medal for Outstanding Honor. ‘Til all are one.” Rotorstorm ducks his helm as the award is magnetized to the right of his cockpit, finally breaking his optic contact with Whirl.
“’Til all are one,” he repeats, though most of the crowd does not hear him over Whirl’s cheers.
Rotorstorm turns without looking up and returns to his seat. The next recipient is called forward and Whirl walks out.
~*~
He can’t do it. He’ll blame it on the way Tailgate’s plating quietly rattles or Cyclonus’ entire personality as he starts to board, but he shuts off the shuttle’s engine and disembarks with them trailing behind. He retreats to his hab suite, and though he does not invite them he’s glad when they make it inside before the door closes.
“Nobody in the mutiny is allowed to have any of my stuff. I don’t care if Thunderclash is dying again and my innermost energon is the only compatible fuel in the galactic sector, he can’t have it.”
Tailgate nods along, his fingers in a death grip around Whirl’s pincer.
“And when you guys are talking about me later, no one call me anything but Whirl. I’m serious. I don’t know about anything I did before that, so what could it matter?” He looks up at the ceiling. “In fact, don’t tell anyone about the Primus thing. No point.”
Cyclonus is a solid, immobile presence on his other side.
“Am I forgetting anything? Oh, tell Roadbuster I’ll be waiting for him in the pit.”
“Do gods go to the Afterspark?” It’s not clear who Tailgate is asking.
“I definitely don’t plan to stick around and watch over you or whatever. Think I’ve had enough of this universe.” He chuckles, a strained sound. “Yeah. So, that’s it. Better get this show on the road, huh?”
“We’ll be with you the entire time,” Tailgate promises.
“For as long as you want us,” Cyclonus amends.
“Yeah, I know.” He shrugs, laughs again. “I’m not even really scared of the whole dying thing. I’d made peace with that. Whenever there was something I needed to do, I took care of it, so I wouldn’t have to worry about it if the right bullet finally found its mark.” He glances between them. “Now, though… you two better behave, I swear. I’m making it your Primus-sworn duty to take care of and listen to each other, okay?”
Cyclonus nods, and the way he takes it so seriously makes Whirl almost glad he’s on his way out. He couldn’t handle being looked at like that all the time, and especially it’s the way they reach across his lap and entwine their hands that really does him in. He hates them dearly.
“Okay,” he says, winding up his t-cog for the big spin. “Okay, twelve Matrixes. No problem.”
~*~
Whirl times the blinking numbers to the rotations of his spark. 1,600 exactly. He’s done it.
He leans back in his chair but cannot stop staring at the little device in his hands. It is perfect. After years of researching, studying, trying, and failing, the pieces have come together to allow him to create this one perfect thing. He loves it, and a dangerous feeling of pride fills his spark, the kind that has so long been missing from his work in the Aerial Corps. If there is a Primus (and he’s still not sure, whatever the Functionists insist), this is what he built Whirl to do.
He gets up from his desk and walks across his small living space to a shelf. Nearing capacity, it has just enough room for him to push a few previous attempts aside to make room for the latest version. Surrounded by its brethren, it becomes lost almost immediately amid the sea of blinking lights, indistinguishable even from those he considers lesser. Some defects are more obvious than others: one has sat at the same time since the moment he brought it online, while another counts one klik backward for every two forward. But most are just slightly imperfect, necessary steps to get to this point, and he loves them all dearly.
He stands back. It feels like the work of a lifetime, these clocks, though he knows he took up the pursuit relatively recently. It’s just hard to remember how he filled his time before he had this project to work on, and he is again grateful he discovered it at all.
It is a gift to be able to create, he thinks, to cast a broad eye over his creations. The numbers blink at him, all out of tune, and he lets himself imagine being content doing just this for the rest of his life.
#maccadams#transformers#idw#whirl#abuse tw#death tw#my writing#oneshot#drops in a bucket#tbh im just so glad this is done#put too much time into it
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Day6 Jae as your college senior (Political Science major since he’s one)
Jae is the senior who’s in charge in freshmen orientation and head of poli sci association, a very charismatic leader. He’s a sophomore. His tall figure, fair skin and cute eyes under those glasses caught you off guard.
Super friendly and jokes a round to make the juniors comfortable, always asks “Do you have any question?” with a cheeky smile.
Most girls in your batch probably having crush on him because you too. He’s even famous in the entire faculty. Super respectful towards everyone.
But you’re competitive so you’re a step ahead, asking for his number in case you have any question without anyone noticing even your new friends. At random times you will chat him first tru katalk
Though he would gladly answer but instead he suggest to meet you face to face to explain further. He always chooses library as a place to meet you.
He’ll explain all about the course and the subjects in every semester, a little bit introduction of the lecturers and some tips to excel the subjects of your first final. He’ll also tell his experience during first year over coffee, in which he treats you
Sometimes you’ll came across him on your way to the class and you’ll greet him first and he replies as friendly to you that Brian, his closest friend and also your fellow senior, teases him over his over friendliness to you. And Jae will hit him and shut his mouth after that. You chuckles and yes your day has been made just by looking at that handsome figure
Would try hard to explain why Nicollo Machiavelli’s thought is not as evil as you think and is necessary in modern politics because you’re such a softie and more likely into Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy in which govern the nation with “love”
He would suggest some helpful tips and inspirational books/movies in politics to help you understand the whole field better
He would hit you up to ask how you’re doing on midterm quiz and if you’re doing bad he’ll cheer you up and continue supporting you. “Actually there’s formula in understanding World Politics, it’s heavily based on realism theory with three key points; Identity, Geography and Power. Anyway, let’s have a tutor lesson on Saturday. I will explain later. For now let’s grab a lunch, are you free now?” he says
Whenever it’s just the two of you, Jae becomes flirty but not too much that it makes you uncomfortable. He’a really keep it slow and not too much. Complimenting you has becomes one of his die-hard habits. Some of your female seniors (his fans) are annoyed with you. But you brush them off, because who cares? Whenever Jae see some of them trying to bully you, he becomes more protective of you
You will go supporting him for every debate competition he participates in. He’ll teach you the right way to debate too and make sure you’ll go practice with him whenever there’s time. He does that because he saw potential in you to replace him next year in the debate team. But stop the lesson if you’re too worn out in which you feel thankful for. He can be persuasive at times but knows too well about the limits. Anyway he’ll make sure you will do your best at it.
You and Jae will be in the same party in your campus. Besides, he would also run for campus elections and you’ll accompany him when he’s campaigning here and there even though it gets dark. He’s so thankful for it and always checks you up to make sure you’re okay. He would aslo asks your opinions on his manifesto and how he deliver his speeches
Whenever there’s issues regarding the university administration and national politics, he would lead the protest with all the students. Students and leaders from other universities also joining him. He and his friends will help solving the issues and if they’re successful, both of you will go out celebrating first then he’ll meet up with his friends later because you’re with him through thick and thin, giving ideas and supports, becoming his source of energy to go through it all
All of his friends know you even the political activist outside the campus because he won’t stop talking about you in front of them. You’ll be so shy but later on and change the subjects. You’re super comfortable and friendly with most of his friends and sometimes he’ll get jealous over it. “I shouldn’t tag you along!” He says with a cute pout while driving to your dorm
Jae will send you random memes and ugly pictures of himself when he gets bored in class and you will do the same. At the end you can’t concentrate in the class because it’s too funny. Your lecturer noticed that your mind is elsewhere and warns you. So whether you want it or not you have to keep your phone in your bag but still can’t stop laughing because of him.
When he holds a visit to the parliament/UN building for the freshmen to expose themselves to, you’ll sit beside him in the bus. You lost your breath a bit at how dashing he looks in suits (usually he’s looks fine but at that moment he’s looks the finest!)
Well, later Wonpil spill the tea that Jae purposefully bought a new one just to tease you. But Jae also secretly likes you in suits too, he captures your new look in his mind.
Whenever Jae is sick, you’ll take care of him, makes sure he’ll take his medicine on time and make him rest. Sometimes you’ll ask Brian about his health because he’s his roomate. Brian will guide you at what to do, what he can eat, wht he cannot eat etc. Usually Jae won’t be open so much about his health condition beacuse he doesn’t want to worry you
Jae likes to frame you in his lyrics and composing songs with his acoustic guitars, you probably not knowing this except Brian and Sungjin, a Music major who would help him with the composition.
Your faculty holds an annual dinner. You dressed up because Jae will be your date. You kind of want to sweep him off his feet that night. “Wow y/n, you’re...beautiful tonight” he says breathily. Yup, your mission cleared. “Shut up, Jae sunbaenim” you reply shyly.
To you surprise, he performed with a guitar in his hands that night on the stage. The song he sings is so unfamiliar, something you never heard of.
Sungjin whispers to you “He wrote this song himself”. “Oh really? He’s so good at it. Just how perfect a human can be?”
From the way he keeps looking at you while letting his beautiful vocals charm everyone, you kind of have a hunch that he sings about you. But you just be silence about it, don’t want to be upset if it’s the otherwise. Maybe he sings for another girl in this hall, no one that she knows of. Everyone claps and whistles for his amazing performance. His circles and your friends especially being loud for it.
“Being oblivious is one of her talents, does she?” Said Brian to Wonpil and Wonpil just laugh it off. “Hey, let Jae suffer a bit dude. It’s fun to watch”
“Ah...ahh... Sungjin asked me to perform tonight. Hahaha...he said it will make my popularity rise among the students, so...it’s kind of important for the campus election, if you know what I mean hehe” , “But you’ve always been popular among the students what do you mean? I can see the girls almost...fainted” you pout and Jae captures this sight again in his mind
He shut you up as he takes your hand in his “Well don’t you know my name? ‘Jae’ means ‘fame’ in Greek. I born with it ya know. It’s the most natural thing to happen hahahah” He laughs out loud at his lame joke. You just laugh along with him since his laugh is that contagious. If he’a not Jae, you will slap this boy for sure with savage remark
“Hey you’re cute when you’re jealous, y/n.” Jae said while tapping his fingers on the steering. “Shut up, sunbaenim!”
After that you’ll bug him to make him sing again, so he had no other options but to send you several videos of him jamming or when he’s practicing
But when you’re having bad time, concerns or trouble sleeping, he’ll sing to you while face timing with you. At that time you never know you need a voice to put you to sleep since your busy parents never did that
Whenever Jae gives a speech at any events, because he won the elections and become one of the student leaders, you’ll take photos of him and once he recognises it, he looks at the camera with a smirk and you sequeled over it
Study week is approaching, apart from your own circles doing revision together, sometimes you’ll ask Jae for help. So you guys will go to library together and have a little library “date”. He would also share some of his old notes with you. After teaching you something, he would go ask you some questions to test your understanding. “What’s the differences between oligarchy and aristocracy? Which one is better in Aristotle philosophy?” He asks but then you failed to answer it to his liking so he pinch your cheeks as a punishment
The library date is so fun, apart from being serious when it has has to be, Jae is so damn playful. He would tell some jokes about his friends, mostly about Dowoon and Wonpil, and make a fool of himself whenever you’re stress. The librarian sometimes will warn you guys to keep it down a little
Your last paper has ended and Jae finished his first so he picked you and your friends up from the examination hall. Later he make excuses so that your friends get the fuck out of his car and that you’ll go on date with him peacefully. As usual, your friends kind of expected it and fake sulking about it but got out of the car nevertheless, warning him to take care of you and get you to the dorm safely that night
After both of you got the result, you asked him first. He doesn’t want to reveal it unless you reveal yours. So you sent him your cute selfie, he doesn’t have a choice but to let you the screen shot of it. His cgpa is higher than you but regardless both of you are in the dean list. He sincerely hapy for you and deliver a bouquet of flowers to your house. Roses and baby breath to be exact because it’s your favourite
As the new semester begins, both of you’re able to meet now. It’s not a secret anymore that you and Jae are a thing now. Though both of you want to keep it low but he lowkey want to let the world know. Event the lecturer noticed and smirked to him whenever he see you guys talking while walking to the class
Jae asks you out the first day of the semester and both of you going to his favourite lobster restaurant. Yup, after working so hard saving up for this moment. He’s a simple person and you like that a lot bout him. Since you’re new to eating lobster, he cracks the lobsters for you and feeds you
Nothing too fancy, as he damn sure about his feelings and the probability of you liking him back, he asks you to be his girlfriend on the way to grab coffees before sending you back to the dorm. You hide your face with the sleeves of your hoodie and turn your face away from him as you say yes.
“Do I have to call you oppa now?”, “You can when it’s just the two of us. But if it’s in front of other people, just use sunbaenim, will you be okay with it? Either way my heart flutters whenever you said both hehe” , “Aren’t we obvious enough to hides it anymore?” , “You’re right but let’s just keep it simple, okay?” , “Sure Jaehyung oppa” you smile while locking hands with his free hand
(Since I’m also a poli sci and ‘Jae’ major so why not?)
#day6funny#day6memes#incorrectday6quotes#incorrect kpop texts#DAY6#jae#jaehyung#park jaehyung#brian kang#youngk#brian#sungjin#kang younghyun#park sungjin#wonpil#kim wonpil#dowoon#yoon dowoon
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@multiheaded1793, continuing from my response to this, I wrote up some alternate history scenarios for the 2020 election to illustrate to you how I think this sort of discourse would be happening in multiple very different scenarios. I think there’s only one scenario that centrist liberals wouldn’t interpret as vindication of their beliefs, and that’s a huge Dem win with a leftist like Sanders at the top of the ticket (a resounding democratic leftist victory is the one experience that’s incompatible with their beliefs about politics!).
It would have been more elegant to just tag you about this, but for some reason I can’t.
These aren’t “proper” alternate history scenarios, e.g. the Sanders victory scenario is “worked backward” to give a final result that’s basically just like OTL, cause the “joke” of the scenario is that the result is basically exactly the same but it’s interpreted differently because it’s Sanders at the top of the ticket instead of Biden. I think “realistically” a Sanders victory scenario would be more different. Or maybe not; one possible interpretation of the 2020 election is elections are very deterministic and it basically doesn’t matter who the candidates are, in which case if we could see a Sanders victory world we might indeed be shocked by how similar their election results maps are to ours.
I hope I didn’t make any silly mistakes. It’s hard to remember and keep track of the twists and turns of this election and the complexities of the United States’s kludgey spaghetti-coded election system! This is why I prefer writing science fiction: there’s less of a chance of getting something wrong!
Anyway, I hope you’ll find these entertaining if nothing else. Warning, this is kind of long.
Resounding Biden victory world:
The point of divergence that leads to this world is obscure. Perhaps it happened decades or centuries or even millennia ago. Whatever the differences are, for a long time they remained hidden in the vast but subtle sociological forces that do more to shape history than all the politicians, generals, philosophers, and prophets. It was only on November 3rd 2020 that these differences produced a manifestation on the flashy surface of politics, as a volcanic eruption might alert humanity to vast slow movements happening in the hot darkness deep within the Earth. On November 3rd 2020 the Democrats get the resounding victory and resounding repudiation of Donald Trump that they were hoping for.
The differences become obvious on election night. As in our world, there is a “red mirage” created by in-person voters favoring Republicans while mail voters favored Democrats, and this briefly creates the impression that the Republicans are doing surprisingly well, but with a much more lopsided vote this “red mirage” lifts much more quickly than in our world. Wisconsin and Michigan flip blue relatively early on election night, while swing state after swing state goes into the Biden-lead column: Arizona, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania ... Texas. Not long into election night Texas flips blue for the first time in two generations; when the news goes out on the TV a hundred million liberals cheer and a hundred million conservatives groan as it becomes obvious that the Republican Party is headed not merely toward defeat but toward a historic once-in-a-generation disempowerment and humiliation. Trump reacts predictably, going on TV to make baseless allegations that he is only losing because of massive voter fraud, but against the background of such a monumental defeat it seems more comical and pathetic than anything else. By the time the sun rises over the CONUS Atlantic coast on November 4th the election is basically all over except for the formalities.
In this world Joe Biden wins all the states he won in our world, and he also wins North Carolina, Florida, and Texas. He also wins one of Nebraska’s electoral votes (as in our world), and wins all four of Maine’s electoral votes (in our world he only won three of Maine’s four electoral votes). Trump still wins Iowa, Ohio, Indiana, and Missouri, but they’re thin squeaker victories, instead of the comfortable margins of victory he enjoyed in those states in our world. The final electoral college count is Biden 389, Trump 149 (in our world it’s Biden 306, Trump 232). In the popular vote the election is a spectacular landslide blow-out, with over 85 million people voting for Biden while only a little over 50 million people voted for Trump (as of the count on 11/25/2020); Biden’s huge popular vote margin of victory doesn’t make any difference legally but it’s a nice solid symbolic repudiation of Trump.
The picture elsewhere is somewhat less spectacularly rosy for Democrats, the big story of this election being more repulsion toward Trump than repulsion toward Republicans in general. Still, the overall picture is very good for Democrats.
Doug Jones loses his seat in Alabama as he did in our world, but in this world Democrats pick up Senate seats in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, North Carolina, and Maine (in our world only Arizona and Colorado flipped to the Democrats). This gives the Democrats a net gain of four seats and a 51 seat majority, with a strong possibility of picking up the other Georgia Senate seat in the run-off election in January 2021. It’s a very thin majority, leaving them vulnerable to conservadem defections, but it’s probably about as good as could realistically be expected under the circumstances. In the House of Representatives the Democrats increase their majority to 243 seats (it was 235 seats after the 2018 “blue wave”); it wasn’t needed, but it’s nice to have. Democrat governors are elected in Vermont and New Hampshire (unlike in our world, where Republicans won those races). Perhaps best of all, the Democrats do well in the state legislature races, and that means they will control much of the next round of redistricting; the consequences of that may profoundly shape the political landscape in the future.
The most obvious discourse implication of this result is an apparent vindication of the Biden strategy of inoffensiveness and reaching out to affluent suburban centrist swing voters. The “Bernie can’t win, we need an electable moderate to take down Trump” people are feeling totally vindicated and credibly claiming credit for this huge victory and drawing lessons for the future that basically amount to “the strategy we advocated was clearly the correct one and we should keep doing it”; they think that if it had been Sanders at the top of the ticket the Democratic victory would have been much narrower or not happened at all. The 2020 election result map also suggests a new geography for the Democratic Party. While the blue wall held this time, in the context of this resounding Democrat victory it looks kind of Trumpy: Trump still won Ohio, Indiana, and Iowa (barely), the Democrat candidate lost the Senate race in Iowa, and Biden’s margins of victory in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania aren’t overwhelming. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has made huge inroads into the south on the strength of southern blacks, Latino/as, and highly educated affluent suburban white swing voters. Political analysts observe that Biden could have lost the Blue Wall and Texas and still narrowly won (with 304 electoral votes). The “recipe” for the huge Biden win was to get lots of non-white votes while peeling off suburban moderates. This strategy is likely to get more effective in the future as the non-white population grows and the country becomes increasingly educated. Put together, this suggests that the Democrat faction in the ascendance will the the moderate “identity politics” faction that wants the Democratic Party to be an economically centrist and institutionally moderate-reformist minority advocate party (think: the sort of people who unironically see “more black lesbian CEOs” as a significant metric of social improvement). On the uglier fringes, this shades into the idea that the Democratic Party doesn’t need those Trumpy culturally conservative poor white people and should just leave them to vote for Republican politicians and rot.
On the left flank, response is divided. Some think that Trump was so bad a potted plant with a smiley face could have won a huge victory against him so the actually existing huge Democratic victory means very little; they think a more leftist party with somebody like Sanders at the top of the ticket would have done even better (a favorite argument of theirs is to paint the mere 51 seat Democrat Senate majority as pathetic). Others think the moderates are probably right about their strategy being the most effective one; it’s hard to argue with spectacular tangible success.
On the Republican side of the aisle, Trump and his hard-core supporters are digging in their heels and claiming with no evidence that the Democrats only won because they cheated. In the other parts of the Republican party, there’s a lot of soul-searching and distancing themselves from Trump and rats fleeing the sinking ship. A decisive repudiation of Trump-style politics within the Republican Party seems likely.
The version of me that exists in this world really enjoyed election night. He bought a nice dinner for himself to celebrate and sat back and enjoyed watching the Republicans get what was coming to them. He has a fond memory of joyously yelling “HE’S BODIED! HE’S FIRED!” as Texas flipped blue. He was in a good mood for days after the election. He feels kind of conflicted about the wider implications of this election though. It sure will be nice to have Trump gone, and the decisive repudiation of Trumpism sure is nice, but... Joe Biden will have most of what he needs to be the next F.D.R., but will he want to be that? Probably not. He still wistfully thinks it would have been better if Sanders or Warren was up there: they might really do something with a once-in-a-century opportunity like this! He expects Biden and his centrist faction to more-or-less squander it. And he’s very much aware of what factions within the Democratic Party will reap a huge PR win from this victory, and he doesn’t enjoy thinking about it. He’s not looking forward to watching Kamala Harris’s inauguration speech in 2024. Still, this will be an opportunity for the left to build. Maybe if A.O.C. can primary Harris in 2024... And if it was Sanders or Warren at the top of the ticket they might have lost, so maybe this is the best that could realistically be hoped for. He’s decided that for now he’s just going to enjoy the beautiful knowledge that Donald Trump’s Presidency will end on January 20th 2021; the future can be worried about when it comes.
Narrow Sanders victory world:
The primaries:
Perhaps this world too was subtly different from ours long before the differences effected the flashy surface of politics, but the obvious point of divergence between this world and ours is Joe Biden unknowingly accidentally eating some contaminated food on February 23rd 2020 (the day after the Nevada caucuses). On the evening of February 23rd he becomes violently ill and is taken to a hospital, where he is diagnosed with a very serious case of food poisoning. His symptoms are severe and there is a tense period when his doctors are not sure he’ll survive. There’s a miscommunication somewhere along the line, and on the night of February 23rd a member of Biden’s staff tells a reporter he’s ready to leak a huge scoop: Joe Biden is dying. By the morning of February 24th the story has hit the presses.
Reports of Joe Biden’s imminent demise prove greatly exaggerated. Though Biden’s illness is severe, it passes quickly: by late morning on February 25th Biden has more-or-less recovered and is out of the hospital and being driven to an airplane that will take him to South Carolina, where he will hit the campaign trail, trying for that win he needs to save his floundering campaign. Still, the incident raises concerns about his health and age at the worst possible time. On February 29th Joe Biden gets the big win he needs in the South Carolina primary, but it’s not quite as big as in our world; the delegate count from South Carolina is this world is Biden 37, Sanders 17 (in our world it was Biden 39, Sanders 15). It is a portent of things to come. With the food poisoning incident raising concerns about Biden’s age and health, different political calculations are made, and Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar don’t sacrifice their Presidency ambitions to give Biden a clear shot at the nomination.
With Buttigieg and Klobuchar still in the race super-Tuesday is a bit of a muddle, instead of the clear Biden victory it was in our world. Sanders wins the west, manages a narrow plurality win in Texas, and manages a strong second or third place in many other states. The super-Tuesday map is rich with southern states where Biden’s conservative reputation and connections with the black community serve him well, and Biden does well. If Democratic primaries were winner-take-all Biden would have managed the sort of resounding victory he had in our world, but they are proportional, so Buttigieg and Klobuchar cut deep into his delegate share and he’s unable to top Sanders the way he did in our world. Amy Klobuchar gets a plurality win in her home state of Minnesota, and Klobuchar and Buttigieg do well in the northeastern states, allowing Sanders to claim plurality wins in all of them. After throwing an obscene mountain of money at the primaries, Michael Bloomberg performs disappointingly. Elizabeth Warren also performs disappointingly. Political analysts in this world see the big winners of super-Tuesday as Sanders and Biden. Biden has gone from floundering to being the clear front-runner among the moderates. Sanders doesn’t really perform all that much better than in our world, but with the moderate vote split he comes out of super-Tuesday the biggest winner, with a solid delegate lead and a good enough performance to look like a strong candidate.
A few days after super-Tuesday Michael Bloomberg and Elizabeth Warren drop out of the race and Elizabeth Warren endorses Bernie Sanders. Sanders is the biggest winner from this, as the left flank of the Democratic Party now fully consolidates around him while the moderates remain divided.
The next round of primaries is March 10th. It’s again a muddle, which ultimately favors Sanders. Joe Biden wins big in Mississippi, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg do fairly well, and Sanders wins in Washington and manages a solid second or third place in most other places, which given the proportional nature of Democratic primaries means he continues to build a plurality delegate lead.
The Democrat machine politicians can see where this is going and don’t like it. They well remember what happened to their Republican counterparts in 2016, when a divided field helped their insufficiently house-trained disruptive outsider candidate win the nomination and ultimately the Presidency. They have no intention of letting the same story play out on the opposite side of the aisle in 2020. Having proved himself with his good performance on super-Tuesday, Joe Biden has re-established himself as the Democrat establishment’s favored candidate, and pressure is brought on Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg to drop out. In mid-March Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg suspend their campaigns and endorse Joe Biden.
Sanders and Biden head into their first one-on-one round on March 17. Biden wins big in Florida, while Sanders gets a modest majority of the vote in Illinois and consolidates his dominance of the west by winning in Arizona.
Meanwhile, COVID19 has been spreading as in our world. By mid-March cities all over the country are under shelter-in-place orders and the Democrats are scrambling to try to figure out how to manage a still very competitive primary election in the middle of a once-in-a-century plague year. Then, in late May, the next punch comes; George Floyd dies as he did in our world, and as in our world his death catalyzes a huge eruption of protest and civil unrest.
The whole thing feels queasily mystical. It is as if someone Upstairs thought the Donald Trump Presidency wasn’t as exciting as they’d hoped it would be and tweaked the parameters of the simulation to make 2020 an Interesting Times speed run. Donald Trump seems to only become more vicious and delusional as he presides over a country increasingly riven with civil unrest and fully under the power of the coronavirus. The streets are eerily quiet, like tombs, when they are not increasingly filled with protest and rage and violence. Bernie Sanders is claiming dominion over the Democratic Party and seems poised to do for the left what Donald Trump did for the right. Opinions are divided about exactly how that last thing feels queasily mystical. Is it the light rising to challenge the growing darkness? Or is the horseman of socialism riding with the horseman of plague and the horseman of civil strife? Whatever value judgments one makes about what’s happening, it seems that the old order is being pummeled from many directions simultaneously and is being driven to its knees. Or perhaps it is dying in the way an AIDS patient might die; killed by half a dozen secondary infections that are all fundamentally consequences of the same disease.
With Klobuchar and Buttigieg out of the race Biden surges. In the later one-on-one primaries against Sanders, Biden usually either wins or comes in a strong second. Biden is particularly strong in the south; he wins big in almost every southern state. Many are surprised by the strength of Biden, who many had previously dismissed as an uncharismatic doddering old man who seemed to struggle to string together coherent sentences. However, unlike in our world, in this world Sanders looks like a winner, so many fence-sitters who voted for Biden in our world vote for Sanders in this world, so Biden is unable to dominate the later primaries the way he did in our world.
The final Democratic primary debate in April looks much like it did in our world: two old men in a mostly empty room; an elbow-bump instead of a handshake because they don’t want to risk coronavirus infection by getting close to each other. It’s a test of how well the notoriously gaffe-prone Biden will do in a one-on-one debate, and he passes that test fairly well, allaying fears that he may have some sort of age-related cognitive decline. Biden’s promise to choose a woman as his Vice President is a clever bit of political maneuvering; Sanders is clearly unprepared for it and struggles to respond gracefully. The only big difference is the mostly unstated background knowledge of who is winning and who is losing. In this world Sanders comes into the April debate fresh from an unspectacular but fairly solid win in the Wisconsin primary.
With neither candidate able to dominate the race the Democratic primary remains competitive into June in this world. Biden gains on Sanders, but is unable to overtake him. Political pundits speculate that Sanders has an unfair advantage: he has an ally in the coronavirus: Biden’s vulnerable older supporters stay home in fear of the coronavirus, while Sanders’s younger and less vulnerable supporters go to the polls without fear.
In early June, Joe Biden and Democrat machine politicians face a choice. Biden can stay in the race to the bitter end. Maybe he can overtake Sanders, reach the magic 1,991 delegates, and go into the Democratic convention the unquestionably fair-and-square winner with a clear majority. Or if he can’t do that, he can still try to win on the conventional floor. Klobuchar’s and Buttigieg’s state-level delegates will be proportionately redistributed between him and Sanders, but their district delegates will be in free play and, with the blessings of Klobuchar and Buttigieg, will almost certainly back Biden. Biden can likewise probably expect the superdelegates to side with him. If it comes to convention floor politics Biden will probably easily crush Sanders. It will all be perfectly legally correct. It can even be credibly argued to be the will of the people; everyone knows Sanders is only winning because the moderate vote was split. But does the Democrat establishment dare alienate Sanders’s supporters this way, when they are going into one of the greatest political fights of the twenty-first century against Donald Trump? A long, bruising primary that drags into July may harm the party in the general election. And they know that inside Sanders’s clothing there is more than a man: there is the human mascot and spear-tip of a movement. Biden gaining the nomination through convention floor political maneuvers may be perfectly legally correct, but it takes no great political genius to see Sanders’s supporters will not see it that way; they will see it as their hero being undemocratically cheated out of his victory by a dirty trick. There is a great fear that if this course of action is taken Joe Biden’s 2020 nomination will go down in history as the twenty-first century equivalent of Hubert Humphrey’s 1968 nomination. And there’s also a real fear that a Sanders defeat by convention floor political maneuvers might trigger an eruption of violence as Sanders’s fanatical supporters respond by violently rioting in the streets. The fact that Sanders is so popular with the young, relevantly with fighting age men, starts to assume an ominous dimension in these speculations.
The last competitive primary happens on June 9th. Biden wins big in Georgia, while Sanders gets a surprisingly big win in West Virginia. The day after that, Joe Biden and top-level Democrat machine politicians make a decision. It is perhaps the most important decision of Joe Biden’s life. They will make a sacrifice for party unity in the face of Donald Trump. On June 11th 2020, Joe Biden goes on TV, announces that he is suspending his campaign, endorses Bernie Sanders, and urges party unity in the face of Trump. Immediately afterward, Klobuchar, Buttigieg, and Bloomberg also endorse Bernie Sanders.
The general election:
In August, it is announced that Elizabeth Warren has been chosen to be Sanders’s Vice President if he wins. There is speculation that there was a deal made to get her to drop out and endorse Sanders in March and this was the reward she was promised, though she is a logical choice in important ways. She has name recognition, has similar politics to Sanders while being somewhat younger than him (unusually important in this election because Sanders is so old and is an “outsider” candidate; he will need somebody who can pick up the torch from him if he dies in office, or in 2024 when he’ll be in his 80s), has a cooler and more analytical intelligence that compliments Sanders’s charisma, and may be attractive to some voters who are less enthusiastic about Sanders.
On August 17-20 the Democratic National Convention formally nominates Bernie Sanders as the Democratic Presidential candidate for 2020.
The mood among liberals going into the general election is tenser and less confident than in our world. Sanders has a lead over Trump in most polls, but the polls don’t look as good for the Democrats as they did in our world. And Sanders, a man who openly calls himself a socialist, a man who said something nice about something Fidel Castro did and dug in his heels when called in it, is a candidate who naturally inspires electability worries. Many liberals are convinced the Democratic Party has collectively made a terrible mistake, and hope they are wrong.
The first Sanders-Trump debate is on September 29th, and it’s the same kind of spectacle the first Biden-Trump debate was in our world. The highlight (or perhaps lowlight) is Trump making a “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by” statement which many interpret as a call to stand ready to act as brownshirts on his behalf. Some moderates have a vague idea that a Biden-Trump debate might have been somehow more dignified and Presidential, some leftists chuckle about how if it was Biden up there he’d probably have soiled his pants in the middle of the debate or something, the general sentiment among everyone to the left of Mitt Romney is simply that Trump lived down to their worst expectations.
The Vice Presidential debate between Mike Pence and Elizabeth Warren on October 7th is a note of normality: they actually sound like normal politicians instead of like two old men having a Thanksgiving table argument about politics while the rest of the family wishes they’d quiet down. There’s a 2020 touch when a fly rests on Mike Pence’s head for a few minutes.
In the final Sanders-Trump debate they put in a mute button to stop Trump from interrupting so much, and it’s actually a huge favor to Trump, disciplining him into actually being an actually not bad debater.
Election night and after:
The mood among liberals going into election night is tenser and less optimistic than in our world. There’s no confident expectation of a big blue wave and a resounding repudiation of Trumpism, and there’s a lot of fear that Sanders is simply unelectable and he will drag down the down-ballot with him.
Election night seems to confirm the worst. Swing state after swing state goes into the Trump-lead column, and aside from a couple of wins in the west the Senate race picture looks bleak for the Democrats. It looks like Trump will win Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania. Sanders’s margins of victory in crucial swing states are mostly tighter, so it takes longer for the “red mirage” to lift. One of the few bright spots for the Democrats is Arizona, which is a sour note for Donald Trump; at this point he’s mostly confident of victory, but losing Arizona is a humiliation, and Donald Trump hates being humiliated. Late in election night, Donald Trump goes on TV and makes a confident victory speech. He has some worries about the red mirage though, so in typical Trump fashion he follows his confident declaration of victory by claiming that the Democrats are committing voter fraud on a massive scale and trying to steal the election, and he says that the vote counts should stop. A defiant Sanders goes on TV and reassures his supporters that there are many voters yet to be counted, and then goes on the attack, saying Trump is blatantly trying to steal the election. He also says something that some interpret as a call for his supporters to riot if his victory is stolen from him, giving the left its own version of Trump’s “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by” scandal.
There’s a lot of tension in a lot of mixed-generation liberal households on election night, as older, more cautious and moderate liberals quietly or not so quietly blame the youngsters for the disaster they believe is unfolding in front of them. “This wouldn’t have happened with Biden or Mayor Pete or Klobuchar,” they think, “How did you expect middle America to react to a guy who calls himself a socialist and defends Fidel Castro? We told you this would happen!” The election picture most liberals go to bed with that night is bleak.
In the last dark pre-dawn hours of November 4th the red mirage finally begins to lift. Wisconsin flips to Sanders-lead. By late morning on November 4th Michigan has also flips to Sanders-lead. Millions of older liberals who went to bed blaming the Berniebros for four more years of Donald Trump check the news and breathe a sigh of surprised relief: it’s not much but maybe Bernie did have what it takes after all; he managed something he needed to do, something Hillary Clinton failed to do: he held the blue wall! All eyes now turn to Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania actually flips somewhat earlier than in our world, to the absolute jubilant delight of young liberal “Berniebros,” the cautious relief of their liberal elders, and the disappointment or outrage or terror of a hundred million conservatives. Not long afterward, a surprise: Georgia flips to Sanders-lead too. It’s a real squeaker, even tighter than Biden’s Georgia win in our world, and Sanders would have won without it, but it’s a pleasant surprise for liberals.
With the election basically all over but the formalities Sanders makes his formal victory speech, with raucous cheers from enthusiastic supporters. In contrast to the almost therapeutic victory speech Biden gave in our world, Sanders’s victory speech is darker, angrier. The speech has its hopeful and conciliatory notes, but the general thrust of its message is that Sanders intends to fight for the ordinary American and his fight has just begun.
Sanders’s victory is greeted with an outpouring of joy and celebration by his often young supporters. Most liberals are happy just to get rid of Trump. Many moderate liberals aren’t really looking forward to what they see as another four years of an obnoxious angry extremist in the White House, but at least Sanders isn’t evil. On the right the mood ranges from grumpy disappointment to ... dark. There’s a significant number of people who are under the sincere impression that Sanders is basically Lenin and the relationship between him and Antifa is similar to the relationship between Hitler and the Blackshirts.
So far the much-feared Trumpist brownshirts seem to be a paper tiger; there have been some rowdy protests but no serious violence. Lots of people are very fervently hoping things stay that way.
Somewhere there’s an immigrant from China who’s old enough to remember the Cultural Revolution and is very, very frightened. She doesn’t follow politics much but she’s heard that Bernie Sanders is a communist and she’s got just the right mix of garbled information about him filtered through her Fox News watching neighbors to be very alarmed. It’s starting here too! It’s all starting again! She’s trying to give her family a crash-course in how to survive in a communist dictatorship, but they’ve never known anything but freedom and don’t seem to be taking her very seriously, which is frustrating and heartbreaking to her; “they don’t realize these things will soon be matters of life and death!”
Comparing the election results in our world and in this world, most people would be struck by how similar they look, how little difference the top of the ticket made.
Compared to Biden, Sanders did better in the west but worse in the south. He did worse with affluent moderates and center-rightists and better with liberals and poor people. He did worse with blacks but better with Latino/as. He actually has a bigger popular vote win than Biden, mostly because he creates greater enthusiasm in liberal areas such as California, but his margins of victory in swing states are mostly tighter. Sanders didn’t poll as well as Biden in the lead-up to the election, but he also did not underperform expectations in the same way; Sanders supporters tend to be the sort of people who don’t answer polls much. Compared to Biden, Sanders’s success relied less on peeling off swing voters and more on bringing in politically disengaged people; the sort of people who don’t answer polls much, don’t trust or like the talking heads on TV, usually don’t vote, and are usually poorer and less formally educated than the conventional electorate. In short, the “dark horse” Sanders voter looks a lot like the “dark horse” Trump voter.
In short, compared to Biden, Sanders has a rather Trumpy profile, and his winning strategy looks kind of like a sort of left-wing mirror of Trump’s 2016 winning strategy: super-charge the base, draw in some politically disengaged people, rely on partisan tribalism to fill in the gaps, with this build the sort of narrow winning coalition that can just manage to defy conventional political wisdom and propel an “extreme, outsider” normally “unelectable” candidate into office.
Sanders won the same states Biden won in our world. His margins of victory are bigger in Arizona and Pennsylvania but smaller in Virginia, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Georgia. Sanders didn’t win that one electoral college vote in Nebraska, which in this world went solidly to Trump, so his electoral college total is slightly smaller than Biden’s.
In the Senate, the picture is broadly similar to our world, though with some differences. Warren and Sanders were both Senators from states with Republican governors who would have the responsibility of appointing their replacements if Sanders became President. The governor of Vermont agrees to appoint a Democrat-aligned independent to replace Sanders if he wins (much as he did in our world), but the governor of Massachusetts intends to appoint a Republican to replace Warren. However, the Democrats did get one stroke of luck in this world that they didn’t get in ours: the Democrat Senate candidate won in Iowa; this saves Warren from going down in history as having cost the Democrats a Senate majority by accepting the Vice Presidency post. Other than this the Senate picture looks basically just like in our world. This puts the Democrats in a somewhat better position than in our world, as there will be a special election for Warren’s Senate seat in 2021 that is likely to elect a Democrat, but the Senate majority is going to come down to two run-off races in Georgia, just like in our world. The House races went a little worse for the Democrats than in our world: as of 11/25/2020 the Cook Political Report calls the House as 220 Democrats, 213 Republicans, and 2 uncalled races (in our world it’s 222 Democrats, 210 Republicans, and 3 uncalled races). Likewise, the governor’s races went the same way they went in our world, except that the Republican also won the governor’s race in North Carolina (in our world, the Democrat won that race). And the state legislature races are the same depressing picture as in our world, so Republicans will control much of the next round of redistricting.
The post-election discourse:
Of course, people in this world cannot compare their election results with ours and see how similar they are. They can only speculate about what our world might look like, just as I can only speculate about what their world might look like. And speculate they do.
Many centrist, moderate, and “pragmatist” Democrats think they know exactly who’s to blame for the Democrat’s disappointing performance: Sanders, and by extension the primary voters who put him at the top of the ticket. How could a President be as bad as Trump was, get 250,000 U.S. citizens killed through incompetence, and then come so close to winning? How could so many people vote for such a person and for the politicians who did nothing to stop him and aided him? Well, maybe if the opposition party did something incredibly, mind-bogglingly stupid, like putting at the top of the ticket a guy who openly calls himself a socialist and who defends Fidel Castro... They are convinced that the election results look the way they do because Sanders turned off huge numbers of persuadable voters. They think the Berniebros took the perfect storm of conditions for a once-in-a-century huge Democrat victory that was 2020 and used it to get an ordinarily unelectable extremist into the White House, at an enormous opportunity cost to the rest of the party (and a little less luck and they’d have blown their own goal too and gotten everyone four more years of Trump!). They are convinced that if it were Biden or Klobuchar or Buttigieg at the top of the ticket the party would not be in this mess. Many of them are sure that the Democratic Party would have surged magnificently to crushing dominance of the Presidency and both branches of Congress, if only the Berniebros hadn’t insisted on burdening the party with a toxic albatross.
The predictable tweets and thinkpieces blaming the disappointing election results on Sanders have been written. The disappointing results in the south are blamed on Sanders’s inability to reach out to black people and persuadable white moderates. Somebody looks at exit polls, notices Trump seems to have improved his performance with everyone except white men (a pattern that exists in our world too), and multiple high-profile articles and blog posts are written blaming this on Sanders’s “class reductionism” and supposed insensitivity to the problems of everyone who isn’t a working class white man. The election map represents the Democratic Party turning away from its vibrant diverse future and doubling down on its decaying past as the party of “white working class” Midwesterners. The fact that non-white people still overwhelmingly voted Democrat and Sanders has many female and minority supporters is, of course, quietly soft-peddled in such analysis. The disappointing election results are blamed on the Democratic Party’s embrace of socialism, of Medicare For All, of “defund the police,” of BLM. Criticism that paints Sanders as “class reductionist” and insufficiently sensitive to the needs of women and minorities coexists happily with criticism that castigates the Democratic Party for embracing anything that makes affluent culturally conservative suburban white people uncomfortable.
Many leftists are, of course, convinced that the moderates have it all backwards and the Democrats would have gone down in epic humiliating defeat under Klobuchar or Buttigieg or, God, can you imagine; Biden. The closeness of the election just shows how badly the Democrats needed a leader like Sanders who could inspire people and had something real to offer; without him the Republicans would have wiped the floor with them; he saved the party from total defeat and ingratitude and backstabbing is his predictable reward, because liberals would rather lose to fascists than win with leftists. It just shows electoral politics is a waste of time anyway, watch 2024 when Warren gets primaried by Mayo Pete who then loses to Tom Cotton.
The version of me that exists in this world had a tense election night, breathed a cautious sigh of relief when he opened his computer and saw Wisconsin had flipped blue in the morning, breathed a bigger sigh of relief when Michigan followed it, and spent a week feeling good when Pennsylvania finally flipped for Sanders. It’s a far from ideal election result, of course, with Sanders’s power likely to be sharply constrained, but still, there’s a President who might really do some good! If nothing else, he thinks Sanders will be good at using the soft power of the Presidency to shift the Overton Window. He’s very excited that Sanders will be going to the White House.
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Wrestle Kingdom 15 day 2 preview
TBD vs. Jay White - White is challenging for the IWGP heavyweight title and IWGP intercontinental title, against the winner of Tetsuya Naito vs. Kota Ibushi from last night. In fact several of the matches on this card are major spoilers for yesterday’s show, so I guess the whole thing needs to go under the cut.
Kota Ibushi vs. Jay White - Ibushi defeated Tetsuya Naito last night to become the 73rd IWGP heavyweight champion and the 27th IWGP intercontinental champion. White is using his “IWGP double championship right to challenge” contract to receive this title shot. If White wins, Ibushi’s 24 hours as double champion would be the shortest reign in the history of either championship.
Ibushi was devastated when he was knocked out of the Double Gold Dash last year, and moreso when he lost to White in the consolation match. Ibushi and White met again during the G1 Climax, where Jay beat him again. Ibushi nevertheless won the G1 Climax to earn the “right to challenge” contract. However, the contract is defended like a championship, and Ibushi put it on the line against White...who beat him again. White then elected to take January 4 off and schedule his title match with Naito for January 5. However, Naito decided to spend the 4th defending the title against Ibushi. The upshot is that Ibushi has finally achieved his dream, but he must immediately put it all on the line against his nemesis, who isn’t exhausted from working last night.
Frankly, I’m not sure why they set this up where the 1/4 main event sets up who gets to wrestle White, like he’s the biggest star in this thing. I suppose maybe the idea is that he’s unavoidable so that you’ll worry until the very end that he could ruin everything. Maybe that psychology connects with the Japanese audience. It doesn’t with me. I’d rather just see the best and/or biggest match close the second show, and White vs. Ibushi isn’t it. Their match at Wrestle Kingdom 14 last year was so dull that I lost interest for about 20 minutes. Jay will go for the same cheap heat spots he always goes for, and Ibushi will randomly no-sell or oversell each of them, depending on whether he wants to be Ultra Instinct Shaggy or Ricky Morton at any given moment.
I suppose White-Ibushi matches have been fun, sometimes. I really liked the G1 Climax 2019 final. But personally I was over this feud months ago. I really hope they’ve come up with some new material, or this is going to be a long slog for me. I’m picking Ibushi to win, because I really don’t think they’ll book White to win just to troll the Tokyo Dome. But the bigger problem is, I wouldn’t care if they did.
Taiji Ishimori vs. Hiromu Takahashi - Ishimori is defending the IWGP junior heavyweight championship. Hiromu defeated El Phantasmo last night to earn this title shot. Ishimori won the title from Takahashi on August 29, although they met again in the Best of the Super Jr. tournament on November 15, where Hiromu won. So this is the rubber match.
This match should be good to great, but it feels inevitable that Takahashi will regain the title. That’s not all bad, since he’s a big star and I’m a fan, but the match would mean more if Ishimori had been built up bigger. I suppose the pandemic made that difficult, since there were enough shows (or junior heavyweights) for Taiji to really burn through other top contenders.
I guess I’ll just try to get in the mindset of enjoying Hiromu’s coronation, instead of hoping for a match that could go either way. Then, on the off chance Ishimori actually wins, I’ll be properly shocked. But I’m not betting on that happening.
EVIL vs. SANADA - Welp, it had to happen--after Evil turned on Los Ingobernables de Japon and joined Bullet Club, it was only a matter of time before his tag team partner Sanada finally got a hold of him and...wait. I’m looking at my notes for the Evil-Sanada match from October 17. I’m frankly not sure why Sanada suddenly got mad at Evil two months after winning that match. I’m pretty sure they just ran out of ideas for each guy. Well, the October bout wasn’t as emotionally charged as I wanted anyway, so I’ll take a delayed grudge match if I can get it.
I believe Kevin Kelly commented recently that a win for Sanada here moves him closer to the main event title picture, but a loss sends him tumbling back down. I’d agree with that assessment. Along the same lines, a win for Evil suggests a renewed push for him, whereas a loss would signal that they’re putting him on the back burner for a while. I don’t expect either guy to headline the really big shows, but even on the lesser shows, only the winner of this match makes sense chasing the heavyweight and intercontinental titles.
I’d be in favor of these two brawling all around the ringside area (as much as safety procedures allow) and getting it out of their system. Blow this feud off quickly, so we can get on with new business--Sanada working his way up the ladder, and Evil plotting against his rivals within Bullet Club. I’m picking Sanada to win.
Shingo Takagi vs. Jeff Cobb - Takagi is defending the NEVER title. Cobb beat Shingo in their last singles encounter in September, but Takagi wasn’t champion yet. So Cobb had to beat him again in a tag match in December to set up this match. Of course, in the meantime, Cobb turned heel by joining Will Ospreay’s new stable, the Empire.
You could always count on either of these guys to have a great clubberin’ battle, but Cobb’s heel turn should add a vicious new edge to this matchup. We should get a strong showcase of what to expect from Evil Jeff Cobb, above and beyond what he demonstrated in World Tag League. Accordingly, I think he basically has to win the title. There just isn’t anything so important that it’s worth keeping the belt on Takagi; the most interesting thing he could do right now is chase Cobb. So this is another “feels like a foregone conclusion” match on a card full of them. At least this one should be fairly different from the others.
El Desperado & Yoshinobu Kanemaru vs. Master Wato & Ryusuke Taguchi - Despy and Kanemaru are defending the IWGP junior heavyweight tag team titles. Wato and Taguchi each managed to beat Despy in one-on-one matches during Best of the Super Jr., so I guess they figured they’d make a go of it as a team.
If you’d told me a year ago that a Young Lion would come back from excursion with a bunch of fancy vignettes, and it was all to build to this match, past-me would never have dreamed that the new guy would be the dimmest star of this group. But as it happens, Desperado had an epic star-making performance in BOSJ, Taguchi is a comedy institution in the promotion, and Kanemaru is at least a champion. Wato just hasn’t been booked like a hot new star, and the whole idea of having guys like Taguchi and Hiroyoshi Tenzan coach him just makes him look weaker. You get the feeling this match is designed to help him recover from all that, except that I have no confidence he’ll actually win the big one in the Tokyo Dome. If he loses here, he’s basically Captain New Japan Mark II.
What’s worse for Wato is that I’m not even sure it’s a good idea for him to finally win the big one, not at Desperado’s expense. The drama of the BOSJ final took me from “Oh, that one guy who looks like Skeletor cosplaying El Kabong” to “holy shit El Desperado isn’t fucking around.” They need to run with that, and maybe dropping the tag title is step one. But dropping it to Master Wato? I guess Wato could pin Kanemaru, but still.
To me the best finish for everyone involved is if the champs retain and Wato flips out and turns on Taguchi. But that sort of thing is awfully swerve-y for New Japan, and it’s smarter not to assume it’ll happen every time it’d be a little convenient. So I guess we’ll see what they’ve got. But I feel safe predicting the champs retain and Wato doesn’t get over as a babyface.
Toru Yano vs. Bad Luck Fale vs. Chase Owens vs. BUSHI - This is a four-way match to decide who gets first possession of the provisional KOPW 2021 trophy. Whoever holds the trophy at the end of the year will be the official King of Pro Wrestling in 2021, or something. Yano won the title for 2020, but it’s a new year so we have a new title. The participants here were the final four of last night’s New Japan Ranbo gauntlet match. I gather that the first man to score a fall over any other opponent wins.
This is a pretty oddball lineup so I would imagine this match will just be a lot of shenanigans. All four guys will cheat to win, but Owens and Fale will work together to double-team cheat, so they can be bigger heels than the other two.
Yano originally won the KOPW 2020 trophy in a four-way like this one, by stealing a pin over Kazuchika Okada of all people. So I would think that makes him a heavy favorite to win here. The only question is if the bookers think it’d be funnier for his tricks to backfire when dealing with the massive, extremely irritated Fale. I think I’d rather see Fale defending the trophy for six months, to be honest, but my gut says Yano will win again.
AZM & Saya Kamitani & Utami Hayashishita vs. Natsupo & Himeka & Maika - This is one of two women’s matches to provide exposure to STARDOM, the women’s promotion owned by New Japan’s parent company. In Japan it’s seems to be considered normal for promotions to be all-male or all-female, and for fans to only want to see one or the other on a given event. So I get the impression some New Japan fans have a problem with running Stardom matches on a NJPW show, although I certainly don’t see why. In any case, TV and streaming rights mean that Western fans probably won’t actually see this match; I’m not even sure it will be televised. And I unfortunately know nothing baout Stardom, so it’s kind of pointless for me to comment on performers I’ve never heard of in a match I’ll probably never get to see.
Tam Nakano & Mayu Iwatani vs. Syuri & Giulia - Another women’s match to showcase Stardom. In this case I at least recognize Iwatani’s name from some ROH shows a couple of years ago, but that’s about it. I’m all for getting women’s wrestling some more exposure anywhere you can do it, but unfortunately these matches are aimed at the live audience in the Tokyo Dome, and won’t do much good raising my awareness.
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Realme Mobile Signal Repair
Among the problems which we can find on our mobile, those that have to do with a policy are the most annoying. Running out of sign means being cut off, so long as we are not under the protection of a Wi-Fi network. Furthermore, our data connection will likewise be impacted. That is why we wanted to determine how to address these problems in Realme mobiles.
Failures with the policy of our Realme phone can appear when we least expect it. Its causes can be very varied, being ourselves the culprits or any third-party app. It can also be due to certain difficulties with our operator or in spite of the SIM card. In this way, we can totally lose the signal or it's too weak to ensure the quality of calls and cellular data.
In this case, the policy signal does not appear anywhere, that is, we will notice an"x" that will show that there are issues with the signal. In this case, we will have several options in our hands to attempt and take care of the issue.
Realme Motherboard Repair
Without it, your phone wouldn't have the ability to work. It is, in actuality, that the heart of your entire apparatus like a CPU is obviously a pc.
The circuit board retains together multiple crucial sections of your cellphone. Let's say your heart fails. What happens afterward? Your system stops moving and you're considered as dead. In the same way, if your motherboard gets damaged somehow, your device will quit functioning. Therefore it is important to identify if your phone is malfunctioning because of a faulty motherboard. However, it's not an easy task to fix your phone's circuit board. Fortunately, our specialists at Hitec Mobile can quickly figure out what is causing your telephone to malfunction and fix it accordingly in virtually no time.
Realme Display Damage Repair
All smartphones come with a massive display nowadays and the larger the screen, the higher the odds of you damaging your smartphone screen when it accidentally slips from your grip. In fact, the very first question to cross our minds when we hold a recently launched phone is, "The best way to protect the screen? "We wouldn't say there are techniques to completely save your cellphone's display from breaking but yes, there are ways to protect your smartphone display from harm.
Realme Dead Phone Repair
How to Revive a Dead Android phone if there's a charger near you, catch it, plug it in, and hit the power button. The battery might just be dead since it is not due to faulty batteries losing charge abruptly. Once the cable has been plugged into the telephone, it should have the ability to begin. If your phone has lights for alarms, this is a fantastic way to understand if the charging indicator comes on. The least that means that the circuit from the USB to the main port is working fine. If it works, then you might just have a broken battery, which can be readily replaced, but if that still doesn't, then it’s time to take some drastic steps.
It is possible that your phone is only with a system hang, and in rare circumstances, Android programs have been proven to freeze quite badly, so badly that even by pressing the power button, there's absolutely no response. Once the battery is plugged in again, check if your phone can get to restart. If the phone still does not boot up, take a look at the battery compartment, there'll be a little square of what seems like white paper embedded within this region. This is actually the moisture index and if it has turned pink or pink even partially, this implies your phone has been subjected to water and it means that your warranty is taken and the phone is dead.
Realme Camera Repair
Smartphones are unique with their quality cameras at a very reasonable cost. Realme goals the common people with the best-in-class facilities at a very reduced price. However, are you frustrated with any flaws in the camera? Can not enjoy taking selfies just as before? Stay trendy, the expert mobile service technicians of Mi Mobile Service Center Hyderabad is here to help you. Mobile service center Hyderabad provides the ideal support apt for the Mi Smartphone camera at Hyderabad.
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Now boost up your selfies using cellular camera replacement solutions! Long-term usage and if it is rough and hard, it may make your mobile phone act wild. Most commonly the quantity buttons may not work or only fall off because of continuous use. This is not at all a serious problem as support center Hyderabad is here to repair your problem. Fix center Hyderabad resolve every issue about your Mi mobile phone and spare parts. Make us a call for rapid and pleasing service from our licensed workers.
Realme Battery Restoration
If there's something in a cell telephone that gets damaged in most cases, it needs to be the battery life. Many mobiles come with good excellent battery life, but just like any other digital product, the battery of a smartphone can have problems at any time. It is obviously frustrating when your telephone suddenly switches off because of faulty battery issues. Generally, a mobile telephone's battery goes completely dead or does not hold a charge however long you put it upon charging. If that's also the case with your Realme mobile phone, then it's far better to opt for Realme cell battery replacement.
To get the battery for the Realme phone repaired, you should pay a visit to the authorized mobile service center in town. They have highly skilled mobile repair technicians that provide battery problem-related aid and other help. You can take the device to their service center and ask to repair the battery or elect for a new battery replacement if the telephone is in warranty. They will most likely keep the telephone in the center for a couple of days because ordering spare components takes time.
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ARTIST CLAIMS ARE HERE!
TIMELINE:
Artist Sign-Ups: May 22-August 7
Artist Claims Open: August 6
Final Check-In: August 30
Final Drafts Due: Sept 18
Posting Begins: September 21
THE BASICS:
One of the unique aspects of a big bang challenge is the combination of fic and fanart. Artists are welcome to create art in any medium they choose, including but not limited to: mixes, videos, podfics, gifs, drawings, paintings, graphics, edits, comics, physical crafts. Art is impossible to quantify, but we do ask that artists put in a significant effort in recognition of the work that the writers are doing on the fics. Authors will be writing their fics all summer and will be expending significant time on the project. A good benchmark for artists is about 15-20 hours of work, including brainstorming and planning.
The final product should be a collaboration between author and artist. What that collaboration looks like is a highly individual process: if you get a clear artistic vision, run with it; but you should also feel free to ask your author any questions you have along the journey. Artists and authors should share drafts with each other as they go so that when the final products are posted, they complement each other well.
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We have 5 wonderful Big Bang fics. Click the Read More for their summaries!
Fic 1: Take Me Out to the Ballgame
Tentative Title: (not the title) take me out to the ballgame
Pairing(s): Jon Favreau / Tommy Vietor
Characters: Jon Favreau, Tommy Vietor
Ao3 Rating: E
Warnings: No archive warnings apply
Additional Tags: Baseball AU ; Coming Out ; Bisexual Characters ; Dating ; Alternate Universe - Different Meeting
Summary: Jon and Tommy meet playing baseball in high school and start to fall for each other, then Tommy moves away. Their epic love story continues when they end up on the same Minor League baseball team. The big question is, will they end up with a World Series ring or an engagement ring?
Fic 2: Spirits that I’ve Cited
Tentative Title: Spirits that I've cited
Pairing(s): Tommy/Lovett; background Emily/Jon, Alyssa/Erin
Characters: Tommy, Lovett, Favs, Emily, Alyssa, Erin, Dan
Ao3 Rating: tentative M (for psychological horror and possible sex)
Warnings: a non-consensual kiss under the influence of possession might happen, this scene is not yet written
Additional Tags: paranormal investigators, slow burn, reluctant colleagues to friends to lovers, mutual pining, angst, hurt/comfort, accidental internet stars, bed-sharing, coming-out, road trips, witches getting married, demonic possession, ghosts, mythical creatures, Monster of the Week, psychological but non-graphical horror, slightly unreliable narrator, intoxication, magical mind control, themes of bodily and mental autonomy, (past) abusive relationships (not between main characters), possession induced mental health problems, worldbuilding, happy ending
Summary: It’s a cold day in November when Tommy meets Lovett and his life turns upside down. Which shouldn’t be the worst thing, looking at it objectively.
Because, objectively, Tommy’s life already sucks. He is lonely, depressed, and Crooked Medium, the agency for paranormal investigations he co-owns with his ex-boyfriend Jared, is falling apart. Besides the shitty fact that he and Jared broke up, they constantly operate in the red, despite their best efforts. And it’s just the garbage cherry on top of the dumpster sundae that Jared and their only other core member, Jon, hate each other’s guts. Jon is Tommy's friend, but more importantly, he is Crooked Medium's exorcist par excellence, and for a former priest Tommy thought he might be better at the whole 'turn the other cheek' thing. He supposes that probably explains the 'former' part.
So of course he panics when Jon unexpectedly buys out Jared’s shares in the company and offers Lovett a one-year apprenticeship as a medium and buys Jared shares of the agency. Suddenly Tommy’s faced with training a person who is not familiar with magic in one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, instead of relying on the experience Jared had. Despite the help from magical professors Alyssa and Dan, witch and shop-owner Erin, and their whole team—to Tommy it feels like Lovett’s credentialing next November is ages away.
However, after a bonding experience involving ghost mice, Tommy slowly but surely discovers that Lovett isn’t an inconvenience at all. He is charming, attractive, hilarious, and way more talented than Tommy originally anticipated. Even their business improves, especially when they become an overnight internet sensation due to a malfunction. Instead of operating only in Boston, people across the country are now booking them to handle their mystical and paranormal problems. With each new case, Lovett learns more—and Tommy learns more about Lovett. This is unfortunate, given that Lovett is technically Tommy's intern, and the last thing Tommy needs is a harassment scandal.
Tommy, naturally good at ignoring things, decides to ignore it. Which works out fine, thank you very much. At least up until Alyssa and Erin’s magical wedding in the woods. Or up until Lovett has a life-changing experience with a mirror. Or maybe even up until Lovett (plus Lovett's friend/household spirit Spencer) moves in.
And just when Tommy thinks falling in love with his employee is his biggest problem, it turns out much more nefarious forces are at work.
Fic #3: The gentle outline of the country we are building
Tentative Title: The gentle outline of the country we are building
Pairing(s): Jon Favreau/Jon Lovett/Tommy Vietor, Jon Favreau/Jon Lovett, Jon Favreau/Tommy Vietor, Jon Lovett/Tommy Vietor
Characters: Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Tommy Vietor, Dan Pfeiffer, Alyssa Mastromonaco, Cody Keenan, Michael O' Neill, Spencer Wong, Andy Favreau, Tanya Somanader, Travis Helwig
Ao3 Rating: E
Warnings: No archive warnings apply
Additional Tags: DC era, LA era, pining, wrong number AU, polyamory, threesomes, jealousy, slow burn, friends with benefits, angst with a happy ending, getting together, smut, fluff, blowjobs, anal sex, rimming, dirty talk, sexting, drinking, marijuana, sex under mild influence of alcohol, friends to lovers.
AO3 (working) Summary: It takes spending the night in one room with a king-sized bed for Jon, Lovett, and Tommy to finally get it right after nearly a decade of trying.
AKA A story about Jon, Tommy, and Lovett getting together, aided and abetted by Jon’s technological ineptitude, misunderstandings, love, friendship, and longing.
Expanded summary: Jon and Lovett embark on a charged, text-based flirtation without knowing the other after Jon texts the wrong number during the 2008 general election campaign. It feels like a summer fling that wouldn’t end, just like those times Jon had slept with Tommy back in Chicago. But both of them do end, but at least Jon’s going to the White House with a new speechwriter and his best friend in tow. Jon thinks, not the right time then with Tommy, not the right time now with you, Lovett.
They write speeches and policies and learn lessons on how to build a country and a friendship. The first summer at the White House, Tommy starts taking Lovett to bed almost every night. Two years later, he stops, because Lovett knocks on his door one day and says, “I am leaving.” Not quite the right time for you and me.
Lovett spends his days in LA writing things very different from what he used to but thinking thoughts about Jon and Tommy that aren’t all that different. Jon and Tommy skype him from Chicago when his show gets canceled, and Lovett thinks about how right they look together on the screen, like they belong to each other. Jon comes to LA and doesn’t leave. Tommy moves closer, but not close enough. They lose everything when November 2016 dawns and then build an empire from the ruins, and over the next few months, they think, maybe it wasn’t the right time then, and maybe we did not do this before because we were always meant to do this together. All of us.
Fic 4: Loving Him was Red - Azure
Title: loving him was red - azure
Pairing(s): Jon Favreau/Dan Pfeiffer, background Michael/Elijah
Characters: Jon, Dan, Tommy, Lovett, Alyssa, Michael, Elijah
Rating: E
Warnings: No major warnings apply
Additional tags: alternate universe, actors, hollywood, tabloids, love at first sight, BDSM, like lots of BDSM, spanking, flogging, humiliation, painplay, safeword use, failed scene, alcohol, alcohol abuse, drug use and abuse, divorce, bad at communication
Summary: Rising star Dan Pfeiffer meets grown-up child actor Jon Favreau on the set of the movie that just might be their big break.
It's a good old-fashioned Hollywood story. Boy meets Boy. Boy falls head over heels at first sight. Boy marries Boy. Boy ties Boy up and fucks him til he screams.
But the Hollywood lights hit every dark shadow too and as the tabloids stir up gossip; as Jon spends more and more time at the club; and as Dan starts to wonder what comes next, the faultlines widen and their marriage falls into the abyss
This is the first of a three fic arc chronicling the beginning, end, and re-beginning of an epic love story.
Fic 5: Invisible String
Tentative Title: Invisible String
Pairing(s): Jon Favreau / Tommy Vietor
Characters: Jon Favreau, Tommy Vietor
Ao3 Rating: Explicit
Warnings: NO WARNINGS
Additional Tags: affection, holding hands, chase sequence, shaving (face), mention of pod sponsors, wills & estates, cartoon villains, clothes sharing, Boston, plane flights, current day/LA era,Summary: Human boatshoe Tommy Vietor discovers he can claim a huge inheritance if he can prove he is married. If he does not, the $40 million fortune will go to the National Rifle Association. Best friend Jon Favreau steps up to help Tommy out. The NRA hires investigators to find information in order to break the will, chasing our boys all over Boston at one point.
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the prodigal sister. four.
pairing: familial byers fam x reader, romantic paring tbd
word count: 2.7k
summary: y/n is the middle sibling of the byers brothers. she’s just ten months younger than jonathan, making the pair “irish twins”. except when her father and mother got divorced, lonnie got custody of y/n and took her away from the rest of the family.
notes: okay so i realized that i was calling the tps chapters parts when i was organizing stuff and now i’ve decided that i’m going to use the term chapter for here too. i don’t think anyone but me noticed but it bugged me lol. and here’s part four! here you get introduced to hopper in the fic, and another night at the arcade!
other chapters: masterlist
tps tag list: @irreleventmoonchild, @rockyrocket15, @the-fae-child, @bucky4cap45, @pinklyrium ( most of the tags seem to be broken so, if u wanna be added/readded to the tag list just let me know ! )
It was a cold midwestern mid-January morning the next morning when Y/N woke up. For the local Hawkins school it was already the beginning of the semester, but back at her boarding school in California, the semester didn’t begin until the beginning of February. So now, switching schools, she’d have to play catch up.
Which is why, when her mother insisted upon taking Y/N along to work with her ( Joyce was still worried about anything happening if any of her kids were home alone, and Y/N had seen the slight hint of panic in her mother’s eyes and agreed to go with her ), they stopped at the school and grabbed a packet of what she missed at school. So the scene that Chief Hopper walked into at Melvald’s--Joyce stickering the discounted items and Y/N sitting on a metal stool behind one of the registers, a textbook propped in her lap--confused him briefly, before he remembered that Joyce had three kids. This must be her daughter.
When Hopper cleared his throat both of the Byers women looked up from what they were working on and, at the same time, waved to Hopper.
“Hey Hop, what do you need?” Joyce asked, putting down the sticker gun and walking back over toward her daughter, placing a hand on her shoulders, “This is Y/N, my daughter. I don’t think you’ve ever met her.”
Y/N extended her hand and looked at Hopper with a bright smile, “Hey, good to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Hopper had made his way to where the women stood, taking Y/N’s extended hand and shaking it slowly as he looked between the two. A quick flutter went through his chest which he pushed down as he shook his head and spoke again, “A lot?”
“They told me about everything.” Y/N explained, head going back down to the textbook in her lap as she carefully looked up to the chief of police to watch his reaction.
“Are we just going to tell everyone now?” Jim quietly exclaimed, knowing he could have been louder ( angrier ) in the nearly empty store. He was just worried that the more people who knew about everything would mean more people who could hurt Jane. And they were all still recovering from what happened at the lab back in November. “Where’s Melvald? Let’s let him in too in case you need to take off randomly!” He knew it was a bit of an overreaction, but it was his protective instincts kicking in.
“She’s not just anyone, Hop. She’s my daughter.” Joyce replied defensively, putting her hands on her hips.
“So?”
“So?!”
“She’s sitting right here, she can hear you.” Y/N said, not taking her eyes off of the paragraph she’d intended to read ( even if she wasn’t entirely focused on the context of the words in front of her at the moment ) when she spoke. “You can’t expect them to hide the whole reason why apparently everyone spent some time thinking that Will might be dead. Finding that shit out is kind of a big deal. I mean, my dad hid that shit from me for a whole fucking year pretty much.” Y/N’s eyebrows shot up as she spoke the last bit, finally looking over at the man across the counter.
“Language.” Joyce muttered to herself, shaking her head. She turned her attention away from her daughter to look over at Hopper with a tight lipped smile. “She’s staying here from now on. She needed to know.”
“Fine.” Hopper grumbled after a couple of moments of silence with ( what he thought was a scarily similar ) look from both Joyce and Y/N.
After a couple more moments, everyone seemed satisfied and Joyce and Hopper moved back over to one of the shelves as Y/N continued to work on the homework she had.
A couple of days later at home, the kids were in the living room all working on their respective homework before heading out to their nightly activities. Jonathan and Nancy were going out--Jonathan complaining about the fact that Nancy was dragging him to some party under his breath--while Will and Y/N were going to go to the arcade with the kids. Will didn’t even complain, because Y/N had said she wanted to try for a high score on “that Dig Dug game”.
After the third time Jonathan grumbled to himself, Y/N nudged his shoulder and looked at him out of the corner of her eyes, “This is what happens when you date a popular girl, Jon. She’s got to go to these things with her friends and she wants you to go too because she loves you.” Y/N sing-songed the word love, dragging it out for s couple of notes with a bit of a chuckle both from herself and from Will on her other side, sitting in the chair.
“Yeah, well she knows I don’t like these parties.” Jonathan scrunched his face up as he crossed something off on his notebook paper before writing again.
“Just bring your camera and take pictures if she wanders off with her friends.” Y/N shrugged, going back to her work. The good thing about switching schools was that, in some cases, she was ahead in the work. In California she had already read the play the English class was working on, so she didn’t need to do much except for answer the questions on the reading sheets she’d gotten.
“That’s not a bad idea, I guess.” Jonathan muttered under his breath.
“What was that? Sorry, I couldn’t hear you!” as if to emphasize her point, she cupped one of her hands around her ear as she continued to speak, “Did you say that was a good idea?” she was teasing him, a grin across her lips as she turned to look at Jonathan who just pursed his lips. “Aw come on!” She dropped her hand back down to her sides and looked at her brother.
Eventually, after a couple of minutes of the pair just staring at each other, Jonathan broke and he smiled back at his sister which seemed to make her happy and she went back to her work. She felt like in the short week it had been since she’d gotten home at first, that she was finally reconnecting with her siblings again.
And her heart tugged in her chest. She hated that she’d missed out on the big stuff, sure. But it was the little things too, teasing Jonathan or taking Will around town, that she missed even more.
When she’d think of going home ever, it was these kinds of moments that she thought about. Sitting in the living room, doing homework. Nothing major happening.
Being true to his word, Steve did call the Byers house and let Joyce, who had picked up the phone, know that he would be by in a couple of minutes for Y/N and Will. Of course, Y/N seemed to think it was a bit ridiculous, but wasn’t going to argue. She’d take riding in a car with a heater than walking in the cold air any day.
She and Will stood outside, waiting for the car to pull up and when it did, Y/N watched as Dustin grumpily got out of the passengers seat and left the door open before heading into the back and keeping the door open for Will.
“I don’t get why she gets the front seat. You picked me up first, Steve!” Dustin’s shout could be heard from halfway up the driveway as Y/N and Will made their way to the car. Y/N turned to look at Will with raised eyebrows who just replied with a shrug as he got into the car and closed the door.
“Because she’s older and your friend’s in the backseat. Shut up, Dustin.” Steve exclaimed back as Y/N got into the car and he drove off to the arcade.
“But I was first!” Dustin said a couple of minutes later after the silence, save for the radio playing, got the better of him.
“Not on the planet.” Y/N said, turning to look back at him with a grin, showing him that her comment was simply teasing. “Anyway, we just got the word that I’ll be going to school with you guys on Monday.” Y/N said, turning back to the front and looking over at Steve.
“Cool. Do you have your schedule yet?” he asked, glancing at her as he continued to keep his focus on the road in front of him.
Y/N shook her head, “Nah, I gotta pick it up that morning from the principal’s office. But I have all the homework I missed from the core classes already, I guess it just depends on what electives they give me.”
“I guess I’ll see you on Monday, then. What grade are you in?”
“Junior, with Jonathan and Nancy. I skipped ahead a year back in middle school.”
“You skipped a grade?” Dustin exclaimed from the backseat and leaned forward to look at Will’s sister.
Y/N nodded, “Yeah, it’s not a big deal. I think the principal and guidance counsellor’s words were that she’s not being challenged to the best extent in this grade, she’s already finished all the English and History work for the next month from the syllabus.” She explained, doing her best to make her voice a bit deeper when she explained what the school authority figures had said to her. It had been just a year after her leaving Hawkins too, her parents splitting up when she was just moving into middle school.
“I didn’t know that. Does Jonathan know?” Will asked, his head tilted to the side as he asked, looking at his sister’s reflection in the rearview mirror.
Y/N shrugged, “I think I told him in one of the letters we used to write.”
“That’s cool that you skipped a grade.” Dustin hummed, grinning.
“It’s not that big of a deal, really. I’m not like, super smart. I’ve got a good memory though.” Y/N explained shyly, turning her attention out the window as they pulled up to the arcade.
Their arrival seemed to signal the end of the conversation as the kids immediately got out of the car before Steve even pulled the key out of the ignition and ran to meet the rest of the party inside the arcade.
Steve turned to look at Y/N, “Are you gonna go in with them?”
Y/N nodded, “Yup. I’m either going home with the high score on that one game, or I’ll finish this book.” she explained, pulling the book she’d brought with her out of her bag and shrugged.
“Okay. Cool. I’ll come in too.” Steve said, flipping his keys in his hands and then putting them in the pocket of his jacket. Before Y/N could even ask why, he was already out of the car and headed for the door.
Y/N got out too, closing the door gently and heading toward the door of the arcade when she heard the loud sounds of AC/DC blasting down the otherwise quiet Hawkins street. She turned her head and watched as a camaro pulled up to a quick and screeching halt in front of her, the redheaded Max getting out of the car holding tightly to her skateboard. She gave a half wave to Y/N before turning back and flipping off her step-brother and making her way inside the arcade.
“What are you doing here, Y/N?” Billy called, leaning out of the driver’s side window and looking at her, his hair falling into his eyes as he did so. Y/N just crossed her arms against her chest and gestured with her head to the arcade, where all the kids were standing inside, looking out the window at the scene. A look crossed Billy’s features and he nodded his head. “Right. Byers. Forgot.” he tapped his hand on the side of his car, the other still holding tightly to the wheel. “So you actually hang out with the kids? What are you babysitting them?” He scoffed, shaking his head and turning to look at the arcade for a brief moment before looking back at her. “And with Steve Harrington? Seriously?”
“I’m not babysitting, Billy. I’m hanging out with my brother, which I happen to enjoy. I’m sure that you don’t feel the same way about your step-sister, but some of us like our siblings.” Y/N replied with a quick glance toward the arcade and flashing everyone a smile. She didn’t understand why they all hated Billy. Sure, the Billy she knew back in California could have been a jerk too. He typically played with girls. But she was having a hard time putting the Billy she knew together with the Billy they’d all described and told her about her first night home.
“It’s an arcade, Y/N. That’s not fun.”
“Maybe not if you suck at video games. Is that your problem, Billy? Your kid sister is better than you at video games?” her tone was completely joking, a grin across her face and a giggle passing her lips as she spoke.
Billy just shook his head. He almost wanted to bite back a comment at her, but he’d known her for a couple of years, and he knew that she wasn’t saying that to press his buttons but to joke with him. He almost missed California more in that moment, where he felt more relaxed. He looked at her, a simple, “Shut up, Y/N.” as his reply.
They both stayed in their spots quietly for a moment, Y/N’s hands having dropped to her sides, but one of them holding tightly to the band of her purse and Billy looking more relaxed than he had been when he showed up to drop Max off at the arcade.
“I’ve got to go. I’ve got a date.” Billy said after another couple of moments, turning to look at the clock on his dashboard and then look back at Y/N.
“I’ve got kids to babysit.” she laughed, rolling her eyes as she used what Billy had called it a moment before. She took a couple of steps away from the two cars and headed for the arcade door, where she watched from the corner of her eyes as everyone moved quickly so they weren’t standing right at the windowed front of the shop as if they hadn’t been eavesdropping. A chuckle, more air than sound, came from her as she turned back to look at Billy, still not having moved from leaning out of his camaro. “I’ll see you at school on Monday, Hargrove.”
“See ya Byers.”
As she waved, Billy’s car engine revved as he sped off down the road, the song switching to another AC/DC track. Y/N watched for a moment as the car was quickly out of her sight of vision as she turned to go into the arcade.
“Will said you knew Billy but I didn’t believe him.” Came Dustin’s comment, not looking up from the game they group had begun to play.
“Yeah, how do you know my step-brother?” Max asked, looking up at Y/N with a confused look.
“He went to school around the boarding school in California. He was friends with some guys from our brother school and he knew my roommate last year.” Y/N explained with a shrug of her shoulders.
“Hargrove’s trouble.” Steve said from her left, and she turned to look at him. “‘m just saying.” Steve held up his hands defensively, shrugging his shoulders.
“Billy’s fine. I can be friends with whoever I want to be friends with, guys. Don’t make this into a big thing.” Y/N sighed, sitting up on one of the tables around the machines and shaking her head. She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation again.
“We’re just looking out for you.” Will said quietly, offering his sister a smile.
“Yeah, Billy’s a dick.” Lucas interjected.
“He beat the shit out of Steve, remember!” Dustin said, finally his attention on the conversation as the game he’d been playing had been lost.
“I could have taken him.”
“Sure buddy. How many fights have you actually won, again?”
Y/N rolled her eyes and listened to the conversation they were having before turning her own head and grabbing the book from her bag and letting the rest of them move off of the topic on their own.
#will byers x reader#jonathan byers x reader#billy hargrove x reader#steve harrington x reader#stranger things x reader#the prodigal sister
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