#/There’s this one time where this guy hired someone to change the votes in order to win- wait a second…/ TOADSTOOL ANHJDFMB | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lalainajanes · 3 years

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For klarosummerbingo, my “mango lassi” square! Did I order Indian food for dinner? Yes, yes I did.

Masks Off

When she notices the goon tailing her – shaved head, seasonally inappropriate leather jacket, neck tattoos – Caroline’s pissed off.

And exhausted.

She’d spent all day cooped up in the boardroom at Forbes Industries, listening to men twice her age complain about dividends and try to suggest that workers didn’t really need a raise subtly.

It had been a tedious and pointless exercise, one she suffers quarterly. Caroline holds 51% of the company’s shares and can easily wrangle another block of shareholders into voting with her. Her parent’s wills, read out fourteen years ago, had bequeathed a stake in FI to several loyal employees. People they’d loved, who’d stepped in to help raise Caroline after they’d passed.

The board knows she has the final say, and it kills them. They think she’s an idiot, that she’d bought her degrees and can’t comprehend the financial statements. They try to ply her with compliments and flattery, attempt unsubtle fibs – Caroline plays dumb and tolerates the bullshit because she knows she can control them. Another board might not be so easy to manipulate.

She’d had a headache by the time the meeting had wrapped, had been so grateful to see Enzo waiting at the curb. She’d practically dived into the backseat of the town car, had rolled the partition down, and enjoyed a satisfying debrief and bitch session on the drive back to her apartment. Enzo had offered to grab her dinner before he went off the clock, but Caroline knew he had a date night planned. She’d shoed him away, told him she’d order in.

Once safely tucked away in her place Caroline had gotten restless.

She’d changed out of her boring suit, pulled out the pins in her hair, and loosely braided it back. After changing into a pale blue cotton dress and pair of oversized sunglasses, then selecting a few Forbes Industries prototypes, Caroline had headed out for sustenance.

She hadn’t bothered to let her security detail know. She’s adept at sneaking away under their noses. The detail is mostly for show, to make sure no one connects Caroline Forbes, wild child heiress, to the vigilante who’s working on tidying up the city streets.

She’ll slip into the leather ensemble she’d commissioned once night falls and load up with weapons. Then she’ll head to the garage where she keeps her armored vehicles and larger toys.

There’s a new villain who’s been popping up more and more frequently on her patrols. She hasn’t caught him doing anything untoward just yet, and he’s yet to make the papers and have a ridiculous name bestowed upon him. She’s scoured papers from England, then the rest of Europe, checking to see if there was a reputation that preceded him. So far, she’s found nothing, but Caroline knows he must be working on something big.

Why else would he be so determined to attract her attention? He must have some kind of plan cooking up, wants her looking in another direction when he enacts it.

The walk to the restaurant had been uneventful. Caroline had to wait a few minutes for her order to be ready, but passing the time on a bench outside, unnoticed, her people-watching undisturbed, had been a nice change from how she’d spent the rest of the day.

It promised to be a hot evening, even though the sun would be setting shortly. Sweat had begun gathering near her hairline, forcing curls out of her braid. Caroline had added a mango lassi to her order and collected her dinner, inhaled appreciatively at the warm, spicy scent emanating from the paper bag.

She’d begun her walk home, sipping her drink contentedly, weaving through the growing number of pedestrians who were venturing out for the evening.

She’d noted the guy shadowing her about three blocks from her building, had heaved a dramatic sigh that had the guy waiting for the walk light with her edging away.

She’d just wanted to stuff herself with naan, biryani, and saag paneer and become one with her couch for a few hours before she went out to take out her frustrations on some bad guys. Was that too much to ask?

Caroline takes a turn, heading east to where there should be fewer people, reaching into her bag to slide her fingers into the modified brass knuckles (not actually brass but a proprietary FI compound) and grasping the extendable baton.

She takes another turn to check that she’s not paranoid, but the goon mirrors it.

As does another person.

Caroline pretends to adjust the strap of her dress, twisting her head to get a better look at her second pursuer. It’s an impressively muscular woman, her considerable height only enhanced by her spiked hair, dressed in skin-tight shorts and a mesh crop top.

She doesn’t seem to mind that Caroline’s spotted her, wiggling her fingers and offering a challenging smile.

There are two possibilities. Either the people following her are cocky and stupid – really the ideal scenario – or they’re cocky because they’ve got a solid plan and some big guns.

When a hand grabs her upper arm and yanks her into an alley, spilling the mango lassi and staining her dress, Caroline suspects it might be the latter. She’s thrown against a wall, just managing to get her hands up to save her face from being smashed into the brick.

She hears footsteps pounding against concrete, and the two pursuers she’s noticed join the man who’d yanked her into the alley. Regretfully, Caroline drops her takeout and her bag and backs away, hiding her weapons in the folds out of the skirt. She forces a quaver into her voice, “What do you want?”

It’s unlikely that three people who seem to have stepped right out of the goon for hire catalog have just decided to rob her. Caroline doesn’t want to assume there’s a larger plot. She’s hoping this won’t turn into a big thing, and she’s out of luck if people are planning to kidnap Caroline Forbes for ransom.

But it’ll be even messier if a bad guy’s clocked her extracurricular activities.

The spiky-haired woman takes the lead, stalking towards Caroline. She’s got a knife in her hand now, “What do I want? Twenty million dollars, to start with.��

Oh good. It’s just a kidnapping.

Honestly, kind of an insulting one. She won’t even have to liquate any assets to come up with the twenty million. Caroline stops moving, straightens her spine. “Done!” she chirps brightly. “Wire transfer, or cheque? I can do cash too, but that’s like ten briefcases. What are you going to do with them after?”

She’s been hoping to catch her attempted kidnapper off guard, but the woman doesn’t falter. She snorts, “You’re funny. I didn’t expect that.”

“Thanks, I get that a lot. I’m chock full of surprises.”

Spike lunges forward, and Caroline dodges, stepping past her and whipping her arm out, until her weapon lengthens fully. She crouches, extending her leg and spinning while slashing with her baton. Caroline lands a brutal strike on Spike’s kidneys. Spikes grunts, stumbles forward, arm banding over her stomach protectively. Caroline completes her spin and rises, catching Spike with a punch before she pauses, poised on the balls of her feet, back to a wall.

Her would-be kidnappers no longer look as confident. Spikes spits blood, expression enraged. The other two watch Caroline with calculative gazes.

“Girls gotta keep in shape, right? The tabloids are brutal. It turns out the elliptical is super boring, so I had to find something a little more fun.” Caroline leaps forward, tucking into a roll, snagging a brick from the ground and using her momentum to throw it into Leather Jacket’s face.

The brick makes contact with a gross crunch of blood, bone, tissue, and teeth. Leather Jacket howls, his hand coming up to cover his head. She jumps again, thighs locking around his neck, spinning to bring him to the ground. She digs her knee into his spine, gripping his head and slamming it into the ground for good measure until he goes limp underneath her.

Caroline stands, wiping her hand on her already ruined dress. “One down,” she says.

Only to instantly regret the proclamation. Bonnie says she needs to lay off on the monologuing, and maybe she’s got a point.

She senses movement behind her, near the mouth of the alley. Caroline turns warily, head swiveling between her two attackers and the men who are now freaking rappelling from the rooftops. Six of them. In black tactical gear, strapped with weapons and wearing black ski masks.

Well, crap.

If she’d been on patrol, with her protective suit and gadgets, she might have been able to take them. Now, in flats and a sundress, with two flimsy weapons and no backup, she doesn’t like her odds.

Caroline tosses the baton aside, pastes on the smile she uses when she has to ignore paparazzi shouting rude questions about her sex life at her. She lifts her hands slowly, palms open. “So, I’m guessing you don’t only want cash, huh?”

“Funny and smart,” Spikes says spitefully, coming up behind Caroline and yanking her hair. “What a rosy life you must lead.”

She feels a sharp sting in the side of her neck, then a flood of wooziness. Brief pain when she collapses.

She’s vaguely aware of being heaved up and over someone’s shoulder, of being alarmed by how her limbs won’t cooperate when she tries to fight back. She’s tossed in a trunk, encased in blackness.

Caroline fights it, the tiredness, her thoughts growing meandering and disorganized. When the engine rumbles to life underneath her, Caroline loses consciousness.

* * * * *

Caroline realizes she’s tied to a chair as soon as awareness returns.

She can hear voices murmuring, too soft for her to make out any words even when she strains. Caroline’s slumped over, pulling against the ropes. She’s definitely going to have some fun bruises tomorrow. Her head’s resting limply against her chest, and she stays as still as she can, barely opening her eyes while trying to get a good look at her surroundings.

Unfortunately, she seems to be in a pretty generic warehouse—grimy, smelly, cavernous, decorated with random overlapping graffiti.

She spots a tray of shiny, sharp medical instruments to her right.

Which is not ideal.

Caroline tests her bonds slowly, checking for any give or weakness. Any kind of opportunity. One of her captors has eagle eyes and notices her movements. She flinches when his voice booms out, “Sleeping beauty awakes!”

Damn it.

Caroline lifts her head, rolling her neck to work out the cramp that’s developed. “I prefer the modern Disney princesses, thank you.” She’s not the type to wait around for a handsome prince to come to her rescue.

She studies the guy who’d spoken. He’s got steel-grey hair and tanned skin, thick biceps. His face doesn’t show even a hint of emotion, and he doesn’t acknowledge she’d spoken. She’d guess he’s a pro, probably some variety of ex-military, likely expensive. Caroline hears the clomp of heavy boots and twists her head to see some familiar faces joining the party.

Moderately damaged familiar faces, but she’s not sorry about that.

“So about that ransom,” Caroline begins hopefully. “Twenty-five million, was it?”

The guy who’d taken a brick to the face grunts, “Thirty now. For our trouble.”

Caroline can admit that’s fair.

“I get it. Plastic surgery’s not cheap. Not that I’ve had any work done, despite what the tabloids might claim. I’m only twenty-seven. Of course my boobs look fantastic in a bikini.”

No one even cracks a smile.

“Okay, so you’re not interested in jokes. We could discuss the fact that it’s super gross that people follow me around the world and stalk me with long-lens cameras. Am I not entitled to take a vacation?”

No response.

Caroline sighs, shifting in her chair in an attempt to get more comfortable. “Tough crowd.”

Spike drags a second chair over, sitting down and resting a booted foot on her opposite knee. “Thirty million dollars. I have a list of six prisoners that I need to be released from the Super Max. And I want something from the Forbes Industries Vault. The subterranean one that most of your employees don’t know about.”

Caroline tips her head back, considering. Thirty million dollars, no big deal. The prisoners might be hard to arrange, but she’s got connections. She knows exactly who she’d need to bribe. She can always scoop them up later, wrap ‘em in a pretty little bow and leave them on the steps of city hall.

The Vault though? That’s not happening. She’s going to have to figure out how they even know about it, who else might have bought the info, but that’s a problem for later.

“How about fifty million dollars and a couple of extra prisoners? Maybe someone from the asylum?”

Spike leans over, her hand drifting over the tray of instruments. She plucks up one with a serrated edge, twirling it through her fingers. “I know you’re used to snapping your fingers and getting everything your little heart desires, but this isn’t a negotiation.”

She leans forward, resting the blade against the dip between Caroline’s collarbones. She taps it against Caroline’s skin with each carefully enunciated word, “Money. Prisoners. Vault.” She pulls back, gives the instrument another spin. “That’s my only offer. You can say yes, and we’ll give you a phone, so you’re servants can start arranging things. Or, we can do this the hard way.”

She doesn’t insult Caroline’s intelligence by spelling out what the hard way would entail.

Caroline swallows, straightens her spine. “No one gets in my vault.”

Spike sighs in faux disappointment, her eyes gleaming with anticipation. “The hard way it is, then.”

Caroline closes her eyes, holds her breath, waits for the first cut to come.

It doesn’t come from where she’d expected.

Glass shatters from high above, showering down, leaving dozens of tiny nicks across her bare shoulders. She feels a rush of air before a body landing in front of her, knees bent.

A familiar man, one who’s been taking up way too much of Caroline’s free time, smirks at her, “Hello, love.”

Caroline gapes at him, and he pivots, backing up until her bent knees brush the back of his calves. She sees few bright flashes, but his back obscures her view of what’s happening. Whatever he’s doing, it’s painfully loud. Popping sounds interrupt shouts and screams of pain, and heavy thuds ring out. Caroline cringes, tucking her ear against her shoulder in an attempt to muffle the cacophony.

Silence, when it comes, scant moments after the chaos began, is jarring. Caroline leans as far to the side as she can, eyes widening when she spots the pile of bodies. She watches as the man, who she doesn’t know if she can call her rescuer since at this point he might also be planning on ransoming her, yanks a handful of zip cuffs from his pocket.

He moves swiftly and with grace, seemingly very at home his body and aware of its capabilities. Caroline’s eyes narrow, mind whirling as he secures her attackers, and she tries to assimilate this new information. He pulls off his leather gloves when he’s done, returning to her side. His expression grows regretful, and his fingertips brush her shoulders, skimming over the cuts and scrapes there. “Sorry about these. The skylight was the best entry point. Make sure you clean them up, hmm?”

He steps passed her, and Caroline feels him make quick work of her handcuffs. She hears the snick of a knife unsheathing and stiffens, but he only uses it on the ropes that bind her legs and torso. Caroline shakes them off, stands hesitantly.

“Okay,” she says, crossing her arms and turning until they’re once more face to face, separated by the metal chair. “What exactly is happening here? Who are you?”

“I’m afraid I’m not yet ready for you to know my identity. In due time, I promise.”

Caroline sucks in a sharp breath, her teeth grinding together. “Um, how about no?”

He blinks, and Caroline steps a little closer. They’ve always met in the dark, and he’d purposely stuck to the shadows as he’d teased and tossed questions at her. She’s never been this close to him. His eyes are blue, his lashes annoyingly long in a way men never appropriately appreciate. He wears a black mask, covering from the top of his forehead to his upper lip. His hair is slicked back, but she thinks it might be on the lighter side, given the shade of his stubble.

He clears his throat and shifts his weight, but he doesn’t step back or shy away. “I… I beg your pardon?”

“I have had a garbage day. It was long, it was boring, I had to argue over things I know I’m right about, with people who think I’m a bimbo and spend way too much time trying to look down my tops. My dinner got tossed aside when goons r us scooped me up. I love this dress, and it’s ruined. I’m bleeding. I don’t know where my shoes are. I’m hungry, I’m tired, and I want to go home!” she’s shouting when she’s done ranting, out of breath.

“Right.” Her rescuer, she’s decided on the term now, shoves the chair aside. He steps forward until his feet bracket hers, wraps his arm around her waist. Caroline grips his biceps, too shocked to admonish this rude invasion of her space. “Hold on. Step up onto my feet.”

She throws her hands up in frustration, “Hello? Did anything I just said sink in?”

His lips, which she’s now noticing are very nice, full and soft looking, compress. She’s pretty sure he’s trying to swallow a laugh. “I heard every word. I’m trying to assist in getting you home. In service of that, if you could please step up onto my feet and hold on.”

His right arm rises, and Caroline recognizes the device in his hand. She’s about to ask him if he’s seriously rescuing her with a device he’d stolen from her but thinks better of it.

He’d stolen the grappling hook from a vigilante who rocks a rose pink leather catsuit, not from Caroline Forbes. It would have been a monster slip, a true testament to how rattled she is from the day’s events that she’d almost blurted out her secret identity to a guy with questionable motives and an unknown name.

Instead, she smiles tightly, loops her arms around his neck, and gingerly steps onto his heavy boots. “For future reference,” she says sweetly, “I generally only like following orders in the bedroom.”

The strangled choking noise he makes as they hurtle upward is immensely satisfying.

* * * * *

Two days later, Caroline’s on her couch watching news footage of a gala she’d been supposed to attend. She’d had a great dress, red and scandalous, all ready to go, but trying to cover her scabby shoulders with makeup had made her look like she’d contracted some kind of infectious skin issue.

She’d sent her regrets and a fat check, resigned herself to a solo evening in her comfy sweats. On her TV, a society reporter’s chattering away about the guest she’d just finished talking to, a lech who’s at least smart enough to hire a publicist good enough to hide his dealings with loan sharks. She trails off in the middle of a sentence, fingertips coming up to press at her earpiece.

The reporter looks right at the camera, excitement on her face. “I’ve just been given some breaking news! A surprise guest has arrived, all the way from the UK. Klaus Mikaelson has shied away from public life since his messy exit from his father’s corporation five years ago. He’s built his own tech firm from the ground up. Buzz had been building since they announced their intention to go public. Let’s see if we can get a few words.”

Bored with the fawning, Caroline’s just about to switch channels. She knows all about Klaus’ Mikaelson’s company. Blurbs about it have been showing up in the intelligence reports she has complied since he’d lured a pair of promising engineers from FI’s Paris offices.

She’s planning on investing in his IPO because he might have scummy HR policies, but his business is sound.

There haven’t been many pictures of him available; apparently, he’d hardly been a social butterfly even when he’d been welcome in the family fold. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen or so in the ones Caroline’s seen, in which he’d been gangly and angular and sporting a terrible haircut.

The image changes, swinging to the red carpet before Caroline can grab the remote. She pauses, impressed because Klaus Mikaelson has grown up nicely. She might be distracted by the flawless fit of his tux, which Caroline knows can cover a world of sins, so she leans closer as the camera pans up to his face.

And promptly drops her wine class.

The blue eyes. That smile, the dimple it carves into his stubbled cheek. She’d brushed her lips over that cheek barely more than forty-eight hours ago when she’d thanked him for what he’d done for her.

Klaus Mikaelson had accompanied her home the other night, had neatly deflected her probing questions, his amusement never turning to exasperation at Caroline’s dogged persistence.

She’d seriously considered inviting him into her home. She’d told herself it was only in search of more information, but a tiny part of her, the one that was unfailingly honest and sometimes gets her in trouble, had admitted her rescuer intrigued her, even without a name.

Well. Now she has one. A plan forms rapidly, and Caroline scrambles for her phone, digging it out of her couch cushions. She taps the screen, connecting a call to Bonnie. “Bon? Sorry to bug you when you’re off the clock. But I need you to find someone for me.”

She stands, walking into her bedroom as she explains what she needs.

Bonnie’s a genius, well worth the exorbitant salary Caroline pays her. She gets the address within an hour.

* * * * *

Caroline drops a rope onto the terrace of Klaus’ apartment, slips down with barely a whisper of sound, landing lightly. She hugs the side of the building, inching over to the open French doors. She’s fully suited up, hair tightly controlled, and mask on. She eases her foot over the threshold, eyes darting around.

Ugh, of course, he has excellent taste.

Caroline likes light and airy, fun patterns and textures. But she can appreciate the sumptuousness of Klaus’ living room. It’s done up in burgundies and neutrals, hints of gold. There’s a buttery leather sofa facing a fireplace, thick carpets that muffle the sounds of her boots as she walks further in. She can imagine a pleasant night in front of a crackling fire, curled up on the couch when the weather turns cold.

But she’s getting ahead of herself.

Her nose twitches, picking up the smell of curry, cardamom, and turmeric.

She hears a door click shut, whirls to find Klaus, barefoot and still dressed up from The Gala, though he’s ditched the jacket and tie. He leans against the now-closed doors to the terrace. He smiles at her warmly, “Hello, Caroline.”

Which answers one of her most pressing questions.

Caroline yanks her mask off, tossing it aside. “I realize this is going to give you déjà vu, but what exactly is happening here?”

Klaus pushes off from the door, ambles towards her, studying her reaction carefully. Caroline doesn’t flinch away or retreat. “I have a proposition for you. And I have dinner. Takeaway from that place you visited the other day when your evening plans were… interrupted. I even got the mango lassi.”

Caroline narrows her eyes, “I have weapons, you know. Way more than you’d think, given how tight this outfit is.”

He laughs, a low husky sound that Caroline knows would be easy to get addicted to. “I’m sure you do. I’m not worried about you using them on me. I only want you to hear out my proposal. You can leave anytime you wish.”

She wonders if it’s stupid to believe him, but she does. He’d had the upper hand two days ago, had no trouble dispatching the group that had taken her. If he had nefarious intentions, he could have picked up right where they left off with the torture.

Caroline’s learned to trust her instincts. They’re telling her she’s safe.

She tugs her hair out of its elastic, loosens her collar slightly, pulling the zipper down a few inches. “Mind lending me something to wear? This totally isn’t designed for sitting for long periods.”

Klaus directs her to a guestroom, gathers a few things of his for her to wear. When she gets to the dining room, she finds he’s arranged the food on gleaming platters and lit candles. Her mango lassi, in its plastic cup, looks wildly out of place.

Caroline refuses to find it endearing.

At least until she’s confirmed that her instincts are correct.

#klaroline #klarosummerbingo #klaroline fanfiction #batman vibes #but where the author is only aware of batman because it's a ubiquitous pop culture thing #so maybe bad batman vibes idk

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 20, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

So many stories landed today that some will have to wait. Tonight’s news, though, boils down to Republican attempts to retake control of the government in the 2022 elections…and, if Trump has his way, even earlier.

This morning, CNN revealed another bombshell story from the forthcoming book by veteran reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa: a six-point memo from pro-Trump lawyer John Eastman laying out a plan for then–vice president Mike Pence to steal the 2020 election for Trump.

The memo started by falsely claiming that seven states had sent competing slates of electors to the President of the Senate; in fact, Trump loyalists demanded their own electors, but each state had certified one official slate of electors. If Pence—or, if Pence recused himself, the then–Senate president pro tempore, Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley—rejected the ballots from those seven states, Eastman claimed, Trump would have ten more electoral votes than Biden and would win the election.

When Democrats howled, Pence could instead assert that neither candidate had a majority and throw the election into the House of Representatives, where each state would get a single vote. Since 26 of the 50 states were dominated by Republicans, Trump would win there, too.

“The fact is that the Constitution assigns this power to the Vice President as the ultimate arbiter,” Eastman wrote. “We should take all of our actions with that in mind.”

Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani tried to convince Republican senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina to back the scheme; someone also ran the idea past Republican senator Mike Lee of Utah. Both dismissed it. But, notably, neither revealed this extraordinary attempt to destroy our democracy.

When Pence ultimately refused to go along, Trump turned on him and told attendees at the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally that “if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election.” He explained that “the number one, or certainly one of the top, Constitutional lawyers in our country,” had offered a plan, and that “Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us….”

Aside from the obvious, Eastman’s memo raises three interesting points. First, it refers to the idea that Pence might hand over the count to Grassley, a plan that needs more investigation. Second, it relies on the work of emeritus Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe, who tweeted that it took snippets of his work out of context to create “a totally fake web of ‘law’ that no halfway decent lawyer would take seriously…. Ludicrous but scary as hell. Think 2024. Those guys mean business....” And, third, it debunks the current right-wing talking point that Trump wanted only to question the results of the election. Clearly, he wanted to be declared the winner.

Even after President Joe Biden was sworn in, Trump supporters continued to insist that the election had been fraudulent. Famously, the Arizona state senate hired a company called Cyber Ninjas to reexamine the votes from Maricopa County, although the county board of supervisors, a majority of whom were Republicans, had already audited the ballots and the machines and found no problems. The county board strongly opposed the new “audit.”

The Cyber Ninjas examined ballots for bamboo to see if China had hacked the election, used insecure practices, rejected observers, and finally sent voting information to Montana for analysis. Documents released by the state senate under a court order in late August revealed that groups backed by pro-Trump loyalists Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell, and two correspondents from the One America News Network paid for the Arizona investigation.

Last week, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that the state senate and the Cyber Ninjas had to release the records concerning their activities. Cyber Ninjas is refusing to do so, offering as a reason—among others—that it is busy writing its report (which is already four months late) and document production will take time away from that effort. Its lawyer says it will “produce documents out of goodwill and its commitment to transparency” when it has time, but does not recognize any legal obligation to do so.

Seeking an Arizona-type “audit” in Pennsylvania, Republicans in that state’s legislature last Wednesday voted to issue subpoenas for personal information of about 6.9 million state voters, including names, addresses, birth dates, driver’s license numbers, and the last four digits of Social Security numbers. Republicans say a private company needs that information to fix issues in election procedures uncovered in 2020, but the Republican leader of the investigation has declined to say how the information will be used.

Democrats sued Friday to stop the release of the voter information, and two Democratic representatives to Congress have asked the Department of Justice to investigate whether the subpoenas could violate federal laws by leading to voter intimidation.

A new story sheds more light on the election reform Republicans are talking about. On May 6, 2021, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis raised eyebrows when he signed a new election law in front of television cameras for the Fox News Channel, excluding all other media. While Republicans insisted they wrote new election laws to prevent voter fraud—despite the lack of evidence of any such widespread fraud—internal emails and text messages from Florida Republicans revealed today by Politico show that their concerns were actually about gaining advantage in the 2022 elections.

Joe Gruters, the state senator who chairs the Florida Republican Party, repeatedly said in public that the new bill would “make it as easy as possible to vote, and hard as possible to cheat.” But in private text exchanges with state representative Blaise Ingoglia, the former chair of the Florida party, Gruters called for getting rid of existing mail-in ballot requests, saying that keeping them would be “devastating,” since Democrats used them more frequently than Republicans. “We cannot make up ground,” Gruters wrote. “Trump campaign spent 10 million. Could not cut down lead….” Ingoglia told Politico: “This was a policy decision all along and had nothing to do with partisan reasons.”

Finally, tonight, the immigration issue is back in the news. Republicans have tried to make immigration their key issue for 2022, but the terrible surge in coronavirus in Republican-dominated states like Texas has captured the news cycle. For the past few days, though, the rise in Haitian refugees on the U.S. southern border has reclaimed headlines. Haitians have long come to the southern border for admission to the U.S., but the recent earthquake in Haiti, along with the assassination of the country’s president and hopes that the Biden administration will be welcoming, has brought 12,000–15,000 Haitians in the past few weeks.

The situation there remains much as it has always been under Biden: the administration kept the public health guidelines established during the pandemic under former president Trump, and it is turning away most adult immigrants and refugees. It has been returning Haitians to Haiti by plane, with seven flights daily set to begin on Wednesday.

But right-wing media is, once again, insisting that Biden is allowing a flood of immigrants to overrun the U.S. At the same time, images of white border patrol agents on horseback riding down Haitian migrants, with their reins swinging, has horrified those who see in them the history of southern slave patrols hunting enslaved Americans. The Biden administration will have to thread a very thin political needle: disavowing the actions of the border patrol agents without opening itself to Republican attacks that it is “soft” on immigration. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has launched an inquiry into the agents’ behavior.

For his part, Trump does not want to wait until 2022 for a change in government. On Friday, he wrote to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger charging that 43,000 Georgia ballots were “invalid.” He called for Raffensperger to decertify the 2020 election “and announce the true winner,” warning that the nation “is being systematically destroyed by an illegitimate president and his administration.”

Trump is under criminal investigation in Georgia for his previous attempts to overturn the state’s election results.

—

Notes:

https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2021/09/20/devastating-florida-republicans-worried-about-2022-as-they-crafted-election-law-1391121

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21065006-arizona-senate-status-report-and-renewed-motion-to-consolidate#document/p328/a2054912

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/arizona-audit-2020-election-recount-gop-maricopa-county/

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cyber-ninjas-arizona-vote-audit-court-order_n_614678cce4b0efa77f80caf1

http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2021/images/09/20/eastman.memo.pdf

https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/966396848/read-trumps-jan-6-speech-a-key-part-of-impeachment-trial

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/20/politics/trump-pence-election-memo/index.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2021/09/15/pennsylvania-election-audit-gets-off-to-wild-start-as-gop-subpoenas-personal-details-on-every-voter-in-state/

https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/pa-democrats-sue-over-gop-election-investigation/2963753/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/09/17/this-is-how-embarrassing-trumps-fraud-claims-have-gotten/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/20/us-begins-deportation-flights-haitians-texas-border-town

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/border-haitians-horses-agents/2021/09/20/c489c3ae-1a41-11ec-914a-99d701398e5a_story.html

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/17/politics/georgia-probe-trump-election/index.html

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #history #election 2020 #corrupt GOP #criminal GOP #January 6 2021

2 notes · View notes

conncrfms · 4 years

Text

𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐲𝐨𝐫𝐤’𝐬 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐎𝐑 𝐋𝐈𝐕𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐍 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐧 𝐛𝐫𝐨𝐚𝐝𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐭 , 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐚 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐉𝐀𝐂𝐎𝐁 𝐄𝐋𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐈 ! 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐦𝐚𝐲 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦 𝐚𝐬 @𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐫 𝐨𝐫 𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐭 𝐩𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐦𝐳 𝐚𝐬 𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐧 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐧 𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐚𝐧 𝐛𝐚𝐫 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐍𝐄𝐖 𝐰𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧 . 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐦𝐳 , 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐫𝐝 𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐡 . 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧 𝐧𝐲𝐜 , 𝐲𝐨𝐮’𝐯𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐥𝐚𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐨 𝐚𝐦𝐛𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 . 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐭 𝐚 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐞 𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬, 𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐰𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐬, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐣𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐬 . ( 𝐜𝐢𝐬 𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐞 + 𝐡𝐞/𝐡𝐢𝐦 ) + ( 𝐦𝐲𝐚 , 𝟏𝟗 , 𝐬𝐡𝐞/𝐡𝐞𝐫 , 𝐩𝐬𝐭 )

hi lovelies! allow me to introduce myself! my name is mya, you can reach me on discord for plots at ˗ˏˋ 𝐦𝐲𝐚 ˎˊ˗#8406 and i have never had a single cohesive thought in my life! now that that’s out of the way let me introduce you to my demon child connor! i spent literal hours on his intro and it’s still not good but that’s besides the point but for your best viewing experience you may wanna see it through his blog for the ~aesthetics~ anyways on with the intro!

triggers will be tagged and marked accordingly as they come up but here’s what to look out for: cheating tw, death tw, cancer tw, and alcohol tw

𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐒

𝐅𝐔𝐋𝐋 𝐍𝐀𝐌𝐄

bellamy connor livingston

𝐍𝐈𝐂𝐊𝐍𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐒

bells

𝐁𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐇𝐃𝐀𝐘

october 26th, 1997

𝐇𝐄𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓

6″0′

𝐀𝐆𝐄

23 years old

𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑

male

𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐒

he/him

𝐎𝐂𝐂𝐔𝐏𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍

ceo of premier event manangement / event planner

𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐔𝐀𝐆𝐄𝐒

english

𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍

bisexual

𝐅𝐀𝐂𝐄𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐈𝐌

alex fitzalan

here is his childhood home, family vacation home, and his current home

𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘

bellamy connor livingston was born in MANHATTAN NEW YORK on an unusually cold october day

his father was voted as the SENATOR of new york and his mother was a LUXURY REAL ESTATE AGENT who sold a majority of the penthouses on the upper east side, it wasn’t easy living in new york and NOT knowing who the livingston’s were, whether you saw their names on billboards on heard it in passing on television you knew who they were

but the livingston LEGACY precedes connor’s successful parents and goes way back to his ancestors who made their fortune, specifically one of his GREAT grandfathers who was granted 160,000 acres along the Hudson and was an OFFICIAL FUR TRADER AND BUSINESSMAN who earned the family a whopping $35 BILLION DOLLARS and the wealth continues to grow RICH KEEP GETTING RICHER

in short connor is a total TRUST FUND BABY.

while a family like this is usually drowning with TURMOIL the livingston’s lived a fairly scandal free life, even when you did MASSIVE DIGGING, no signs of infedlity, their four kids got along great, and they were BIG on philanthropy and giving to charity

𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐓𝐖

this is until you stepped behind CLOSED DOORS which is were the livingston’s liked their SKELETONS to remain, connor’s dad, was a SERIAL CHEATER and the only reason no one ever spoke up is the livingston family INFLUENCE no one dared to cross them

𝐄𝐍𝐃 𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐓𝐖

despite growing up in such a TOXIC ENVIROMENT connor was actually a really good kid, his grades were nothing to write home about, and he was definitely a CLASS CLOWN but he did what he was supposed to, and stayed out of trouble for the MOST PART

he was the ELDEST of four children so he felt the need to be a good influence on what would prove to be a BUMPY ROAD for the family

connor’s high school experience was not what you would expect from someone of his CALIBER, well at least not ALL of it

for starters he had the tendency to be a bit ARROGANT due to who his parents were and because he knew the scope of their influence, and he used this to his advantage, he was definitively a “DO YOU KNOW WHO MY FATHER IS?” ass bitch, partly due to the fact people had always treated him differently and thus it went straight to his already empty head

and he PARTIED a lot, whether it was throwing parties in a penthouse his mother rented SPECIFICALLY for him, attending LAVISH parties, or jetting off to THE HAMPTON’S “for lunch”, school became a DISTANT PRIORITY

so distant in fact his parents ended up hiring a TUTOR to help him with his studies, and you wouldn’t believe me when i say connor FELL and he fell HARD

so hard in fact i’d say he CRASHED, two planets colliding into each other that was although a CATASTROPHE was ENCHANTING to see, but i’m getting ahead of myself

BEATRICE or BEA as connor and nearly everyone else called her, was connor’s opposite in almost EVERY WAY, she was a straight a student, and connor could hold a c average if he made the effort to CHEAT, she went to their private school on a SCHOLARSHIP, his parents had enough money to buy the ENTIRE SCHOOL, but they were IN LOVE

and i mean the kind of love you see in ROMCOMS the kind of SICKENINGLY SWEET love that others will tell you is IMPOSSIBLE, but they made it work, bea made connor more serious but his studies, and he in turn fell COMPLETELY and EFFORTLESSLY in love. see BEA was already WHOLE so think of this story less of two halves COMPLETING each other, and more so two wholes COMPLEMENTING each other

they continued to date throughout the rest of high school, and BEA became apart of his family, his mother referred to BEA as her DAUGHTER IN LAW, it was cemented in everyone’s minds that one day the two of them would be MARRIED

oddly enough connor NEVER met BEA’S parents no matter how much he BEGGED and PLEADED, all it took was BEA telling him her family life was something she was UNCOMFORTABLE with and he dropped the subject COMPLETELY

due to BEA’S influence, connor applied to university, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, to be exact and got ACCEPTED into the school of BUSINESS, of course BEA also applied an got ACCEPTED into the school of SOCIAL SCIENCES

connor didn’t HESITATE to PROPOSE to BEA and to no one’s surprise she immediately said YES and the plan was to get married IMMEDIATELY and so the date was set for JULY 17TH 2017, the theme to be WINTER WONDERLAND, it was BEA’S idea a winter wedding in summer, and seeing the way it made her absolutely BEAM it was worth it

the MONTH of the wedding was a tense one, GRADUATION, PREPARING FOR COLLEGE, and a WEDDING

however TRAGEDY would strike, BEA was LATE to the WEDDING and anyone who knew BEA knew that she wasn’t LATE to anything, that’s when connor got a call that would change his life FOREVER

𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐇 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐖

remember how i told you BEA never wanted connor to meet her parents? that’s because BEA was sick, CANCER to be exact, and didn’t want connor to find out. her parents tried to rationalize that she didn’t want to seem him HURT, and that she told them EVERYTHING about him, she DIED with connor right by her side, and what was supposed to be the HAPPIEST moment of his life became the SADDEST

𝐄𝐍𝐃 𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐇 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐖

that was THREE YEARS AGO and to this day he hasn’t recovered since

𝐀𝐋𝐂𝐎𝐇𝐎𝐋 𝐓𝐖

since then he has gotten two new vices DRINKING and HOOKING UP, it’s not unusual to see him at a bar drinking his FIFTH or TENTH shot of vodka and taking home his SECOND or TENTH girl of the night

𝐄𝐍𝐃 𝐀𝐋𝐂𝐎𝐇𝐎𝐋 𝐓𝐖

he has been CLOSED OFF to the idea of love ever since, and hasn’t held a STABLE relationship since then, he simply can’t see himself COMMITTING to anyone as he did with BEA

in LIGHTER news, he graduated from COLUMBIA with his associate’s in BUSINESS and is now a ceo of his own EVENT PLANNNG company, which has been extremely successful in putting on TOURS, CHARITY BANQUETS, CONVENTIONS, CONCERTS, and the like, they specialize in everything except WEDDINGS

and his father 𝐂𝐎𝐋𝐈𝐍 𝐋𝐈𝐕𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐍 has started his presidential campaign, that connor has somehow managed to rope himself into

𝐒𝐄𝐂𝐑𝐄𝐓

he fights in an underground fighting ring.

it started innocently enough, after BEA passed away he wanted an outlet something where he didn’t have to think about the GUILT and could let out his ANGER, really he wanted something to distract from the SADNESS

BOXING seemed like a good idea until he couldn’t harness the anger and nearly KILLED his opponent

that’s when things fell into place, his “ FRIEND ” who witnessed the fight first hand told him about this fighting ring that him and a couple of other people were involved in and connor decided WHY THE HELL NOT, he felt as he had NOTHING else to LOSE

and thus began the cycle of showing up to work in shade to hide BLACK EYES and surprisingly enough BRUISES are easy to hide behind three piece suits

and now current day it’s become THERAPY for him, since a lot of the guys are just like him, looking to ESCAPE from something in their PAST

𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘

𝐙𝐎𝐃𝐈𝐀𝐂

scorpio sun, scorpio rising, virgo moon

𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐆𝐍𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓

chaotic good

𝐌𝐁𝐓𝐈

estp-a

𝐄𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐀𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐌

type 7w8

𝐓𝐄𝐌𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓

choleric

𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐒𝐄

slytherin

𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐔𝐀𝐆𝐄𝐒

in order: physical touch, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and words of affirmation

𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐓𝐒

adaptable, adventurous, affable, affectionate, ambitious, amusing, attentive, brave, bright, calm, caring, charismatic, charming, committed, courageous, creative, decisive, dependable, determined, diligent, determined, direct, driven, easy-going, efficient, engaging, enthusiastic, extroverted, flirtatious, forthright, frank, fun-loving, funny, gregarious, intelligent, knowledgeable, lively, logical, loyal, mischievous, neat, objective, observant, open-minded, organized, outgoing, passionate, persistent, playful, practical, pragmatic, protective, quick-witted, rational, realistic, reliable, responsible, romantic, self-confident, sociable, strong-willed, and trustworthy

𝐍𝐄𝐆𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐓𝐒

abrasive, aggressive, aloof, analytical, argumentative, arrogant, assertive, avoidant, belligerent, blunt, bossy, calculating, callous, cautious, competitive, condescending, confrontational, critical, cynical, deceitful, defiant, destructive, detached, discreet, dishonest, dramatic, evasive, explosive, foolhardy, grumpy, guarded, harsh, headstrong, impatient, impulsive, insensitive, intimidating, irrational, judgmental, melancholic, narcissistic, negative, opinionated, outspoken, perfectionist, pretentious, private, quick-tempered, rebellious, reckless, rude, secretive, stubborn, temperamental, thoughtless, unemotional, vain, and violent

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐏𝐎

i’d like to say he’s a weird amalgamation of characters i liked in media i’ve consumed, and although he relates more to some characters than others this is an incomplete list of my influences

p.s. you can click on the names of a character to see a gifset of them that reminds me of connor <3

𝑺𝑪𝑶𝑻𝑻 𝑳𝑨𝑵𝑮 ( 𝐀𝐍𝐓-𝐌𝐀𝐍 ) , 𝑬𝑳𝑬𝑨𝑵𝑶𝑹 𝑺𝑯𝑬𝑳𝑳𝑺𝑻𝑹𝑶𝑷 ( 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐆𝐎𝐎𝐃 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐄 ) , 𝑹𝑰𝑮𝑩𝒀 ( 𝐑𝐄𝐆𝐔𝐋𝐀𝐑 𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐖 ) , 𝑫𝑨𝑴𝑶𝑵 𝑺𝑨𝑳𝑽𝑨𝑻𝑶𝑹𝑬 ( 𝐓𝐕𝐃 ) , 𝑹𝒀𝑨𝑵 𝑯𝑶𝑾𝑨𝑹𝑫 ( 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐎𝐅𝐅𝐈𝐂𝐄 ) , 𝑱𝑶𝑯𝑵𝑵𝒀 𝑩𝑹𝑨𝑽𝑶 ( 𝐉𝐎𝐇𝐍𝐍𝐘 𝐁𝐑𝐀𝐕𝐎 ) , 𝑫𝑼𝑵𝑪𝑨𝑵 ( 𝐓𝐎𝐓𝐀𝐋 𝐃𝐑𝐀𝐌𝐀 𝐈𝐒𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐃 ) , 𝑨𝑳𝑬𝑿 𝑹𝑼𝑺𝑺𝑶 ( 𝐖𝐈𝐙𝐀𝐑𝐃𝐒 𝐎𝐅 𝐖𝐀𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐘 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐄 ) , 𝑪𝑯𝑼𝑪𝑲 𝑩𝑨𝑺𝑺 ( 𝐆𝐎𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐏 𝐆𝐈𝐑𝐋 ) , 𝑪𝑨𝑺𝑬𝒀 𝑮𝑨𝑹𝑫𝑵𝑬𝑹 ( 𝐀𝐓𝐘𝐏𝐈𝐂𝐀𝐋 ) , 𝑳𝑼𝑲𝑬 𝑫𝑼𝑵𝑷𝑯𝒀 ( 𝐌𝐎𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐍 𝐅𝐀𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐘 ) , 𝑨𝑵𝑫 𝑫𝑬𝑹𝑬𝑲 𝑴𝑶𝑹𝑮𝑨𝑵 ( 𝐂𝐑𝐈𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐃𝐒 )

𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒

𝑹𝑶𝑴𝑨𝑵𝑻𝑰𝑪

𝑪𝑯𝑬𝑨𝑻𝑰𝑵𝑮. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐎𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑬𝑿𝑬𝑺 𝑶𝑵 𝑮𝑶𝑶𝑫 𝑻𝑬𝑹𝑴𝑺. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑬𝑿𝑬𝑺 𝑶𝑵 𝑩𝑨𝑫 𝑻𝑬𝑹𝑴𝑺. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑭𝑹𝑰𝑬𝑵𝑫𝑺 𝑻𝑶 𝑳𝑶𝑽𝑬𝑹𝑺. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑭𝑹𝑰𝑬𝑵𝑫𝑺 𝑾𝑰𝑻𝑯 𝑩𝑬𝑵𝑬𝑭𝑰𝑻𝑺. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐈𝐕𝐄.

𝑺𝑲𝑰𝑵𝑵𝒀 𝑳𝑶𝑽𝑬. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑺𝑳𝑶𝑾 𝑩𝑼𝑹𝑵. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑷𝑹 𝑹𝑬𝑳𝑨𝑻𝑰𝑶𝑵𝑺𝑯𝑰𝑷. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑻𝑶𝑿𝑰𝑪 𝑹𝑬𝑳𝑨𝑻𝑰𝑶𝑵𝑺𝑯𝑰𝑷. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑼𝑵𝑹𝑬𝑸𝑼𝑰𝑻𝑬𝑫 𝑳𝑶𝑽𝑬. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑷𝑳𝑨𝑻𝑶𝑵𝑰𝑪

𝑺𝑸𝑼𝑨𝑫. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑹𝑶𝑶𝑴𝑴𝑨𝑻𝑬𝑺. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑮𝑶𝑶𝑫 𝑰𝑵𝑭𝑳𝑼𝑬𝑵𝑪𝑬. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑩𝑨𝑫 𝑰𝑵𝑭𝑳𝑼𝑬𝑵𝑪𝑬. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑩𝑬𝑺𝑻 𝑭𝑹𝑰𝑬𝑵𝑫. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑪𝑯𝑰𝑳𝑫𝑯𝑶𝑶𝑫 𝑭𝑹𝑰𝑬𝑵𝑫. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑵𝑬𝑮𝑨𝑻𝑰𝑽𝑬

𝑭𝑹𝑰𝑬𝑵𝑫𝑺 𝑻𝑼𝑹𝑵𝑬𝑫 𝑬𝑵𝑬𝑴𝑰𝑬𝑺. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑬𝑵𝑬𝑴𝑰𝑬𝑺. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

𝑭𝑹𝑬𝑵𝑬𝑴𝑰𝑬𝑺. 𝐎𝐍𝐄, 𝐓𝐖𝐎, 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑.

if any of these interest you feel free to message me! i have ideas for all of them that i’m always ready to share! also feel free to mix and match any of the plots above a good influence who has an unrequited crush but is also his roommate? sounds like content to me, a friend with benefits turned best friend turned exes on bad terms we love to see it! and if none of these seem interesting to you fill free to check out connor’s wanted connections page!

#wealthyhq:intro #cheating tw #death tw #cancer tw #alcohol tw #i didn't proofread this #so if there's any typos #rip

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bustedbernie · 4 years

Link

Oh hai. Lately there have been a slew of think pieces about Bernie Sanders being the front-runner, discussing how his movement has threatened to withhold their votes from Democrats if Bernie isn’t the nominee. Hidden between the lines is the idea that Democrats, in general, owe their votes to Sanders if he is the nominee, regardless of the fact that his voters do NOT owe Dems their votes if he is not. So, rather than call them out for using the same tactics that lost the 2016 election, there is a faction in the media that is growing more and more permissive to the idea that Bernie and his Revolution are somehow the victims in all this, and that mainstream Dems have done them wrong time and time again when picking a candidate that appeals to the Dems masses.

Let me let you in on a little secret.

I don’t owe Bernie Sanders or his fucked off revolution of stanerific emo-marxist cyber-terrorists a goddamn bit of shit the fuck all. When these utter fucking geniuses in the media reflect on how energized and dedicated his enthusiastic fans are when engaging in their harassment of the average Dem, they seem to think the people who have been abused don’t fucking matter. These Dems are people who have never done anything whatsoever to deserve the constant bullying, cyber-stalking, targeting, threats, or in my case, being falsely reported to the FBI by fans of Bernie who seek to silence dissent. What these media personalities don’t understand is that the abuse by Bernie fans, in his name, actually causes the gap between MAGA and Berners to shrink to the point where it is non-existent. There is no real difference between the abuse from either side, and since Sanders isn’t the warm and fuzzy type that reaches out to the people who have been abused, often there appears to be no real difference between Sanders and Trump.

Slate:

Still, the Bernie-or-Busters, small as they may be, have spun their position into an argument for why others should vote for Bernie Sanders too, regardless of the platform they prefer. As efforts in political persuasion go, this contingent puts forward an openly hostile argument. Sanders is the only electable candidate, they suggest, not just because of his policies, but because of the single-mindedness of his followers. The reason you should vote for Sanders is that we won’t vote for anyone else. You don’t want Trump to win again, do you?

No. But I also don’t want Bernie Sanders to win. In a case of one not liking either candidate, people look to see which movement they feel most comfortable with, Bernie’s or Trump’s. If it turns out that both movements engage in racist behavior, sexism, and homophobia, it really doesn’t matter what they profess to be in favor of as far as policy is concerned, what matters is how they treat their fellow citizens by and large. We all know that unless we take back the Senate with a large majority that can defeat Republican attempts to stop legislation from hitting Sanders’ desk, nothing will pass anyway. So, if you’re not in favor of Bernie’s policies in the first place, and do not like him or his movement, why would you be enthusiastic about showing up for the guy who leads the movement that engages in attacks on you?

Yes, it sounds like ugly hostage taking—not a brilliant persuasive strategy but a crude ego-boosting exercise for a group of leftists who can’t resist the impulse to lord some power over an electorate that doesn’t normally consider them relevant. But that’s exactly what makes it so normal, even understandable, in a depressing “we’re all human” sort of way. [NO.] Because the truth is this: Every threat these Sanders stans are explicitly making is one the venerated Centrist Swing Voter makes implicitly—and isn’t judged for. The centrist never even has to articulate his threat.

Excuse me, it IS ugly hostage taking, it is NOT normal, and no, it doesn’t make me see them as more human.

Another thing is this: not everyone opposed to Bernie Sanders is a Centrist, Moderate, or a Swing voter. Many of us are as far left or to the left of Sanders, I for one am definately to his left, and had supported him in 2015. That was until his racist abusive Bern Mafia targeted me for expressing concern about his lack of outreach to black voters. I noticed his lack of history in hiring black people (D.C. is Chocolate City, we could not find one black staffer in 2015; I am open to correction on this point; if he had black staffers prior to 2015, please send me receipts because I have been looking for them.), lamented and mocked his poor showing at Netroots, fumed over his constant MLK appropriation, jeered at his white ass crowds, and felt humiliated by his inability to discuss black people in ways that were not centered on Poverty or Prisons. It is HIS FAULT that his voters have no clue how to engage Black people without resorting to stereotypes and outright bigotry, because he does the same thing.

Buzzfeed:

Sanders, seated across the table, a yellow legal pad at hand, responded with a question of his own, according to two people present: “Aren’t most of the people who sell the drugs African American?” The candidate, whose aides froze in the moment, was quickly rebuffed: The answer, the activists told him, was no. Even confronted with figures and data to the contrary, Sanders appeared to have still struggled to grasp that he had made an error, the two people present said.

No. He did not apologize for spreading this stereotype, and yes, it shows how he views black people in general.

Slate:

One of many disorienting factors in this election cycle is the fact that the left is more popular and more viable than it has been in a long, long time. They have not one but two exciting candidates, and both are offering policies closer to what leftists actually want than most presidential contenders in U.S. history have.

I wanted the party to move to the Left towards the direction of where I stood too. I can’t really name my ideology because it’s so far left I am almost hitting the wall. Additionally, I am more Libertarian than Sanders, who trends more authoritarian. Yet, I instinctively know that playing a game of “my way or the highway” won’t lead to a place where poverty programs are expanded up and out, ensuring all necessities of life are provided. It will lead to gridlock and we will make zero progress.

Because folks at the center tend to be wooed by multiple candidates, they’re used to having options, and they’re used to the experience of their vote determining who ends up with the nomination. This means that they usually like the candidate they vote for, in the primary and in the general. Not so for leftists, who get to merely tolerate the candidates they end up having to vote for in order to mitigate the damage from a worse result.

Here’s the rub… I’m Black. None of this shit applies to me, because as a Black person, I rarely even LIKE or TRUST any of the candidates I have been voting for over the years. I also usually, especially in State and Locally, don’t have any say so in determining the nominee of any race. I am always stuck voting for whoever White People choose as the candidate, and as such, am merely tolerating whoever is chosen to prevent a worse outcome, which usually means preventing a racist shitmonger from winning a race.

Speaking of race… Progressives refuse to address race as a factor in anything; they like to ignore race in everything they do and allow Prison Policy to stand in for Racial Policy, so it’s impossible to get them to see my reality. They get this shit from Bernie.

From Buzzfeed:

“The real issue is not whether you’re black or white, whether you’re a woman or a man,” he said in a 1988 interview. “The real issue is whose side are you on? Are you on the side of workers and poor people or are you on the side of big money and the corporations?”

Not much has changed with Bernie, as you know, Bernie never changes, because he was born as a 72 year old yelly man, just like Benjamin Button, but louder and not as cute.

“It’s not good enough for someone to say, ‘I’m a woman! Vote for me!’” No, that’s not good enough. What we need is a woman who has the guts to stand up to Wall Street, to the insurance companies, to the drug companies, to the fossil fuel industry,” the Vermont independent senator and former Democratic presidential candidate said in a not-so-subtle rebuke to Hillary Clinton”

Bernie’s attacks on Identity Politics filtered down to his base, causing them to feel confident in their attacks on Blacks, LGBTQ, and Women who brought up issues of race, sexuality, and gender over the past few years. They love to say shit to black people online that they would never say to an actual Black person IN PERSON, because they are scared as fuck of Black people. Kinda like Bernie. The refrain of “that’s identity politics, not real policy’ rang out constantly on social media the past few years to the point where pointing out racism, homophobia, and sexism was met with swarms of white men attacking Black people, All Women Who Dared To Be THAT Bitch, LGBTQ, and really, anyone worried about social justice issues that focused on identity. The attacks were and ARE bigoted in the extreme.

This is racist as fuck and is one of the ways the Bernie Titty-Babies managed to marginalize Kamala Harris and drive a wedge between her and Black Voters. Somehow they thought keeping it going would make us like dusty ass Bernie more, but they’re stupid, because we don’t even like that geriatric Bernadook now.

This is homophobic.

Bernie’s supporters are engaging in a hate campaign against Mayor Pete and are trying to convince the world that they are not being homophobic, they are just saying Pete is suppressing his dangerous serial killer nature by being so straight laced. This is fucked up because they are attacking a gay man for being “straight appearing” in spite of the fact that his seeming straightness is how he interacts with a world that hates gay people, and has at times (and Still Does) MURDERED men and women who are gay for not assimilating or conforming to hetero-normative stereotypes. Bernie ignores this behavior from his fans like he ignores all of their nasty hate campaigns. I blame him.

This is misogynistic. No explanation needed.

Racist and fat shaming. Black hair is not your fucking business, bitch. Back the fuck up.

This is just blatantly false and caused people to harass Kamala Harris supporters until they stopped using the Yellow Circles she asked supporters to wear, it stems from the misogynoir his fans engaged in towards Kamala. Bernie has never said shit, so I blame him.

Bigotry. Also erasure of Biden’s Black support in a effort to make it seem as if Bernie is the candidate of diversity. Bernie is at fault, he also erases minorities.

Sexist. Also, damn near all of his fans seem to hate Obama on the same level and with as much heat as MAGA. Why the fuck would we want to join in unity with this man when his fans HATE the first black President. Oh, you think Bernie has nothing to do with setting the tone?

“The business model, if you like, of the Democratic Party for the last 15 years or so has been a failure,” Sanders started, responding to a question about the young voters who supported his campaign. “People sometimes don’t see that because there was a charismatic individual named Barack Obama, who won the presidency in 2008 and 2012.

“He was obviously an extraordinary candidate, brilliant guy. But behind that reality, over the last 10 years, Democrats have lost about 1,000 seats in state legislatures all across this country.”

Bernie doesn’t fucking like Obama either.

Sexism. Racism. Bernie does the worst with Black Women, and is often dismissive when asked a question by one of us. So, his fans see nothing to lose by targeting us in particular, and we in turn are likely the largest group of people willing to sit this one out if Bernie manages to come out on top. The media is no help whatsoever to marginalized people, because they ultimately weave a narrative where Bernie comes out the victim.

We can already see it happening amongst the Children of the Bern, where they have taken to labeling K-Hive, a movement started by a Black Woman (Me) for a Black Woman (Kamala Harris), “Liberal ISIS” for our resistance to Bernie and willingness to defend the other candidates from the attacks levied by the Berner Swarm.

Oh, cry me a fucking river! We don’t dox, cyberstalk, harass, abuse, try to get people fired, engage in bigotry, we learn from our mistakes, and we never make it our mission to ruin someone’s life.

We simply turn the tables on the bros and ask tough questions, like Kamala Harris. If that breaks you down, you were already broken before you found us. Oh, yeah. That’s another thing. We don’t go looking for Berners to abuse; we wait until they come to abuse US and refuse to play along.

Regardless of what poor Peter Daou says, there is no “Unadulterated Hatred” in asking if someone has checked on him.

So, yes, I can blame Bernie for the nastiness of his movement and choose not to ever join it no matter what. Progressives love to play forever victims, even while they engage in their vile abuse, but I do not have to empower their movement or help them elect Bernie. Maybe if enough people sound the alarm and let him know we will not be helping him in November while suffering constantly at the hands of his Branch Bernidians, then he will have no choice but to be a leader and fucking lead these assholes into being decent people. I don’t expect the abuse to magically end if Bernie becomes President or loses to Trump, and I also don’t expect him to do shit about it, so I guess I’m just Never Bernie. What I am now stuck with is the same as always; White States get to vote first and create the narrative that Dem voters are in favor of whoever these powerful white voters choose, and I am sick of it and sick of Sanders. I didn’t become a Democrat to not only be marginalized by the White Moderate, but to also suffer abuse from the punk ass White leftist bitchmade humdinger of a Revolution. I’m not here to empower shitfucks that search me out no matter where I am just to heap abuse on me, threaten me, or report me to the FBI as a possible MASS SHOOTER, all because I think Bernie is an old bigot who minimizes Black oppression to appease the white voters he thinks he’ll need to win the General.

I’m just Never Bernie, deal with it or die mad about it. I don’t care which.

#neverbernie #bernie #berniesanders #bernie sanders #berniebros #bernie bros #notmeus #feelthebern #long post #longpost #faq

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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 years

Text

Pluralistic: 04 Mar 2020 (Brokered conventions, the Siege of Gondor, ICE risk-assessment whitebox, Chinese covid censorship, America's national immunocompromise)

Today's links

A brokered convention will produce a powerless presidency: Transformative change requires a movement, not a plan.

What the Siege of Gondor teaches us about medieval warfare: 40,000 riveting words from Roman military historian Bret Deveraux.

ICE's risk assessment algorithm only ever recommends detention: NYCLU suing to force them to admit what we've all figured out.

Probing China's Covid-19 censorship: Outstanding work from Citizen Lab.

America is uniquely at risk from coronavirus: 77 million un- and underinsured people.

This day in history:

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

I'm coming to Kelowna, BC tomorrow! I'll be at the library from 6-8PM with my book Radicalized for the CBC's Canada Reads. It's free, but you need to RSVP (and most of the seats are gone, so act quick).

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cbc-radio-presents-in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-96154415445

A brokered convention will produce a powerless presidency (permalink)

Hoping for a brokered convention is basically saying, "Hey, go fuck yourself" to every doorknocker and phone canvasser in your base. It says, "Let's not use votes to choose the candidate. You little people were for show. We choose our leaders by gathering the people who matter in smoke-filled rooms."

Any candidate hoping to enact a transformative program from the presidency is going to need a powerful, motivated base to whip establishment Dems into order: "I want to do it, now make me do it." Jettisoning the idea that your supporters get you nominated is the most demoralizing thing I can imagine, short of shutting off the server your organizers used to get you elected as soon as they succeed (looking at you, Barack Obama).

It's pure technocratic hubris, the kind of thing that turns promising wonks into figureheads who accomplish nothing. Saving America from plutocracy and white nationalism requires a movement, not a savior with a plan.

What the Siege of Gondor teaches us about medieval warfare (permalink)

Last spring, Roman military historian Bret Devereaux published over 40,000 words of analysis of the Siege of Gondor as depicted in Peter Jackson's Return of the King. It is by far the best use of fiction as a tool for teaching history that I've ever read.

It's in 6 parts, broken down by themes. By far my favorite section was the opener, on the logistics of sieges. I am a quartermaster by temperament, and the logistic of moving 200,000 orcs (plus trolls, elephants, siege engines, etc) is FASCINATING.

https://acoup.blog/2019/05/10/collections-the-siege-of-gondor/

"The road the orcs are on allows them to march five abreast, meaning there are 40,000 such rows. Giving each orc four feet of space on the march, that would mean the army alone stretches 30 miles down a single road. At that length, the tail end of the army would not even be able to leave camp before the front of the army had finished marching for the day." (!!)

The section on the siege's opener, part II, is likewise fascinating and contains some great craft notes.

https://acoup.blog/2019/05/17/collections-the-siege-of-gondor-part-ii-these-beacons-are-liiiiiiit/

"LOTR doesn't rely – as so much fiction does – on the 'good guys' making stupid mistake after stupid mistake in order to create tension. Instead, Gondor executes its plans admirably, and yet it is so outmatched in military might that it remains in peril."

Part III is more in the weeds on weapons and tactics. It gets into some really gnarly deep nerd stuff about the immediate preamble to a siege that I loved.

https://acoup.blog/2019/05/24/collections-the-siege-of-gondor-part-iii-having-fun-storming-the-city/

"The paths the siege towers will take must be cleared and leveled (even a slight grade will tip them over). Earthwork cover for the approach on the gate should be set up, along with obstructions to prevent the army within the city from advancing at an inopportune moment. In assaulting a fortified city with a large army, the spade is often the most important weapon. Even building a ramp right up the enemy walls to enter the city was a common and successful tactic, if the assaulting army had enough labor to do it quickly enough."

My favorite part of the section on calvary charge was the notable absence of NCOs in the orc ranks, maintaining discipline.

https://acoup.blog/2019/05/31/collections-the-siege-of-gondor-part-iv-the-cavalry-arrives/

"The orc general, Gothmog has to push through the ranks and reorder his infantry, while the orcs stare dumbfounded at the new threat. This is a task that should have been taken up by a hundred-hundred NCOs up and down the line, which speaks to problems of command structure."

By far the most intensely geeky section is in Part V, which deals with the math for calculating whether the trolls could possibly heft the hammers that deal the damage that we see.

https://acoup.blog/2019/06/07/collections-the-siege-of-gondor-part-v-just-flailing-about-flails/

"If a troll really is around 9 times as strong as a strong man, we might figure that a troll sledgehammer might be something like 81kg, and a troll warhammer only 5.76 – 13.59kg. Wildly short of the massive clubs and hammers the trolls wield in these scenes."

ICE's risk assessment algorithm only ever recommends detention (permalink)

The New York Civil Liberties Union and Bronx Defenders have filed suit against ICE, trying to force it to respond to a FOIA request about risk assessment algorithm that has put people in detention 97% of the time.

https://theintercept.com/2020/03/02/ice-algorithm-bias-detention-aclu-lawsuit/

The algorithm was tweaked after the 2016 election (prior to then, it only recommended detention for 53% of cases), and by classifying virtually everyone it evaluates as a public safety risk, it violates the law's requirement of "individualized determinations" for detentions.

People in immigration detention have yet to see a judge or be found guilty. They can be locked up for weeks or months, and detention can cost them their jobs — or even their children. The Trump administration has exponentially increased the number of immigration arrests; coupled with automatic detention-by-algorithm, this has put thousands of New Yorkers in harm's way.

Investigative journalists and activists have previously shown that the algorithm was changed to eliminate all possible outcomes (bond, release, etc), so that it could only recommend detention. So the problem here isn't the usual one of not knowing how the black-box works. We know exactly how it works. You ask it, "Should this person be detained?" and it says "Yes."

"The no-release policy is particularly tough on people with disabilities or health problems. 'This practice of widespread detention is both cruel and needless.'"

Probing China's Covid-19 censorship (permalink)

Citizen Lab's new report on Chinese coronavirus censorship is outstanding. By decompiling the YY client (which stores blacklist words on the client-side) and probing Wechat (which uses server-side blacklisting), they build up a detailed picture of Chinese epidemiological censorship.

https://citizenlab.ca/2020/03/censored-contagion-how-information-on-the-coronavirus-is-managed-on-chinese-social-media/

Most importantly, they demonstrate how the Cyberspace Administration of China's threat of "thematic inspections" of platforms to ensure coronavirus censorship led to indiscriminate blocking of vital public health information.

It's "authoritarian blindness" in the making, "where people too scared to tell the autocrat the hard truths makes it impossible for the autocrat to set policy that reflects reality"

https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/24/pluralist-your-daily-link-dose-24-feb-2020/#thatswhatxisaid

"Censorship of COVID-19 content started at early stages of the outbreak and continued to expand blocking a wide range of speech, from criticism of the government to officially sanctioned facts and information."

By contrast, the sheer volume of "sarcastic homonyms or word play related to COVID-19" that appear on the blacklist are really a testament to the ingenuity and spirit of Chinese netizens.

"A number of these keyword combinations are critical (e.g., "亲自 [+] 皇上," by someone + emperor), criticizing the central leadership's inability or inaction in dealing with COVID-19 ("习近平 [+] 形式主义 [+] 防疫," Xi Jinping + formalism + epidemic prevention). Many of them refer to leadership in a neutral way (e.g., "肺炎 [+] 李克强 [+] 武汉 [+] 总理 [+] 北京," Pneumonia + Li Keqiang + Wuhan + Premier + Beijing)."

America is uniquely at risk from coronavirus (permalink)

Among rich countries, the USA is uniquely vulnerable to coronavirus. Thanks to its title to "by far the worst system among rich countries, it is much worse than that of many poorer countries when it comes to confronting a fast-moving epidemic."

https://theweek.com/articles-amp/899359/why-america-vulnerable-coronavirus

The US has 77m un/underinsured people. "and the vicious, right-wing ideology of the Republican Party has wrecked the government's ability to manage crises of any kind, " with "unqualified cronies" running important agencies.

"Now they are resorting to the only thing they know how to do really well — lying, concocting conspiracy theories and blaming Democrats and the media for any bad news. It does not bode well."

This day in history (permalink)

#15yrsago EFF is hiring a new IP lawyer https://web.archive.org/web/20050307005314/http://www.corante.com/copyfight/archives/2005/03/04/ip_attorneys_eff_wants_you.php (the ad that led to the hiring of Corynne McSherry!)

#10yrsago Guardian column on LibDem proposal to block web-lockers https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/mar/04/web-lockers-digital-economy-liberal-democrats-wrong

#1yrago Fox News was always partisan, but now it is rudderless and "anti-democratic" https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/11/the-making-of-the-fox-news-white-house

#1yrago Leaked memo suggests that Google has not really canceled its censored, spying Chinese search tool https://theintercept.com/2019/03/04/google-ongoing-project-dragonfly/

#1yrago Terra Nullius: Grifters, settler colonialism and "intellectual property" https://locusmag.com/2019/03/cory-doctorow-terra-nullius/

#1yrago Tim Maughan's Infinite Detail: a debut sf novel about counterculture, resistance, and the post-internet apocalypse https://boingboing.net/2019/03/04/gnu-slash-apocalypse.html

#1yrago Financialization is wearing out its welcome https://www.ft.com/content/a9f13afc-3c3d-11e9-b856-5404d3811663

#1yrago How the patent office's lax standards gave Elizabeth Holmes the BS patents she needed to defraud investors and patients https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/03/theranos-how-a-broken-patent-system-sustained-its-decade-long-deception/

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Naked Capitalism (https://nakedcapitalism.com/), Slashdot (https://slashdot.org/) and Kottke (Kottke).

Hugo nominators! My story "Unauthorized Bread" is eligible in the Novella category and you can read it free on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Upcoming appearances:

Canada Reads Kelowna: March 5, 6PM, Kelowna Library, 1380 Ellis Street, with CBC's Sarah Penton https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cbc-radio-presents-in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-96154415445

Currently writing: I just finished a short story, "The Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel now, though the timing is going to depend on another pending commission (I've been solicited by an NGO) to write a short story set in the world's prehistory.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: Disasters Don't Have to End in Dystopias: https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/01/disasters-dont-have-to-end-in-dystopias/

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a very special, s00per s33kr1t intro.

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quakerjoe · 4 years

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Dear Biden Bro Rape Apologists

This includes you politician motherfuckers backing Biden right now.

A CUPPA JOE for CINCO de MAYO, 2020

During all this time you spent bashing me because I supported Tara Reade, I’d like to point something out at this time that clearly y’all missed in your ever-glorified shit-slinging fest defending your GOP insider, Joe Biden.

No ONCE did any of you motherfuckers ever ask one simple question of me and it was this:

“Do you actually BELIEVE Tara Reade?”

Rather an important question, isn’t it? Here’s what separates me from you shit guzzlers who are so fucking terrified and scared of trump that you’re willing to back any piece of shit just to be rid of him.

You see, dumbasses, my answer would have been “I don’t know; I wasn’t there.” But like most feckless twats, you all missed the point and now it’s too late for you all. The train left the station. That ship has sailed. The point was that we needed to take the accusation seriously, for the sake of all women and all Survivors and investigate the matter because it would have been the right thing to do, not ignore and scorn her and try to cover it up. I’d expect that of the GOP, but come on, Democrats! You were supposed to be better than that! EPIC FAIL ON YOUR END HERE.

Since clearly you left-wing trump-tards-for-biden types need it spelled out for you:

Whether of not Reade’s story is true or not is, at present, immaterial. What matters is your conduct and the conduct of the fucking assholes in the DNC and the party, and you all failed at being decent human beings.

You failed to take the accusation seriously when it was YOUR guy while not that long ago you were all screaming for justice to the victims of people like Bret Kavenaugh, trump, Cosby, and Weinstein to name but a few rich and powerful types who adhere to trump’s “philosophy” of how you can grab ‘em by the pussy and get away with it when your famous.

YOU FAILED. Not me. You.

What’s worse is that good people like Al Franken had their careers burned for far less. You failed him, and not you’ve shown that you’re willfully ignorant, selfish cunts, just like trump supporters. JUST LIKE THEM.

You see, there’s supposed to be this process when it comes to vetting people for things. Employers tend to do a general background check before hiring employees. When I joined the Navy over half a lifetime ago, my life was thoroughly put under scrutiny because I’d volunteered to serve on submarines. They looked into every detail of my life from my family to my schooling to my jobs to interviewing my friends to get a feel for whether or not I was trustworthy enough to work on classified equipment, also checking my finances to ensure I wasn’t vulnerable to things like being tempted to be a traitor by selling secrets to foreign adversaries because I was in a tight spot. They wanted to make sure there was no dirt anyone could have on me that might compromise me in some way.

Trump got ZERO of that. I was only an enlisted fuck serving on a sub. Why is it we do not hold the Commander-in-Chief to an even higher standard when he’s going to have the “football” within reach at all times with nuclear codes?

As I’d mentioned, the investigation involved looking into character. Biden is a CREEPY CHARACTER, but clearly like trump supporters, you Biden Bros are fine with Biden being creepy and possibly even RAPEY. But the point is we’re talking about an outright RAPE here. RAPE. Biden is accused of cornering and then digitally penetrating a woman’s vagina against her consent. Does that mean ANYTHING to you? Especially you women who are betraying your own supporting this fucknugget! Where’s the concern? Where’s the desire to delve into the vetting process and enact this “DUE PROCESS” you once screamed for?

I don’t know if Reade’s story is true or not. However, where we part ways is that I, for one, took it seriously. I firmly believe, in good conscience, that Biden’s got enough going against him as it is that that Due Process will either vindicate him enough that people like me might be able to choke down the vomit long enough to force myself to vote for him OR he’ll be proven to be a rapist and should, by rights, step out of the way for someone that’s NOT a rapist.

You assholes backing him FAILED. You failed not only women everywhere who are Survivors, you betrayed MeToo, TimesUp, the already weak and tarnished reputation of the Dem. party, and overall and most importantly- your country.

You FAILED to be a decent human being. So, to end this, you clearly need me more than I need you or Biden. If you can’t represent what I hold dear and adhere to a code of conduct becoming a representative of the US Presidency, then I won’t be bullied by you or tolerate you forcing me to betray my code of decency. You won’t tarnish my moral compass. But, in the end, you’ll still need me.

Like trump supporters, you need what I represent- “The other”. I’m the one you’ll blame in November when Biden tanks and we get 4 more of trump because somehow in your addled brains you equate MY lack of support as support for the other side. I support neither because to me, they’re one in the same all working to promote the GOP agenda of utter shittiness. None of my values are being represented by Biden except by way of paltry lip service in order to get elected to his likely one term where he promised to literally change nothing. Yay. A real go-getter to save the working class and save the world from disease, poor education and climate change. Woo-hoo!

So don’t you worry. I’ll be here for you to blame. I know you will because taking personal responsibility for your loss is just what trump supporters do- deny mistakes and blame someone else; trump style, but you know what? I don’t give a flying fuck in a rolling donut. I for one as will others like me will know that the fault is yours for not standing up to the fuckery of the DNC and always taking a knee to bow down to corporate/establishment Democrats who truly don’t give a fuck about you. I’m here for them too; the Great American Scapegoat, that’s me. You people will never learn and you’re no better than the GOP, trump, or his dumbass supporters. Blame me and my kind all you want because we’re not only not afraid to stand up to trumplefuckstick, we’re also not afraid to stand up to Democrats and call them out on their bullshit, either. You Biden Bros had a simple job- sell us on Biden. Earn our votes. Convince us in a meaningful way. Instead, you’ve demonstrated that you’re pieces of shit like trump’s cultists.

It’s not MY JOB to vote for someone, especially if I don’t believe him or if he represents NOTHING I want from my representative in the White House as POTUS. It’s THEIR job to convince me to HIRE THEM because this is a big fucking job interview, not a round of fucking Candy Land. So far, I am about as impressed with the Democrats as I am with the GOP and you’re not helping. To me, you’ve gotten to be more of the same than you were back in 2016. It’s as if trump has actually set a new standard so low that Dems are racing them to the bottom.

If Democrats want my vote, they’ll front me at least SOME of what I want in a POTUS. Biden offers ZERO for me, and if you weren’t so terrified to trump like scared little children, you’d get your heads out of your stupid, well laid asses and see that Biden’s just not into you either.

~Quaker Joe

#MeToo #MeTooExceptBiden #SayNoToJoe #BLUEMaga

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prorevenge · 5 years

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Become the worst neighbor and HOA Board member ever? Lose your "job" and HOA

Let me start by saying NEVER purchase a house in a HOA, it is a complete mess that should be regulated and illegal. If I knew about HOA's when I bought my first home I would have never purchased my first home in one.

Me and my wife purchased our first home when we were 24 and 25. We spent months looking at houses and areas and tried to find a "forever" home in a good district for potential future kids etc. We finally found a perfect one at a decent price.

At first everything was great, super nice neighborhood and decent neighbors. Well a few months after buying the house we rented an RV to go on a trip and parked it in the driveway for the 3 days leading up to the trip to pack it and for me to learn how half the things in it worked.

Well this is when we learned that HOAs are absolutely crazy and our neighbor was on the board of our local HOA. Within an hour of it being parked he got home and stormed over demanding we remove it from "his" neighborhood or he would have it towed and fine us for every hour it was there.

Myself being the average and normal person told him kindly to fuck off and get out of my driveway and told him if he returns I'll call the cops because he was screaming like a madman inches from my face.

About 3 hours later a big rig tow truck shows up and he walked up like he was a god and handed me a plain envelope with a letter inside that pretty much said "by order of the HOA this RV is to be towed" and a fine of $1,500 for violating their rules.

While Mr Crazy Board Member might not listen to reason the tow truck guy they found wasn't so fond of entering my driveway and towing a vehicle when I told him if he comes on the property I'll call the cops. Once the tow truck driver decided he's done being involved in this mess and left neighbor goes even more crazy and storms off.

I call my friend to get his Dad's number because he's an attorney to ask him about this insane letter and fine I just received and to ask him some legal advice. After speaking to his father he told me to come down, write him a $500 check and bring along all the papers I received when purchasing the home and the current letter I just received.

The next day he had a very friendly letter sent to my neighbor and the HOA board. Basically telling my neighbor to fuck himself in legal terms and to leave us and our property alone.

I then continued to receive fines of $1,500 a day in plain envelopes not postmarked stuffed into my mailbox that I then turned over to my friend's father and each time he sent another set of letters and contacted USPS to report the incidents. Turns out putting mail into people's mailbox is a crime, who knew.

Well we decide to go on our week long trip across the state and mildly forget about it all. Kind of upset I had to spend $500 to have an attorney send letters but that's what they do.

Fast forward to us returning from the trip and the RV back in our driveway for 2 days so we can unload/clean then return it. Again each day more envelopes stuffed into our mailbox and more visits to our attorney and more letters sent and more incidents reported to USPS.

Well here's where the fun really begins, turns out Mr Crazy finally gives me a "summons" to appear before the board. My attorney said this is crazy illegal because what they've done is use what looks like an actual legal document improperly to "summon" me to the board.

Another $500 to the attorney and we wait for the date they made (a Tuesday at 10AM). They attempt to keep my attorney out of the room on some "board privacy" rule but quickly shut the hell up when he begins going over their own rules that they are violating to them.

Deep in this HOA book are some very nicely worded rules and stuff outlining about what makes board members ineligible, and how they cannot serve if they commit certain infractions. Well guess what Mr Crazy neighbor has done? Committed several of them, all documented.

Also the cherry on top is that if 51% of the HOA members vote to dissolve the HOA, it all goes away. Well it happens my wife worked part time from home during this mess and had all the free time in the world to begin a "Disband the HOA" campaign.

Over the course of the next 2 months she went around and really began to get to know our neighborhood really well. Turns out a lot of people dislike the HOA and the power hungry seniors who act like dictators that run it.

The HOA attempted to stall everything by holding no meetings (another HOA violation) and began their own campaign trying to change HOA rules to keep from being ousted and a fairly racist flyer and letter to everyone explaining the "dangers" of not having an HOA and all the bad people (blacks and Mexicans) that will move in and take over/sell drugs etc. That our houses would become much less valuable and everything else they could try.

Turns out it's extremely fun to use someone's own rules against them. The neighborhood even started a fund that paid us back what it cost us to get the attorney started and the continued costs he had.

A few weeks after their failed fear campaign and being forced to hold a meeting a vote was called by using their own rules. The HOA was no more and all remaining funds were to be dispersed back to the home owners and members equally (this never happened, turns out somehow the HOA used all their funds in the course of the last two months).

About half the former board members sold their homes and moved, including Mr Crazy Neighbor. I've spent 3 hours trying to find old news articles because it was reported on mostly due to the racist letters by the HOA but it was too long ago to find anything.

Moral of the whole mess, don't buy a home in an HOA and if you do.. plan to hire an attorney.

(source) (story by doggologgopoo)

#prorevenge #by doggologgopoo #pro revenge #revenge stories #pro revenge stories #pro #revenge #revenge story #last10

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purplesurveys · 4 years

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626

HI BELATED HAPPY NEW YEAR

First things first, did you have a good year? I would say most of it was good. I did most of the stuff I said I was going to do so I’m giving myself pats on the back for that. Things just kinda took a turn for the worse by the end of the year what with an ambiguous end to my most recent semester (I don’t have two of my seven final grades yet because my prof likes seeing her students suffer, I guess) and losing Nacho, so it all balances out.

How old did you turn this year? I turned 21. Which means legality in the US, but I’ve been legal in the Philippines for three years now so it doesn’t warrant much of a celebration lol.

Do you feel your age? I guess. There are days where it’s very tempting to feel inadequate because there are many 21-year-olds in my social circle who have their own business, are grabbing opportunities here and there (they’re in a successful band, are junior radio jocks, hired as emcees, serve as UAAP courtside reporters, to name a few), already make their own money, etc., but I just have to remind myself that everybody is moving at their own pace and that in my case, at least I’m not behind and that I’m moving remarkably fairly for my age.

Did your appearance change in anyway? Nah I BARELY did anything to my look this year. I did not go for a haircut at all in 2019 and now my hair is crazy long. I’m keeping it untrimmed until my grad shoot, so the long hair will stay with me for a while.

Post your favorite selfie. I would but Tumblr doesn’t really work the same way as Twitter where I’d feel more free to share photos of myself haha.

If you traveled, where did you go? My family went to Pangasinan, Bicol, Tagaytay, and Cavite this year. I also took my friends on a day trip to Nasugbu shortly before school started in August as sort of a last hurrah for our summer vacation.

Which fashion trends did you love? Which fashion trends did you hate? I initially liked chunky sneakers until everyone bought their own pair solely so that they’d feel like they’re one of the cool kids – it quickly became uncool after that. I was a fan of mom jeans (still am), high-waisted jeans, culottes, and tops in muted colors and had cute little bows in the chest area. I hated bike shorts and scrunchies, and slowly got tired of off-shoulder tops by the end of the year. I never understood tracksuits and never bought one of my own, and was also never a fan of hype fashion like DBTK shirts.

What was your favorite article of clothing this year? Post a pic if possible? I looooooooved the floral romper and the two-piece ensemble I was both able to snag at Feliz.

What song sums up this year for you? Buwan by juan karlos, the two reasons being that the song exploded in 2019 and because it was Nacho’s favorite and he made a million jokes about it.

What album came out and has been on heavy rotation since then? This question is a little vague so I’ll answer it in two ways. In my case, I definitely played Beyonce’s Homecoming album TOO MUCH last year. But radio-wise, it looked like Ariana Grande and Camila Cabello had stellar years.

What was your favorite movie of the year? I had several favorite movies, but here they are put in order: Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Midsommar, and Toy Story 4.

Did an actor/actress catch your attention for the first time this year? Florence fucking Pugh. Also I just realized how attractive Timothee Chalamet is, although I’ve been aware of him way before 2019 and haven’t watched any of his material.

Favorite new TV show? I watched the first few episodes of Stranger Things but I found it too slow-paced so I let it go easily. Other than that I didn’t really get into any 2019 shows because I’m not a big TV person, but I did recently get into Descendants of the Sun so that’s new for me! Queer Eye will also always have a place in my heart.

Which new ship/fandom has taken over a lot of your time, attention, and tears? I’m a little too old for that now but I did heavily get into the Try Guys. I don’t ship any of them together but I just genuinely love each of them, them as a group, and all the content they put out.

What food did you try for the first time? Ooh there’s a lot. Foie gras, aligue (crab fat) ramen, Bloody Mary, pistachios, a vanilla frappe from Starbucks, Tim Hortons food, ji pai (Taiwanese fried chicken) and pad thai, to name a few. I’m so so so pumped to try out even more new food in 2020.

Did you make any big permanent changes this year? I stopped talking to my brother.

What was one nice thing you did for someone else? Being one of the only two people in my org who can drive, I’ve always offered lifts to my friends. I don’t say anything even if where I’m taking them is entirely off my normal route, which frustrates Gabie, but honestly I just like helping my friends and making their commute easier for them. I also checked up on Nacho a day before he passed. I regret being too civil, but at least I checked up on him. Not a lot of people did that in his last few days.

What was one nice thing you did for yourself? Ok so one thing my org does is hold journalism workshops to schools across the country. The org is a bit small and not all the members are reliable, so what usually happens is that the same group of people attend the workshops and teach and facilitate – me being a part of that same group of people. Given that we have class during weekdays and these workshops happen on weekends, the schedule can be very demanding, especially if these schools request a shit-ton of topics for us to teach them. I sort of looked out for myself more this year by declining to go to a couple of the workshops, so that I can experience actually having a full weekend to myself.

Did you develop a new obsession? I discovered a YouTuber who is insanely good at Mario Kart 8 and I watched a ton of his playthroughs in 2019. Oh, and MUKBANG ASMRs. It’s an insanely unpopular opinion but I love chewing noises, dude.

Did you vote? It was the senatorial elections this year and yes, I did vote. None of my votes got in, of course, because unfortunately the rest of the Filipino electorate don’t know any better. I was part of a real-time fact-checking group that day for extra class credit, and I will never forget the collective groan and moan that came out of that room when the first batch of results came out on the news and we saw the same corrupt, power-hungry, money-hungry, anti-poor politicians top the polls.

Did you move? No. I’ve lived in the same house since 2008.

Did you get a job? I did not, BUT I did get an internship which I was pretty stoked about.

Did you get a pet? I did not. I don’t want anyone else but my dog, who I’ve had also since 2008.

Do you regret not doing anything? Sure. I have never taken Gab’s mom out on a girls’ night kind of date, and I always told myself that I was going to finally do that in 2019 – which I didn’t. I’m so going to make sure we do it this year. I’m also sad that I didn’t get to see Angela more times last year. And that I didn’t do more for Nacho, so now I have to live with the loss of him forever.

Do you regret doing something? Nothing is coming to mind so I guess nothing major. <-- Pretty much, thankfully.

Have you done anything that scared you? Tried vaping, did shisha for the first time, walk alone in Katipunan, be stuck at a restaurant table with Gab’s (very stoic) dad while she went to the washroom, to name a few lol. On a deeper note, I was a bad girlfriend several times over 2019 and it rocked the relationship quite a bit.

Did anyone/thing make you so mad it stayed with you for days? Yeah absolutely. I hated the people who went too far when it came to Nach, especially his ‘friends’ who didn’t hesitate to turn his back on him. And when things finally crashed and burned, I was too fucking pissed at everybody to even say something about it.

Did you lose anyone close to you? Yes.

Did you fall in love? For most of 2019 as with 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018, yes.

Did you fall out of love? Nope.

Did you start a new relationship? I did not.

Did you go through a break up? I almost had to, but we sat each other down several times in the year to fix what had to be fixed, and it’s been very smooth sailing since.

Did you have to cut ties to someone? They weren’t people I was close to in any extent, but I’ve blocked several people from a certain elite school because I hate that school.

Who was important to you this year but wasn’t important last year? No one strongly comes to mind since I basically just retained my circle, but I did meet Gab’s closest cousin this year for the first time, and anyone who’s family to her is automatically important to me, so I’d go with him.

Who wasn’t as important to you this year as they were last year? This is going to sound completely awful, but I guess my college blockmates. I was always sort of the ~black sheep in our small batch of 7 while all of them are incredibly close with one another. 2019 was the year that I stopped trying to hang out with them, because I realized that no matter how hard I try, we’re really just on different wavelengths and I can’t keep faking my expressions and mannerisms just so I feel accepted or so that I can survive a day with them.

If you could have a do over on one thing you did, would you take it? Yeah, I definitely wish I cut some of my classes much less.

What was the best moment of the year for you? What was the worst? There were a lot of high moments from 2019 if we’re being honest. I liked taking Gab and her dad out for a ONE Championship pay-per-view back in January, I liked being invited to her dad’s birthday dinner, my road trip to Nasugbu, every day that my dad was here, going to the beach, partying for Halloween with friends, seeing old friends again in our org Christmas party, that one night Gab and I went to BGC just to bar-hop, our fancypants date that was also in BGC, and I’m sure there’s a bunch more that I’ve forgotten to mention. The absolute worst moment came at the very minute I pieced it together and found out *surprise surprise* Nacho was gone forever. I don’t think I was able to speak for two hours. When I did, I ended up crying the rest of the night until I passed out.

Did anything happen that you were sure would change you as a person but it really didn’t? Not-so-serious answer, but I thought I was gonna live my entire life without needing injections to my mouth, but lo and behold I went to the dentist in December and got THREE. I thought I was going to pass out, I thought it was going to hurt, I thought I was going to thrash around my seat in terror... I ended up not even feeling anything. I dunno if it’s because I got a lower dose of whatever, or if my dentist is just better than others, but the whole experience went much better than I expected. This may sound shallow but I have the biggest needle-and-any-sharp-object phobia, so this is a lot coming from me hahaha.

Did anything happen to you that you were sure wouldn’t change you as a person but it did? Watching Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Gab just needed a companion to the cinema that night; I had no idea what the movie was going to be about and even read the entire plot while trailers were showing – in the end, it’s been me who’s been talking about the movie way way more than she.

What are you most proud of accomplishing? Not killing myself. The 2010s was just me internally betting on when I’d finally pull the plug, but I had what it took to get me to 2020, apparently.

What have you learned about yourself this year that you didn’t know in the years prior? That everything you do and say on the internet is permanent, and you’ll forever have to live with the the consequences that come from them.

Did your opinion of anyone change for the better? Andrew. Before 2019, I found him so horrifyingly clingy, so chatty, and he was always trying to be close to everyone (he still does). It drove the introvert side of my ambivert-ness absolutely NUTS. At one point I realized he wasn’t going to change, so I just gave him a chance and turns out, he’s a great friend and an even better co-worker hahaha.

Did your opinion of anyone change for worse? Everybody who claimed to be Nach’s friend but didn’t find it hard to say vile stuff about him.

If you make resolutions, did you complete them this year? I told myself I was going to make a one-photo-a-day private Instagram dump for 2019, but I stopped as early as January 27 LMAOOOOO. I’m doing it again this year and I’m much more determined to keep it going.

If you make resolutions, what will your resolutions be for the coming year? Keep my 2020 Instagram active, be able to travel... and be happier, basically.

If you could go on an adventure during the remaining days of the year, where would you go and what would you do? Who would you go this? A little too late my dude. I’m typing this out in 2020.

What do you wish for others for the coming year? What do you wish for yourself? I just hope everybody on here feels a little bit more warmth and happiness, dude. We all deserve it.

#survey #surveys

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minaland · 5 years

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Song Fic Drabble Game (#1)

Rules: Create both a playlist of 10 songs and a list of 10 pairings. Put the songs on shuffle. For each song, write a drabble starring one of the pairings on the list. (One song = one pairing with no repeats.) The catch is you only have until the end of the song to finish writing. When the song ends, you stop writing. Ready, set, drabble!

(this was @9taeils‘s idea and we did it together, with the same songs but different pairings. we had a lot of fun with it so go check hers out too! and vote for your favorite one and i’ll do my best to write it into a full fic! okay let’s go)

Be Alright by Dean Lewis – Taehyung/Yoongi

A loud crash startled Hoseok so badly he almost fell off his chair. Jin turned his head towards the source of the noise. His expression darkened.

“Sorry,” Yoongi slurred from the doorway. “Sorry, Jin, I broke your, uh, thing.”

Namjoon dropped his cards and jumped to his feet when he realized how drunk his friend was. He made it to Yoongi’s side seconds before he fell and guided him gently to the leather couch against the far wall, where he collapsed and immediately covered his face with his hands.

“Taehyung cheated on me,” Yoongi said.

Invisible by 5 Seconds of Summer – Jin/Taehyung

Taehyung hugged his knees to his chest. It wasn’t supposed to go like this.

The muted TV on the wall flashed muted colors against the opposite wall, and he sat in the glow, reflecting on that night. How long ago was it? How long had he even been here?

He should’ve tried to save Jin. He shouldn’t have left things the way he did. He should’ve stayed behind, should’ve tried to work things out.

Coward, he thought. You’re a coward. His blood is on your hands.

Someone in one of the rooms at the other end of the hall screamed, and he covered his ears so he didn’t have to hear it.

11:11 by Taeyeon – Jeno/Jaemin

Jeno sat up in bed. Nothing on TV held his interest. The apps on his phone couldn’t keep his attention. All the songs on his playlist just reminded him of Jaemin. He turned everything off and flopped onto his back. He glanced at the clock.

It was 11:11.

He remembered all the nights and mornings he and Jaemin would wait for 11:11 to make their wishes. Jaemin always told Jeno his wish, but Jeno always thought it was bad luck and kept his to himself.

He always wished for things to get better.

Tonight, his wish was different. Tonight he only wished for peace. He wished for his heart to heal. It was only a breakup, after all.

He stared at the blinking time and counted the seconds, repeating the mantra in his head.

I wish for peace. I wish for peace. I wish for peace.

11:12.

Gotta Get Out by 5 Seconds of Summer – Vernon/Seungkwan

Vernon stood in the street, watching as people ran past him. Seungkwan crouched beside him, his head buried in his hands.

“Seungkwan,” he said, a smile spreading across his face.

Seungkwan lifted his face towards his best friend, wiping a tear from his cheek.

“What are you smiling for?” Seungkwan said.

The earth began to shake beneath their feet and Vernon reached a hand to Seungkwan, who didn’t hesitate to grab it. He let himself be pulled to his full height, and together they ran alongside the growing crowd.

The sky lit up in an unnatural color and Vernon laughed out loud. Seungkwan couldn’t figure out what in the world could be so funny, but he trusted Vernon with his life. He held on tight, and together they ran.

Tequila by Dan + Shay – Hoseok/Yoongi

Yoongi asked his friends to meet him at the bar. He didn’t want to end up going alone again. Not today, of all days.

But last minute, he texted them and cancelled the plans.

They wished him well, told him that they were a phone call away if he needed anything at all. He was grateful for them, but he couldn’t bring himself to see them tonight.

So he walked to the train station and rode into the next town, then walked a block to the nearest pub.

He sat down at the empty bar and ordered a double shot of Patron.

It was Hoseok’s favorite drink, and a drink they had shared often.

He preferred whiskey or scotch, and to be honest, he truly hated the taste of tequila, but it was a special occasion—the anniversary of their first kiss and, incidentally, the anniversary of Hoseok’s death.

Nobody’s Fool by Miranda Lambert – Jungwoo/Doyoung

“Hey,” Jaehyun said, nudging Doyoung’s arm. “Don’t you know that guy?”

Doyoung straightened up and looked across the bar at the group walking in. Among them was Jungwoo. Of fucking course it was Jungwoo. Was Doyoung an idiot? Did he really expect not to run into him, here, at their bar?

“Yeah,” Doyoung said, pretending not to be interested.

“Didn’t you, like, date him?” Jaehyun pressed on.

“No,” Doyoung said. “Not exactly.” He was too embarrassed to say he fell way too hard way too quickly for a guy who only flirted for sport.

He watched out of the corner of his eye as Jungwoo leaned on the bar and shamelessly flirted with a pretty man nursing a pink drink. Doyoung watched with narrowed eyes and a heavy heart as he pulled the handsome stranger to the dance floor.

The Breaker by Little Big Town – Hoseok/Jimin

Hoseok’s finger hovered over Jimin’s name in his phone. He was just going to call really quick, just to say hello and see how things were going.

He knew he’d ruined everything. He couldn’t help it. His heart had always been known to change quickly, there was never anything he could do to stop it.

He locked the screen and put his phone down on the table. He took a look around as he sipped his iced coffee. The café was bustling with people on their lunch breaks.

Idly he wondered if he might run into Jimin here.

It was killing him not to call. But his girlfriend sat across from him, typing away on her laptop, rushing to get her paper done before her next class. And her hair was messy, and her eyes bugged out a little from stress and a lack of sleep, and he couldn’t worry her even more by calling his ex.

And he couldn’t ruin Jimin even more by letting him hear his voice. He couldn’t put that hope in his heart.

Junkyard by Zac Brown Band – Namjoon/Jungkook

Namjoon heard shouting from across the shop. He wiped sweat from his brow and looked in the direction of the yell. It was too hot for this.

As the owner of the auto repair shop approached him, he could smell the alcohol in his sweat. He slurred curse words at him for a minute or so before he turned on his heel and went back in the direction he came from. Namjoon only nodded and continued his work. He needed this job, so he took the abuse.

A loud engine rumbled far away, and as the sound came closer Namjoon’s muscles tensed up. He hadn’t worked here long but he’d already grown accustomed to the sound of the owner’s son’s car. Suddenly the engine turned off and silence followed. The door opened and closed and Namjoon heard Jungkook’s footsteps approaching him.

He couldn’t interact with him.

He’d lose his job.

And he needed this job. Nobody else was willing to hire him.

“Hey, Namjoon,” Jungkook said in a small voice. He didn’t turn to look at him. He paused what he was doing long enough for Jungkook to notice and to know that he was heard, but that was all he was willing to risk.

“Hey, you!” the drunk shouted.

Namjoon took a deep breath and tried to focus only on the weight of the switchblade in his pocket.

Saving Amy by Brantley Gilbert – Seokmin/Jihoon

Sometimes in the middle of the night, Jihoon would still wake himself up crying. Seokmin was always patient. He didn’t know what it was like to lose a partner. He hoped he’d never learn.

Tonight was particularly bad. Jihoon had shouted the name in his sleep, over and over like he was being tortured by the memory. Seokmin shook him awake, told him that everything was okay, that he was here and that he loved him and would take care of him.

Once he was fully awake, Jihoon let himself breathe, let himself be held and comforted.

The room was suddenly ice cold, strange for late June, and Jihoon cuddled up to Seokmin for warmth. Seokmin made a stupid sound effect as he wiped Jihoon’s tears from his face, trying to make Jihoon laugh, but he was already back asleep.

There was a wide smile on his face.

The Black and White by The Band CAMINO – Mingyu/Seungcheol

Mingyu dialed Seungcheol’s phone number with shaking hands. It rang for a minute then went to voicemail. He hung up and tried again with the same result.

He understood why Seungcheol had left so suddenly. But it was late, and he hadn’t slept yet, and Mingyu worried that something would happen to him.

He called again.

This time it rang once before going to voicemail. He declined the call.

Part of Mingyu wished Seungcheol could just let go. Why, every time Minghao got himself into shit like this, did Seungcheol have to rush off and save him?

Mingyu dialed again, pulling back the curtain as he listened to the ringing, looking outside and hoping to see Seungcheol’s car pull up in their driveway.

“Hi.” Seungcheol’s voice was calm. Mingyu relaxed and leaned against the wall. He held onto the phone with both hands. “I’m okay,” Seungcheol said. “Everything is okay. Go back to bed. I love you.”

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years

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IF LISP IS A CASUALTY OF

This is an extremely useful question. If someone went to Stanford and is not obviously insane, they're probably a safe bet. And yet a lot of lines have nothing on them but a delimiter or two. And that cures the other half of the thank-you notes from his wedding, four years ago. I now realize, is that there is now potentially an actual audience for our work. Here's a sign of how much programmers like to be good at hacking, is figure out what you truly like. It's practically the standard ending in blog entries—uh, what it the conclusion? Prep schools openly say this is inevitable—that high school students aren't capable of getting anything done yet. But you're not thinking that way about a class project and a real startup? Naive founders think that if they can just hire enough people it somehow will be. The whole language always available.

Part of the reason VCs are harsh when negotiating with startups is that big companies tend to have fewer bugs. The reason is that software plays an increasingly important role in companies, and the power of something is how well you can use this information in a way that is crabbed and incomprehensible? What makes it true is that it's more preposterous to claim about anywhere else. And yet, if they do let you down, will still seem to have been a prudent choice. The way to learn about physics didn't need to start by mastering Greek in order to read Aristotle. It's especially good if your application solves some new problem. After the first 10 or so we learned to treat deals as background processes that we should ignore till they terminated. They're the ones that actually work. Certainly. C: C is too low-level. So companies have evolved to fill that niche. He just cannot fail now.

But if you look at the employment agreement you sign when you get fouled is not to search for them—not to wander about thinking, what great discovery shall I make? In fact, the acquirer would have been capable, yet amenable to authority. Co-founders really should be people you already know. Back in the days when people might spend their whole career at one big company, which is the least of your problems, a low burn rate gives you more opportunity to recover from them. And the way these assumptions are going to get nothing. Well, therein lies half the work of essay writing. Only a few people really happy than to make a difference. I know many Lisp hackers that this has happened to. As long as you've made something that a few users love you, but that won't be the last idea you'll have.

As well as having precisely measurable results, we have to have in person. And aside from that, grad school is close to paradise. It sounds crazy, but there's a good chance that would work. Knuth pointed out long ago that speed only matters in a few critical bottlenecks. In practice this seems to work much as in LA. If a startup succeeds, you get to compare how they all perform on identical tasks; and everyone's life is pretty fluid. Sure, it can be launched. Most subjects are taught in such a boring way that it's only by discipline that you can test equality by comparing a pointer. Unfortunately the sort of AI I was trying to solve. Kerry lost. If they could even get here they'd presumably know a few things we don't.

On Lisp. Medieval alchemists were working on a hard problem, but their approach was so bogus that there was a university nearby. As in an essay about it. But I think I know the answer to that. Initially you have to think about more than just learning. Right now most of you feel your job in life is to be learned from whatever book on it happens to be intended for writing compilers. Above that threshold, software purchases generally had to be crammed into the form of an academic paper to yield one more quantum of publication. I think almost anything you can do anything if you really get it, you can contribute to open-source projects. And board votes are rarely split. Individual programs can certainly be the result of a presidential election, which makes it easy to believe it was the cause. And the cost of checks, you can do something that makes many different programs shorter, it is just as worthwhile to design a good language? I've paid close attention to any evidence I could get on the question, how do you get into a good one?

They were invented by McCarthy in the course of developing Lisp. Airbnb into the astonishingly successful organism it is now. But it seemed worth spoiling the atmosphere if I could only tell startups 10 things, this would be one of them you were at a disadvantage. The term dark ages is presently out of fashion as too judgemental the period wasn't dark; it was just different, but if you major in economics it will be easy to raise more money. Or the company that would be a distinct node if you drew a tree representing the source code. I had stopped believing that. What I'm looking for are programs that are short because delimiters can be omitted and everything has a one-character name. But in ambitious adults, instead of drying up, curiosity becomes narrow and deep. They're all terrible procrastinators and find it almost impossible to make themselves do anything they're not interested in. This turns out to be important, because a lot of time on work that interests you, and startups run on morale. In retrospect this was a smart move, but we couldn't figure out how to give them what they want to do research as a career.

Well, this seems a grim view of the world. PhD in computer science, and it could require interpretation in the case of contemporary authors. And when I used to think running was a better form of exercise than hiking because it took less time. One got extra credit for motives having to do with how abstract the language is spoken. Societies eventually develop antibodies to addictive new things. I hadn't deliberately tuned in to that wavelength to see if there was any signal left. Your second advantage, poverty, might not sound like an advantage, but it turned out I was 450 years too late. College is where faking stops working. Yes, of course. And make the topic so intellectually bogus that you could not, if asked, explain why one ought to write about these issues, as far as I know has a serious girlfriend, and everything they own will fit in one car or is crappy enough that they don't mind leaving it behind. Of course they do. Having gotten it down to 13 sentences, I asked myself which I'd choose if I could save some of the people on both sides who supply and check proofs of the supplier's solvency.

Startups rarely die in mid keystroke. Maybe this will change if enough startups choose SF. If they were just like us, then they had to make concessions. At this point he is committed to fight to the death. But really what work experience refers to is not some specific expertise, but the curiosity I mean has a different shape from kid curiosity. They have little discipline. So in addition to the usual clauses about owning your ideas, you also can't be a founder of a startup is to have a rigid, pre-ordained plan and then start a startup at 30. There is now a whole neighborhood of them in San Francisco. Wodehouse or Evelyn Waugh or Raymond Chandler is too obviously pleasing to seem like serious work, as reading Shakespeare would have been better off; not only wouldn't these guys have broken anything, they'd have gotten a lot more than you realized. If it is not all they're for, then what else are they for, and how important, relatively, are these other functions? Checks on purchases will always be expensive, because the center of gravity of Silicon Valley.

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statusquoergo · 5 years

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Credit where credit is due, Gabriel did a nice job directing this episode. He had more screen time that I’m used to from actors pulling double duty, and he seems to have handled the extra workload well.

That’s not to say the episode was flawless. Yeah, by Season 9 standards, it was pretty good overall, but I mean. Season 9 standards.

We start off at home with Louis and Sheila having a terse exchange over tea as I wonder, yet again, why they’re together at all if they’re always so goddamn pissy about everything. Louis bemoans his demotion as Sheila irritably directs him to drink his rooibos and asks him what the big deal is, being that he didn’t even want the job in the first place (true). Louis parries that he only said that because Donna offered it to him the same night he found out about Sheila’s pregnancy (true), but at any other time in his life, he would have taken it (false). On the contrary, you may remember this fairly unambiguous exchange from “Pecking Order” (s08e02) between Doctor Lipschitz and Louis: “As I recall, you accepted Harvey becoming managing partner after Jessica left.” “That’s when I realized I didn’t want to be managing partner.” I suppose I’ve never accused this show of internal consistency before, why bother starting now?

Louis then delightfully compares himself to a ball-less cat and laments that though “the job wasn’t sunshine and rainbows, [he] was getting really good at it,” and excuse me but what? Forget that disastrous hearing that summoned Faye to their doorstep, his most recent acts as managing partner include trying to bully Professor Gerard into letting him be the keynote speaker at Harvard’s Ethic Conference to talk up his failing firm, and going completely off the rails trying to fire the poor IT guy for failing to digitally break into the New York State Bar Association. Louis sucked at being managing partner.

Next up is a reminder that I need to be careful what I wish for as Donna and Harvey discuss his reflexive support of her impassioned but quite incorrect argument against Louis trying to fire Benjamin, and how much she didn’t appreciate it. Turns out it wasn’t so reflexive; he did it because she thought she would like it, which is its own magnificently flawed concept—thinking she’ll get mad at him for disagreeing with her doesn’t say much for his respect for her integrity—but then Donna realizes that he’s afraid she’s going to leave him if he doesn’t unconditionally support her, and you just know the writers thought they were being real clever with this. (Wait, isn’t one of Harvey’s defining character traits his ability to read people? “You read books, I read people” was actually one of the first things he said to Mike in the pilot… Gosh it’s been a long time.)

As I was saying about this show’s internal consistency, two things about this whole exchange: One, all through Season 7, Harvey had no trouble calling Paula out when she was being ridiculous and disagreeing with her about all kinds of shit. Two, as recently as “Everything Changes” (s09e01), Harvey cooed that “[he’s] finally where [he’s] supposed to be” when he’s with Donna, to which Donna replied “We both are,” and like, are they a match made in Heaven right out of the box or what? His trust in their relationship is wildly inconsistent. Unless he wants to forfeit his autonomy for some reason? I don’t know, it’s weird and I don’t like it.

I also take issue with Donna’s dismissive “Oh, my god. Of course. Harvey, I’m not gonna leave you.” This has been an issue for him since forever, as she well knows, but rather than ask him what’s wrong—is he really afraid she’ll leave him over something so small?—or point out that he needs to go to therapy (if she wants to be tactful, she could ask if he wants to “talk to someone” about this), she treats it as an endearing character quirk, and someone needs to save Harvey from all this shit yesterday.

The interruption to this…reconciliation isn’t quite as cringy as the can opener bit from the last episode, but I’ve gotta call it out for being just some truly lazy storytelling. Gretchen appears out of nowhere to tell them they “need to go see Louis,” on account of his demotion, and Donna’s deer-in-headlights response is “Oh, my god. We need to go to him right now.” Yeah, no shit, that’s what Gretchen just said, except this framing affords Harvey the opportunity to mount his noble high horse and declare: “No. You go to him. I need to go see Faye.” Which he does, dramatic music and all, declaring that “dammit, not everybody has to do everything by [her] book,” and I must point out that she demoted Louis for trying to fire the employee who he asked to perform an illegal activity that he failed to perform only because he was caught; in what book is that okay? He then asserts: “You want consequences, I’ll give you consequences,” which is delightfully reminiscent of that old classic, “I’ll give you something to cry about,” in that it makes absolutely no sense, and Harvey, you adorable impetuous dumbass, if your goal is to convince her to leave, I think you might be going about it in a little bit the wrong way.

Roll title crawl! (No seriously, that was all just the cold open.)

Anyway Donna does go to comfort Louis, already treating herself and Harvey as a unit when she assures him that “if [he] ever [needs her] or Harvey during any of this Faye bullshit,” they’re there for him, and dropping the much more interesting detail that she has a much older sister she doesn’t want to talk about who “turned every man she was ever with into an emotional doormat,” which I don’t have time to fic right now but I feel like might explain a lot. Then Alex and Samantha have an endearing little exchange wherein Samantha proposes doing something to help Louis and Alex clarifies that it has to be ethical, and it’s nice to know that at least a couple of people around here aren’t completely insane.

Speaking of things being insane, I won’t fault Gabriel for this because the direction itself is fine, but from a writing perspective, the narrative construct of this next scene is terrible. Harvey shows up at a meeting with Some Guy whose nondescript company is apparently, thanks to his board and the company’s lawyers, being taken over (by someone) against his wishes, and the only hint of context for any of this is that “the people” orchestrating this takeover are “related” to Faye. The obvious conclusion to this exchange is that Harvey is going to help this guy, who is apparently the CEO of this random organization, sue the company by acting as a shareholder rather than a C-level employee, and I still have no idea what the fuck is going on.

Back at the firm where I do kind of know what’s going on, Susan the Associate approaches Katrina with a problem she found in the VersaLife case Katrina’s working, and as soon as they gave her a name in the last episode, I know she was going to be important. More to the point, it looks like Katrina’s got herself an associate! (Remember when senior partners were required to hire their own associates? It was a whole big thing back in Season 1, I think.)

Next up, Louis is having lunch with an old friend, Saul the Judge, who informs him that some other judge is retiring or being fired or something, and offers him a judgeship, and there is so much wrong with this scene that I don’t even know where to begin.

Yes I do. Since when has Louis’s lifelong dream been to be a judge? This is literally the first time he’s ever expressed any interest in it, at all. And another thing, that is not how judicial selection works.

In New York State, judges, depending on the court, are either appointed by the governor and confirmed by the State Senate, nominated by a commission and approved by the governor, chosen at a partisan nominating convention and elected by the voting public, or appointed by the mayor. Qualified individuals can apply to be considered, such as by the Mayor’s Advisory Committee, but there’s no one-and-done offer/acceptance transaction between someone currently on the bench and his lawyer pal, so either this guy is offering Louis a job that doesn’t exist or, more likely, the writers don’t know shit about the New York City legal system.

Moving on. Harvey shoves a recusal form in Faye’s face as he informs her that he “got” a case against her old firm, and he’s “taking it,” as though he didn’t go way out of his way to hunt it down in the first place. He then throws a stupidly juvenile hissy fit, claiming he’ll use whatever he fucking has to to “win,” and prove his system his better than hers, but he won’t have to cross any lines because she de-balled (second reference, just as charming as the first) the guys at her old firm so much that “they’re shaking in their boots” at the mere threat of lawsuit. This whole exchange is basically a showcase of Harvey acting like a spoiled child, and I know he’s a passionate guy but I gotta say, I’m getting tired of this whole act.

Back to that clusterfucking disaster of a judgeship offer, Louis fesses up to Sheila but admits that he doesn’t want to accept the drop in salary with a kid on the way, or leave his friends in the lurch, and she in turn fesses up that she asked Saul to make the offer in the first place because “being a judge has always been [his] dream.” (SINCE WHEN?) Louis is incensed until she tells him that it was basically Saul’s idea, but that if he doesn’t take it now, he’ll never get the change again, which… Why? Well, I guess they haven’t pointlessly manufactured any tension in awhile. Anyway, Louis promises to sleep on it.

Elsewhere, Samantha proposes committing conspiracy to get Faye out of their lives and Alex shuts that shit right away, and I’m actually really enjoying their dynamic right now. Susan asks Katrina what she should do about a smart, funny paralegal she clicks with; Katrina, having “seen that before,” recommends finding a new paralegal, and I’ve never had this question before but is Katrina anti-Machel for some reason? Doesn’t matter. Susan proposes reaching out to opposing counsel, who just so happens to be an old family friend, and Katrina wisely tells her not to, but somewhat less wisely starts and ends her rationale with “Because I know,” which I’m sure won’t motivate Susan to act in any sort of way.

Now, I’m no dream theorist, but luckily this show has all the subtlety of a Liberace action figure, so it’s not too difficult to figure out what Louis’s subconscious mind is trying to say: He wants to humiliate Faye (for demoting him and taking over his firm), he wants to bang Donna (and maybe also Alex), he thinks of Harvey as his peer but also his inferior (who he wants desperately to impress and probably also to fuck), and his confidence is mainly derived from the approval and admiration of others. Also he wants to have sex with basically everyone. Maybe not Gretchen. But everyone else.

Dr. Lipschitz, to whom Louis was evidently relaying the events of this dream, finds the whole thing quite amusing, but points out that if Louis takes the judgeship, he won’t have his friends around him anymore. Double-edged sword and all that.

Part II

#suits usa #season 9 #s09e03 #analysis

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p-artsypants · 6 years

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Boy Toy- Act I

At the age of 21, Princess Astrid lawfully has to pick a husband. But when the perfect groom is now where to be found, she requests the toymaker to create one for her. It's safe to say that everyone in the kingdom is a little concerned. (Pinocchio!AU I guess?)

I’m still working on Arcadia or Bust, but I have this weird AU already finished from like forever ago. I know I’ve been doing a lot of AUs lately, but I just really love them.

AO3 | FF.net

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“No! I won’t go! You can’t make me!” She screamed as she threw herself on the bed. The princess kicked her perfect dainty legs into the mattress.

“It’s rude to skip out on a party,” her beloved servant, Tuff, stated.

“Especially your birthday party,” his twin sister, Ruff, replied.

Astrid looked up from where she had her face buried in her pillow. “But there’s going to be so many people that I’m going to have to shake hands with. And you know Uncle is going to stuff me into a dress.” She hid her face again. “I’m not doing it!”

The two servants looked at each other and sighed. “Why do we do this?” Tuff asked. “You whine and complain, and then you know your uncle is going to make you go anyway, even if he has to carry you in.”

Astrid rolled over on her back. “I don’t like your attitude. I took you off the streets, and I’ll put you back on them.”

Ruff smiled at the princess, looking in her closet for the right dress. “You can, but you won’t.”

Tuff sat on the mattress casually. “Yeah, then who would you throw your axe at? One of the other servants?”

Astrid mumbled. “They always flinch and get hit…”

“See? You’ll just have to tolerate us.”

Astrid sneered. “Sometimes I really hate you two.” She was lying of course, but she needed to keep her servants in their place somehow.

The trio was sequestered in the East wing, what she had dubbed as her living quarters. Thick sheets covered the windows, broadswords and heavy axes hung on the walls. The furniture was in disarray as sometimes her anger would be too much for her and she would cleave a bedpost in two. Only her most trusted servants were allowed to enter, a pair of twins that she had personally hired from off the street with no training whatsoever.

Ruff pulled out a pink taffeta dress with pink-feathered plumes sticking off the back. “Here’s the dress Dagur got you last year for your anniversary. You could wear this!”

“I thought I told you to burn that abomination,” the princess hissed.

Ruff laughed as she stuck the garment in the back of the closet. She and Tuff enjoyed teasing the princess like this. Despite how bratty her replies were, they knew that Astrid was truly happy when people interacted with her instead of just blindly following every order.

She was just bad at showing it.

Just then there was a knock at her bedroom door. Tuff opened it and greeted the nameless servant on the other side.

“His Majesty would like to talk to the Princess in his study,” the shy girl spoke.

“Here we go!” Astrid flung herself off the bed and snagged her favorite battle-axe from where it was lodged in the fine cherry wall. It was her security blanket, if only the twins knew it.

She was perfect. She had to be. The whole world was watching her, pandering to her, and adoring her. Though that adoration ran dry when she turned away. In truth, she would sooner push someone down in the mud to keep her boots clean, than to offer a hand to help them up. She viewed the world over her nose, and demanded perfection.

Astrid, the princess of Berk.

A perfect bitch.

She stomped down the hall and threw the door open to her uncle’s study. “I have arrived, oh great Stoick! Here at your beck and call!”

Stoick, the Tsar of Berk, was a stark contrast to his ‘niece’. A huge man, built like a mountain, but had the soul of a lamb. He was a quiet man, but lived to serve the people. His crimson beard, rosy cheeks, and cauliflower nose only made him look kinder. No Tsar was perfect, but if the populace of Berk had been polled, his numbers were stellar.

So how could such a kind and gentle man be related to Astrid? Well, Uncle wasn’t exactly a truth. When he had fostered her from her old kingdom, she had refused to call him ‘father’ like every councilman had asked. Stoick had suggested ‘Uncle’ instead, and she begrudgingly agreed. Even then, her past traumas had put a bleak disposition on the Princess the likes no one had seen before. Regardless, he loved her dearly, as he had no children of his own.

A parentless child, and a heirless King. Naturally, things worked out.

The monarch looked up at his niece; her blonde hair disheveled, tattered clothes, and that blasted axe.

“The party is in three hours. I expect you to be ready by then.”

“Well, you should lower your expectations.”

Oh how she vexed him. “Astrid, please, you’re turning 21. There’s going to be a lot of people here to see you.”

She huffed, “I don’t want to see them.”

“I know. I know.” Stoick stood from behind his desk and dwarfed the princess. “But tonight is very special. Tonight, you’ll be picking a husband.”

Her axe fell to the ground with a clatter. “Excuse you! I will do no such thing!”

“Yes, you will. I’ve told you this several times!”

“When? I don’t remember!”

“That’s because you never pay attention, child!” He accused. “Everyone in the line to the throne has to be married or engaged by their 21st birthday.”

“I didn’t think that applied to me!”

“I have no heirs, Astrid. Who did you think was going to take on the crown after me?”

She crossed her arms. “I think we should just become a democracy.”

Her uncle laughed and turned his back on her. “Those never work. You give people power and they vote in idiots.” He cleared his throat. “Don’t distract me from what I called you in here for.”

She grunted and dropped in a chair. “I hate this. I hate everything about my life.”

“No, you don’t.”

“You don’t know how I feel.”

Being the ruler of a country was hard. But being a father was exhausting, Stoick was often at a loss at how to handle Astrid. As she got older, she just seemed to grow farther and farther away.

“You’re right my dear. Maybe I don’t. But I went through some difficulties when I married your aunt. A loveless marriage that ended before it even got started. God bless her soul. That’s not what I wanted for you. Which is why I mentioned it so many times before. I want you to find love. You deserve it.”

The blonde relaxed her rigid stance. “I appreciate the sentiment, Uncle…but no one would ever love me.”

“What about Dagur?”

She snatched her axe up from the ground and pointed the blade at the monarch. “Say his name again, and you’ll wake up bald!” She shrieked.

“I know, bad break up. Forget I said anything.”

Astrid twirled her weapon and rested it against the chair side.

“As for the dress…”

Astrid groaned as she slumped in her chair, her chin resting on her chest.

Stoick stepped over to the chestnut cabinet in the corner of the room. To any other person, it would look out of place and full of junk. But to the royals, the wood panels held magic. He pulled out a leather garment bag, and draped it over the desk. Astrid sat up in interest.

“I was waiting to give you this until you got older and could fit in it.”

The princess unzipped it herself. The dress inside was black with gold trim outlining the off the shoulder neckline. More gold flowers were embroidered into the bodice of the dress. Finally, the skirt melted from black to scarlet. The colors of Berk’s flag.

Astrid stared at the dress.

“It was your mother’s. I gave it to her as a gift when our kingdoms first united.”

“Yes. I’ll wear it.” And she re-zipped the bag.

If there was something he could depend on from his niece, it was her fierce loyalty to her family.

The few hours remaining before the party were quiet. Astrid had retreated to her room, and was no doubt sitting in quiet agony while Ruff did her hair.

She stood rigidly, faking her smiles to all that graced her presence. Her arms were folded gently in front of her, occasionally squeezing tightly, as the men poured into the room. They all glanced at her with knowing looks, all thinking the same thing:

“She’s going to pick me.”

The crown jewels sat on her milky collarbone, as there was no way to avoid that tradition. Along with the tiara and red sash, everything screamed untouchable royal. Despite the quaint smile and flirtatious eyes.

She really did make herself sick sometimes.

“My dear, why aren’t you mingling with the young gentlemen?” Stoick touched her shoulder, noticing not a word had come out of her bright red lips.

“Uncle…” Astrid spoke quietly, trying not to be heard, “because I don’t want to talk to the young gentlemen…if you could call them that…”

“Now Astrid, don’t be rude. I’m sure there’s a nice, handsome, quiet guy that you could take out on special occasions. Go on, be cordial.”

Rich, beautiful, eligible men as far as the eye could see. All she had to do was point, and the man that would inevitably serve her for the rest of her life would be chosen. And yet, as she danced around the room, he was not there. The man of her dreams, the man that didn’t fake smile around her, the man that could see through her act, the man that could love her for who she was; he didn’t exist. Astrid was no fool. She knew of her cruelty, she knew what was being said about her.

And yet, how could she change if there was no one to love her?

“Well, hello my darling,” A smooth voice spoke. Astrid’s foul mood plummeted into the floor. The man speaking was a tall man, beefy in build. His broad chin was dotted with the faint hairs of an attempted beard. His hair, copper, was parted in the middle, and curled around his ears. His deep forest green eyes, the same eyes she used to gaze into for hours, had not changed, but great amusement reflected back.

She didn’t even try to hide her distaste. She growled, “Dagur B. Zerker. For what God forbidden reason are you here? To steal my food?”

He laughed. “No, not quite, you see. Your uncle invited me. He hoped that we would get back together.”

The princess blinked once and then shrieked across the ballroom. “UNCLE!!!”

Most attendees jumped at the shout and scrambled to move out of the war zone.

The ruler had just gotten away from her, when she stomped back up to him and stuck her finger in his face. “WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?!”

Stoick rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I was hoping you would reconsider courting him again.”

She shook her head. “I’m surprised at you uncle. I loved him, but he got Mala, one of my ladies in waiting, pregnant, and you think that’s a reason for another chance?”

Dagur snorted behind her. “She had a miscarriage, though.”

Astrid riled up in anger, before turning around and decking him in the mouth. “You ass!”

Startled gasps went up in the crowd as the gentry began whispering and staring.

Stoick grabbed his niece. “Enough! Behave yourself, woman!”

“He started it! I’ll kill him! That son of a bitch!”

Dagur, after he had been punched, made the wise decision to run out the room.

“Now,” Stoick stated, “I need to do damage control. Can you handle socializing for a little while without starting another fight?”

Astrid looked away in shame, but nodded solemnly.

“Good, I’ll be back in a bit.”

The crowd parted like the red sea, and Astrid was left alone. And for once in her spoiled life, she felt like she had nothing. She always had the best, the newest, the most expensive. But it wasn’t enough. She needed more and more. But in this moment, she realized it would never be enough. There was no happiness in material goods or false words.

Then, from across the room, she spotted Gobber, the Toymaker. One of the best in the world. Every year, he took a request from Astrid for her ideal custom present. No other like it was to be made.

This was Astrid’s favorite part of her birthday every year. Not just because the present was quality and made exactly they way she wanted, but because Gobber took pride in his work, and he made sure Astrid knew it. One year, the girl asked for a racing car, one that she could drive inside the palace. Gobber came multiple times in the process of building to have Astrid sit in a chair and pretend she was the one driving. Gobber was the father she never had. She never confessed to anyone, but she was always excited to see the man.

The toymaker came to her and respectfully bowed. “Your highness, happiest of birthdays to you. Long live the Princess.”

“Gobber,” She smiled pleasantly.

“I won’t beat around the bush, my dear, what do you wish me to make? I know you have it all thought out. Just like every year.” He smiled, his lead tooth glimmering in the light.

Truth be told, Astrid had forgotten to think about her present. She’d been so preoccupied with worrying about a groom…she chuckled to herself, and without thinking, blurted her personal joke out loud.

“Make me a husband.”

The toymaker laughed, but then grew silent when he saw the Princess was not joking.

“A-Are you sure?”

“Yes, Gobber, I am.”

“…Anything particular you want me to consider? Looks?”

“Just make him perfect.”

She was the Princess, and she always got what she wanted. This was no exception. Gobber took a shaky breath, “I’ll do my best, my lady…but--…”

“Your best is all I ask,” She affirmed. “I wouldn’t want anything else.”

The toymaker shrugged. “Okay. I guess I have no choice.”

“Take your time on this, I am not in a hurry to get married, but lawfully I must wed by the end of the year.”

“Three days, my lady. As tradition, you will have your gift in three days.”

“Lovely. I will see you in three days then.”

“Yes, Princess Astrid.” The toymaker bowed low and exited the ballroom. The rest of the room could only look in shock and horror at what had just happened.

“I do believe this solves everything.” The Princess smirked.

Out of nowhere, the two twin servants burst into delighted laughter. They approached from both sides. “That was priceless!”

“What a joke!”

“Did you see how everyone reacted?”

“Excellent!”

Astrid glanced between the two. “I’m serious, you know.” She raised an eyebrow.

The laughter waned. “Wait, really? You’re going to marry…a toy?”

“Most likely. But I haven’t any stretch of the imagination what he’s planning on doing. If it turns out much different then I expect, then I will make the toy another servant…or maybe a moving target, if I’m so inclined.”

The siblings shared a worried look. It was a well-known fact that the Princess morbidly stunk at human interaction, but to go as far as to marry a machine? That was an act of desperation. “If you say so.” Ruff shrugged.

#fanfiction #boy toy #httyd #how to train your dragon #hiccup horrendous haddock iii #hiccstrid #Astrid Hofferson #pinocchio #AU

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warmau · 6 years

Text

Highschool!AU Renjun

find college!nct (here) & hs!haechan (here) | hs!jeno (here) | hs!jisung (here)

favorite subject: foreign language & gym

least favorite subject: world history

voted most likely: to guest on a cooking show

if you ask people in school, renjun is unanimously known as being nice

he’s helpful, always energetic, and seems to be the only sensible on his group of friends

the role of keeping the younger ones under control falls to him after mark leaves for college

and,,,,,,renjun honestly fits the role well

he can be silly, crack jokes and play pranks with haechan and chenle - but he also knows when to be there for his friends

to listen to their hardships and hope he can be there for them through all the ups and downs of being teenagers

“you’re ,,,,, the mom friend” jisung reckons and renjun just shrugs, to be honest he doesn’t mind that - moms are cool

people in school are weirdly obsessed with understanding where renjun is from and renjun is just like “how about you guys study for your classes instead?” when people start taking smack

haechan: usually you’re lame,,,but that was cool

renjun: thank- wait did you just call me lame

he loves foreign language, so he takes two classes - advanced chinese but then also french because like ??? why not??

also,,,,his nice personality doesn’t undermine his comeptitivness

and his love to like,,,win

in gym???? he takes kickball to heart.

when he loses anything,,,,he’s sore about it for the next period and haechan is like how are you,,,,,older than me and hold grudges like a baby

and renjun is like it’s not a gRUDGE,,,,,,,but im pretty sure we would have won if chenle just tried to kick the ball harder

chenle: how is everything my fault

jeno: life is like that, chenle is to blame for everything

but no,,,he really is a sweet person and has the cutest hobbies

like he loves to read cooking books and make crafts and he does this thing where he hums happily when he’s studying - usually to his favorite songs

fun fact: he has a pic of zhang yixing in his locker and everyone is like why and renjun is like why? why not

bUT ,,,, you’re actually in another school and you don’t know anything about renjun and the nct dream kid shenanigans

you actually first meet renjun because he’s your co-worker at a part-time job in a popular cafe

you actually get the job first,,,working a couple of months before your boss finally decides you need someone to help you run the register - seriously,,,,,the place is booming after 4pm and you’ve been dying doing everything yourself

and that’s when renjun is hired,,,,,and you meet him - looking excited and happy about this hellish job

that hwen you hand him a mop and go “coffee spilled at table three and seven”

his smile just falls

and you’re like yep - welcome to actual hell

but renjun,,,,manages it well - he’s fast and organized and really really really good at making pasterie and coffee

you notice,,,,about a week into working with him that people are spending more time at the counter, pretending to look at the menu but atually looking at renjun

who always looks so soft in his work uniform, his bangs pushed back under the dumb beret you have to both wear - round glasses perched on his nose as he makes latte art

“do you really need those”

you ask once, pointing to the glasses and he shakes his head “no, they’re just cute.”

and it doesn’t take long for the dream kids to find out about renjun’s part time job

coming in and chuckling, calling renjun a “little paris boy” and asking if there is anything on the menu they can get for cheap since their friends works there

one day, jisung leans his elbows on the register and looks at you curiously

you look back, waiting to see if he’ll order or not

“you and renjun have been working together for a while, what do you think of him?”

renjun is busy with coffee orders and haechan trying to distract him that he doesn’t notice jisung up to no good

you shrug,,,,,,,you haven’t thought anything interesting of him yet - he’s just,,,,

“he’s nice.”

jisung lets out a sigh, “no no - i mean do you think he’s cuuuuute?”

you blink,,,opening your mouth but nothing comes out

before you can think it over, jeno appears and pulls jisung away with a roll of his eyes and an apology to you about jisung’s questions

but,,,,,the question lingers in your mind

and when you and renjun are closing up that evening, you steal a glance at him and realized

oh god,,,,,,,,he is super cute

changed out of his work uniform, he’s wearing what all other high schoolers have to - a button down and the slacks in the color of the school’s choice

but somehow,,,he makes it,,,,cuter

his hair falls softly over his forehead in bangs, his serious face while he works putting away trash and whatnot is different than the usual smile you see on his face when he talks to customers

he’s young, but there is something strong in his jaw and his eyes are a pretty dark brown,,,like freshly ground coffee

his lips part slightly in concentration and when he looks over at you, you have to pretend to be gazing at the register in front of you as to not come off ,,,, weird

“christmas is coming, i think we’re going to be seriously overworked.” he says as you throw your bag over your shoulder

“that’s true,,,the boss said something about us having to make mint hot chocolate and butterscotch latte’s for the season.”

renjun crinkles his nose

“mint hot chocolate sounds weird,,,”

you laugh a little and agree

“it sucks i think we have to come in on sunday to learn how to do it too,,,,” he groans and holds the door of the cafe open for you as you both step out into the evening air

“see you sunday!” he cheerfully waves, heading in the opposite direction to catch his bus

you want to say it back but your voice dies in your throat,,,you’re suddenly nervous about saying it,,,about saying something to renjun

don’t get a crush - don’t get a crush

you chant to yourself as a reminder as you make you way home too but,,,,,,,as usual,,,,,,,that’s exactly what happens

sunday morning you and renjun are both not happy about being at work. your boss isn’t even there, he just leaves a stack of instructions on how to make the holiday drinks and a note that says - learn to make these the right way kids!

you and renjun both sneer at the word ‘kids’,,,,but get to work regardless

renjun,,,,,,,as per usual gets it perfect with one try. each of his drinks tastes delicious and he can take measurements of sugar and milk by hand,,,

you,,,,,,,not so much

you get whipped cream every, the mint tea almost spills on you at some point and you’re bad at opening the hot chocolate packs - at one point you try to rip one open with your teeth and renjun has to stop you because he’s sure that’s a healthcode violation

“here, let me help you.”

he smiles,,,,,,,,and you remember telling jisung about renjun - that he’s just,,,,,,,so nice

he takes your hands and shows you how to get just the right amount of coco into the cup

you feel him leaning over your shoulder, asking against your ear if you see what he did

you don’t want to acknowledge the shiver down your back - the increase of your heart

so you’re thankful,,,,,but also upset when renjun let’s you go to work on his own drinks

it takes you a while, but with renjun’s help everything turns out well and you both are happy - until you realize your shift lasts till five today

a couple of days pass and people are really feeling the christmas drinks - the cafe is crammed everytime you show up after school for work

and renjun greets you with a sad smile

“guess what, this all gets worse.”

“what could you mean-”

you and renjun stand side by side, unimpressed at the register wearing matching santa claus hats (that almost makes haechan pass out from laughter when he sees you both)

the days just get worse and worse, there’s too many orders and too many dumb mint hot chocolates to make

and finally,,,,you don’t think you can keep up - you end up in the back of the kitchen trying not to cry your eyes out and quitting this job,,,half because you need the money but half because you don’t want to leave renjun out to dry

“are you ok?”

renjun’s voice comes from your side and you choke back the tears,,,not wanting him to see

but renjun’s hand is warm on your shoulder, and you don’t know what to do but to turn and hide in his open arms

renjun is a bit shocked by your sudden embrace,,,but he holds you close regardless

“i know it’s hard,,,,,,,,” he mumbles

and you feel him stroke your hair, let your tears stain the front of his shirt but doesn’t mind at all

you hear the impatient people out at the front, asking where someone is to take their order and renjun goes out first to let you clean yourself up before you join him

the hard day comes to a close and as usual you expect to part ways with renjun,,,,but he is walking in the same direction as you

“i know,,,,,it’s a lot these days, but im really happy we get to work together.”

renjun starts, his voice sounds just a little hesitant - like he’s not sure if he should say what he’s about to say

“and i hope you don’t,,,,,quit.”

you stop walking and renjun stops to,,,,,brown eyes fleeting from you to the ground

you shake your head, “i wont,,, i like you too.”

you don’t realize what you say till it’s out,,,,and then your face is turning three hundreds shades of red because no no you meant to say i like working with you too

but renjun looks,,,,,happy

his smile is shy, but it’s there and you don’t know if you should try and say something

but you don’t have to because renjun reaches out and takes your hand,,,,

holding it and nothing feelings more normal than that moment

no more words are needed as renjun walks you all the way home and when you say you’ll see him at work

he’s about to turn around before he stops himself and clears his throat

“so,,,,,,after our shift tomorrow - would you like to go on a date?”

your first date is ,,,,,,, sweet

you and renjun walk among the holiday inspired store windows, christmas lights and fake snowmen are everywhere

and you and renjun get called ‘adorable’ by at least three santa’s

which makes renjun all flustered and confused,,,,,,a purehearted boy whose like do they think we’re???? dating

and you’re like WELL,,,,isn’t this a date???

and he almost hiccups but it’s true - it is a date oh my god he’s on a date

you talk mostly about how school is, how work is the worst and your boss is a stingy old man

but it’s ,,,,,, a new feeling

it’s like the world is muffled when you’re with renjun, all you can focus on is him

and the way he laughs, cutely covering his mouth with the back of his hand

the way he embarrassingly admits having his mom on speed dial

the sore loser face he makes when you beat him at rock paper scissors when you two are trying to pick a snack to go eat

how he tries to sneak a bite of your food when you’re not looking as revenge

you both have school tomorrow so you can’t stay out late - but renjun makes sure that he walks you to your train first - waving until you’re safely inside the station

and you don’t see it, but he’s grinning like a goofball to himself all the way home

it’s actually jeno who figures out you two are a thing when they all stop by at the cafe

he sees renjun’s hand brush yours over the counter and the two of you kind of look at one and other

and he’s just like,,,,,,,,,,,,oh

he doesn’t say anything - but then haechan sees and well he tells EVERYONE

people in renjun’s class who don’t even know you are like oh,,,,your s/o?????

and he’s like oh my god - oh my god haechan whaT DID YOU SAY

but haechan even seems to have connections in your school?????? people are like whose renjun and you’re like uh

dating him,,,,,,,,is honestly the cutest though

you guys watch his favorite cooking shows and he tells you what he likes making at home in his spare time

you’ve never seen someone so excited about food - it’s cute

also?? you guys get into this little like ritual of going out for snacks after your weekend shifts

and renjun is ???? a god at making 7/11 ramen?????

you’ve never loved it as much as before - renjun just gets blushy when you compliment him

(mostly because the clerk is looking at you two like at or get out LOL)

but you also just enjoy each others company at work even more because you guys work like a team

and you need teamwork in dating too,,,understanding each other without words and just being the support the other person needs

renjun practices the phrases he learns in french on you and you’re like,,,,,that’s amazing what does it mean

renjun: calls you the most beautiful person he knows

renjun: oh it,,,it just means i like your eyes

mark comes by to visit the cafe during winter break and he’s like “how are the kids?” and you’re like kids????

the kids are the rest of nct dream

mark sympathetically shakes his head at you like “seems ryou haven’t seen them at their worst yet.”

their worst is having a sleepover with renjun and you getting 42 calls and voicemails of haechan doing karaoke and jisung imitating kissing noises as renjun tells him to stop

like,,,they’re not middle schoolers - but sometimes they act like it ,,,,,,,

but they all really welcome you into their friendship, because as jeno says if you’re special to renjun you’re special to them

you know renjun’s round glasses???? that aren’t real glasses but he wears them a lot

he gets you a pair and you guys are the specs couple (thanks to chenle for that nickname)

ok but imagine you’re on your break with him and he takes his glasses off shyly and that means he is thinking about kissing you but he’s like,,,,,,,,too shy to say it

so you do it instead and he just,,,,bursts with love and giddyness

to be honest,,,,you probably have to initiate pda because renjun wants to keep it mannered and pure but when you press your lips against his neck he just !!!!!!!!! with hearts around his head

the amount of times haechan pretends that renjun has a mark on his neck drives renjun up a wall with worry until jeno is like chill bro there’s nothing there

writes your name in chinese characters in his phone with a little green heart emoji

favorite kisses tho? forehead kisses after work

picks you up from school and gets flocked down by like 324323 girls and he escapes only when he sees you and he’s like please,,,,lets go before i disappear and you never see me again

jokes jokes,,,,,,,but i mean he is a visual

shopping for gifts together for friends,,,,,but also you know renjun would obssess over getting you something sentimental

and he does,,,,,a small puppy charm that you clip to the front of your uniform at work

and someone asks why you have it - do you like dogs

and you just think back to a red-faced renjun giving it to you and going,,,,doesn’t it look like me? you can have me near you all the time,,,,,,

you: we work together though

renjun: you’re right, but if im on one side of the cafe and you’re at the other - it’ll be like im still close by,,,,near your heart,,,,this is corny please tell me to stop

#nct scenarios #nct dream scenarios #renjun scenarios #nct scenario #nct dream scenario #renjun scenario #nct imagines #nct dream imagines #renjun imagines #sfw #nct au #renjun au #nct dream #huang renjun #renjun #nct #highschool!au

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belphegor1982 · 6 years

Text

The Many Merry Majorly Mangled Demises of Major Wolfgang Hochstetter

Second and final chapter :o) (part 1 here) (the story on FFnet)

Chapter Two: Bad Decisions, Bad Lawyers, and Ballerinas

The other stories were longer, giving the men – and Hogan – things to do with their time for a week more. Which was a relief with the unholy combination of Major Hochstetter and execrable weather keeping all the prisoners in their barracks. They were used to living in each other’s pocket, but spending every minute of every day in a cramped space with no real possibility to go outside, play a sport that provided an excuse to run, or even just see the sky without standing at attention – that was hard, bordering on unbearable.

Thankfully, they not only had new reading material, which was rare enough, but a personal choice to make. Several men surreptitiously reread stories in order to be certain to cast their only vote in the right place. As a result, cabin fever didn’t sink in as much as it might have.

The list of stories (represented by numbers) pinned on the wall in Hogan’s office steadily acquired crosses. It also acquired another ‘M’ at some point, sandwiched between two at the top of the paper, making the title a mysterious ‘TMMMMDMWH’. Hogan pondered over the change in the acronym for their literary endeavour until Carter admitted to adding the extra letter.

“I thought, since Hochstetter’s a major and it’s about making sure he gets it in every kind of way possible, ‘The Many Merry Majorly Mangled Demises of Major Wolfgang Hochstetter’ would be… I dunno. Fitting? ‘Cause I really think he’s gonna get majorly mangled. That’s kind of the point, right?”

“Absolutely,” said Hogan, not certain whether ‘majorly’ was orthodox grammar but completely willing to overlook it as long as his men were happy. “That’s exactly the point, Carter. Nice touch.”

Carter smiled his lopsided grin, the one Hogan had come to associate with particularly successful explosions; it suddenly made him recall an especially messy Hochstetter death involving grenades, fireworks, and a cannon.

No need to wonder who the author was. It had been a long time since their resident mad bomber had something to blow up.

****

At long last, after one week, everybody had put a cross next to the story he preferred and the time came to compile the results and reveal the winners. The men gathered around the table and on the adjacent beds, looking eagerly at Hogan and the paper in his hands. He didn’t remember being the centre of such attention from that many men since the last time he had told them the Red Cross delivery truck would arrive on time for once.

“Right,” he began. “Here are the results of the ‘Many Merry Majorly Mangled Demises of Major Wolfgang Hochstetter’ contest.”

“‘Majorly mangled’, huh?” said Newkirk. “I like the sound of that. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bloke.”

“Shh, I want to know the results!”

“Yeah, who won the gold?”

Hogan gave them a look, and Newkirk, Davies and Carter fell silent. “I figured I’d go with bronze first, then silver, then gold. So the bronze goes to…”

There were a few sharp intakes of breath. Hogan suppressed a smile and said, “Story number 6. That’s the one with the woodchipper. Who wrote it?”

Olsen raised his hand amidst grins and chuckles with a broad smile.

“Congratulations, Olsen.” Hogan grinned as he handed him the story. “Care to do the honours?”

Olsen took the paper, glanced around at everyone, and read.

****

Have you ever been chased by a pack of dogs? Not much fun, right? Well, that’s why Major Hochstetter was running so fast that night. He’d already left a boot and half a pant leg in the jaws of one of the dogs and he had no intention of giving them more than that.

A raid against the Underground had gone bad. Don’t ask me how, those Gestapo guys aren’t the talkative type, and it’s very unlikely that they’d talk to me (they prefer to ask the questions, anyhow). So one of the Underground people kept a dozen dogs, probably for hunting, and he set them loose on the black uniforms before high-tailing it.

The Gestapo scattered, and for some reason, all the dogs decided to hunt them some major, and believe me, they weren’t looking to play fetch. Not that Hochstetter had the time to stop to pick up a stick, too (or his gun, wherever he had dropped it). No, he ran for his life, like he had never run before. You always run faster if there’s something chasing you, anyway. He ran, he ran, and when he couldn’t run anymore, he ran some more. Behind him, the dogs were howling, as though they sensed their prey was tiring and they would close in on it soon enough.

Salvation came with the walls of a park and a trash can; he jumped on one to climb the other. Now laugh all you want; I know Hochstetter’s no athlete, but in those kinds of circumstances anyone can do acrobatics like that. He did huff and puff like the wolf from the fairy tale, though.

The dogs were still howling, and they tried to snap at his feet, but Hochstetter was out of their reach. He stood on the stone wall, straightened his jacket and sneered at the dogs.

And then he slipped and fell off the wall.

The good news was, this was the dog-free side. The bad news, well… He fell right into a woodchipper. Woodchippers are not exactly supposed to chip people, so what followed was ugly, noisy, and messy, and made the dogs run away whimpering.

The next morning, the gardener found a finger. He sent it to the police, on the grounds that it didn’t belong to him and its owner might miss it; but nobody ever claimed it.

****

The final sentence was punctuated by applause and snickers with a few mock winces thrown in. Floyd clapped Olsen on the back, laughing, while Kinch smiled in appreciation.

“You sure didn’t do things by half, did you?” said Saunders approvingly. “A bloody woodchipper. That’s just nasty.”

“You can talk,” Olsen retorted. “I know you wrote the one where Hochstetter goes to Australia and gets bitten, stung, poisoned, and eaten. Sounds like you made up half the critters in that story.”

Saunders’ expression was undeniably proud. “What can I say, Oz puts the ‘wild’ in ‘wildlife’.”

“Yeah? Well, I’ll take my pack of dogs over your drop bears any day. And those are about the only animals that make sense.”

“Funny you should say that, because—”

“Guys,” interrupted Kinch, “later, okay? I want to know who won.”

Hogan shook his head, and announced, “The silver medal – if we had one – goes to story number 12. Who wrote ‘Hochstetter’s Trial Tribulations’?”

Baker unfolded from his chair with a smile. People clapped his back and applauded as he made his way to the head of the table.

“Nice job,” said Hogan with feeling. He handed the corresponding roll of paper to Baker, who cleared his throat and began to read.

****

They kicked in his door at three in the morning. In retrospect, Major Hochstetter should have considered this a very bad sign.

“This is ridiculous!” he bellowed when Gestapo invaded his apartment, throwing clothes and books everywhere. Then he spotted Kluglicht, his assistant, and roared, “Kluglicht! What are these men doing here?”

Kluglicht, despite his name, was not the brightest bulb in the box, which was why Hochstetter had hired him in the first place: he was too dumb to question orders. He saluted his superior and stared at him blankly for half a minute.

Then a captain stopped in front of Hochstetter’s bed and clicked his heels.

“Major Hochstetter, you are hereby charged with treason and conspiracy to assassinate the Führer. Please follow us.” He paused and sniffed. “Once you’re decent.”

Obviously, dragging a Gestapo major clad in black and white death-heads pyjamas to headquarters was not done, even if he was a suspect.

Hochstetter was so shocked he didn’t even protest. At first.

They kept him locked up for three months, or maybe two weeks. It was hard to tell, without a window. The first few days, Hochstetter heaped invectives upon invectives on his invisible jailers; then he tried to shout he was innocent, and had absolutely no part in any conspiracy against Hitler, and so on. Then he ended up pleading and begging for someone to talk to him. (It has to be said that the first time he resorted to this, he whispered so that the fewer possible people heard him, which, you must admit, kind of defeated the purpose.)

The only visit he eventually got was Kluglicht, who brought him a stale cake with a broken nail file in it.

“Sorry, Herr Major, I had to use my brother-in-law’s oven and I think the nail file broke during the baking…”

“Never mind your brother-in-law, Kluglicht,” Hochstetter snarled, happy to finally have someone to yell at. “How long have I been here for?”

“I don’t know, Herr Major, what time is it?”

“Dummkopf! Give me the date!”

Kluglicht stared at him blankly, then appeared to think. A minute later he slowly nodded.

“It’s the… 6th. Of March. Right. Because last week we were in February and now we’re in March.”

Only a few days had passed since the arrest. Hochstetter stared at him.

“Oh, and they told me to tell you that your trial begins tomorrow.”

“Splendid,” growled Major Hochstetter. “I suppose I don’t get a lawyer, do I?”

“Yes you do, Herr Major.”

“Really!?”

“I volunteered, Herr Major.”

Hochstetter sat back and stared at the wall.

“They really want me dead.”

The trial was ugly, even for Nazi Germany, where ‘trial’ is a word that makes bad people smirk and good people shake their heads. At some point during the accusation, Kluglicht lost his footing completely and yelled, “That – that ain’t true!”, at which point the prosecution roared with laughter and Hochstetter pounced on his assistant-turned-lawyer and started to throttle him. They pulled him off Kluglicht with great difficulty and attempted murder was added to the treason charges.

In the end, when he was declared guilty, Hochstetter was almost resigned to his fate. He baulked when the guards took him back to his cell and handed him a gun, though.

“What on earth am I supposed to do with this, you idiot? Shoot you and escape so you can shoot me in the back?” That was his personal experience talking. “I bet it’s not even loaded.”

“Herr Major, there is one bullet in the gun.”

Ah. That sort of escape, then.

Wolfgang Hochstetter drew a breath, cocked the gun, and shot.

He missed and took out an ear instead.

They hanged him the next day.

****

Cheers, two-tone whistling, and applause broke out after the last sentence.

“Nice one! Not very original, as deaths go, but points for style,” Newkirk called out.

“Yeah, I didn’t know you could write like that, Baker!” exclaimed Carter admiringly. Baker acknowledged the compliments with a nod and a smile, his face flushed, looking somewhat self-conscious but pleased. Hogan waited until he was back between Saunders and Addison and the noise had died down to take up the list again.

“And now, the winner of the ‘Many Merry Majorly Mangled Demises of Major Wolfgang Hochstetter’ contest – the story that got the gold. And the prize goes to—”

He was going to draw out the suspense a little bit, but was interrupted by the door opening, letting in an icy wind and a puzzled Sergeant of the Guard.

“What are you all doing?”

“Giving out Academy Awards, Schultz,” replied Hogan easily.

“What Academy?”

“Well, the Barracks Two Academy of Arts and Letters, of course. We just had a little contest and we were just about to announce who won the gold medal.”

“But you barged in before the Colonel could tell us,” said Carter in a tone that almost managed to be reproachful. “Boy, that’s rude.”

Schultz ignored Carter and peered at the paper in Hogan’s hands in a way he probably thought of as shrewd.

“A gold medal? And where did you get that, hmm?”

LeBeau rolled his eyes. “It’s a figure of speech, Schultz. It just means the story that won the contest.”

Schultz’s eyes jumped from the paper, to LeBeau, and back to Hogan. “What contest.” It hardly even sounded like an actual question.

Hogan crossed his arms and looked him in the eye. “Since the recreation hall is still closed and the Escape Committee put off escape attempts due to bad weather, we had to make our own entertainment. So we wrote a few short stories and had a little contest. What are you doing here?”

“Escape Committee. Jolly joker.” Schultz rubbed his hands then blew into his fingers before continuing. “I came here for a surprise check.”

Ah, yes. Another display of Hochstetter’s ‘ring of steel’ – surprise roll calls, random bed checks, and more or less regular head counts. The guards (Schultz in particular, since he was their own appointed barracks guard) were especially peeved about it, as it meant that not only did they have to make their rounds all day in the cold, with no possibility to take a five-minute break on a bench or take refuge in the barracks on a pretence of a chat, but all their furloughs had been cancelled. The current animosity rising against Major Hochstetter did not come from the prisoners only.

Hogan and his team had nothing going on, no reason to be down in the tunnel, not a single man missing – just as things had been for weeks. There was absolutely no reason to send Schultz on his way or distract him from counting the prisoners. Plus, just the look on his face when he realised what the overall theme of the contest had been had to have some entertainment value.

“Okay, Schultz, count all you like, we’re all here. Just let me tell the guys whose story won, and then the author can read it aloud. You can even listen to it, if you behave.”

There was a hopeful tint to Schultz’s frown.

“No monkey business?”

“None whatsoever. Just reading.”

Schultz nodded, still looking unsure. Hogan reported his attention to his list.

“And the winner of the ‘Many Merry Majorly Mangled Demises of Major Wolfgang Hochstetter’ contest is –” he ignored Schultz’s startled squeak, always surprising coming from such a large man “– ‘Hochstetter and the Junior Ballerina Corps of Bad Wiedenburg’!”

Amidst the laughter and the applause, Schultz had gone pale, round blue eyes popping out. The thought occurred to Hogan than he might have made a fine silent comedy actor, once upon a time.

“What—what—what—”

“It’s the title, Schultz, try to keep up.”

“So,” said Olsen with a laugh, “who’s the guy who put Hochstetter in a tutu? Gee, thanks for the mental image. I’ll have nightmares all night.”

Hogan went to look at the rolls of paper in the basket and picked the right one. The writing was small, slanted, and a little cramped as the writer reached the end of the page. None of the stories had been signed, but somehow, it wasn’t hard to figure out who the author had been. He had to ask, however, and did with a grin. “So who’s the author of this fine piece of literature?”

Newkirk stood up with lazy grace and gave a mock bow. The twinkle in his eyes suggested he was much happier with the results than he let himself show. Hogan swapped places with him as he picked his story, unfurled it from its roll and began to read.

“Once upon a time…”

“Oh, it’s a fairy tale?” Schultz seemed to have gotten over his initial shock and was looking around hesitatingly. “It’s harmless then. Right?”

“I dunno, Schultzie,” said Newkirk. “Is it treason to listen to a story about the death of a Gestapo major? ‘Cause that’s what this is all about.”

Hogan started counting down to the moment Schultz would hear nothing, know nothing, and hightail it out of the barracks. Five… Four… Three…

To his surprise, when Schultz came to a decision, he didn’t go to the door; instead, he sat down on Carter’s bunk and laid his rifle on his knees with an expression not unlike a cat waiting for cream.

“I know I usually see nothing, hear nothing, and know nothing, but this I think I want to hear,” he said with a wink, as though sharing something that was part big secret and part highly amusing joke. A few chuckles and snickers answered him, and Newkirk went back to his paper with a grin.

****

Once upon a time, there was a Gestapo major who was a paranoid bastard.

All Gestapo majors are paranoid bastards if you ask me, but this one was special. He wanted to do everything himself in case some nasty old Underground members got him by surprise. He cooked his own food (badly), typed his reports (took him hours), and – especially – spent his days nosing around, watching people go about their lives. If he could have got himself to watch himself, he would have done it. That’s how paranoid he was, ladies and gents (but mostly gents, unfortunately).

One day, Major Hochstetter (for such was the name of our quirky paranoid Gestapo major) got a tip that an Underground member might be hiding amidst the Junior Ballerina Corps of Bad Wiedenburg.

The Junior Ballerina Corps of Bad Wiedenburg have twenty-six girls, all between the ages of nineteen and twenty-two and a half, who are trained scrappers. They can use their feet in about forty-seven ways that no other girl between nineteen and twenty-two and a half can or should. One ballerina doing the grand jeté is able to break the noses of twelve men in twenty seconds.

Yes, they are a fearsome lot. What else do you expect from Nazis, mate?

Now, our esteemed major was in a major quandary, so to speak – but not for long.

He decided that someone should infiltrate the Junior Ballerina Corps of Bad Wiedenburg to find the mysterious Underground member.

And since he was such a paranoid bastard, he couldn’t trust anyone but himself for the task.

He had to clear with his superiors the fact that the Junior Ballerina Corps of Bad Wiedenburg would now count a member who was not, in fact, a girl between nineteen and twenty-two and a half, and was stockier and rather more hairy than the norm. His superiors thought he was a loony, so they waved him off and concentrated on something more serious, like stopping the eighty-three attempts to kill Hitler.

Major Hochstetter had trouble in the beginning, as you might guess. He only knew how to break people’s noses by punching them, or slamming them into walls; but this was ballet. You have to be graceful to do ballet dancing, even when you’re twisting a man’s arms behind his back and karate-chopping him into oblivion. Hochstetter had about as much grace as a rhinoceros stuck in a mud hole.

No, he did not break anyone’s nose with his feet, even on purpose. It takes skills and muscles he didn’t have.

But he was coming along nicely. The girls were starting to talk about letting him perform with them for the Heidelbergestburg Winterfest. He even had a lead or two as to the identity of his victim—er, suspect.

Every year, the Opera of Heidelbergestburg organised a special performance on the Heidelbergestburg Lake. It’s east of Berlin and very cold, so each winter the lake freezes over so much that a whole Panzer division can cross it on their way east (not that they do, they’re usually seen running the other way).

Hochstetter thought it the perfect time to unmask his suspect.

The upper crust sat in chairs carved in ice – because it was so chic – and applauded when the Junior Ballerina Corps of Bad Wiedenburg (plus one) skated their way gracefully (minus one) to the middle of the frozen lake. A band was playing The Blue Danube (the girls had insisted).

Hochstetter had never been on ice skates before, but he made a valiant effort. He could barely refrain from grinning, like the cat who watches the canary, knowing it will catch the bird as soon as it gets out from its cage. Between two pas de chat and just before the sauté, he caught up from the girl he suspected and whispered nastily, “I’m on to you, Fräulein.”

He really couldn’t wait for the moment when he’d arrest her, you see.

The girl only smiled and did a pirouette. Hochstetter went on with his sauté.

The finale involved him doing an arabesque while the girls formed a circle around him, but there was one problem. They did not stop at one circle.

In fact, they continued to circle him, faster and faster, until he just couldn’t move for fear of getting his face ice skated.

The leader detached herself from the group somehow, and smiled. It should have been a pretty smile, because she was such a pretty girl, but it sent shivers down Hochstetter’s spine.

She said, “You came here to find an Underground member, didn’t you, Major?”

He was scared and furious, but he nodded.

“Congratulations. You’ve found twenty-six.”

She took up her place in the circle before he had time to think of something clever to say.

When the ice broke, they all skated back, and watched him sink into the icy waters. They laughed when he cursed them, blew him kisses when he threatened them, and smiled the same smile as the cold took him and he finally went under.

There were a few bubbles, and that was it.

When his superiors heard of his death, they shrugged it off and went back to the plots against Hitler. One loony to deal with was enough.

****

“That was nice,” said Kinch after Newkirk punctuated his story with a resounding “The end”. Like the others, he was grinning from ear to ear. “Inventive.”

“Oh, Newkirk, that was wicked,” Schultz chimed in severely. The reproach in his tone quickly gave way to a smile and a twinkle in his eye. “But not bad.”

Hogan himself had enjoyed every word as well as Newkirk’s lively performance as a storyteller, and he applauded with the rest. “You really liked the idea of drowning Hochstetter, didn’t you, Newkirk?”

Newkirk’s grin would have put the proverbial cat to shame and given the proverbial canary a heart attack.

“Actually, sir, I reckon he froze to death before he drowned. But I really liked the tutu. And it’s not like he’s never danced before, is it?”

He looked pointedly at LeBeau, whose answer was a fierce glower and a muttered, “Oh, very funny. You know he almost broke my feet? I couldn’t walk normally for a week after those ‘dance lessons’1.”

“Il casse les pieds à tout le monde2,” Kinch pointed out. “Why should you be any different?”

The expression on LeBeau’s face was beautiful; there had to be a pun in Kinch’s words, Hogan thought, because it was halfway between outrage and absolute delight. If Schultz’s expression was anything to go by, he was just as confused as Hogan was – the difference being, he quickly shrugged it off, used as he was by now to not understanding the finer points of foreign languages, English or French.

“Colonel Hogan,” he said confidentially – in a stage whisper, that is, “I know I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but Kommandant Klink received a phone call from Colonel Hertel two hours ago.”

“You don’t say?” said Hogan, keeping his tone light and mildly interested. Hertel was Hochstetter’s new superior, which was why he had given the go-ahead on the ‘ring of steel’ – most of the Gestapo hierarchy didn’t hide their impatience (or their disdain) of Hochstetter’s well-known Stalag XIII fixation.

“Misses his radio-detection truck, does he?” asked Newkirk. “Always knew these Gestapo blokes were the sentimental type, deep down.”

“Well – kind of. He said that since Major Hochstetter found nothing, he had a better use for the men and the equipment stationed at Stalag XIII. They leave tomorrow.”

The cheer that went up in the barracks might have been a little quieter than the receptions the winning stories had gotten, just in case, but there was a sudden definite lift in moods among the men. Hogan himself couldn’t help a smile as hope rose in his chest, like the warmth of a cup of good coffee. They would be back in business soon.

“Thanks for the heads-up,” he said to a Schultz who looked torn between fretting over the prospect of more monkey business and resigned to its (probable) inevitability. “Hey, you know what? Next time Hochstetter gets to police the camp, you’re welcome to our little writing contest. I’m curious to see what you’ll come up with.”

Schultz’s face fell. He all but fled to the door of the barracks.

“Colonel Hogan, I can listen to a story, because you were reading it and I was just there. Sometimes I don’t hear nothing. But participating? I won’t be able to say that I know nothing!”

The last word was guessed more than heard, since it was half muffled by the door closing as Schultz made a hasty tactical retreat. The news he had brought remained in the air, like a promise of better things to come.

Major Hochstetter would most likely not come to an ignominious end via frozen lake and Underground ballerinas, by shooting himself in the ear, or mauled by a pack of dogs. But Hogan swore to see to it that he would not evade judgement later, when the time came.

In the meantime, they finally had their whole range of weapons back – including, not the least, words.

THE END

Whoo-hoo! I’ve had that one in my WIPs since April 2013 – wrote pretty much the first chapter and the three contributions, then got stuck. Hope more stories will unstick like that!

Notes/Translations:

1 LeBeau having to give ‘dance lessons’ to Hochstetter is from “Six Lessons from Madame Lagrange”, in the 5th season. After rewatching though, I came to the unfortunate conclusion that Hochstetter is not shown stepping on LeBeau’s feet. Oops. (We’ll just say there’s an ellipse, won’t we.)

2Il casse les pieds à tout le monde: Taken literally, “he breaks everybody’s feet”, but it’s a figure of speech meaning “He gets on everybody’s nerves/He drives everyone up the wall”.

Thank you for reading! :o)

#Hogan's Heroes #my stuff #fanfiction

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faketextstuff · 6 years

Text

Caught In A Lie (prologue)

Summary:: In order to succeed in the entertainment business in this world one most eventually ‘make a deal with the devil’ or ‘sell their soul’ to the mafia and become a modern day slave to the family. Jimin is a struggling dance student with high morals and a determination to make it on his own. His best friend is a hired body guard in the notorious Bangtan faction and is constantly trying to persuade Jimin in coming to work for the family in order to make his life easier. Yet Jimin keeps refusing. When things start to go bad he finds himself wondering if making a deal with the devil would be his best option. He soon finds himself deep in a lie and caught in the claws of a beautiful but deadly woman who is one half the leader of Bangtan.

Paring: JiminxReader

Warnings: Graphic violence, cursing, deception, eventual sexual content.

A/N: This is purely a fake world in which I’ve thrown real people into. Think of it as a movie staring your favorite people. This is in no way related to them other than I used their names. All fiction and it should stay that way. I mainly wrote this because I’d personally love to see BTS star in a mobster film. I believe they have the talent and look for it. This is purely a gift to ARMY who wanted a badass girl fiction. LOL Please review it or comment. It makes my day to see nice words. Also if there are typos I’m sorry. It was 2AM when I wrote this.

"So how's the dancing coming along? My parents said you applied at the school of fine arts over the summer."

Jimin glanced up from his soda where he had been watching the large ice cubes float around in the bubbling cola. Ever so often Jimin would occasionally stir his drink with the black straw, watching as more bubbles floated to the surface of his drink then popped, making a low fizzing noise.

His eyes met the dark yet curious ones of his old school mate, Jungkook. Jimin and Jungkook had both attended the same school and even though Jimin was two years older than the other male, the two formed a tight knit friendship that had lasted through high school and college. Jungkook was the sports guy, always making the top teams and gained many scholarships to play at different schools around the world, while Jimin was the dance kid.

Jimin did play a few sports growing up but dancing had always been his passion aside from music. To him the two went hand in hand. Can't really dance without music.

Jimin had met Jungkook while both of them auditioned for a school play when they were preteens. No one ever pictured Jungkook for a singer but once he opened his mouth everyone, Jimin included, were blown away by his voice. Jimin knew his voice was top notch as well but he preferred dancing and letting Jungkook have the lead singing bits in their play. The two of them built a name for each other and were tied in the school's student body voted for "most likely to succeed".

However, succeeding in Busan was easier said than done. The entertainment industries in the country were mostly owned by the rich and powerful, by rich and powerful, that meant mafia. Each idol that came along either bought their way into the industry with their parents money, were born into it or they were working for the Mafia. There were several different mafia factions, the most known were the factions of Red Velvet. A faction of women who were as deadly as they were beautiful. They helped many well known actresses push their way to the top by any means necessary.

There was the EXO faction. A large group of guys who mostly held a tight grip on the television and broadcasting areas. The BigBang faction were their don who was called G-Dragon held most of the crime and drugs that filtered out into the streets, Stay Kids faction, Seventeen faction....all of these families were ones you never wanted to cross on a bad day.

However there was one that held each family and faction in a tight grip. The Bangtan faction. They were formally known as BigHit but once the don of their faction stepped down it was handed off to two young members who had been with the faction from the start, the name changed to Bangtan. Kim Namjoon, aka Monster, who lived up to his name with his ruthless sense of business and knowhow. And BigHit's adopted daughter Y/N, aka Swan. Many factions protested BigHit's don handing the family over to a foreigner who had no blood ties to Korea but she quickly earned her place and respect with her knowledge and take no shit attitude. The rumors spread like wild fire about her ruthless nature but sensible attitude towards solving issues quickly and almost effortlessly. Swan quickly earned her name and place in the country. For a long time she was known as the White Swan due to her light colored skin and easy to spot features, however as she made a name for Bangtan she became the Dark Swan. Everyone said the White Swan was her when she did her charitable work for the country by helping lost kids find their way and bringing more money into the country with her over seas ventures and projects, and the Dark Swan was a side of Y/N no one dared mess with. She'd not hesitate to get her hands dirty and eliminate the problem when necessary as well as the one causing the issues. She also held the police tightly in her hands. Most say it was because of her beauty that had the men and women falling at her feet but truthfully it was because they knew what would happen if they crossed her's or Namjoon's path. Together they were unstoppable and pretty much ran the whole country. They were as close as brother and sister and when working together they were called the Twins.

Succeeding in Korea now meant working for one of the families. Make an enemy of one and soon everyone had you on their list. Jimin had been working on his own, refusing to 'sell his soul' for the promise of fame and riches. Jungkook, he joined swore service to Bangtan right out if college. Jimin was unsure of his position but knew Jungkook was very close to Namjoon and Swan. There were many pictures of Jungkook sticking very close to Swan's side while out at public functions.

Of course Jungkook wasn't stupid, he knew damn well that dating a mobboss' daughter, adopted or not, was like signing your death warrant these days. Times were tough but Jimin knew Jungkook's heart was always in the right place so he never judged his friend for running off and joining the mafia.

Jimin's pride, however, kept him striving to achieve his dream on his own. He was struggling and knew the odds were not in his favor for getting accepted into top league dance academy when he didn't have the money to buy his way in, but still he held on to his hope and determination.

"Hello! Jimin!" Jungkook snapped his fingers in front of Jimin's face twice, knocking the older one out of his trance. "You still with me?

"Yeah, sorry." Jimin laughed, his cheeks flushing slightly having been caught drifting off. "Yeah I applied but I haven't got a call back for an audition yet." Jimin let his shoulders skin a bit in sadness. He had worked himself close to death to get this far, only to not get a call yet.

"You'll get a call. You're the best dancer in the country." Jungkook gave a comforting smile to his friend before leaning back in his seat. "You know how to get a call--"

Jimin was quick to cut the younger man off, "No." He stated firmly with a clenched jaw and hardened eyes.

Jungkook sighed and cocked his head slightly to the left, his dark eyes staying fixed on Jimin. "Why not? You've worked so hard, you deserve to get a little help. Namjoon and Sawn could help if you just ask."

"For what price, Kook? My pride?" Jimin sighed, his hands going up to rub his face harshly. Of course the offer was beyond tempting but Jimin wasn't going to sell out that fast!

"Pride? You think I sold my pride when I took the job with Bangtan?" Jungkook began to get a bit defensive. Bangtan was his family and he was overly protective of his new family.

Shaking his head, Jimin gave the man an apologetic smile. "You know that's not what I meant, Kook. I just...I want do this on my own and not owe anyone anything."

"You don't have to do this alone. You think I wasn't afraid of losing myself when I joined? I was. Fuck it was the scariest thing I've ever agreed to, but my dream was more important to me. Now I'm working on my own album with one of the best producers in the world. It's all worth it if you can do what you love, even if you have to get your hands dirty time to time." Jungkook began preaching to his friend, hoping he'd come around. Jungkook hating to see Jimin struggling this way. "Remember Hoseok? The guy who graduated from college a few years a head of us?"

"Yeah, the lead dancer for the drama team?" Jimin nodded, his brow arching slightly.

"Well he started out street dancing when Namjoon found him, he works for Bangtan and now he's the top choreographer in the world. Hell, you can't turn on the TV without seeing someone using his dance moves. Same with Kim Seokjin the famous chief. This restaurant is his. He owns a chain of them and recently opened one in Tokyo. I work with him and Swan everyday. He's a great guy." Jungkook glanced around the highly packed restaurant and smiled. Yeah every member of Bangtan worked hard and had to pay their dues but the pay off made it all worth it. "It's okay to ask for help. Everyone needs help."

Jimin sighed knowing that Jungkook was making very valid and tempting points he just didn't know or believe he was cut out for the mob life. Hell, he hated hurting bugs when he stepped on them while on the streets but the things Bangtan could and would do to people who displeased them, it terrified him. Even more so to think of quiet, shy little Jungkook who had had known for years having to hurt a living soul. "I just want to get by on my own. To have something that's mine, ya know?"

Sighing, Jungkook nodded, Jimin was still as stubborn as ever but he hoped one day he'd come around and accept help and no be so hard on himself. "Yeah, I get that." Dammit, he just didn't want to see life drag Jimin down and snuff the fire that fueled Jimin's dreams. "If you ever change your mind just give me a call."

"I will, Kook. I swear." Jimin chuckled once more, giving Jungkook the smile that at times he didn't have the energy for.

Jungkook returned the smile before he noticed outside the entrance that a large black SUV had pulled right up to the door. Jungkook knew that car and a small smirk tugged the corners of his lips. "I'll be damned. Talk about timing." He said with a breathy laugh. "Speak of the devil and she shall appear. Isn't that how the saying goes?"

Jimin turned his attention out towards the SUV and watched with curious eyes as a man dressed in an expensive black dress suit, white shirt and black tie stepped out from the drivers side and made his way towards the backseat passengers side. Jimin recognized the man to be Kim Seokjin, owner of this restaurant as Jungkook earlier pointed out.

He didn't blink as he watched Seokjin glance around cautiously before opening the door and helped someone step out from the backseat. It was a woman with long dark hair that hung loosely in curls that fell down her back in soft waves, she was dressed in a form fitting black dress which made her skin look a beautiful pale color. Her lips were painted red as blood and the coat that hung snugly to her body was a bright shade of red that matched the lipstick. It was Swan! He knew her from the photos. He watched as Seokjin stood close to her side and another man slid out of the backseat as well.

The man had a very intimidating look about him that only worsened the feeling by his dyed silver hair. He too was dressed in all black, unlike Seokjin, this man was dressed in solid black and no tie. To Jimin it looked like something right out of a movie.

Jimin half wanted to ask Jungkook if her ears were burning and that's why she showed up here of all days, but he thought it better to keep his sarcastic comments to himself, at least for now. He just watched in silence as the silver haired man opened the door for Swan and the three made their way inside gaining many whispers and glances. Everyone clearly knew who just walked in and Jimin couldn't believe people were openly whispering about the trio right in ear range.

Jungkook stiffened his posture to look more professional as Swan glanced around the crowded restaurant. Eventually her eyes landed in Jungkook and a soft smile spread across her red tinted lips. Okay, yeah. He could see what people meant by her beauty. She was even more breathtaking in person.

Jimin's heart fluttered and his hands began to sweat as the three swiftly made their way over to their table. "Kookie, I didn't expect to see you here on your day off." Sawn spoke, her voice was gentle and her Korean was flawless. Hearing her speak no one could say she wasn't raised in Korea.

"My friend Jimin, here has never eaten here so I thought I'd treat him today." Jungkook spoke with a soft laugh before nodding his head towards Jimin who wanted to desperately crawl under the table out of sight but it was too late, Sawn's gaze fell immediately on him. "Swan, this is my good friend from Busan, the one I told you about."

Jimin quickly straightened up and forced a nervous smile. "I'm Park Jimin." He bowed his head in respect.

"Oh this is the dancer I've heard so much about." Swan grinned brightly before extending her hand. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you, Park Jimin. I'm Y/N, but you can call me Swan."

Jimin discreetly wiped his hand on his jeans before taking hers in a gentle grasp. He made a mental note to curse Jungkook later for talking about him to Swan. "Nice to meet you too, Y--Swan." He managed to catch himself before he called out her real name.

"I hope you've enjoyed the food here." Seokjin spoke up as Jimin quickly released Sawn's hand as if he had been burned by her gentle soft touch.

"I have, thank you." Jimin smiled nervously before bowing his head once again to the older man.

"Jin-hyung, since it's his first time, you should comp our meals." Jungkook smirked and wiggled his brows.

Seokjin visbilly bristled at the younger man and narrowed his eyes. "I'll comp his mean, you know how much money I spend on you with food alone? I even had to add Sushi to the menu for you."

Jungkook held an amused look as he began to argue with Seokjin with a playful tone. "You're getting testy in your old age Jin-hyung." Jungkook mocked.

"Old? I'm not old. Twenty-six is not old!" Seokjin's voice rose a whole octave as he chided the younger man. "You won't think that when you're my age."

"You'll still be older than me and just as tight with money." Jungkook mocked Seokjin's tone which caused the silver haired man to chuckle under his breath.

Swan rolled her eyes and placed a hand to Seokjin's shoulder. "Just this once, let's comp his meal. Kookie will make up for it later in Suga's studio. Isn't that right, Suga?"

At this, the silver haired man smirked and gave a sharp nod. "Oh of course."

Jimin's eyes widened slightly, Suga? He knew that name. Min Suga, or Yoongi was a world known and respected music producer and rapper! Jimin had done many of his routines to Suga's songs. Jimin had no idea that Suga was a part of Bangtan.

"What are y'all doing here today?" Jungkook asked suddenly which caused all the smiles to fade.

Swan glanced at Jimin, silently wondering if she should talk with a stranger here within ear shot. However she still spoke after fixing her gaze on Jungkook. "We have a..." she paused wondering how she should word this. "A meeting with that smuggler who has been dealing BigBang fits for the past few months."

Jimin noticed Jungkook's playful demeanor disappear into something he had never seen before. Jungkook became serious and tense. "Do you need me?" Need him? What did that mean? What was going on?

Swan shook her head and gave a wave of her hand. "It's nothing Yoongi, Jin and I can't handle." She glanced to her left to Suga who just gave a cold smirk and folded his arms across his chest lazily.

Jimin held back the urge to gulp, whatever this meeting was but he knew by Suga’s look that it wasn’t going to end in the smugglers favor. Suga had a dangerous vibe oozing from him as he stood silently.

“You enjoy your day off, but I’m glad I saw you. I know I promised you tomorrow off as well but I will need you. I have to go to Japan to oversee the construction for the new hotel Joon and I are opening.” Sawn continued, her voice holding a serious tone.

Jungkook nodded instantly. “I’ll be there.”

“We’re going to leave early so just plan on staying at the penthouse. We’ll take the jet and come back in three days.” Swan smiled softly.

“Just the two of us?” Jungkook asked feeling the urge to get all the details now rather than later so he’d know how prepared to be. It was always dangerous to travel out of the country in their line of work. Namjoon and Sawn were never allowed to both be out of the country’s the same time. It left Bangtan exposed to people who would dare try a take over.

Swan shook her head as Suga glanced down at the Rolex on his wrist before plascing a hand on the small of Swan’s back to signal it was time for them to go. “No, V will be coming with us since he’s over the design.”

Swan gave Jungkook a sharp nod, as if telling him they’d sort out the details later before turning her eyes to Jimin, the soft expression returning to her face.

Jimin felt himself heat up under her gaze. He then realized he had been staring the whole time with a slightly slacked jaw. “Jimin, it was nice to meet you officially. Jungkook talks about you all the time. I hope one day to see you dance. If you ever need anything don’t hesitate to ask. Any friend of Jungkook is a friend of mine.” With that she gave a small nod before turning on her heel to leave the two alone. Followed closely by Seokjin and Suga.

Jimin felt his cheeks turn about fifty shades of red as she walked away. He watched the elegant sway of her hips as she headed towards the stairs that lead them up to VIP booths. He glanced over at Jungkook who was simply smirking at his friend. “She’s amazing right?” He asked as Jimin simply nodded.

“Amazing.” Jimin nodded.

**–**

As Sawn walked towards the VIP section she smiled to herself stopping herself from glancing back over her shoulder at the young friend of Jungkook. The deer in headlights look he gave her the whole time made her giggle softly to herself. Innocence in today’s world was a very odd thing to find.

“What are you giggling about?” Yoongi asked nudging her with his elbow as they neared the “meeting room”. A room no one should ever want to find themselves in unless you’re on the Bangtan side.

“That Jimin. He’s a cutie isn’t he?” She laughed softly while Jin smirked at his boss.

“You always liked them young, boss.” Jin wiggled his brows in a suggestive manner gaining a gentle shove from Swan as she pushed open the door to reveal a bruised up man gagged and bound to chair in the middle of the room. The smuggler. Hoseok was standing behind him with a large grin that stretched from ear to ear when he saw Swan and his fellow members enter.

“Hobi darling, did you bring me a present?” She asked with a grin as the trio stepped into the room. Her smile was a cherry one but her tone was cold as ice. “You’re so good to me, sweetie.”

Suga followed Swan into the room and Jin gave a swift glance down the halls to make sure no one who wasn’t granted Bangtan access happened to be lurking around the VIP section. After making sure the coast was clear he stepped inside and closed the door, making sure to lock it after it was shut.

#bts mafia au #bts fanfic #bts angst #bts reactions #Lets agree to never speak of this in daylight #Jimin is a innocent smol bean....right now

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