#when they could have and should have won - they squandered it in the most mentally devastating way for charles | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

funkzpiel · 4 years

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the infinite dance of stars and dust and all that falls between

[ The Witcher / Stardust AU ] - Read it on AO3 Pairing: Jaskier/Geralt Featuring: Star!Geralt, Cursed!Emhyr, Barren!Yennefer, Soft Boys!Regis & Dettlaff (eventually)

Decided to release this in chapters to help me feel productive and have obtainable goals, lmao. Should only be like 3 chapters though, I think. I don’t even know what else to say, hahaha, perhaps this is finally my mental breakdown. 🤔

“Would a coward or a cad vow to breach the Wall to retrieve that falling star for you?”

“Well, no—” She said, battering her lashes, thick and sooty against fair cheeks.

Jaskier gathered her slim hands in his, brushed them against his lips as he took a knee before her and thus vowed, “Then I take this oath to do just that, my lady. I will prove myself worthy of your affections. I will conquer the Wall and all that lies beyond it. I will fetch that falling star for you, bottle it in a bulb and make for you the most fantastic necklace anyone has ever seen. Then no one could question your beauty, your loveliness or my dedication to you – not with a star shining about your neck. You can consider it my betrothal gift. Surely that outshines any ring anyone else has offered.”

“If you bring me that star, I’m yours.”

Jaskier thought of those words often. Sometimes the memory thrilled him, knowing how brave his lady’s brilliance had made him. Sometimes the memory led to nothing but a string of invective curses that sent the birds sputtering from their branches. He was beyond the Wall , he reminded himself for the umpteenth time. The. Wall. Where witchcraft ruled and sorcerers sacrificed fair maidens and monsters lived off the flesh of mortals quite like himself – foolish young adventurers who lost their way, more often than not, and he didn’t even know where he was going to start with! Well… he didn’t know how to get back, specifically. Getting there wouldn’t be a problem – not with the candle his mother had left for him.

A candle that, once lit, could take him anywhere he wanted to go. Perhaps, if he were very lucky, there'd be enough left to get home after, too.

“Take me to the fallen star,” he whispered as he lit it, far enough away from the Wall and his village to be certain that no one had come to drag him back. He hadn’t been ready for the violence of that magic, lured into a sense of peace by an item as innocent as a candle. Jaskier hadn’t been prepared to be thrown through space as magic pinched the world, dragging him from just outside the wall across fields and rivers and miles of land, and forward into something hot and solid. The world stopped spinning, but he was most definitely no longer standing.

Jaskier scrambled up, hands catching on firm flesh and quite a lot of it. Not just flesh. Pectorals. A man’s chest. He lifted himself up, looked down at the body he had bulldozed in his mad, magic infused dash across the continent, and felt his breath stolen from his lungs. There was a man beneath him. A man, laid flat on his back, his head haloed in a circle of fine silver hair more akin to silk than the ill-kempt hair of most men. Fair skin, flawless and clear like a still pond. Eyes that shone like the sun, glimmering and unlike anything Jaskier had ever seen in a mortal man’s face before. A man spun from the sun and the stars and the sky itself. Beautiful and… vibrating? Ah wait, no ~ growling. That couldn’t be good.

Emhyr watched Queen Calanthe’s ruby - now a stone of white as beautiful and lovely as any star - jet off into the night. Three heads of noble bloodlines from across the globe all whipped to watch it disappear. And from her sickbed Calanthe merely grinned as though she had won some great game, looking so powerful and proud instead of small or dying. But she was, without doubt, dying. She eyed the male suitors of whom she had invited into her bedchambers and said from her sickbed, “Only one of you can wed my daughter, and while I will not yet survive the night to judge you fully as I should, instead I bequeath this quest. If you think yourself worthy of my daughter, you will find that ruby. If your touch returns its royal red color, the great many spells that Mousesack has bewitched upon the jewel will have deemed you worthy - and so it shall be done. But know this, only a man of royal blood can change that ruby’s color. A man of intellect, brave enough to lead this empire to glory. He must embody the spirit of a lion and more, and until such a man finds it, my daughter shall grow and lead in peace. Any attempt to force the ruby, to steal it from someone who rightfully changed it, or any other misleading act will see misfortune upon the liar so great, he will reach and wish for death, but never grasp it.”

Emhyr watched from behind the safety of his platemail and helm as Calanthe breathed her last, fully thinking her daughter’s path secured. Whether she live and lead alone or beside a man of proven worth, it did not matter. She would be spared the touch of the power hungry or malicious, and for Calanthe, that was enough.

And all the while, Emhyr knew a truth that even Calanthe did not understand. That Pavetta was his, promised to him by Calanthe’s late husband the king, and the key to restore his human flesh. In that moment he had no doubt that the ruby was meant for him and him alone, and while the royal suitors bickered amongst themselves, Emhyr discreetly saw himself out while none were looking. It was easy enough. He shouldn’t have been there anyways, as any of them saw it. He had requested an audience with the queen when news had spread of her imminent demise, no longer content to wait until Pavetta’s courting ball. Thankfully urgency had bid her ignore his helm. She assumed him another suitor - and did not worry. In her eyes, no man was fit for the stone anyway. So why worry? And the others saw only a knight, perhaps one favored by the queen. A man of no consequence.

Let them think that, it only served him in the end.

Emhyr took the fastest horse from the stable and set off in the direction the jewel had gone.

The witches of Aretuza - or what remained of them - stood atop their mountain dwelling, surrounded by crisp white moonflowers before the pale fall of the moon itself, and watched the stars just as their scrying had bid them to. Ahead of them all, Tessaia stood with ancient hands clasped behind her back - spine rigid and strict despite the way that age and abuse of magic had wilted her.

“There,” she breathed as finally it happened. A faint white gem shot into the night. With a burst, it collided with the ageless lights twinkling above and just as predicted, a star fell from the fabric of the night above. She watched it fall, watched it disappear far into the distance. But she had a direction, that was all that mattered.

Behind her, ancient and weathered faces were alight with hunger and hope. For the witches of Aretuza had squandered their power for eons in the name of researching and controlling chaos, and in doing so had also paid a great and terrible price - their health, their beauty.

Of the four witches that stood atop the mountain, only one had not been touched by time. Yennefer. Tall, slender, and beautiful, she stepped forward to peer off in the direction the star had fallen. She was too young to need it, too new to the ways in which the women of Aretuza abused magic to understand its use. But she knew why they would want it - what lord or king would listen to a withered old hag? They needed youth to continue controlling the free world, to continue shaping it.

But Yennefer had different plans. Revenge and salvation all in one.

“I will go after it,” she offered, enthusiasm masked beneath a weaving lie of loyalty. But in this moment, no lie could stand - for the witches of Aretuza trusted not even one another when it came to the power of stars.

“No,” Tessaia said, “I will go. As leader of this school, it is my right to fetch it.”

Yennefer watched them squabble and bicker. Watched as they drew from deep in the reaches of Aretuza’s stronghold a simple black box. Its lid was lifted and from within, a brilliant light - nearly painful to gaze upon were it not so small - bled out from the cracks and crevices. Tessaia took the brilliant little flame in hand and deftly ate it, beauty blooming from within and spreading without until her hair regrew again, and her skin pulled taut and rosy. Suddenly there were two young, beautiful women among the four leaders of Aretuza. Which was dangerous. Incredibly so.

Tessaia ordered that the school continue its teachings, packed a bag, selected a mount, and disappeared into the night. It was simple enough for Yennefer disappear after that - no one but Tessaia had ever considered her to be a threat, after all.

And Yennefer wanted something more keenly than any witch seeking pure beauty could ever understand, for she had already suffered the consequences of shallow dreams already. Aretuza had used the allure of beauty to steal the life from her womb, to control her. And never again would Yennefer fall for such a trick again. She’d take the star before any Aretuza witch could so much as look at it, and in doing so she’d steal from them something as precious as they had stolen from her: their opportunity to restore what they had squandered. And perhaps, with a little luck, something more as well. Something priceless.

“Get. Off,” the stranger beneath him snarled so viciously that Jaskier could feel the man’s chest rumbling beneath his fingers.

“Oh? Oh!” He stuttered, picking himself up quickly. “My apologies, I’m afraid that was my first time using a magic… candle…”

Which reminded him - the candle was still in his hand, half the size but still present. It could likely get him back, a boon that nearly stole the strength from his knees in relief. The thought of wandering however far back had been a daunting one. He tucked it delicately away, eyes darting to the stranger he had none too kindly cannonballed mere moments ago. He was a strange one, that was for certain. Taller than Jaskier, though not outrageously so. He had the build of a warrior, and yet he wore something that nearly looked like high waisted silver silk trousers and a thin, wispy white blouse of a shirt. The clothing was pale, nearly glowing in the light, and despite the mundane and simple tailoring of it all, it looked ethereal. Otherworldly, even.

And about his neck, contrasting greatly with his simple clothing, was a thick band of gold topped off with one of the largest diamonds that Jaskier had ever seen. All in all, between the dark grimace, the intimidating bulk, soft clothing and expensive amulet, the man was a painting of conundrums and contradictions. Jaskier almost didn’t even know where to begin.

“I, uh - what are you doing in a place like this?” He finally asked when the man began pacing, eyes up on the night sky with a fierce scowl. A place like this, specifically, meaning a crater. A black, smoldering hole in the forest that had torn trees straight up from their roots and obliterated the ground for miles. Almost as though… Jaskier jumped, suddenly spinning wildly around as he looked, “Oh! Have you seen a fallen star, by the way?”

The man suddenly stilled and glared at him, jaw set tight.

“Hilarious,” he grunted.

“No really, a star should have fallen over here somewhere,” Jaskier said seriously as he began to pace, looking for any sign of a rock - anything that might look like a star. Did they still glow when they fell, he wondered. Would it be large or small? Large, he assumed, based off the crater, and yet nothing stood out at all. Not so much as one pebble, even. He frowned and crossed his arms with a soft, wondering, “How odd…”

The stranger glared up at the sky as though daring the gods - or perhaps the stars - to laugh before he rubbed his palms on his trousers and said, “You already found it.”

“I did?” Jaskier asked with owlish eyes, suddenly patting his pockets in case he had in fact found it and merely forgot somehow. But nothing felt new or out of place. “Are you certain?”

“Quite certain,” the man said, taking a step forward only to wince. Albeit not so much a wince as a delicate flinching of the muscles in his jaw. Jaskier turned to him, lips drawn in a worried line.

“Did I hurt you when I…?”

“You, no,” the man snarled, trying to take another step with a steadily growing growl of irritation. He managed to place more weight on it, but seemed frustrated despite the small success. “No, some stuck up royal bastard threw an enchanted rock into the sky and knocked me down.”

Jaskier put his hands on his hips, impressed, and asked, “Are you a writer?”

The man gave him a baffled, irked look and with a snort continued applying pressure to his ankle. Slowly, as the moment hung between them, Jaskier felt his jaw loosen and drop.

“You’re quite serious, aren’t you?”

“Not known for being much else.”

“ You’re the bloody star!” Jaskier exclaimed, eyes darting up as though he might see an obvious mark in the night where the stranger had once hung.

“I’m the bloody star,” the man agreed, one tooth exposed by the angry curl of his lip.

Jaskier leaned back, staring at the man seriously for a pregnant moment that left the stranger looking somewhat uncomfortable, before he finally threw his hands out at his sides and declared, “How could I have been so blind! Of course you are the star! How else might one explain you? Your hair made of starlight as it is, your skin as flawless as the purest marble - and the sense of you, where do I even begin? Of course you’re the star.”

The stranger looked at him as though Jaskier were the one injured, not he, and asked, “I think that candle scrambled your brains more than the fall scrambled mine.”

Jaskier walked forward suddenly, one hand thrust out as he said with a charming smile, “I am Jaskier, the infamous bard of the village of Wall and soon to be the husband of the most lovely countess ever to exist. A pleasure,” as though the star had not just questioned his sanity.

With a confused little frown between his brows, the star slowly took his outstretched hand and said, “Geralt,” only for his confusion to bleed away to fury when the bard deftly slipped a chain of silver around his wrist and jumped back, a delicate line of twinkling silver hanging between them. Geralt watched the loop around his wrist close seamlessly, then yanked only to scowl when the chain didn’t break. Jaskier stumbled a step closer as a result, however, before bolting back again with a sheepish, “I’m sorry, Geralt - lovely name by the way - but I’m afraid I must insist you come to Wall with me. I promised my dear Victoria a star, you see, and if I don’t bring you to her she’ll never marry me.”

Geralt stared at him for a very, very long time before yanking the chain again, sending Jaskier sputtering into the dirt.

“Hey!” He gasped, struggling onto his elbows, hands grasping on the chain for dear life - but Geralt was already walking away, dragging the bard with him through the dirt despite the way his ankle flagged his steps. “Hey!”

“What?” Geralt grunted, otherwise ignoring the way the bard flailed behind him, dragging him along with an ease that definitely proved without a shadow of a doubt that he was no mere man.

“Wall is the other way!”

“I’m not going to Wall.”

“What!” Jaskier squawked, “But Victoria-”

“-Not my problem.”

“And where are you - ah, rock! - going to go, huh? Last I checked, there’s no staircase to heaven!” Jaskier snarled ferally as he was dragged over rocks and broken bits of trees.

“I’ll figure it out,” Geralt mumbled distractedly, as though Jaskier’s arguments and struggling were of no real consequence to him as he kept walking, eyes scanning.

“But I need to present you to Victoria!”

“Again, not my problem.”

“Yes, well, I…” Jaskier grimaced as the candle dug into his hip in his pocket, then suddenly grinned, “Oh! Let’s make a deal!”

“Not interested,” Geralt grunted.

“No truly, star, I swear you’ll want to hear me out!”

With a sigh, Geralt stopped - eyes drifting to the heavens again out of sheer sour exasperation, before he finally turned to glare down at the bard being dragged behind him and ground out a short, “Twenty seconds.”

Sensing an opening, Jaskier quickly scrambled to right himself into a better sitting position.

“Don’t even need that. You come with me to Wall and I,” Jaskier said, pausing for theatrical effect as he reached into his pocket, “Will give you this .”

He presented his black Babylon Candle with a flourish and a knowing grin, and if anything Geralt’s jaw just tightened - annoyed that the bard was right. He did have something of use. It was small for a Babylon Candle. Used once already. But it would be enough to get him back into the night sky, and that was hardly an offer he could turn away from. His scowl darkened, amber eyes darting up from the candle to search Jaskier’s face.

The world wasn’t safe for stars, Geralt knew this. He had seen what witches and wizards and men did with their hearts first hand. But either the bard in front of his was a spectacular liar or he had no idea the sort of power Geralt had locked away inside his chest. And so long as Geralt was careful, there was no reason why that would ever change.

“Alright,” he finally groused. “I’ll go with you to Wall, meet your Victoria - but after that, the candle is mine.”

“Agreed,” Jaskier said with a grin, bouncing up from the ground and onto his heels. Then, with a gentle tug, he announced, “Then off to Wall!”

#the witcher #geraskier #stardust au #geralt of rivia #jaskier #yennefer of vengerberg #Emhyr var Emreis #star!geralt #Witcher Writing

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johneetries · 6 years

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To begin...

Hello. I’m bipolar and manic depressive. I discovered these things as a result of a suicide attempt. There. Now the hard part is out of the way. Let’s get into it.

Being diagnosed with a mental illness was one of the most normal and foreign events I’ve ever experienced. Was it a surprise? No. Was it easy to digest? Double no. Being diagnosed with bipolar was a very somber “aha” moment. But before that moment could happen, a misdiagnosis inevitably happened first.

I spent this past summer working in middle-of-nowhere, South Dakota. Classic one liners about small Midwestern towns couldn’t even do justice to how desolate this place was. There were no traffic lights. No easily recognizable grocery chains. And worst of all, no Taco Bell. The events of my summer consisted mostly of two things: working and drinking. I was working over seventy hours a week. The first month I was there, I had two days off. Total. My post shift activities started simply with a beer at the bar once the restaurant was closed. Then a six pack would find it’s way home. Six became twelve. Twelve became eighteen. Eighteen became thirty. Liquor started being added to the mix. If it came between buying food or booze, I chose booze every time. Sleep became less and less until almost nonexistent. Toward the end of my time there, I was averaging between thirty minutes to two hours of sleep a morning. And I stress morning. I would generally stay up drinking until the sun had long risen. Every single night. As I reach the end of this paragraph, I can see how clear the warning signs may have seemed. But they weren’t. I was riding the wave of a bipolar high.

For the unversed, bipolar disorder exists in a spectrum of highs and lows. During the highs, the symptoms are rarely seen as symptoms. In my case, I perceived that I was feeling good. Great, even. I was putting in long hours at work and doing a damn fine job, at that. So what if I wanted to stay up drinking all night? As long as I was still functioning at work, there’s no problem. You can see how easily I was able to sway myself. Hard work equated to hard drinking. Simple math from a complicated brain. The longer the highs go unchecked, it can lead to mania. Which it did for me. Occasionally drinking all night turned into every night. And quickly. I isolated. I self-harmed. I stopped eating. The crossover from my highs to my lows were blurred. But when the lows hit, they hit hard.

Keep in mind, at this point in time, bipolar disorder was not on my mind at all. I boiled it down to simple and incorrect equations like excessive booze equals better mental state. Being a warm and welcome individual in the workplace subdued the self-hate that was growing. The whole “fake it till you make it” mentality used inappropriately. You keep your demons waiting outside your gate long enough, a few things will happen. One: more demons will show up. Two: they will grow irritable from being ignored. And three: they’re going to eventually smash that gate down and flood your castle.

My demons demolished my castle and its outlying kingdom. In one perfect storm, I completely lost my footing. For a multitude of reasons I could never describe or put into words, I decided to kill myself. And that is where I would like to leave that. While I am thankful that my attempt was unsuccessful, I will never feel the desire to talk about those moments in great detail. I know why I did what I did. I know the headspace I was in. I know the abuse I put myself through to get to that place. That is all that matters for anyone else to know. The explicit details and play-by-play of that night are mine. And mine alone. For selfish reasons, I keep that frame of thinking to myself. But for even more selfless reasons, I don’t ever want anyone to know what I was fully thinking in that moment. No one should have to ever understand how it feels to be ready and willing to take your own life. No one. There is no lower feeling than falling asleep for what you believe to be the last time.

Scratch that.

There is no worse feeling than waking up after falling asleep for what you believed to be the last time. The moment my eyes opened and I awoke cold and alone on the street, I knew that everything would change. And it did. Through a series of darkly humorous events, I eventually landed in a mental facility in Sioux Falls. Where I was held for twenty-four hours and within that time diagnosed with very base depression. A diagnosis I could have made for myself years ago. The doctors answer? Medication. Prozac. Two-hundred milligrams.

Now, I’m not sure if this a common mistake or one that was specific for me. But Prozac made me worse. Noticeably worse. It wasn’t until I started going to therapy and was diagnosed with bipolar and ordered to immediately stop taking Prozac that I started to feel better. The way it has been explained to me is antidepressants can often increase bipolar symptoms. Now for me, I was on a serious run with the lows. And Prozac was making those lows plummet further than I was ready for. It was explained to me that bipolar requires a mood stabilizer to be treated effectively. Again, not sure if this common treatment or was specific for me. But after enough time on a mood stabilizer, I could see how it was helping. But I’m jumping ahead.

Upon my release from the mental hospital and my return to Phoenix, I did eventually find therapists to see. Where I was asked a series of questions. Questions that I knew would lead to bipolar diagnosis. So when my psychologist suggested I might have bipolar, I was pretty hesitant. The questions were too obvious and handpicked for such a diagnosis. It wasn’t until he had me meet with his colleague, a psychiatrist, that things came into focus. She asked me much more specific questions. And based on my answers, she started asking questions that seemed tailor made for me. The more I answered, the more she asked. Never once did she stop to tell me I definitely had bipolar. She asked so many questions that I eventually hit my “aha” moment. I sat there in silence as it all soaked in. I’m bipolar. This is for the rest of my life. I have to do something about this. When I looked up, she was just looking back at me. Seemingly dissecting my brain through whatever my eyes were telling her. And from there we started discussing medication.

After six weeks on proper medication, I started to notice a difference. The symptoms of bipolar weren’t completely gone. But they became mild. I was balancing out. I was thinking more clearly. In the midst of all this clarity, it became important to me to not hide my mental illness. I wasn’t planning on being brash by walking around with a megaphone shouting “I’M BIPOLAR” to every passerby. But I also wasn’t going to keep quiet about it like I had some dirty secret. Because the truth of the matter is this: There are so many others like me who live with the knowledge of their illness every day. People who carry the burden of orange bottles in medicine cabinets. People who pay professionals to declutter their brains. Then there are the people who have yet to be diagnosed. The walking wounded limping their way through life. Ignoring the signs and unknowingly self-destructing.

I’ve walked both paths. I know exactly how they both feel. To be honest, neither one is great. But the fact is plain: I dodged suicide. I got a second lease on life, and I don’t want to squander it. So I’m trying to better myself and my surroundings. Maybe I’m getting things right, maybe I’m not. But I’m trying. I’m not staying on the course my life was on that got me to suicidal ideation in the first place. I’m branching out and doing things differently. And I sure as hell will not be quiet about mental health. Anyone who stumbles across this that struggles with their own fight with mental health: you are not alone. While your illness is a part of who you are, it does not define who you are. You define who you are. No battle is ever won without a fight. So fight for yourself. Fight for a better tomorrow. Fight to stay alive. Accept your reality. Own it and move forward. No one makes a better you than you. In the face of all that haunts you, live your life. Even if it feels impossible. I assure you, it is not. I am thirty-two and completely starting over. In the wake of my attempt, everything in my life has changed. For better or worse, everything has changed. I’m taking what’s left of the time I was allotted on this planet and trying to enjoy it. I hope you do the same, friends.

Until next time,

#mental health #mental disorder #mental illness #bipolor #depression #anxiety #suicidal ideation #self harm #self medication #manic disorder

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thisdaynews · 5 years

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Champions League: English clubs' success causes self-doubt for Spain's top teams

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/champions-league-english-clubs-success-causes-self-doubt-for-spains-top-teams/

Champions League: English clubs' success causes self-doubt for Spain's top teams

Diego Simeone leading his Atletico Madrid side to the final of the Champions League in their home stadium was talked up in Spain as a possible storyline

When Atletico Madrid’s Wanda Metropolitano stadium was named as the host venue for this year’s Champions League final, three storylines caught the imagination in Spain.

Would Diego Simeone’s team seize European glory on their home turf? Would Real Madrid saunter across town to retain their continental supremacy? Or would Lionel Messi lead Barcelona to another crown?

The answers… no, no and no.

All three of the Spanish heavyweights squandered first-leg leads to exit the tournament before Saturday’s grand finale, which will instead be contested between Liverpool and Tottenham to ensure a first non-Spanish winner since 2013.

There was a similar story in the Europa League, which had been the near-exclusive domain of La Liga teams too in recent years. This time, it was an all-English affair as Chelsea overcame Arsenal in Baku.

After a decade of almost non-stop success, La Liga’s failure to produce even one finalist this season could be seen as the end of an era.

Should Spanish football be worried that the tide has turned?

Premier League leads European football to £25bn valuation

Champions League final: Can Spurs turn the tables on Liverpool?

Klopp: I have never had a better team for a final

Spain’s decade of dominance

Spanish teams have won the Champions League in seven of the past 10 seasons – Real Madrid’s victory over Liverpool in 2018 was their fourth title in five years

Since 2009, Real Madrid have won the Champions League four times, with Barcelona triumphing on three occasions, while Atletico Madrid also reached two finals: a total of nine finalists and seven winners.

Meanwhile, English teams made it to the final only four times, with Chelsea’s victory over Bayern Munich in 2012 the solitary title for a Premier League representative.

Spanish sides also exerted a stranglehold in the Europa League, a competition which provides a good indication of a domestic league’s strength in depth: Sevilla took the trophy three times in a row between 2014 and 2016, while Atletico were also three-time winners, including a victory in the 2012 final over another Spanish team, Athletic Bilbao.

Those results suggest La Liga’s superiority was by no means restricted to the ‘big two’. Not any longer, however.

Perhaps even more telling than Barcelona’s defeat against Liverpool in this season’s Champions League semi-finals was what happened at the same stage in the Europa League: Arsenal thrashed in-form Valencia side 7-3 on aggregate.

On paper, the fourth-placed team in La Liga facing the fifth-best team in England should have been a close contest; on grass, it became a mismatch.

At first sight, there appears to be one obvious explanation for the new-found dominance of English football: money.

As a commercial entity, the Premier League is vastly more successful than all its continental counterparts. That was evidenced by the staggering fact that Huddersfield, despite finishing bottom of the league, earned more television revenue this season than every La Liga club except Real Madrid and Barcelona did during the 2017-18 campaign.

Cold, hard cash obviously gives Premier League teams an advantage – why should Valencia be expected to compete on an even footing with an Arsenal team whose two strikers cost nearly as much as their whole starting XI?

However, that kind of financial disparity has been in place for some time, and it didn’t make that much difference over the past 10 years. Financial might contributes, but it can’t be everything – or Premier League clubs would have hoovered up far more trophies than they actually have.

So if it’s not a mere matter of money, what has changed? What is England now doing right, and what has Spain started to do badly?

The best coaches

Managers Jurgen Klopp, Pep Guardiola and Mauricio Pochettino have helped change the style of football played in England’s Premier League

Former Cameroon international Lauren, who started and finished his career in Spain either side of eight seasons in England with Arsenal and Portsmouth, believes there is a simple explanation for the Premier League’s upsurge this season.

“The smart thing that Premier League teams did was to sign the best coaches in the world,” says Lauren, who now lives in Seville and works as a pundit for La Liga TV.

“Managers such as Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp and Mauricio Pochettino have changed the mentality of English football.

“They have created a different Premier League which still has the same intensity and speed but those coaches have also added lots of different ideas. Now we are seeing the results.”

Those “different ideas” can be broadly summarised as the implementation of a possession-based game. In 2015-16 – the last season before Guardiola’s arrival at Manchester City – the average number of passes made in a game by the Premier League’s top six was 481.3. This season, that figure jumped to 599.1.

“English football has absolutely changed since my career,” continues Lauren. “There are lots of new methods, tactics and ideas, even the behaviour of players off the pitch.

“It all comes from Pep’s methods of playing from the back, starting with the goalkeeper, switching play, keeping the ball moving, pressing with intensity.

“That style of play first came to England years ago with Arsene Wenger, but now the new breed of coaches have built on those ideas and changed English football for the better.”

Spain’s foremost television pundit is former Liverpool forward Michael Robinson, who finished his playing career with Osasuna in the late 1980s and has stayed in the country ever since.

Robinson agrees with Lauren’s assessment, noting that it took English football a while to accept the need to embrace overseas influences if they wanted to enjoy success in Europe.

In an extensive Champions League analysis aired this week on TV channel #vamos, Robinson said: “English football has been rich for many years without winning.

“They invested in a lot of very good foreign players, but not in the architects. They’ve now realised they needed a different approach… a different vision of football that wasn’t [traditionally] English.”

Robinson hails Guardiola as the chief inspiration for the new mindset, lauding the City boss for “revolutionising English football”.

Lauren, though, emphasises that this upsurge is not just about passing the ball, and has been particularly impressed by Klopp’s ability to blend the traditional English values of hard work and high tempo with more continental methods.

“I love Klopp,” Lauren enthuses. “What I like about Liverpool is that they can play their style for long periods of the game. The manager has the mentality of quick transitions and pressing high up the pitch, and the way they can do that for 90 minutes is unbelievable.”

Teamwork trumps solo talent

Lionel Messi was unable to stop Barcelona’s slide out of the Champions League at Anfield in their 4-0 semi-final second-leg defeat by Liverpool

Within Spain, the failure of La Liga teams to land a European trophy this season is largely being addressed more on a club-by-club basis than country-wide, with endless hours of discussion devoted to the Champions League shortcomings of Real, Atletico and Barcelona.

There are, though, some common traits connecting the three clubs, such as an ageing core of players who have been allowed to enter into decline, and an inability to cope with the pace and intensity of vibrant top-class continental opposition such as Liverpool.

Former Real Madrid striker and manager Jorge Valdano – a World Cup winner with Argentina in 1986 – also believes this season’s Champions League has highlighted “the importance of the collective over the individual”, making the point when appearing alongside Robinson on the #vamos broadcast.

“Cristiano Ronaldo couldn’t have done any more than he did, but it wasn’t enough for Juve,” he said. “Lionel Messi couldn’t have done any more, but it wasn’t enough for Barca.

“Liverpool, though, had their big triumph against Barcelona without Roberto Firmino or Mohamed Salah, and Tottenham had theirs without Harry Kane.

“Individuals couldn’t save their teams in this Champions League. Collectives were more relevant than individuals.”

Valdano believes his compatriot Pochettino best embodies that approach, saying: “In the ideal Champions League team, would you have any Tottenham players? For me, no. And that speaks well of Pochettino. Tottenham have been the most flexible team this season.”

And in the same way that English football has successfully integrated Spanish methods through Guardiola and Pochettino, perhaps there is the biggest lesson to be taken now for La Liga teams from the English game: less fixation on superstars like Messi and Ronaldo, and more emphasis on teamwork.

Alfredo Relano, editor of sports daily newspaper AS, noted in a column on Thursday: “I do not lament it [four English finalists]. We owe to England the invention of football, and for our own game, which has been so successful in Europe these years, a reflection will not hurt.

“English football has been renewed with what it needed, but preserved some values, of which perhaps the first is that the club stands above the individuals. Here it is the reverse. This is what we can learn from them.”

It’s been a long time since Spanish football has been forced into a period of self-doubt. For now, though, the English game has been transformed from the pupil to the master.

#self-doubt #Spain's

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prolapsingintothemaelstrom · 7 years

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Renegade (pt. 4)

Another wolf-finds-his-mate story, but I kicked it up a notch and created a whole new world around it.

Pairing: Chanyeol x Reader

Genre: Supernatural (EXO as wolves, but more species involved in the storyline)

Word count: 8912 words

Warning: Long read, Somewhat angsty, Dork! Chanyeol, five second sex scene that I have not written like I would write smut but more held-back, lots of things happening and after a while you won’t even be able to tell what the biggest problem is. I promise it’ll all make sense later on.

New to the series? Start your adventure here: Prologue (Don’t skip it, it contains info you’ll need later on.) The posts will always contain a link to the next part, unless that part hasn’t been posted yet.

Part 4

Chanyeol leaned his bum onto the table top of the chestnut brown, wooden desk, allowing him to compromise some of his tallness and spread his legs spaciously for (y/n) to stand in between them. Owing to his long legs, his dress shoes remained settled on the floor, though the idea to wrap them around her legs had emerged from his cerebrum several times. As if holding her waist in his arms was not enough, he wanted to capture her prisoner of love and hold on to her like there was no tomorrow.

He acted as much out of desire for her as out of necessity. Since the day they had intensified their mate-bond, Chanyeol would wake up to minor headaches that disappeared by virtue of a few kisses, hugs and minutes of physical contact, shared with his girl.

He wished for things to be different, but for now he had to make do with sneaking around like teenagers at locations where (y/n) was not supposed to be; empty lecture-hall back offices having the amplest space were at the top of Chanyeol’s preferred list. He felt guilty for urging her to have rendezvous with him like these. Unfortunately, there weren’t many other options considering the dangers of abstinence.

(y/n) didn’t seem too bothered with the situation as he imagined her to be. Be it the back office of a lecture hall for an elaborate make-out session or the janitor’s closet for a quick kiss, she seemed genuinely happy to be with him. She had only complained once, stating she had become unable to focus on the course material during his lectures because he was too attractive in both his looks and voice.

Surreptitiously, Chanyeol had been trying to find a solution to that problem and was planning to put some of those solutions to the test on their next legitimate date. From the get-go, he resolutely reserved illegal college appointments for experiencing and showing his love. He held no wish to squander their limited time together in explaining the process by which information is transmitted from the presynaptic cell to the postsynaptic cell, which change occurs in the postsynaptic cell and whatnot. He just wanted to be close to her. As simple as that. As simple as (y/n) holding onto his white shirt with her small clenched hands, as simple as their kiss. Slow but passionate, contributing to a whole new level of intimacy. It made Chanyeol’s heart do things inexplicable; slow down and skip at the same time.

“Aren’t you a sneaky little thing?” He pulled away unhurried, the tip of his nose brushing over (y/n)’s. Chanyeol opened his eyes to find hers were still closed and smiled at the thought of her enjoying their kisses as much as he did.

“How so?” (y/n) asked, opening her eyes to drown into Chanyeol’s.

“You've been holding onto my shirt for less than five minutes and somehow you've managed to pull it out of my pants. Go on like that for an hour and I'll be naked".

“Sorry!” (y/n) laughed and let her head fall in the crook of Chanyeol’s neck to hide her embarrassment, causing her grasp on his shirt to tighten haphazardly. When she noticed, she decided to draw them around his waist instead, capturing him between her arms.

“You’re too cute”, Chanyeol chuckled and gave her a kiss on the head. He rested his chin upon her hairs as he combed through them with his long fingers. “Hey, promise me you’ll stay the night tomorrow?” he whispered, maybe because he was aware those kind of requests were not what one would call taking things slow; it was barely the fifth day he could address her as his girlfriend. Then again, nothing in their relationship was normal. Lecturer-Student relationship, sex after a first non-official date. Rationally, he blamed everything on their magical bond but emotionally, he couldn’t help but blame it on his feelings for her that grew stronger by the minute.

(y/n) nodded silently, then nuzzled her head deeper into Chanyeol’s neck.

“Promise!” Chanyeol requested as he smiled broadly to her response. He had felt her nod but still wanted to hear her say it, just because it would spike his happiness.

(y/n) untangled herself from Chanyeol, staring deep into his eyes as she wrapped her arms around his neck instead. “I swear on Charles Sherrington’s and Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s graves that I will find an indisputable excuse for when my mom hears me out on why my bed remained unslept on a Friday night”

“Swearing on the founding fathers of neuroscience’s graves. That’s a heavy promise”, Chanyeol said. “Now add the part where you’re going to spend that night with me, and swear it on Otto Loewi’s grave”, he demanded with a smirk.

“Who the hell is that?”, (y/n) burst into laughter, causing Chanyeol to laugh along with her as he explained.

“Module three point two. We saw it yesterday. Neuroscience and behaviour lecture. His frog experiment that won him the Nobel prize?” He remembered how he re-read the third module on Monday afternoon for teaching purposes and how the textbook mentioned the funny details on how Loewi awakened one night with the sudden idea, wrote it down on a note, went back to bed and then woke up unable to read his own note. The next night, Loewi woke up to the same idea and rushed to the laboratory instead.

“Sorry, I can’t recall”, (y/n) shook her head as she tried to regain composure from her laughter. Bad student, Chanyeol thought. You’re ought to read the modules before the lectures. Then again, back in his days he wasn’t any better so he held his tongue. “So Otto Lewis’s grave it is?”

“Otto Loewi”, Chanyeol articulated. “Not Lewis”.

“That’s what I said!”

“No, it’s not”, he shook his head, earning a pout from (y/n). “Fine, for once I’ll do with Otto Lewis, whoever he may have been. He better be worth a lot”, Chanyeol made a mental note to google that name later on.

“I solemnly swear on Otto Louis’s grave I will spend the entire night in your presence”. Chanyeol shook his head, hearing another wrong pronunciation of the name Loewi. She’s never going to get that right, he sighed to himself, and hoped she’d get it right in writing.

“Ah, we got a lot of work to do”, Chanyeol pulled her close to him again, wrapping her in a tight hug.

There were many perks to a small town. Even more to a small town with mainly supernatural inhabitants that had impeccable hearing skills. The alpha’s long howl was audible for the entire pack throughout the town. As each family contained at least one wolf, information could be passed on quickly, allowing emergency gatherings to be organised last-minute.

It was to say the least unusual that they had requested all adults to gather in the barn. In fact, it was the first time this ever happened, as far as Chanyeol could recall. All non-adults were requested to gather in the Main mansion or to be brought there by their parents for babysit arranged just in the nick of time for the meeting, whilst the adults fidgeted to find a good spot beside their preferred groups of friends or family.

This was what a real pack looked like. Not small groups of ten or twenty people, but an entire legacy of people, most descendant from one same wolf that existed a thousand years ago. Taking into account not only the wolves but also all mates, be them wolves, witches or humans and large groups of lost pack-members killed at devastating battles throughout history, two hundred would be the more accurate number.

For a wolf pack, this was not an exceptionally large number. South Korea had three big wolf packs, according to Chanyeol’s knowledge, and one of them was rumoured to have at least double the amount of members. As for the biggest one known? Russia, apparently, rumoured to have a pack consisting out of no less than a thousand members.

There were also smaller wolf packs, but they were in the vast minority compared to the large ones. The only way to create a new pack is for one to become an omega and start a new pack from one’s offspring. Wolves, being herd animals, however, rarely left their pack, the only frequent recurring exception being when one found their mate in another pack. This would cause a non-wolf member of the pack to move to the wolf’s pack, and if both were wolves, the one with the smallest pack would move to the bigger pack.

To manage such large groups, most alpha’s opted for having their own advisory board or council, much like mundane politics. Every six years, adult members of Chanyeol’s pack could vote on who they preferred to be on the board, the only difference being that there was no political war nor contestants or advertisement to endorse people. People just chose who they deemed fit for the position. Last time, it had caused Chanyeol headaches, not knowing if he’d vote for his mom or his dad. Unable to make a decision, he ended up flipping a coin when he was in front of the ballot and to his luck, both his parents made it onto the board.

The lucky one, or maybe unfortunate one, - Chanyeol could never tell if it was a blessing-, to be the alpha of their enormous group? Joonmyeon’s father Kim Yongha. He had become their alpha after killing their previous one, a result of a policy which stated that alpha’s should be killed when they reach the age of eighty. Enough reasons not to sign up for becoming the next himself, Chanyeol thought as he tried to squirm himself through the huge amount of inhabitants with a can of beer at hand, looking for his friends. Thanks to his wolf abilities, he had found them quickly.

“We saved you a seat”, Jongin patted on the square straw bale next to him. As usual, it was the young adults that secured the spots to sit on. Chanyeol plopped down on the bale, taking another sip from his drink.

“You’re late. You were calling (y/n)?”. Minseok, who was sitting behind him on the straw bale, hovered his head between Jongin and Chanyeol’s shoulder.

“I’m not late. It hasn’t even started yet”.

“You’re avoiding the question. How is the absence sickness?” Minseok asked instead.

“Slight headaches in the morning but we’re making up for that tomorrow”, Chanyeol tried to stay cool about it. He wasn’t going to tell them how he would sneak (y/n) into places she was not supposed to be at, at College, for make-out sessions. His friends were well aware of their Lecture-Student relationship and providing them with such details would just feed their dirty imaginations. Chanyeol knew some of them could not help but think of their statuses as some sort of fetish in the bedroom.

“Oooooooh. Huge fireworks tomorrow night”, Jongin laughed and Chanyeol gave him a dead glare, remembering how he still had to kill Baekhyun for timing the festival’s fireworks to the minute he found ‘his release’. He turned to look behind him, finding Baekhyun playing a game of cards with Kyungsoo, then back in front of him to the wolf pack. Maybe now was not the right time to do so

“Your parents really didn’t tell you anything?” Minseok figured it’d be best to switch subjects.

“They didn’t”, Chanyeol shook his head, sipping from the can once more and looking in front of him to the huge crowd that had gathered.

“That’s curious. Your parents tell you everything”, Jongin pointed out.

“We don’t have a witch in the family to do privacy spells and with an entire town full of supernatural hearing wolves who could pass by our house and overhear everything, that can mean only one of two things. Either they’ve got no clue what’s going on, or something bad is happening”, Chanyeol said, assuming that if his parents withheld information from him, it’d be not to cause panic in the entire town.

“I guess we’re ought to find out now, aren’t we?” Minseok nodded. “This is what the meeting’s for, right?”

“I guess. I don’t see why else”, Jongin agreed.

From the looks of it, their group was not the only one who had been left guessing on what the fuzz was about. Many of the pack members seemed confused, turning the entire event in a bring-your-own-booze festivity. Some believed that this assembly meant exceptionally good news, reason enough to start the party early and drink away, whilst others suspected bad news, also reason enough to get a head start on the alcohol. Compared to others, Chanyeol conveyed the impression of a good boy with his plain beer.

Although it was not in Chanyeol’s hearing focus, he noticed immediately the sound of a candle that was blown out, hinting the board had finished their private pre-discussion. He was not the only one, as everyone suddenly fell silent and turned their heads into the direction of the board members that marched inside the barn, the alpha in their middle.

The board members spread to stand with their families, Chanyeol’s dad joining Yoora. His mom did not seem to be present. Maybe she’s on babysit-duty, Chanyeol thought. Their alpha, Joonmyeon’s dad, however, secured a place in the middle of the barn.

“May I have your attention please”, he broke the silence and raised his voice so that even non-wolf pack members could hear him clearly. Chanyeol could barely see Yongha as he did not stand on a platform or foundation to stick out from the crowd. “First of all, I’d like to express my extreme gratitude for everyone who without doubt had other important matters to attend to and had to abandon those responsibilities in order to join us for this emergency announcement”. Damn, he always blows things up as if we all live extremely busy lives. I was just calling (y/n), Chanyeol thought. Loosen up, alpha.

“As many of you have gathered, this meeting covers our official statement concerning all the reports of strange mundane behaviour, we have been fortunate to receive from many of you”. You make it sound like it’s a good thing, Chanyeol remembered how he first informed his parents of the bizarre demeanours.

“I, your alpha, and the board would like to express our apologies for the investigation to have taken so long since it was not a frivolous matter to investigate as we have done many in the past. You see… it appears that our town, our inhabitants, we, you, are being watched. We are being observed by none other than the South Korean government as a result of an unresolved incident that took place mid-August. I, and the board, we fear we have been discovered as wolves and that we are being threatened to be either massacred or turned into living experiments”. High-pitched deep inhales could be heard from mainly women, fright striking them. Human mates clung onto their wolf partners in search for protection. In Chanyeol’s group of friends, calmness remained. They knew their alpha would not provide them this information without offering a solution.

“From the information we have been able to gather, the government is checking with the army to invade our town. We have examined our options and concluded that moving our entire pack is not one of them. Finding a new home will not settle the issue and neither will many of you be willing to leave behind all the memories that have been created here. This town is too precious to all of us. This is our home”, people nodded in agreement. “We have contacted our ally-packs to request help in resolving this matter and following the code, there will be no blood-shed. We are kind-hearted and we are proud of that. We will not harm any South Korean citizen, even if they pose a threat to us, just because they have been requested to carry out a task. Is that clear?”

“Clear”, all wolves shouted in unison. Some Yes’s could be heard, uttered by the human mates who had no idea how to respond to the alpha. Despite being threatened, there was a gargantuan feeling of solidarity.

“We are no vampires or sirens, but for now a massive human brainwash is our only option. Starting tomorrow we will be providing temporary housing for witches from other packs and together with our witches, we are certain that we will find a human way for them to forget everything they know. In addition to this, the board has decided to implement some additional rules for you to follow until a vast plan of action is decided. Note that these rules apply with immediate effect. Rule number one. No-one, no single exception, will take on their wolf-form until further notice. Not in our town, not in our woods, nowhere! Remember that you could be followed as an individual”. We can hear when they’re nearby, Chanyeol thought, but was immediately shook when the alpha raised his voice as if it was aimed at his thoughts. “NO EXCUSES. Equal goes for the witches under us. No magical activities shall take place without permission of the board”.

“Second rule. Nobody leaves town without permission. Right now we have no estimation on when they are planning to invade our town and we want to make sure that when they do, we are at our strongest, should we have no concrete plan of action yet. For that, we need everyone present. We are betting our luck that they have not figured out the majority of our abilities and the presence of witches and we will most certainly make use of that advantage in case of need. The only approved exception for now, concerns our children who may leave for school in groups. As customary, a bus will leave in the morning to drop the children at school and will pick them up. University students, employees and self-employed adults stay here. For those in need of proof of illness, Doctor Oh will help you with that”.

Chanyeol’s eyes widened. He was not allowed to leave town anymore? He was not allowed to go to College for his lectures? He was not allowed to go see his mate?! No, they had to make an exception for him. He would become useless if he couldn’t see his mate. He’d get absence sickness. They would understand that he couldn’t ask a human mate to move in with him after a few weeks, right?! How was he supposed to explain to his mate that he was fit enough to see her in his town, but not to lecture?

“Additional questions?” Yongha shouted.

“What was the incident?” Chanyeol recognized Jaemin, one of the wolf students he had over the summer, his father speak up. “The incident… you mentioned it was caused by an unresolved incident”, he swallowed deeply, fearing he was not allowed to ask that question. Yongha sighed, emotional pain visible in his eyes.

“It was a wolf… A wolf who killed a twenty-two-year-old male college student in our woods”, he responded, not raising his voice anymore. He was in deep thoughts with the boy and his family. “Apparently, similar incidents have happened across Seoul since that day. Many… serial killers… make their first victim close to home and that’s why they chose to keep a close eye on us. Most probably, we are falsely being accused for murder”.

Grief covered the entire barn. One would think that in a supernatural world, homicide was a regular occurring thing. Part of that may be true, but this did not apply for wolf packs. Wolves were love-hung, kind-hearted, compassionate creatures. To them, murder was unforgivably horrendous and happened scarcely ever, which only raised more questions as to which rogue wolf would turn serial killer.

“You boys stay in the Main mansion”, Chanyeol’s father was suddenly standing next to him and his friends. “We don’t want an empty house for them to prepare their last ammunition or… whatever. I imagine you’re all going to spend a lot of time together anyways, with the town-arrest. You might as well live together. Better make a party of it, but don’t get drunk”

“You sound like we’re counting our last days, Papa Chanyeol”, Yixing pointed out. “What’s the use of partying if we can’t get drunk?”

“You can have fun without. Besides, I don’t want to see you drunk. You already look like you’re on weed half of the time; I don’t want to see the combo”.

“You should!” Jongdae laughed. “I swear it’s worth it!”

“I don’t take anything!” Yixing defended.

“If I thought you did, I wouldn’t have mentioned it so casually. Relax”. Chanyeol’s dad then turned to his son, who had become exceptionally quiet. “Hey, what’s wrong? We’re going to get through this, promise”, he flashed his son a small smile.

Chanyeol sighed deeply. “The plan isn’t remarkably promising, is it?” His dad took a seat next to his son on the straw bale, giving him a few pats on his back.

“There are still many things to sort out first, with the arrival of other pack’s witches”, his father nodded. “I know that’s not reassuring but our pack has survived worse throughout history. You read our history books, you should know. Besides, they’ve been watching us for weeks already. I’m certain we’ll have a waterproof plan before they invade. What happened to my ever so optimistic Chanyeol?”

“It’s just a really bad timing”, Chanyeol traced his fingers through his hair, then scratched his jaw nervously.

“If there’s anything I can do for you”, his dad gave him a few more pats on the back.

“Dad”, Chanyeol looked up to face his dad for the first time, his eyes twinkling in a begging sadness. “I need an allowance to go to college. You can give me that, right?”, he asked. His dad was going to give him at least that much, right? Considering his situation.

“Son, you know I’m really proud of you? You’ve grown up a lot and you feel responsible to teach those bachelor students, but you don’t have to feel guilty about this. Just stay home”.

“Pa, you don’t understand-”,

“Of course I do. Your mom and I are closing our businesses as well. It’s just temporary. You can work on your thesis instead and like that, your time won’t go-”

“No no no, dad”, Chanyeol cut him off, slightly panicking and shaking his hands in front of him to show his disagreement. “You really don’t understand. I need…”, he felt a bit shy to say it and lowered his head to watch the straw-covered floor. “I need… skinship”, his heart skipped a beat when he uttered the last word.

“You need what?”, his dad raised an eyebrow. He had never heard of the term before. Despite being a cool dad, engaging in music and having his own bar, he was not up to date on the present-day slang words used by the youthful adults.

“You know...”, Chanyeol exhaled deeply, having to go in detail. “Touching… kissing- I have a mate!”, he blurted it out. Although it had been no secret to his friends, the friends of his friends and his sister, his parents had no clue on the recent developments in Chanyeol’s love life.

“You found your mate?” Chanyeol’s dad’s face lit up, excited. “Why haven’t I met her yet? She works at your college?” He bombarded his son with questions. “Why didn’t you tell us? What’s her name? What’s she like? How far-”

“Dad!” Chanyeol interrupted him, stomping his feet. “Stop! She’s one of my students, alright?” Chanyeol’s frustration had caused not only his friends, but also some of the people standing in the barn, to shift their focus onto him. Great, just great, Chanyeol thought. Now everyone knows I’m screwing one of my students. Could this day get any worse?

“Eh”, his dad wasn’t sure what to respond. “Well…”, he looked around discovering various eyes on him, awaiting his response, and concluded he had to handle the situation as mature as possible. “That’s… unfortunate”.

Oh, really? Chanyeol judged his father’s observation and was boiling inside as a result from all the unwanted attention he was getting. On the outside, he tried to remain calm as his father contemplated on what to say.

“I admit I’m not a fan of those kind or relationships, but if she’s your mate, I have no doubt that what you’re both feeling is pure and I fully support you”.

“My husband was married when I was hired by his pregnant wife as their cleaning lady and at first, we had an affair for-”, an elder woman started telling her unfortunate wolf love-story to the people around her, causing others to turn their heads into another direction.

“Alright Grandma. Everyone knows that story”, her granddaughter interrupted her and tried to calm her down. Chanyeol chuckled. He wasn’t the only one who had overstepped boundaries.

“Listen, son, I’m not the one who can grant you permission to leave town, only Yongha can. I’ll need some details on how advanced your relationship with this girl is but we’ll do that at home, ok?”

Chanyeol was being Chanyeol. There was no other way to explain or bring into words the idiocy of the situation. When he was in his element, he did not hold back the dork within him. He was the type to get over-excited over the most foolish things and go all-in whenever an opportunity rose for him to act like a buffoon. He should’ve worked in the entertainment industry.

Chanyeol was testing one of the solutions he had come up with to handle the attractiveness-problem. He knew the solution he was to test first, was going to flunk terribly, but he still wanted to see how far he could go with his stupidity for (y/n) to handle. Quite frankly, he needed this. He needed this to take his mind off his other problems. Whilst the witches were searching for a solution to the army-threat and he was waiting for permission to leave town, life went on, and he still had some conquering to do. He had to get his girl to become as comfortable as possible with him before he’d break to her about being a wolf.

The ceiling of his room was decorated with a bunch of helium-filled balloons in an expanded diversity of colours, one of his new preferred objects; the green ones being his absolute favourite. Dressed in nothing less than a ridiculous white-pink rabbit-onesie, (y/n) stared at him with mouth agape as she watched him jump up to try and catch hold of one of the wires that hung loose from the balloons.

“And you also said my voice was too attractive”, Chanyeol grinned and untangled the wire from the balloon he had caught, guiding the mouthpiece to his lips and inhaling deeply from the inflated material. “So, Otto Loewi”, he sounded like a chipmunk. (y/n) let herself fall onto her back, on the bed, from laughter. Her tears were evident in her eyes. She hit Chanyeol’s giant Rilakkuma several times with her palm, unable to restrain herself from rolling in the aisles. When she finally started to regain her composure, Chanyeol inhaled from the balloon once more.

“He won the Nobel prize for his frog experiment that-”, he couldn’t finish his sentence before he found his girlfriend bursting into laughter again, holding onto Rilakkuma for support to stay seated.

“Grant the frog some attention, princess”, Chanyeol said in his normal voice after (y/n) stopped snorting, leaning his hand on his hip impatiently but looking amused himself.

“I thought you were a bunny, not a frog”, (y/n) wiped away her tears.

“Oh no, I am a frog”, Chanyeol inhaled what was left of helium in the balloon. He then crouched down, his hands flat on the floor between his knees, pretending to be one. “Kiss me, princess”.

“Ieuw yuk”, (y/n) giggled.

“Kiss me kiss me kiss me”, Chanyeol demanded, still in his high-pitched helium voice, puckering his lips and closing his eyes.

“No, gross!” He had a cushion thrown to his head.

“If the princess doesn't kiss the frog, how can he ever turn in a prince huh?” Chanyeol pouted, back with his normal, deep voice.

“Never!”

“I guess the frog will have to take the initiative then”, Chanyeol jumped towards (y/n) in his frog posture. When he reached the bed, (y/n) jumped off it quickly, trying to run. A one-minute chase later however, Chanyeol had managed to corner her, locking her in against a wall, sitting down.

(y/n) pretended as if she found him disgusting as his lips got closer to hers, pinching her eyes fearful and trying to pull away further against the wall. Chanyeol gave her a slow kiss, lingering onto her lips for a few seconds before he pulled away and she opened her eyes.

“Ya! Why are you still a frog?”, she played along and raised her voice at him, finding him in his frog position still.

“Because it's you who has to do it!”, Chanyeol defended. “Come on, it wasn't that bad, was it? Just kiss me already”. Still acting as if she was disgusted by the frog, (y/n) gave him a hasty peck.

“See. You're still a frog! Hopeless case! You're just a frog”, she complained.

“Aren't you the most impatient princess ever? Magic takes time! It won't work with such a quick kiss. Do it properly!” (y/n) eyed Chanyeol out of disbelief. He could imagine her thoughts. How was this her lecturer? How was this her boyfriend? Nevertheless, a few seconds later she complied and leaned in, swinging her arms around his shoulders to pull him closer for a deep, sweet kiss. She can definitely handle the idiot within me, Chanyeol thought, no, she loves the idiot within me. He leaned forward so his knees sank to the ground as she kissed him, transforming from a frog into a prince.

“Where's my prince? All I see is a man-child”, (y/n) pouted.

“What?” Chanyeol’s eyes grew wide. “You don't like me?”

“Give me back the frog. I liked him better”.

“Ya! You're really a rude princess!” Chanyeol shouted at (y/n). There was a short moment of silence before (y/n) finally spoke, sticking her lip out.

“How is it that I find this bunny-with-a-chipmunk-voice-pretending-to-be-frog person so charming?” The comment made Chanyeol’s face lit up.

“Because you like meeeeeeee!” He sang happily.

(y/n)’s nails pinched into Chanyeol’s back as she held on to him closely, her heavy breaths aligned perfectly to Chanyeol’s movements. With the same frequency, his mind flooded with the thoughts of how much he loved this girl he was being intimate with, how he wanted to be even closer to her. He sank his lips to her neck, planting kisses at her most sensitive spots which caused some moans to escape from (y/n)’s lips.

Getting a kick out of (y/n)’s sonority, Chanyeol continued leaving pecks in her neck when all of a sudden, he felt an excruciating pain in his mouth. His wolf fangs were forcing their way out beyond the bounds of his will. He had the begrudging need to mark her as his mate and tried to force his fangs back in but the more he tried, the more his body retaliated. He felt his chartreuse yellow eyes rise to the surface, too and he knew he would not be able to hold back if he didn’t get out of bed soon.

“Sorry”, Chanyeol quickly shot up from the bed and ran towards the bathroom, smacking the door closed with a loud bang after he entered. Hastily, he locked the door, switched on the lights and observed himself in the mirror. His fangs had come out completely. Touching one gently with his index finger, he tried to use his wolf-powers to suck them back in, without result.

He let the tab water run, splashing some of the cold water in his face in hopes of his wolf eyes and canine teeth disappearing, but nothing he did have any effect.

“Chanyeol, are you ok?” he heard (y/n) knocking silently on the door, concerned.

“I-” He tried to think of an excuse. “Eh- I’ve got something in my eye. It stings”, he made up through his fangs.

“I can have a look. Maybe there’s something in it”, (y/n) offered but Chanyeol was quick to refuse her help.

“No, it’s ok. I get this more often”, he lied.

“You should let a doctor check that. Wash it out with some water”, she advised him.

“Yeah I will. You go back to bed already, I’ll join you once I’m done”, Chanyeol assured her.

“Oh, ok”. He heard she was disappointed for not being allowed to help whilst she strolled back to the bed.

Chanyeol opened the door to Soo’s coffee House, gesturing for (y/n) to walk inside first as he held the door open for her. He was in real gentleman mode today, contradictory to his squirrelly behaviour of the night before. It was a tee bit of an interesting paradox as to which Chanyeol would surface for his girlfriend. Sometimes it’d be the dorky one, mostly the sweet one, but either were equally adorable and lovable and he never failed to make his girl smile when he was around.

(y/n) stood still in the opening, waiting for Chanyeol to follow her inside and guide her further as she admired the place’s interior. Brick walls, fireplace, dark wooden tables and chairs, Bordeaux and beige couches. It screamed the perception of being home. No wonder Chanyeol promised it to be one of the most interesting places in town. He had just given her a tour around town, a two hour walk, Soo’s coffee house being the final stop.

They weren’t the only customers. In a corner close to the bar, an elder man was sitting. Spread at the table section, there were a few others enjoying their coffee, each of them entirely alone. With everything that was going on, many had to take some time to clear their thoughts, Chanyeol thought.

He slid his hand to hold (y/n)’s waist, guiding her towards a Bordeaux couch at the fireplace. As they both took a seat, Chanyeol quickly grasped something what looked like a thick but not too heavy medieval book from the coffee table in front of them.

“Ladies first”, he handed it over to (y/n) who kindly took it from Chanyeol’s hands and stared at the cover before opening it. It was made out of leather and had an old flap binding. From the sides, you could spot that if not real, the parchment inside was an exact replica of the animal membrane. “It’s the menu”, Chanyeol explained. “The first four pages are the menu and all the rest are, or used to be blank pages in which people can write with those feathers”, he pointed back at the coffee table that had three small jars of ink and two feather quill pens, one with a white feather and one with a Persian blue feather.

Curious, (y/n) opened the book in the middle and flipped through the pages, looking for the last piece of text someone left. To her surprise however, the writings were spread throughout the entire book, leaving open pages in between. “Ah yes, people write on random pages so you can’t tell which one someone wrote. They’re scared someone would check after them”, Chanyeol leaned over her shoulder to read along.

“She seems scared”, (y/n) said, hazarding a wild guess that the note she landed on was written by a female. The handwriting was very neat and elegant.

“It’s part of the concept. You can come in here and write your thoughts. If you’re scared, if you’re depressed or frustrated. Seldom, you will find a happy writing in those books. Most people use metaphors throughout their entire writing so people can’t tell what’s really going on but when you read through them, you can feel the emotion and you know you’re not alone. If there’s one coffee house where you’re not judged for coming in alone, it’s this one”, Chanyeol said.

“You wrote in these books too?”, (y/n) asked, lifting her head to the ceilings as she noticed that there was also very relaxing and lyricless music playing in the background.

“Sure. In several of them. Maybe one day you can tell which one is my handwriting and you can hunt through all the books looking for my entries, hmm?” He didn’t mind that much. Before she was going to be able to tell which one was his, he’d have a stable relationship with her without wolf-secrets. Part of him hoped that one day, she’d read his memo’s about his worries concerning her and she’d fall in love with him all over again.

“I like this place. I’m going to come here more often”, (y/n) flipped to the first pages and scanned the menu. “I think I’m going to go for the milk-tea-flavoured bubble tea”, she nodded after going through the options again.

“No coffee?”, Chanyeol frowned. “Kyungsoo has the best coffee you’ve ever ta-”

“And I believe you”, (y/n) stopped him. “But I’m a tea person”, she flashed a smile at him.

“Please tell me you’re not like my friend Sehun who’s obsessed with bubble tea”, Chanyeol pouted.

“Haha, no”. Chanyeol got up from the couch.

“I’ll go make the order. Also part of the concept… My friend Kyungsoo doesn’t want to disturb anyone so if you need anything, you have to go to the bar. Be back in a jiffy, ok?” he asked and (y/n) nodded.

“Double espresso with little milk, no sugar and a milk-tea-flavoured bubble tea?” Kyungsoo asked when Chanyeol arrived at the bar. He was a regular customer and Kyungsoo knew by heart his order. As for (y/n)’s, he heard using his wolf abilities.

“Exactly”, Chanyeol leaned his elbows on the bar, waiting patiently.

“She’s cute. Wish we got to spend some time together to get to know her, too”, Kyungsoo started working on the bubble tea.

“I’m waiting to meet Miss. D.O. as well. When is she coming along?”

“I don’t know. Five years from now?”

“Let’s hope not”, Chanyeol turned his head back to steal a glance at (y/n) who had started making her very own first entry in one of the menu’s. “Hey, would you happen to know what factor activates the involuntary need to mark one’s mate?” he then asked.

“I’m not sure. Why?” Kyungsoo poured syrup on the black boiled tapioca pearls. “Wait”, he realised and put down the syrup. “Are you there already? Was that what I heard yesterday? When she was asking if you were alright?”

“This growing onto your human mate thing is becoming difficult. First she’s my student, second I meet her during mating season and now I can barely touch her without feeling the need to mark her. Someone up there must be finding a lot of joy in giving me a hard time”, Chanyeol sighed.

“I’m convinced that’s not the case”, Kyungsoo consoled him. “I’d switch places with you pronto to have my mate”, he explained. “Anyhow, I think it has to do something with the mate herself. My mom always told me that when this happened to dad, she was ready to be marked and wanted to be marked. I’m not sure it’s the same for human mates. It rarely happens for them”.

“I haven’t even explained mine the concept of marking, how would she be ready for it?”

“It’s possible if she’s deeply in love with you”, Chanyeol heard a man sitting in a corner whisper. The grey-haired, older wolf had been eavesdropping on them. “Maybe you should consider telling her that you’re a wolf. I’m certain she can take it”, he kept reading his newspaper as if he wasn’t talking.

“How is it that I’ve known from the start this moment would arrive and I haven’t spared a single second to think about how I’m going to tell her?” Chanyeol cursed himself and ran his hand through his hair.

“One piece of advice”, the older man whispered back. “Don’t transform in front of her. Not until she has gotten used to the idea of you being a wolf. You can show off your eyes but don’t turn completely until she’s gotten comfortable with the idea. For humans, it’s a scary experience at first”. Not that transforming was allowed at the moment, Chanyeol thought. Nevertheless, it was good advice to begin with.

“You know what they say, Chanyeol”, Kyungsoo encouraged him. “If you’re destined mates, you will find the perfect way to convey the message”, he shoved the bubble tea and coffee to Chanyeol. “There you go”.

“Thanks”. Chanyeol turned around and looked at the old man with his newspaper, whispering another thanks to him as well, resuming his walk back to the Bordeaux couch where (y/n) was sitting.

“Here you go”, he handed the bubble tea over to her and she gave him a quick kiss to thank him. She placed the menu back on the coffee table.

“The ink dries fast”, she pointed out. Yeah, because the witches spelled all the goddamn books, Chanyeol remembered.

“Lucky you. Wait until I’m sitting here to correct your exam papers. I’ll find your entry straightaway”, he scoffed.

“There’s no name on those, only student numbers”, (y/n) reminded him. “Anti-discrimination policy”.

“What makes you think I don’t know yours by heart?”, he teased back.

“You’re not being fair!”, her tone sounded disappointed but she smiled. “You weren’t planning on giving me straight A’s were you? If I deserve an F, I want an F”.

“I swear I wasn’t. And why would you think you’re going to fail? This girl… You complained you couldn’t pay attention to my teaching and when I came up with a working solution, it appeared you had studied by yourself last Thursday evening. You don’t even need to come to my lectures…” Chanyeol made a long face.

(y/n) placed her bubble tea on the coffee table and turned ninety degrees so she could lay with her head in Chanyeol’s lap. “I wouldn’t want to miss those for the world”, she assured him. Chanyeol held on to one of her hands, running his thumb in circles over her hand’s back.

“I don’t want to go home”, she suddenly wailed. “I want to stay here with you”, she nestled her head against Chanyeol’s abs.

“It’s already close to noon. Your mom is going to get worried”, Chanyeol didn’t like the idea of parting ways either but tried to stay rational. In his town, their relationship was well known, but outside, it had to stay a huge secret. She couldn’t go home and tell she had found herself a boyfriend.

“She doesn’t get worried, only angry”, (y/n) corrected him. Chanyeol looked down at his girlfriend with her head resting on his thighs, her eyes closed. She was snuggling close to him as if she was looking for comfort from experiencing a nightmare.

“Hey”, Chanyeol asked silently. “Your mom… You mentioned she was very strict. She-”, he paused a second, scared to ask. “She doesn’t beat you up, does she?” (y/n)’s eyes shot open and she lifted herself from his lap.

“She used to”, she admitted silently, but immediately defended her. “Only a little! And it hasn’t happened in years anymore, I do everything she asks me to!” Chanyeol’s eyes grew wide, staring at her in disbelief. Was she telling him that it was alright?

“This is a serious matter. Why didn’t you tell me before? What would happen if you don’t follow her orders, would she still get physical?” He asked worried.

“I don’t know”, she looked down, not willing to face Chanyeol as she answered.

“Ok, now you’re lying to me”, Chanyeol read her. “Was that why you didn’t pick up last Wednesday? I couldn’t reach you the entire evening. What happened that day?!” He was connecting dots and determined to get to the bottom of it.

“Nothing”, (y/n) responded, slightly panicking. “Like I said, I fell asleep early”.

“Stop feeding me lies”, Chanyeol raised his voice. He was losing control over himself because he was concerned and cared deeply for her.

“Chanyeol, stop. You’re making her uncomfortable. She’s not ready to tell you this”, Chanyeol growled when he heard Kyungsoo whisper those words to him from the bar. “If you keep this up, she’s going to distance herself from you and you’ll both be worse off”.

“I swear, nothing happened. You can check. I’ve got no bruises or cuts or anything”, she stuck out her arms. “You would’ve noticed yesterday”. Chanyeol reminisced about the night before, how he had traced his fingers over her entire skin. She was right. He would have noticed.

“Promise me you’ll come to me when this kind of thing happens”, he begged instead, taking hold of her hands in his.

“Yeol-ah”, she asked with a low voice as her eyes twinkled. “I have to tell you something. Can you promise me you won’t get mad?”

“Of course”, he raised one of her hands to his lips, giving it a kiss.

“My mom wants me to marry Hae-Won”, she confessed. “I know I’m your girlfriend but I have to go on another date with him tonight”. Chanyeol’s mind turned blank. It took him a few seconds to process the information, causing him to lose control over his temper when it finally hit him.

“Hae-Won?! That annoying latecomer who hangs around you the entire time during my lectures?”, Chanyeol’s voice rose through the roof again.

“Chanyeol! You promised not to get mad”, (y/n) pouted. “It’s just to meet in the middle. That way my mom stays happy and I can still sneak out to see you without her getting suspicious”.

“You’re saying you have to date him to date me?”, Chanyeol asked, tears bottling up in his eyes.

“I promise you, I’m not marrying him. Not ever. Never ever. I want to be with you”, she held her hand to cup Chanyeol’s cheek.

“You’re asking me to trust you on this, aren’t you?” It hurt him. It hurt him badly that she was asking him for permission to do so and that she was driving him to say it was ok, even though it’d be against his will.

“Please? Things are complicated enough already. Just for now”, she implored. Chanyeol leaned in to kiss her. He did not want to speak the words she had requested him to, so he decided to grant her his promise with the touch of his lips.

“I hate your mom”, he said as he pulled away.

“So do I”, (y/n) climbed over him to sit on his lap, throwing her arms to hold his neck and pull him in for another desperate kiss.

Chanyeol’s big paws ran over the forest terrain, hard ground, dried leaves and log roots at an incredible high speed. He was not conserving his energy, reaching his top speed. Like his human form, he was also slightly taller than others in his wolf form. He was a grey wolf, one of few who had the same shade of fur as the name carried; soft, warm, dense, fluffy and grey. He had a broad snout, narrow chest but a longer tail that swung behind him with every movement of his build, together with dainty, small and slightly triangular ears. Needless to say, he looked graceful.

Whilst he ran, he kept his head at the same level as his back, looking in front of him with his sparkling, chartreuse eyes that distinguished him from non-magical grey wolves. The moonlight reflected on his fur and his wolf-irises made it possible for him to identify and jump over every hindrance that came his way.

He was breaking the entire set of new rules that had been set up by his alpha at once. Running in his wolf-form, having left town. He had pondered for a long time before deciding to do so, but after crying intensely for hours, he decided to take his chances to blow off some steam.

It was becoming too much for him to administer. A threat to his town and pack, his girlfriend that was facing an arranged marriage, the possibility he wasn’t allowed to go to College and see her, him not being able to get too intimate with her anymore due to unwillingly having the need to mark her and the pressure of finding a way to confess to her that he was in fact, a wolf. How did it progress to this?

Chanyeol stopped running when he reached the edge of a cliff that provided him with a beautiful scenery of Seoul at night. His mouth slightly agape, his tongue stuck out a little, teeth becoming apparent as he breathed heavily from the effort. It had been a while since he had run that fast, yearning to run away from his problems even if it were just temporary and literally.

After recovering from the pressing lack of air, he jerked his head up to face the sky and let out a long loud howl, increasing his pitch gradually until he had raised close to an entire octave from his initial mournful note. With every centilitre of air that escaped from his lungs past his oesophagus, relief washed over him and soon he found himself panting for air once more.

If it hadn’t been for the sudden cracking sonance of leaves behind him, he would’ve never considered the possibility he wasn’t alone. Alarming, he turned around into the direction of the sound, panicking as he sought the source. How could it have been so close? He should’ve heard something earlier. He should be able to smell its presence. All his senses were failing him. He ran his eyes through the tree trunks, back and forth. His heart started to race and his breathing became unstable. What was happening? Why could he not trace the sound again?

Golden. Bright golden. Bright, golden eyes suddenly met his from afar, holding his stare. It was puncturing, sucking out his soul with every passing second and Chanyeol realised, he had to run if he cherished his life and wanted to live to see tomorrow.

In a matter of nanoseconds, he turned around and sped out of the woods, looking behind him in fear of the golden eyes chasing him down. For unknown reasons, the golden eyes stayed put, not moving an inch but Chanyeol still had the tendency to run with the want to stay alive, scratching his body against a tree by accident as he ran out of the forest without being careful.

“I know who killed the boy!”, Chanyeol ran inside the Main mansion, his mother, father and alpha standing in the living room. They had been waiting for him to provide him with the results of their discussion on his permission to leave town, only to find out that he wasn’t there. Waiting along with them were his friends and his sister, who had been worried something had happened to their dearest friend or brother.

“Chanyeol!” His mom ran towards him and embraced him, relieved he was ok. Glad he was still alive himself, Chanyeol hugged his mom back whilst he leaned his chin upon her shoulder to face the others.

“The golden eyed, they’re in town”, Chanyeol looked up at Yongha. “They kill”, he said, still petrified from what he had just experienced. Confused, his mom let go of him and shot a terror-stricken stare at her son.

“No. That’s impossible” Yongha said headstrong and shook his head. “Impossible!” he suddenly yelled as he repeated the word.

“I saw one. With my own eyes. They’re here. In Seoul”, he said between breaths. “It explains everything”.

“Young Mee”, Yongha ordered Chanyeol’s mother. “Get the board witch”, he did not let go of his stare that was pointed at Chanyeol. “NOW!” He yelled.

Chanyeol’s mother left the mansion hurriedly, following the alpha’s instructions. Aside from Kyungsoo, Joonmyeon and Yoora, the rest of his friends were baffled by what was happening. They seemed to have no idea as to what was going on.

“You went out of town and you turned, didn’t you?” Yongha asked with a strong voice. Instantaneously, Chanyeol got on his knees and bowed deeply for his alpha, admitting his wrongdoing and apologizing. He let out a soft squeal as he did, feeling the cuts on his lower abdomen stretch open.

“Hmmmph”, Yongha huffed. “I refuse your request to leave town. Consider it your punishment. When your mother arrives with the board witch I expect you to wait for us in the integration room for investigation”.

“Yes, sir”, Chanyeol tried to hold back his tears, thinking of (y/n). Why had he been so stupid to break all the new rules at once?

“Who are the Golden eyed?” Jongdae whispered to Joonmyeon curiously.

“It’s the Flaithius family’s wolf pack”, Joonmyeon explained.

“Who are they?” Baekhyun joined the conversation.

“The most powerful wolf-family line in existence”.

“Why’s that?” Everyone’s attention was on Joonmyeon. He looked up at his father who gave him the approval to explain it to the guys as they already knew too much anyways.

“Because they found a way to defy freaking nature”.

-> Part 5

Author’s note: Wow, am I glad this chapter is finally finished. Sorry for the long wait and I hope you like it because now it all seems a huge mess but I swear it’ll all make sense as the story develops further :( Pinky promise! Also, I need Soo’s Coffee House in my life. Desperately!

#chanyeol scenario #chanyeol fanfic #Park Chanyeol #chanyeol #exo scenario #exo fanfic #exo fanfiction #chanyeol fanfiction #park chanyeol fanfic #exo park chanyeol #kpop scenarios #chanyeol angst #exo angst

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whereareroo · 4 years

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KAMALA KAMALA

WF THOUGHTS (8/21/20).

After a long and unusual week, the Democratic Convention is over. What do you think of the V.P. nominee, Kamala Harris?

Most people like her. Of course, she has some detractors. You're entitled to your own opinion.

I'm a big Kamala fan. She's smart, tough, and sassy. I think Biden made a brilliant choice.

There are many reasons to like Kamala Harris. I think the biggest reason has been totally overlooked. Thankfully, you have me to get you up to speed.

What's the big reason to be thrilled about Kamala Harris? If the ball bounces right for the Democrats over the next four to six years, Kamala Harris will be the first Black President who was qualified for the job on Day One. Let me repeat that. Kamala Harris stands a good chance of becoming the first qualified Black person to assume the presidency.

What about Obama? Let's push the Obama mythology aside and review the facts.

Obama graduated from law school in 1991. Prior to 2004, he occupied himself by teaching law, doing low level legal work at a law firm, and sitting for a few years as a lowly state senator in the Illinois state legislature. He ran for Congress in 2000 and he couldn't even get the nomination of his party.

In a fluke election in 2004, Obama became a U.S. Senator. The incumbent Senator, a Republican, decided to retire. The expected Democratic candidate, a former U.S. Senator, decided to skip the election. In the free-for-all amongst seven candidates for the Democratic nomination, Obama was the surprising winner. Obama's luck continued in the general election. Four months before election day, due to a sex scandal, Obama's Reublican challenger dropped out of the race. The Republicans had trouble finding a replacement candidate. A mere 86 days before the election, the Republican Party in Illinois announced that their candidate would be a radio host from New York who had never lived in Illinois! That's how Obama became a U.S. Senator.

Mostly on account of his oratory skills, Obama became a media star and a celebrity. He took his seat in the Senate in January of 2005, and he immediately began his run for the White House. He didn't want to be a Senator. Despite his inexperience, he wanted to be President.

When Obama won the presidential election in 2008, beating the weak Republican ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin, he had virtually no federal government experience. During his partial Senate term, he did not spend much time on governmental matters. He spent almost all of his time running for President.

More importantly, when Obama became President he had never run a big organization. His Senate staff was the largest organization that he had managed. A typical Senator has about 35 employees and a total staff payroll of about $1,500,000. As President, including the military and the post office, Obama was tasked with managing a workforce of almost 5 million people and a budget of more than $4 trillion. Obama was not prepared for such a big task. That's what happens when, over the course of 48 months, a lowly and inexperienced state senator becomes President.

If she ever becomes President, the qualifications of Kamala Harris will vastly exceed Obama's qualifications in 2008. She spent 7 years in local politics, winning multiple elections and serving as the District Attorney of San Francisco. In that capacity, she managed a staff of 200 people. Next, she spent 7 years in state politics, winning multiple elections and serving as the Attorney General of California. If California was a country, it would be the 37th most populous country in the world and it would have the 5th largest economy in the world. For 7 years, Kamala Harris was the chief legal officer for that massive organization. She managed a staff of 4,500 people. For the past 4 years, Kamala Harris has served with distinction in the federal government as a U.S. Senator. She has been described as a "workhorse." She's been an effective, aggressive, and outspoken Senator. Her Republican colleagues have described her as "well-prepared," "a quick study," "hard nosed," "smart," and "tough."

My point is indisputable. If Kamala Harris becomes President, especially after serving time as Joe Biden's Vice President, she will be the most qualified Black person to win a presidential election.

All of the above is good news for Kamala Harris. What's the bad news? If she becomes President, she will be expected to outperform Obama. After all, it is reasonable to expect a stronger performance from a person with stronger credentials. Harris may also have to simultaneously carry the burden of being the first female President. I think she's up to the challenge.

If President Harris is fairly measured against Obama's actual performance, as opposed the the "Obama Mythology," she should be able to easily surpass his performance. If the truth be told, Obama was an average or mediocre president. When Obama took office in 2009, he had full control of the government. His party, the Democrats, also controlled the House and the Senate. Obama should have been able to deliver massive change. Due to his inexperience, he did not know how to use his power. He squandered his big chance. Except for the Obamacare Health Plan, a watered down health program that barely passed by a handful of votes, Obama did little when he had full control in 2009 and 2010. In particular, he did not do enough to lift everyday Americans out of the Great Recession that started in 2007. Obama paid the price for his poor performance in the Congressional elections of 2010. With a net gain of 63 seats, the Republicans took control of the House. Obama lost full control of the government. For the balance of his presidency, his accomplishments were minor. Due to inexperience, he missed the huge opportunity that he had during his first 24 months in office. If he had hit the ground running and quickly achieved a few major accomplishments, he might have held onto a favorable Congress in 2010 and he could have built a sterling legacy. He failed. He couldn't overcome his inexperience.

Like many other Americans, I gave up on Obama during his first term. I voted for him in 2008 because I was skeptical of McCain's mental capacity and because I thought it was time for a Black President. Almost immediately, it was evident that Obama wasn't ready for the job. If Kamala Harris gets to the White House, it will be an entirely different story. She has the potential to be our first legendary Black President.

In 2012, I voted for Romney. He had better credentials than Obama. I'm still sorry that Romney lost. You should be sorry too. If Romney won in 2012, he would have been the Republican nominee in 2016 and we wouldn't have Trump. Romney would have been a perfectly fine president.

As long as I'm criticizing Obama, let me make another point. I blame Obama for the rise of Trump. Obama proved that there was a path to the White House for a celebrity candidate with no qualifications. Yes, Obama was our first celebrity president. Trump was watching in 2008 and 2012. Trump decided that he could be the next celebrity president. I sincerely believe that Trump would not have run if from 2008 through 2016 the White House was occupied by Hillary Clinton, or John McCain, or Mitt Romney. Obama changed the rules, and Trump took advantage of the new rules. Even though my point is absolutely true, you probably won't read about it in the history books.

I'm going to forget about history and look forward. Kamala Harris has the stuff to be the new leader of the Democratic Party. She has the stuff to be our first great Black President. It's an added bonus that she's a woman. I'll be cheering for her, and I hope that you'll be cheering too. It's time for new leadership in America. Go Kamala!

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rilenerocks · 4 years

Text

This evening I went outside at about 8:20 pm to take my recycling container to the curb for early morning pick-up. There was still plenty of light for this time of day and I suddenly realized that the summer solstice would arrive this weekend. The longest daylight hours of the year. And that from then on, we’ll lose a minute of daylight every day until the winter solstice arrives in December. The year is halfway over. I felt astonished by that fact while simultaneously, I recognize that for the most part, in recent months, time has felt like it’s running through my hands like water. How is it possible that during this time of pandemic, quarantine and limited choices, that hours melt away while the lines between days blur? I’m sure there’s a psychological explanation for this phenomenon, although there haven’t been many moments in history like this one. Perhaps for other people, young ones in particular, the days drag on, seemingly endless in their monotony. Frankly, I don’t know much about anyone but me and those few people who are close enough to share their thoughts and feelings with me. I feel like I’m racing to keep pace with everything, from the little changes happening daily to my mind and body, to the news bombs dropping, lighting blazes that should keep my focus for a long time, but don’t because there are too many flaring everywhere. I’ve had an internal app for that which goes back to my twenties when I was trying to figure out how to rank what I needed to do in order of importance. I visualized this big ball of life, not particularly a smooth circle, but with bits of tasks protruding at the oddest angles. Eventually I learned that seeing the overall picture was one thing – trying to work with it as a single entity was bad news. So my inner voice repeated over and over, “break this down into smaller manageable pieces and do the most important ones first.” That rule has always worked for me and I’ve passed it along to my family and friends, even when they didn’t ask for my opinion. Lately, though, I’ve been struggling to stick with the program. Everything feels really important right now. So much so, that I feel a little lost in the rush of events.

This year I’ve had a lot of friends’ deaths and illnesses that have left their painful marks on me. My friend of 50 years, Julie, finally died after a long decline from cancer. Hers was the most challenging for me, part of a small group of women from my youth with whom there was still a deeply intimate bond. And there was sweet Nick who worked for Michael, victim to the demon depression, and Lidia, an artist and part of my social circle when my kids were young, taken by the coronavirus. There were lots of famous cultural icons who’ve died too. Kobe Bryant, John Prine, Little Richard.

The talented musician and lyricist David Olney is gone as is the comic, Jerry Stiller and Kenny Rogers, a musician from my childhood years. I started realizing I can’t remember all the deaths as they’re lost in a faceless sea of Covid19 victims. Is the virus the top priority? It’s still here and still actively tearing through our society. As with everything else, there’s a division between those who are taking it seriously and those who are basically done with it. I’ll never understand why wearing a mask which can potentially protect the vulnerable is so controversial for people. Impinging on their individual freedom. That says a lot to me. For a huge swath of the population, selfishness is the credo – not community responsibility. Right now I know four people who are in cancer treatment. The idea that simply crossing paths with an asymptomatic carrier could make them sicker during their time of being immunocompromised enrages me. But talk about lives lost. What about the boiling rage that’s poured into the streets all over the world? George Floyd could never have imagined what an international furor his murder would ignite. The centuries-old oppression of people of color is a deep stain on humanity. So much barbarism and so many lives taken. I can barely assimilate it all. While the virus carouses and people of different colors and genders demonstrate for fair treatment, below our feet, in our waters and the air, climate change is churning away, threatening the existence of everyone and everything on this planet. Climate change

World has six months to avert climate crisis, says energy expert

International Energy Agency chief warns of need to prevent post-lockdown surge in emissions

Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent

Thu 18 Jun 2020 00.00 EDT

Yesterday, I read the article with the above title in The Guardian. Hardly encouraging, to say the least. So here we are. Volatile and at risk. Every day there’s something new to think about. North Korea blows up a building where negotiations for cooperation are taking place. A warning is given internally in the US about not resuming nuclear testing. India and China are warring on their border. Oddly, the Supreme Court handed down two unexpectedly liberal decisions which inflamed Trump who thought he’d effectively rigged that court. Frankly, so did I. What a blitz of wide-ranging topics. Swinging around mentally from issue to issue, I suddenly began thinking about Captain Brett Crozier. Remember him? He was the captain of the USS Theodore Roosevelt who got fired for writing a letter about needing to dock the ship to prevent widespread transmission of Covid19 amongst his crew. They wound up in Guam, where many, including Crozier, tested positive and were quarantined. The way he was treated created blowback. The person who fired him resigned and there was a recommendation that Crozier’s commission be restored. But then, at least for me, he vanished from the headlines. I looked him up and found that in the beginning of May, he was reassigned to San Diego in a temporary position as assistant to a Naval Air Forces chief of staff. He is still being scrutinized in a further investigation. A big story that got little in a hurry, like so many others. Whew! What an exhausting whirlwind.

I’m slowing this cycle down. There are a few things in my control. When I go out in the world I wear my mask, sanitize anything I can and wash my hands. I’m home almost all day every day, still practicing social distancing. I went to a supportive march for the Black Lives matter movement. I’m growing food organically in my garden and creating a welcoming habitat for threatened pollinators. I donate what I can to organizations that support hungry people and that are working hard to restore ecological balance in the world. I’m hoping we have more than six months for such a massive effort. I’m an ally to oppressed people of all colors and sexes and think often about how to do better in that position. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of writing to a young woman who won the scholarship named for my husband, which is annually awarded to a student who excelled in history and social sciences at the school where he taught. She wrote an insightful paper about Alexander Hamilton and plans to major in journalism in college. She was president of her Habitat for Humanity club and editor-in-chief of the school paper. She wrote that she has a social conscience. I’m so happy that I can in a very small way, carry on Michael’s engagement with young people and pass on his messages. I’m hoping to keep on with this tribute to him and those students as long as I can.

But I’m also going to be still. I’m going to try to keep my head on straight. I’m going to enjoy my garden. I’m listening to new music every day. I’m watching the birds with my binoculars and enjoying their behavior as they cohabitate with me. I’m writing more. I need to draw more too. When I’m with my grandsons, I want to have fun with them, but I want to teach them too. Making a contribution to their growth is important to me. Life is certainly busy, but I can contain some of the overwhelming parts. I ordered myself a little pool. Years ago, Michael and I had one and sometimes it was just great to loll around in cool water. I miss swimming and dream of it, but for now, this will have to do. Sometimes I just close my eyes and visualize Michael from head to toe, which has a remarkably comforting effect on me. I toy with writing a book on the sexuality of older women but so far my kids have begged me for restraint.

No matter what happens next, I want to savor these small moments. I have no idea what catastrophe may appear next. I do know how I’m not getting any younger and that my future will be filled with challenges. Time to practice self-awareness. You can find me in my yard if you’re looking for me. Yell. I won’t be able to hear because of my headphones. I’m hoping I can use the outside as often as possible during the last half of the year. I don’t know how many years I get. Not going to squander any time if I can help it.

Summer Solstice This evening I went outside at about 8:20 pm to take my recycling container to the curb for early morning pick-up.

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irvingkenyon21-blog · 6 years

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Advertising and marketing In The Hospitality Sector.

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likenessofwolf-blog · 7 years

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Victor said that if they could manage to build something out of the wreckage of their former lives, they’d be some sort of heroes. That was a hard pill to swallow for a twenty-one year old kid who had regular, half-remembered but disturbing nightmares of a car crash, but Victor was not perturbed. Boston, he said, was their oyster. Nevermind that Frederick was there for school and Vic only couch surfing and lucking out with the fact that he was momentarily the only one in his dormitory. Freddie had been a fool to think he could just walk away from it all, his brother, the neighborhood, and not be followed. After a few weeks, the things Victor said were beginning to make a sort of sense. He found himself slipping back into an old role he had believed college would help shake him of. Maybe he was right; it didn’t have to be the typical path. They could emerge triumphant their own way.

“Boxer or the bag.” Victor was especially fond of that one and like most of his favorite things he’d impressed it on his kid brother.

Victor was sitting on the edge of the bottom bunk at one side of the room with his elbows on his knees, watching The Highlander. It was the afternoon movie, and had all the good bits edited out for the daytime slot. It played on Freddie’s tiny, dorm television with snowy reception in slightly adjusted but familiar scenes.

“I don’t know why you’re watching that.” Referring to the loss of meaning inherent with the edit and nodding his scruff covered chin in the direction of the screen.

Victor made a face as if he were aware of the inadequacy, but admitted to nothing. Instead, he pulled a cigarette with had been waiting for him between the crook at the top of his ear and the knitted hem of his beanie. He tilted his head to the flame in the cupping of his palm while he thought of something else to say. “We’re going out tonight.”

Freddie didn’t argue with that part. If Vic had his mind set on tying one on there was no stopping him. He was like their old man that way. Three or four bourbons in and he was everyone’s friend. The most charming and good looking man in the room who seemed to magnetize women with the barest glimpse of his darkness. Passing the half-dozen mark and he got reckless. That was when they bet too high when Freddie wasn’t sure of the count and, too often, washed out. More than ten, they’d both end up bloody and breathing hard, sharing a nearly forgotten, luke warm pint sized glass bottle in the alley.

Victor had an invitation from a girl he described as having golden hair and long legs to come to Grendel’s Den – a bar in Cambridge, near the university square and well out of their depth. BU guys were not precisely the top of the food chain in that neighborhood and Victor wasn’t even that, but somehow there they were. It was not all that different than the way – a few days later – he’d show up with a stolen cable box and smug expression, swiftly solving the problem of bad reception and afternoon movies. No explanation as to how he worked the magic; it just was like that.

Freddie was an imitator. He practiced and practiced, absorbing every word shared, until he mastered each and every trick. But it was never natural magic for him. Slight of hand was the attractive cousins of conning. Freddie learned them through methodology. If you could conceal an ace, you could steal a watch. If you could keep someone’s eyes on yours, they weren’t watching any of the fifty-two cards. I also helped if you could count.

“Aw – C’mon, show them, Freddie. Be a pal. Show us the trick.” Victor knew how it worked, of course, but he had his arm slung around his statuesque blonde and put on the show for her sake.

Freddie was huddled around his beer. He wore tattered denim and a long sleeved black shirt with logo so faded it was no longer discernible what band it belonged to. The back was a little clearer – Tour 1999 – and a list of cities touched. He did not fit in with the sweaters and roman alphabet crowd, but Victor’s girl had her sister with her who had the same coltish, long limbs but was a few inches shorter dark, pixie cut hair and doe eyes. She piped in and won him over.

“Yeah, c’mon, Freddie. Show us.” She smiled sweetly.

“… Yeah. Okay. Alright. Here…” He reached out to take her by the wrist first, then her sister. Each girl was stood apart by several feet but facing each other by his direction. He cleared his throat and tried to deepen his voice, sound commanding. It was very simple magic, but he started while looking at the little fairy girl and nearly lost his train of thought. They did not even notice.

To the blonde, without turning, he said, “You… You’re going to keep your eyes open and stand here, because you are our witness,” then he focused on her sister.

“It’s important here you listen to my instructions exactly. This is all about connections. Like the one between you and your sister… “ He helped ease her into place against an unoccupied spot on the wall where she’d be mostly out of the way of drunks during the process. “Or you and me.” He smiled there and the way she blushed up at him said he was doing something right. “Now, you’re going to close your eyes and just focus on that. Connection.” She did.

Freddie allowed himself only a second to admire the dusk around her dark lashes before turning to her tow-haired sister.

“Now… “ He only mouthed the word as he approached. With one long fingered hand he gave her a silent but heavy with meaning push – two fingers center left chest over the blonde’s heart. Firm enough she was nudged back and had to steady herself by planting her feet. As he did so, his other hand raised a single digit up to his lips – shh. No one made a sound and for a moment it seemed as though even the ambient noise of the pub had been turned down a notch.

He turned once more, centering himself between the girls. Victor had a wolf’s smile slashed across lightly bearded features. There were only a handful – perhaps twenty five or thirty, but arguably even less – tricks like this one which relied on mentalism as much as they did deft handiwork. This was one of the oldest, and simplest. He knew just how they worked. Still he liked something about seeing his little brother put his flair to it, a bit different every time.

“Alright. Open your eyes. She did and met his smile with a dreamy one of her own. “Now tell us what you felt.

There was a moment’s hesitation as if she wasn’t certain she trusted her own senses enough and feared she was wrong, then - “I felt someone tap me over the heart.”

Her sister clapped both hands over her mouth and squealed, wide eyed.

“What?” The pixie was confused. Had she gotten it wrong? “Someone touched me.”

Victor was laughing loudly and throwing back his beer. This never got old.

“Did you know he was going to do that? How did he do that? Holy shit.” His date was still wide eyed, but now turning her focus to him, demanding answers to how her sister felt through her while ten feet away with her eyes shut.

“Someone explain!” The brunette pleaded, now looking to Freddie imploringly, distressed by her sister’s shock.

“While your eyes were closed, I poked your sister in the chest. You felt me poke you.” Not a single lie to be found. Only slight of hand.

Now it was her turn to cover her mouth and stare. The rest of the night Freddie felt like he’d gotten away with something that went above and beyond pick-pocketting or hustling cards. She looked at him like he was some sort of magic. Progressively, but pretty quickly, the brunette – her name, he learned, was Katie – got closer until she was hanging with both of her arms up around right. She was clinging to it so naturally it would seem like they were long-time lovers and giving him big, brown eyed stares of admiration. Frederick felt like a fraud.

Three months later he and Katie were a regular thing. They hadn’t put a title on it, but it was clear they were both comfortable and attracted. They spent most nights together in one or the others tiny living space, huddled on twin beds and barely dressed. She read voraciously and he enjoyed watching her do it while they both should have been sleeping. His own sleep had never much improved and he didn’t mind being kept up by her. None of it was perfect, but it was pretty good and laced with the easy acceptance of youth and inexperience.

That night, Victor dropped by with a pizza and beer to watch the fight on cable. Their guy won, and that lead to a long night of his brother reminiscing about his own time in the ring and if only he’d kept at it instead of squandering his talent and youth. Twenty-six and already an old man in his own estimation. Katie slunk off to bed first, bored of listening to the boys talk and class in the early morning across town. Freddie joined her a bit more than an hour later with a belly-full and fuzzy-headed. He dropped in beside her and right into a fitful, uneasy sleep.

He was in the wreck again. The cabin of his father’s car filling rapidly with icy water and unable to move. His chest was being crushed again against the white-wall seats by the steering wheel. He could feel the broken ribs and punctured lungs filling with fluid of their own. If the cold lake water didn’t do it, internal bleeding would have, but he was not thinking at all about the pain. He would have chewed his own limb off like a trapped animal if he could have gotten to her then, his panic was so great. She was unconscious and he watched as her perfect mouth and nose slipped beneath the rise of water first with terror gripping his heart.

“Freddie! Goddamnit. Wake up!” He was being shaken.

When open and blinking wide his eyes were the color of ice water filtered through glass. Suddenly alert. He came to with such a jolt that he knocked her forcibly back with one arm. Katie in her heart-spotted underwear and his Joy Division shirt sprawled against the mattress on her rear, catching herself against the heels of her palms behind her. Her surprise and fear was all over her face, but quickly replaced with irritation.

“What the fuck, Freddie!”

“I’m sorry.”

He still wasn’t all there. Senses kept trying to trick him and go back to where he had been. His heart was hammering and he could not catch a full breath. He’d sat up too, and rubbed his eyes with one hand while reaching for her with the other. She retracted from it with a scornful look and he felt the shame of it making the tears he was only narrowly averting harder to hold back. His eyes clouded over.

“I’m sorry. I am. I didn’t mean to scare you, Katie. I didn’t hurt you, did I? …Please don’t be that way. I just… “ He had tried to explain it to her before as best he could and she’d been bored at best, unsympathetic at worst. She wasn’t a bad person, he knew it and cut her all the slack he could; she simply didn’t understand. In his frustration with knees drawn up slightly and arm cast over them, he let out a broken exhale as the other hand came up to pinch at the bridge of his nose.

“Jesus. If only you could call up this sort of emotion for anything in our lives.” She was up and on her feet a minute later, yanking on her pants and finding her shoes and bags.

��I have class.” The moment she said it Freddie stopped expecting to ever see her again. Three months was a good run. He did not try to stop her.

Later, alone in bed, he tried to shut his eyes and reconnect with the dream. So much of it had already faded as it always did. What he remembered was only due to the repetition of imagery. It came to him in flashes, but always from behind a curtain. The harder he tried to grasp it, the more it slipped away. No one could help him capture the truth of it, and he could not help himself. Depression began to take hold.

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flauntpage · 7 years

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Marcus Mariota Has A Brighter Future Than "La La Land": The NFL Underground Mailbag

Welcome to the NFL Underground Mailbag. Ask Chris Harris your question about the NFL, general sports or cultural minutiae at [email protected]. Follow him @HarrisFootball.

Drew J.: Which team you viewed as a non-contender when the season ended now looks like a contender after free agency and the draft?

Dammit, Drew, you're just waiting for me to say "Jacksonville Jaguars" so you can send this column to Deadspin in about six months with the email subject line "Can You Believe They Pay This Douchebag To Pontificate About The NFL?"

I'm not going to say Jacksonville Jaguars, but I do think this generation of drunken-sailor spending on defense (Calais Campbell, A.J. Bouye, Barry Church) will go better than last year's (Malik Jackson, Tashaun Gipson, Prince Amukamara). The problem in Hooterville is, as ever, named Bortles.

Read More: Myles Garrett, Good! Mitch Trubisky, Argh!

I could make an argument for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Tennessee Titans, purveyors of third-year franchise QBs in whose futures I basically believe (more on them shortly). Tampa signs DeSean Jackson and drafts O.J. Howard. Tennessee drafts Corey Davis and signs Johnathan Cyprien and Logan Ryan. If I squint, maybe I can see Cinderella?

But I think my answer has to be Houston. The Texans already had a ready-to-contend roster, J.J. Watt presumably returning from being America's foremost lumberjack, and membership in the AFC South going for them. And now they have Deshaun Watson, who probably isn't Dak Prescott, because that story was insane, but offers a higher ceiling than anyone else the Texans might've trundled out under center. I'm not picking the Texans as Super Bowl LII champs, but I think their bold move up to grab Watson in the first round of last week's draft gives a mature Houston roster a puncher's chance in '17 and gives Browns fans yet another potential milestone. "We passed on him twice? Hand me the arsenic."

Memo to Houston: things could get interesting. Photo by Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports

Michael G.: How do you analyze the Vikings backfield with Dalvin Cook, a second-round draftee, and Latavius Murray, a free-agent signee?

That Cook lasted until the 41st pick is one of the sneaky shockers of the 2017 draft. Before the combine, Cook was a consensus top-15 pick in any mock draft you cared to read.

(Incidentally: stop reading mock drafts! They are useless click-bait completely unworthy of the valuable time you'd otherwise spend cleaning your toes or finding health care. The reason NFL writers arrive at a "consensus" mock draft every year is that everyone reads everyone else's mock drafts! People would stop writing them—especially in fucking February—if you'd stop looking at them. They are the Transformers of sports articles.)

Then NFL teams started paying attention to Cook's off-field misbehavior—breaking a car window with a BB gun, chaining up puppies in a harmful way, hanging out with friends who were investigated for brandishing firearms at a neighbor, and, most significantly, being charged with assault for allegedly striking a woman outside a Tallahassee bar, though a jury found him not guilty. Teams also started nitpicking his medicals and his disappointing combine quickness, and suddenly he wasn't even a top-40 draftee.

But when a running back is as impressive at a huge football school as Cook was at Florida State, I tend to trust the tape. He was a monster. We can't know what kind of person he is; we can't know if he's Montee Ball ready to squander his talent. But if his head is right, Cook's a future NFL star.

Murray should be fun to watch. Photo by Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports

As for Latavius Murray? He's a 6'3" 230-pounder with power and great long speed, he's only 27, and he's coming off a 12-touchdown season. I'd call him an above-average player. He can be the lead dog for a good pro rushing attack, and he'll probably top the Vikings in TDs. He's not a change-of-direction and acceleration menace like Cook. Give these guys a good offensive line (Minnesota's blocking was disastrous in '16) and they'll make a fun tandem.

Brian W.: What movies from the 2010s will be thought of the same way we think of Casablanca, Gone With The Wind, and Citizen Kane? My bets are La La Land, The Social Network, Zero Dark Thirty, and Her.

Can we stop with La La Land? It's pretty, well-acted pablum. It's fine, but it's nostalgia made manifest, and as such is subversively retrograde. The Artist won Best Picture on the wings of similar thirsting for the "simpler time" that never actually existed. In 50 years, they'll be begging you to accept a surplus neural implant of La La Land with every dose of zombie spray. The Social Network is "important" and a good character study, but is it a good movie? Is there actual tension? Zero Dark Thirty and Her are surpassingly excellent films, but if I wanted to choose a surpassingly excellent film that was illustrative of our era, I'd choose The Lobster.

But that's not what our era will be remembered for.

We live in the Era of Stupid, and I have a hard time imagining our culture getting surpassingly smarter in some speculative evaluating future. We'll probably be way dumber. So without doubt, our descendants will turn their lonely eyes to the 2010s and remember fondly the innocent days when something as deep and heartfelt as The F8 Of The Furious roamed the planet.

Rich L.: I don't know why you're so down on what you call "soft-focus" NFL features. OK, so we're never gonna really know who these athletes are. Big deal. I like feeling a connection to athletes, even if it's inherently one-sided. Does that make me a sucker or something?

Yes.

When you're a child, looking up to Steph Curry or Tom Brady is fine. Your brains are mush. You're trying to become a person. You're dumb. Part of the responsibility of growing up and becoming a functioning member of society is shrugging off childish things. It would be lovely to be able to understand and believe in very wealthy people we don't know, and I know my continued insistence that we don't and can't and shouldn't try makes me sound like a cynic.

But goddammit, times are too fucking serious to play this game anymore. It makes us sleepy. We start assuming these players and managers and owners (and celebrities and politicians and football columnists) are good people with decent things in their hearts, and soon they're bilking us for stadium money and covering up institutional rape cultures and inspiring the mental gymnastics that allow us to attack victims so as not to question our fandoms.

I love sports, but our fandoms should be questioned. Is every wealthy athlete a terrible person? Of course not, but you don't know who is and isn't, and any personal connection you feel for their lifestyles or their romantic entanglements or their Guitar-Hero-playing pre-draft antics is akin to that scam where you "buy a star" in the night sky. You're free to do as you choose, admire whom you like, toss your money into a trashcan and light it on fire, but in the end you're projecting a lot of emotional energy billions of light years out into the universe, and it ain't coming back your way.

OK but we like Marcus Mariota. Photo by Jay Biggerstaff-USA TODAY Sports

Nick B.: What's Marcus Mariota's ceiling this year and in the future?

I really like Mariota's tape. He and Winston will forever be linked by the '15 draft, but so far they're not particularly alike as players. I call Winston the Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man, because he's improvisational almost to a fault, which leads to unexpected brilliance but also bouts of head-clutching madness. I like Winston as a player, but someday soon I may love Mariota.

He's got touch, he's got plenty of wing, he squeezed passes into some ludicrous windows, and most importantly he's under control. Of course, he did this last year in the context of a powerful rush offense and without the same workload Winston bore in Tampa (Winston averaged 5.5 passes per game more than Mariota, and led the league in air yards per attempt). We'll see if the addition of rookie receivers Corey Davis and Taywan Taylor opens up the Titans offense. I'm hopeful.

John C.: Should I move out of the USA?

I assume you're talking about Mango Mussolini's continued assault on the most vulnerable members of our society, but my answer is: probably not. Or not yet. I know every day the U.S. starts to feel a little more like Gilead, but every place has its problems, right? White nationalism isn't just an "us" problem. I say stay and be decent to everybody you meet; serve as an example, as thankless as that often feels. And anyway, where are you going to go? Canada? It's fucking cold there and they eat moose heart.

Sean M.: Does pineapple belong on pizza?

More than moose heart does.

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His first date with his future wife was spent in a New Hampshire motel room drinking Wild Turkey into the wee hours with Hunter S. Thompson. He stood several feet away from Martin Luther King Jr. during the “I Have a Dream” speech. He went to China with Richard M. Nixon and walked away from Watergate unscathed. He survived Iran-Contra, too, and sat alongside Ronald Reagan at the Reykjavík Summit. He invaded America’s living rooms and pioneered the rhetorical combat that would power the cable news age. He defied the establishment by challenging a sitting president of his own party. He captured the fear and frustration of the right by proclaiming a great “culture war” was at hand. And his third-party candidacy in 2000 almost certainly handed George W. Bush the presidency, thanks to thousands of Palm Beach, Florida, residents mistakenly voting for him on the “butterfly ballot” when they meant to back Al Gore.

If not for his outsize ambition, Pat Buchanan might be the closest thing the American right has to a real-life Forrest Gump, that patriot from ordinary stock whose life journey positioned him to witness, influence and narrate the pivotal moments that shaped our modern world and changed the course of this country’s history. He has known myriad roles—neighborhood brawler, college expellee, journalist, White House adviser, political commentator, presidential candidate three times over, author, provocateur—and his existence traces the arc of what feels to some Americans like a nation’s ascent and decline. He was 3 years old when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and 6 when Harry Truman dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now 78, with thick, black glasses and a thinning face, Buchanan looks back with nostalgia at a life and career that, for all its significance, was at risk of being forgotten—until Donald Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States.

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A quarter-century before Trump descended into the atrium of his Manhattan skyscraper to launch his unlikely bid for the White House, Buchanan, until then a columnist, political operative and TV commentator, stepped onto a stage in Concord, New Hampshire, to declare his own candidacy 10 weeks ahead of the state’s presidential primary. Associating the “globalist” President George H. W. Bush with “bureaucrats in Brussels” pursuing a “European superstate” that trampled on national identity, Buchanan warned his rowdy audience, “We must not trade in our sovereignty for a cushioned seat at the head table of anybody’s new world order!” His radically different prescription, which would underpin three consecutive runs for the presidency: a “new nationalism” that would focus on “forgotten Americans” left behind by bad trade deals, open-border immigration policies and foreign adventurism. His voice booming, Buchanan demanded: “Should the United States be required to carry indefinitely the full burden of defending rich and prosperous allies who take America’s generosity for granted as they invade our markets?”

This rhetoric—deployed again during his losing bid for the 1996 GOP nomination, and once more when he ran on the Reform Party ticket in 2000—not only provided a template for Trump’s campaign, but laid the foundation for its eventual success. Dismissed as a fringe character for rejecting Republican orthodoxy on trade and immigration and interventionism, Buchanan effectively weakened the party’s defenses, allowing a more forceful messenger with better timing to finish the insurrection he started back in 1991. All the ideas that seemed original to Trump’s campaign could, in fact, be attributed to Buchanan—from depicting the political class as bumbling stooges to singling out a rising superpower as an economic menace (though back then it was Japan, not China) to rallying the citizenry to “take back” a country whose destiny they no longer dictated. “Pitchfork Pat,” as he was nicknamed, even deployed a phrase that combined Trump’s two signature slogans: “Make America First Again.”

At 78, Buchanan is as mentally agile as he was during his heyday. Each morning at his home in McLean, Virginia, he reads and annotates the print editions of five newspapers. | André Chung for Politico

“Pat was the pioneer of the vision that Trump ran on and won on,” says Greg Mueller, who served as Buchanan’s communications director on the 1992 and 1996 campaigns and remains a close friend. Michael Kinsley, the liberal former New Republic editor who co-hosted CNN’s “Crossfire” with Buchanan, likewise credits his old sparring partner with laying the intellectual groundwork for Trumpism: “It’s unclear where this Trump thing goes, but Pat deserves some of the credit.” He pauses. “Or some of the blame.”

Buchanan, for his part, feels both validated and vindicated. Long ago resigned to the reality that his policy views made him a pariah in the Republican Party—and stained him irrevocably with the ensuing accusations of racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia—he has lived to see the GOP come around to Buchananism and the country send its direct descendant to the White House.

“I was elated, delighted that Trump picked up on the exact issues on which I challenged Bush,” he tells me. “And then he goes and uses my slogan? It just doesn’t get any better than this.” Buchanan, who has published such books as The Death of the West, State of Emergency, Day of Reckoning and Suicide of a Superpower, admits that November’s election result “gave me hope” for the first time in recent memory.

But none of this means he’s suddenly bullish about America’s future. Buchanan says he has “always been a pessimist,” and despite Trump’s conquest, two things continue to color his dark forecast for the nation. First, Buchanan harbors deep concerns over whether Trump, with his off-topic tweeting and pointless fight-picking, has the requisite focus and discipline to execute his nationalist agenda—especially over the opposition of a media-establishment complex bent on his destruction. Second, even if Trump delivers on the loftiest of his promises, Buchanan fears it will be too little, too late. Sweeping change was needed 25 years ago, he says, before thousands of factories vanished due to the North American Free Trade Agreement, before millions of illegal immigrants entered the country, before trillions of dollars were squandered on regime change and nation-building.

He has lived to see the GOP come around to Buchananism and the country send its direct descendant to the White House.

He’s not unlike the countless Trump voters I met across the country in 2016, many of them older folks yearning for a return to the country of their youth, a place they remember as safer, whiter, more wholesome, more Christian, more confident and less polarized. The difference is that Buchanan refuses to indulge in the illusion that a return to this utopia of yesteryear is even possible. Economically and demographically and culturally, he believes, the damage is done.

“We rolled the dice with the future of this country,” he tells me. “And I think it’s going to come up snake eyes.”

***

The living room of Buchanan’s home in McLean, Virginia, a wealthy suburb of Washington, could be mistaken for a museum. Between this wood-paneled space and his red-carpeted basement there must be 3,000 books on the shelves, meticulously categorized by genre, author or time period, a classical backdrop to Buchanan’s extensive collection of historical guns (including a rare replica of Robert E. Lee’s revolver) and a lifetime’s accumulation of family photographs, newspaper clippings, campaign keepsakes and miscellaneous relics.

His house is a monument to failed uprisings against the political establishment. Above the mantel rests a spectacular painting of Buchanan gazing out a bus window during a ride through scenic Iowa. Across the room, encased in wood and glass and standing some 4 feet tall, is the gilded pitchfork he received from “the Buchanan Brigades,” a group of campaign supporters, symbolic of his populist insurgency (and, unintentionally, of his paradoxical existence as a Georgetown-educated tormentor of the Washington elite). Resting on the coffee table is the most delicate souvenir of all, a piece of pristine stained glass gifted to him by a New Hampshire voter. The size of a nightstand surface, its craftsmanship is immaculate, with a dove’s red-and-white tail weaving through blue scrawl in memory of the year, 1992, and the motto of his presidential campaign: “America First.”

It all feels like ancient history, and Buchanan himself these days looks, well, rather ancient; the wrinkles run deep across his brow, and untamed wisps of gray hair shoot divergently from the back of his head. This aging exterior should not fool anyone. He is as mentally agile and rhetorically sharp as he was during his heyday on CNN and PBS, before the star commentator turned into a presidential candidate. As we talk for hours, Buchanan recalls those three campaigns—and the rest of his half-century in public life, not to mention his childhood, adolescence and early career—with a vivid clarity and a command of detail.

Buchanan has had plenty of titles over the years, from spokesman to candidate, but his favorite is historian. He cherishes history not just for its drama but for the lessons bequeathed and the parallels he can extract: the seductive appeal of populism, the rising tide of nationalism, the similarities between the current president and the two he worked closely alongside. Above all, Buchanan loves history because, in his mind, it contains our civilizational apex; he treasures the past because he is convinced that his beloved country, these United States, will never again approach the particular kind of glory it held for a middle-class family in the postwar years.

Such assured pessimism is somewhat surprising, given that Buchanan’s boldest achievement—and perhaps the most lasting aspect of his legacy—was being Trump before Trump was Trump.

“The ideas made it,” Buchanan tells me, letting out a belly laugh. “But I didn’t.”

Buchanan at his home, holding a replica of Robert E. Lee’s revolver. | André Chung for Politico

There is some sad irony in the fact that Buchanan, whose vision is finally penetrating and driving the uppermost echelons of government, has seen his public profile diminished to an all-time low. This is somewhat intentional: Since being fired from MSNBC in 2012, he has hunkered down, content to make occasional Fox News appearances, write two columns a week for Creators Syndicate and spend more time at home with his wife, Shelley, binge-watching television shows such as “24” and “Homeland.” (“I dated a girl who reminded me of Claire Danes,” Buchanan grins. “She was crazy as a hoot owl.”) The couple doesn’t get out too often. They attend 9 a.m. Sunday Mass at Saint Mary Mother of God Church near Capitol Hill, then shop at their local Safeway and settle in for the coming week. They have an occasional dinner out at J. Gilbert’s steakhouse in McLean but mostly have simple meals at home; when it’s not Lent, Buchanan has two glasses of Grgich Hills Chardonnay each night. The slower pace suits a man who has battled heart problems and had several hospital stays in recent years.

His intellectual metabolism, however, remains turbocharged. After he walks a half-mile each morning around his neighborhood, Buchanan and his wife—Nixon’s former secretary, whom he calls “junior” and “kiddo” despite the fact that she is slightly older than he is—brew eight cups of coffee in a pot that is often finished by noon. In those intervening hours, Buchanan reads and annotates copious amounts of news; he begins with Drudge Report and AntiWar.com—two aggregators of reporting and opinion, one from the right and one from the libertarian-leaning left—before weaving his way, red markup pen at the ready, through the print editions of his five preferred newspapers: the New York Times, Washington Post, Washington Times, Wall Street Journal and Financial Times. (He used to read USA Today, too, but recently canceled the subscription.) This daily intake informs Buchanan’s well-considered stances on every current event we discuss during our conversation and provides fodder for his columns, which, however distasteful they may be to many on the left (and some on the right), cannot possibly be mistaken for material poorly researched.

Buchanan loves to write; he spends more time on his columns today than ever before, he says, about five hours on each one. The rest of his time, in recent years, has been consumed by books. He offered an ode to his former boss Richard Nixon in 2014 with The Greatest Comeback, an unappreciated tale of Tricky Dick’s political resurrection, and this May will release his 13th book, Nixon’s White House Wars, which is something of a sequel, offering a thorough and mouthwatering insider’s account of one of history’s most bellicose presidencies. “The first one had a happy ending,” Buchanan says. He shrugs his shoulders. “The second one, not so much.”

The path Buchanan took to becoming one of Nixon’s key loyalists was unusual, to say the least. Raised in a middle-class Roman Catholic family of nine children in Washington—back when the District of Columbia was “a sleepy and segregated Southern city,” he once wrote—Buchanan excelled in his parochial-school education and, despite an appetite for troublemaking and partying while he was a student at Gonzaga High School, he earned a scholarship to attend Georgetown University a few miles away. When Buchanan was expelled from Georgetown in his senior year for hospitalizing two D.C. cops during a traffic altercation that degenerated into fisticuffs, he and his father successfully petitioned the university to reduce his expulsion to a one-year withdrawal. Buchanan went to work in his father’s accounting firm during the suspension, began rethinking his life ambitions and, upon returning to finish college, decided to pursue a career as a columnist. (He had developed an interest in journalism as an 11-year-old boy, when he wound up in a full-body cast thanks to a football injury and spent four months doing nothing but reading newspaper and magazine coverage of the Korean War.) After Georgetown, Buchanan won acceptance to Columbia University’s journalism school, where he was surrounded by brilliant liberals who would go on to populate the nation’s most prominent newsrooms—an experience that shaped Buchanan’s distrust of the media’s objectivity. Upon earning his master’s, he sent out 17 job applications and fielded offers from three other newspapers—the New York Daily News, Charlotte Observer and Albuquerque Journal—before packing his bags for the Globe-Democrat, a conservative newspaper in St. Louis.

His break arrived quickly. After five weeks of reporting for the business section, an editorial writer position opened, and Buchanan never looked back. Three-and-a-half years later, in 1965, when Nixon came to town for a local party function, Buchanan cornered him in a kitchen and offered his services ahead of Nixon’s imminent 1968 campaign. “The Old Man,” as Buchanan still calls Nixon—“He was like a father to me at times”—hired him, and they became conjoined: Buchanan was a speechwriter, political adviser and special assistant in the White House. He gave famously defiant testimony in front of the Senate Watergate Committee and remained loyal to Nixon until the end, yet somehow emerged with his reputation enhanced even as, in his own recollection, “All those friends of mine went to the penitentiary.”

Clockwise, from left: Buchanan’s “America First” campaign slogan in stained glass; his famed pitchfork; a “What Would Nixon Do?” mug nodding to Buchanan’s former boss. | André Chung for Politico

For all the comparisons of Trump to his own campaigns, Buchanan argues the more relevant parallels are between the 45th and 37th presidents. “They both confronted bureaucracy and a hostile media that hated Nixon and hates Trump,” he says. “The ‘deep state’ wants to break Trump’s presidency, just like it tried to break Nixon’s.” One difference between the two men is restraint: Whereas Trump appears consumed by “irrelevant things and peripheral attacks,” Buchanan says, “Nixon told me, ‘Don’t ever shoot down. Always shoot up.’” He lets out a sigh. “I feel for the guys that are in there,” Buchanan says of Trump’s team. “The problem is the president is distracted—and his adversaries know it. If I were them, I’d keep egging him on.”

Certainly, though, Nixon—and nearly every other former president—benefited from the absence of social media and the insatiable, 24-hour news cycle. Buchanan remembers his old boss occasionally calling him late at night, raving about some perceived slight and asking him to write and distribute something in response. By the next morning, Nixon had cooled off. “You didn’t do that, did you?” the president would ask him. (Buchanan recalls a former colleague once joking, “Watergate happened when some damn fool came out of the Oval Office and did exactly what Nixon told him to do.”)

Buchanan says Trump has “tremendous potential,” but adds, “This is my great apprehension, that the larger issues—the taxes, the Obamacare thing, the border security agenda, the trade agenda—could be imperiled by unnecessary fights.” He thinks for a moment. “It’s not a bad instinct to be a fighter. But sometimes you have to hold back.”

When it comes to Trump’s fight with the news media, however, Buchanan wants the president to keep swinging. Not only is it justified, he says, based on recent coverage, but Buchanan—a journalist by training—believes undermining the media’s legitimacy is essential to winning popular support for the president’s agenda. Here again, he speaks from firsthand experience in yet another American political war, the Nixon administration’s assault on the Fourth Estate. After the president’s November 1969 speech responding to nationwide protests against the Vietnam War was panned by all three major television networks, Nixon asked Buchanan to craft a memo detailing the president’s successes in his first year; instead, the young speechwriter advised the White House to wage “an all-out attack on the media.” Nixon liked the idea, but he didn’t want to be the messenger. Buchanan drafted the speech, and 10 days after Nixon’s nationally televised address, Vice President Spiro Agnew, an imposing figure who was then one of the most popular Republicans in America, delivered his now famous speech in Des Moines slamming “a small and unelected elite” who possess a “profound influence over public opinion” without any checks on their “vast power.”

It’s not a bad instinct to be a fighter,” Buchanan says of Trump. “But sometimes you have to hold back.”

Conservatives loved it, especially on the heels of Nixon calling them “the great silent majority,” a phrase Buchanan had coined. The entire sequence remains one of Buchanan’s career highlights—“it was a sensation,” he says of Agnew’s speech—and he says it holds important lessons for Trump. For starters, the president needs a strong and reliable surrogate. “Nixon would give Agnew all the lines he wanted to say, but couldn’t say because he was the president. Trump needs somebody like that—he’s doing it all by himself,” Buchanan says. He smirks. “Is Mike Pence going to do that?”

Moreover, Buchanan argues, calling out media bias has consistently worked in the 48 years since Agnew’s speech—and still does. “What we did was call into question their motives and their veracity. We said they are vessels flying flags of neutrality while carrying contraband,” Buchanan tells me. “And that’s a message that is still well received today, because people know it’s true.”

***

The architect of Nixon’s “all-out attack on the media” never strayed far from the media himself. He went on to became one of the best-known television personalities of the modern political era, a celebrity pundit who parlayed his popularity and visibility into a presidential bid two-and-a-half decades before Trump did the same.

After a brief stint as a holdover in President Gerald R. Ford’s administration, Buchanan returned to writing, pouring himself into a syndicated column that quickly became an acerbic must-read on the right. Radio opportunities weren’t far behind, and after five years of co-hosting a D.C.-based program alongside liberal journalist Tom Braden, the two took their act to CNN for an experiment called “Crossfire.” It was a hit, and so was “The McLaughlin Group,” an argumentative public affairs panel show that also began airing in 1982. Buchanan, suddenly the star conservative on two of political television’s premier programs, had emerged as one of the most influential media voices in the country. There was a vacuum of compelling content in those early days of always-on news—and Buchanan eagerly filled it with forceful opinions that were encouraged by producers who discouraged compromise and common ground. It’s the one element of his legacy to which he attaches some regret, repeatedly citing the poisonous tone of cable news discourse as a culprit in our societal and cultural disunion.

A decade after Buchanan left, the White House again came calling. This time, Ronald Reagan wanted him to serve as communications director. Buchanan had no choice but to accept—“the Gipper himself!” he recalls of receiving the offer—and spent two years, starting in the winter of 1985, steering the 40th president’s press operation. Buchanan sees fewer parallels between Reagan and Trump, though he offers two cautionary notes from his experience in that administration. First, he says, Trump must be “conscious of the coalition that brought him here” the way Reagan was responsive to the concerns of working-class cultural conservatives; Buchanan is particularly concerned that Trump, in addition to not following through on border security and protectionism, could hurt his own older and blue-collar voters with any type of dramatic health care overhaul. Second, Buchanan, in a nod to Trump’s testy public demeanor, remembers that Reagan’s famously sunny disposition wasn’t always on display—he just made it seem that way. “I saw Reagan explode a number of times in private. He was an Irishman, and you could see that temper go off,” Buchanan tells me. “But he never let the anger show in public.”

Clockwise, from top: Buchanan’s replica of Robert E. Lee’s revolver; a mug labeled with the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, where Buchanan took his first journalism job; the glasses he now wears. | André Chung for Politico

Eleanor Clift, the liberal longtime Newsweek journalist, first met Buchanan while covering the Reagan White House. “Everybody knew where he was ideologically,” Clift recalls, “and he was far to the right of President Reagan, and you could get him to tell stories about Reagan making fun of him and tasking him with selling things to conservatives.” She says Buchanan wasn’t much of a source for mainstream reporters because most of his energy was spent wooing the right. It was several years later, when the two began sharing the set on “The McLaughlin Group,” that Clift realized Buchanan’s gift for framing a political argument. “When he puts his analyst hat on, there’s nobody better,” she says. (Clift and Buchanan are in talks with television executives to bring “The McLaughlin Group” back on air, they tell me, but decline to elaborate.)

Buchanan was such a lucid communicator, in fact, that some conservatives wanted him to run for president. Having remarked shortly before leaving the White House in 1987 that “the greatest vacuum in American politics is to the right of Ronald Reagan,” Buchanan re-entered the media realm—resuming his roles on “Crossfire” and “The McLaughlin Group”—only to face mounting pressure from the right to enter the race for the Republican nomination in 1988. He ultimately declined, but published a page-turning autobiography in that presidential year, Right From the Beginning, that seemed a preliminary step toward a potential run for something, someday. The book is fascinating for its glimpse at Buchanan’s idyllic America, the earnest age of sprawling middle-class families and booming church attendance and fistfights at the local hangout after one six-pack too many. What it barely mentions, in making the case for a return to this safer and gentler society, are the dangers of trade and immigration—two issues that would animate Buchanan’s campaign against George H.W. Bush four years later.

“Between the years on ‘Crossfire’ and the years he ran for president, he was conservative but became very protectionist and nationalist, and that was of course a surprise,” Kinsley tells me. “The Republican Party stood for free markets completely and the Democratic Party stood for protectionism, and the idea that Pat Buchanan, who had worked in the Nixon and Reagan White Houses, would become an ardent protectionist was shocking.”

When I ask about the transformation, Buchanan tells me the story of his uncle, a Republican activist who hailed from industrial Pennsylvania, confronting him at the 1976 GOP convention. “Free trade is killing us, Pat,” he told him. Buchanan says the incident “planted a seed in my mind,” but that a decade later he was still an avowed free-trader working in the Reagan White House. It was the winding down of the Cold War in the twilight of Reagan’s presidency that Buchanan says refocused his attention away from international dilemmas and toward those at home. Free trade had never seemed problematic; nor had Reagan’s 1986 amnesty that legalized some 3 million undocumented immigrants. The more he studied domestic policy problems, though, the more convinced Buchanan became that the country needed a drastic course correction. “We had carried the load for the West all throughout the Cold War. All of these allies had been essentially freeloading off the United States,” he recalls thinking. “And I said, ‘If the Russians are going home, it’s time for us to come home and look out for our own country first.’”

His only regret is that he didn’t take up the fight sooner, when he could have had a greater impact, and maybe could have headed off some of the decline he sees when he gazes across the modern American landscape. “Look at Detroit in 1945 and Hiroshima in 1945. And look at the two of them today,” Buchanan says. “Something went wrong.”

***

By 1992, the evolution was complete—“I was a full-fledged economic nationalist,” Buchanan says—and his crusade against the embodiment of globalism, President George H. W. Bush, became a surprise 10-week proxy war for the future of the Republican Party. Buchanan’s allies held out hope he could pull a historic upset in New Hampshire that would throw the entire nominating process into turmoil. But they knew it was terribly unlikely, and were thrilled when Buchanan captured 37 percent of the vote, even though it was still a double-digit defeat. He wound up winning nearly 3 million votes nationwide against Bush, and though he carried no states, was invited to speak at the party convention. When he delivered his fire-breathing “culture war” speech, urging Republicans to “take back” the country from the alien forces of militant secularism and liberal multiculturalism, Democrats said it was proof of a GOP tacking hard and fast to the right. That was the whole idea: Buchanan, unlike Trump 25 years later, was a committed social conservative who saw crusades against gay rights and abortion as part of the campaign to restore his ideal America. But they also limited his appeal, and some in the party establishment hold a grudge to this day, convinced Buchanan scared off independents and jump-started the Clinton dynasty. Buchanan dismisses this notion, but long ago made peace with the fact that he would need to damage Bush in order to shape the future of Republicanism. “He wasn’t going to remove the sitting president from winning the party’s nomination,” says Terry Jeffrey, Buchanan’s research and policy director that year. “But the question was: Which direction is the party going to go?”

It was an open question in 1996, when Buchanan mounted a second and more viable campaign, this time against establishment favorite Bob Dole, as well as Southern son Phil Gramm and publisher Steve Forbes, among others. Doubling down on the nationalist rhetoric—which, unlike Trump, Buchanan continued to combine with heaping doses of social conservatism—he carved out his role at the far right of the field. Things looked good when he won a nonbinding contest in Alaska and even better when he upset Gramm in the first official contest in Louisiana. Dole edged him by 3 percentage points in the much-anticipated Iowa caucuses, but eight days later, Buchanan’s political career climaxed with a 1-point win in the New Hampshire primary. “We’re going to recapture the lost sovereignty of our country,” Buchanan cried in a victory speech, “and we’re going to bring it home!”

It was the closest he would ever come to the presidency. Buchanan won just one of the remaining contests as Dole coasted to the nomination. Four years later, Buchanan broke from the GOP after years of tension with its establishment wing and sought the Reform Party nomination. He won it, over the objections of some activists, but bombed in November, winning fewer than 500,000 votes nationwide. (Ralph Nader’s Green Party tallied roughly 2.5 million votes more.) Buchanan, however, once again put his imprint on history: He won 3,407 votes in Palm Beach County, Florida—a liberal, heavily Jewish community—thanks to the “butterfly ballot” famously confusing many voters. George W. Bush won Florida by 537 votes, and Buchanan makes no bones about what happened. “The Lord intervened,” he says, grinning. “We sunk Al Gore and won the election for Bush.”

Less memorably, the 2000 campaign also brought Buchanan into contact for the first time with Trump. The New York real estate tycoon and tabloid favorite was also mulling a run for the Reform Party’s nomination at the urging of Jesse Ventura, the former professional wrestler who had won Minnesota’s governorship on the third-party ticket in 1998. Trump never followed through, but true to the form he would display 16 years later, the future president took pleasure in brutalizing his potential competition. Trump devoted portions of a book to highlighting Buchanan’s alleged “intolerance” toward black and gay people, accused him of being “in love with Adolf Hitler” and denounced Buchanan while visiting a Holocaust museum, telling reporters, “We must recognize bigotry and prejudice and defeat it wherever it appears.”

The irony today is unmistakable. “What Trump said about Pat at the time is precisely what Trump’s opponents are saying about him now,” says Justin Raimondo, editorial director of AntiWar.com, who gave a nominating speech for Buchanan at the Reform Party convention.

His only regret is that he didn’t take up the fight sooner, when he could have had a greater impact.

Trump’s attacks stemmed from Buchanan’s suggestion in a book that year that World War II had been avoidable and that Hitler did not want conflict with the United States or its Western allies. Buchanan, who loathes international aggression—he vigorously opposed George W. Bush’s war in Iraq, further distancing himself from the GOP—has written and repeated similar sentiments about World War II over several decades, which, on top of his criticisms of Israeli influence over U.S. foreign policy, have led to charges of anti-Semitism. (Most damaging was William F. Buckley writing in National Review, shortly before Buchanan joined the 1992 race, that he could not defend his fellow conservative against such accusations. That said, some Jews in the media who are critical of Buchanan’s politics, including Kinsley, have defended him on this front.)

Buchanan has faced his share of critiques, but no one has hit him harder than Trump. In retrospect, it’s astounding that the man who used Buchanan’s playbook to win the White House had previously bashed him in the most ruthlessly ad hominem terms imaginable—yet Buchanan used his columns to cheerlead Trump’s 2016 candidacy from Day One. The explanation for this became clear once I accepted that Trump had done something entirely out of character: According to multiple sources, Trump called Buchanan out of the blue some five years ago, when the former candidate was a regular guest on “Morning Joe,” and apologized for all of the hurtful things he had said. “He made amends,” Bay Buchanan, Pat’s sister and former campaign manager, says of Trump. “Long before he got into the presidential [race], he reached out to Pat and apologized for what he’d done, realizing it had been wrong. … My brother is a very forgiving guy, and if someone asks for forgiveness, he’s going to deliver it.”

Buchanan himself refuses to comment on private conversations with Trump but does tell me the president would call occasionally during the 2016 primary to thank him for kind words during a TV appearance or make small talk about the campaign. Buchanan also says Trump mailed three “Make America Great Again” hats to his home—two of which he gifted to childhood friends, while keeping the other one for his extensive collection of presidential memorabilia.

“Did you ever offer him any advice?” I ask.

Buchanan begins to shake his head no, then stops himself. “I gave him some advice once,” he says, a smile spreading across his face. “I think he took it.”

***

Controversy has been a constant in Buchanan’s life, and will surely be part of his legacy. Buchanan, his friends say, suspected that powerful people at MSNBC were looking for a reason to fire him from the day he started there in 2002, reuniting with liberal commentator and former “Crossfire” co-host Bill Press for a similarly formatted program, “Buchanan & Press.” Ultimately Buchanan lasted a full decade at the left-wing cable news outlet before he published the book that would, finally, end his national broadcast career. In early 2012, months after Buchanan published Suicide of a Superpower, MSNBC fired him over provocative passages in the book relating to demographic change in America. Officials at 30 Rock were exceptionally disgusted with one chapter, “The End of White America,” in which Buchanan warned of the dire consequences brought on by what he had often called the “mass invasion” of immigrants from poor countries.

“Can Western civilization survive the passing of the European peoples whose ancestors created it and their replacement by Third World immigrants?” Buchanan wrote in his column the day of the book’s release, pre-emptively defending what he knew would be a polarizing thesis. “Probably not, for the new arrivals seem uninterested in preserving the old culture they have found.”

Of course, Buchanan’s views were well known by that point; he had presented identical arguments in several previous books, which explains why some of his highest-profile colleagues were furious with MSNBC’s decision. “Morning Joe” co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski issued a statement saying that they “strongly disagree” with Buchanan’s firing, and that his statements “should have been debated in public.” Chris Matthews dedicated a segment of “Hardball” to Buchanan in the wake of his dismissal, saying, “I miss him already,” and adding: “To Pat, the world can never be better than the one he grew up in as a young boy. … No country will ever be better than the United States of America of the early 1950s.”

“The America we knew and grew up with, it’s gone. And it’s not coming back,” Buchanan remarks, though his friends say that deep down he wants to be wrong about these predictions. | André Chung for Politico

Buchanan will go to his grave believing exactly that. He swears he has no personal animus toward people who don’t look like him; in fact, he says, the immigrant groups he interacts with in northern Virginia are “always smiling” and seem like wonderful members of the community. “Obviously they love America,” Buchanan tells me. “The question is, what is it that holds us together? The neocons say we’re an ideological people bound together by what Lincoln said at Gettysburg and what Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, and that’s what makes us one nation. But my tradition of conservatism says it’s not; it’s the idea of culture and faith and belief and history and heroes and holidays.”

He takes a long pause. “Can you have a nation that consists of all the people in the world—and be one people?”

Buchanan has spent decades researching and thinking and writing about the threat he believes recent immigrants pose to America’s identity, and he comes to the subject armed with reams of statistics and arguments grounded in his reading of history. There are three main problems with the latest immigration trends, he says. First, whereas the Europeans were “never going back” and therefore put down permanent roots, millions of recent immigrants in the United States hail from Mexico and Central America and have easy access to their original home. Second, the vast numbers of new arrivals are stifling opportunity and mobility for the waves of immigrants who came before. And third, that stifling of opportunity and mobility causes prolonged concentration in closed-off communities, which robs those immigrants, Buchanan argues, of the chance to work their way out of ghettos and assimilate into American culture.

“This is why we argued in 1990 for a moratorium on immigration—those folks coming in poor could have been like the ethnic Irish and Italians and German,” Buchanan says. Instead, “they keep coming, and now you’ve got 60 million Hispanics living here, many of them in enclaves that can sustain themselves culturally and economically and socially. And it’s like they’re at home. A little piece of Mexico has been moved over here. … You look at the 24 counties from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas: Are they part of the United States or part of Mexico?”

A minute later, Buchanan adds, “You think you can go to Tucson, to what they call ‘Little Mexico,’ and ask them what the Constitution says? You think they know what the Constitution says?”

Can you have a nation that consists of all the people in the world,” Buchanan asks, “and be one people?”

It’s this type of talk that has earned Buchanan the ugliest of labels—racist, bigot, xenophobe. He says it used to bother him but doesn’t anymore. “Everybody’s a racist. The curse words of the left [are] losing their toxicity from overuse,” Buchanan says. “Those accusations used to be cause for a fight. Now they’re just tossed out.” What’s interesting is that his many friends on the left have grown similarly numb to the hullabaloo. At this point, they are resigned to rejecting Buchanan’s views while remaining convinced of his inherent respectability as a person.

“I’ve learned to live with the fact that Pat has some very abhorrent views, which I strongly, strongly object to, while at the same time I know him to be a very good, very solid, decent man, who is loyal to his friends and loves his country,” Press, his former MSNBC co-host, tells me. “I know that may be an impossible distinction, but I really don’t think Pat has a racist bone in his body. I think he just gets carried away with his view about threats to Western civilization.”

Kinsley recalls his old colleague renting a vacation home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore that had an extra bedroom, where Buchanan could store boxes of books he would read while there. “Pat might be a nut, but he’s not a con man. Trump is both a nut and a con man,” Kinsley tells me. “You have to give Pat a certain amount of credit for intellect. He really thought through policy problems, and that’s where he’s not like Trump at all.”

Trump or no Trump, Buchanan has only become more alarmed about America’s political trajectory. The Republican Party is “running out of white folks,” he says, and historically immigrant groups have voted overwhelmingly Democratic. “If you bring in 100 million people and they vote 60 percent Democratic and 40 percent Republican, you’re buried,” Buchanan tells me. “What I’m saying is the America we knew and grew up with, it’s gone. And it’s not coming back. Demographically, culturally, socially, in every way, it’s a different country. And I think it’s come to resemble more of an empire than a nation and a people.”

Buchanan’s friends say that deep down he wants to be wrong about these predictions. And he admits that sometimes his pessimism gets the better of him: He never believed Trump would win in November. On Election Day, in fact, he bumped into Virginia Congresswoman Barbara Comstock’s mother at the polling station and suggested that her daughter would soon be running for higher office—to replace Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential nominee, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine. Instead, he found himself up at 3 in the morning celebrating, basking in congratulatory emails, and convincing himself that maybe, just maybe, America isn’t doomed yet.

“But this,” Buchanan tells me, “is the last chance for these ideas.”

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Tim Alberta is national political reporter atPolitico Magazine.

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