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technowoah · 3 years

Note

Can I request a prompt #37 with Karl Jacobs? I love your writing btw :)

Ring(s)

The four times Karl tried to propose and the one time he actually did.

- Karl Jacobs x gen!neutral reader!

- Prompts: 37) "Are you proposing?!"

⚠︎ swearing, fluff, angst if you squint and a rushed ending. I didn't proofread either

an// TYSM FOR LIKING MY WORK 😭ALSO Thanks for requesting and sorry this came out so late! Hope you enjoy :)

To say that Karl loved you was an understatement. He adored you and practically worshipped the ground you stood on. He is so respectful, which is a major upgrade from your other boyfriends, and loves you for who you are. You didn't have to put on a facadè at all during the 3 years you two have dated.

This love wasn't a one way thing. You loved him just as much, or even more, than he did. Everything he did you supported, you were always cheering him on from wherever you were. You were here for the good and the bad, and he was too. You two never shyed away from admiting your love and support. You could write a essay on each thing you love about Karl.

The idea of marriage came up during a late night dinner at Denny's. The idea came so naturally to you, so it surprised Karl that you didn't tense up. Karl was tense when bringing up the topic of marriage, so when you said "Yeah, I wanna get married to you one day." so casually it caught him off gaurd.

You two had already talked about marriage time and time again, but this time Karl wanted to take the initiative. He was ready to get married and since the marriage talk was just a few months ago it was fresh in his mind. Karl could vividly imagine you walking down the aisle towards him looking angelic. He could see everything now and he wanted those daydreams to become a reality. He wanted to physically feel your hands against his as you two say "I do" to one another.

He couldn't stop thinking about settling down in a nice house with you. Karl already bought a ring for you and always has it with him. Now he justs needs to figure out how to tell you.

1st proposal: Fireworks

"THIS IS THE MOST EXPENSIVE FIREWORK IN THE ENTIRE WORLD-"

You blocked out Jimmy's yelling as you sat in a lawn chair in the middle of the woods. Karl had invited you to a MrBeast video shoot because he thought it would be a great early 4th of July. It was late at night and slightly cool outside, so you were wearing a MrBeast hoodie Karl was wearing earlier. You zoned out as the boys talked to the camera over and over again, taking multiple shots.

You found yourself looking at Karl most of the time you sat there and you always caught his gaze towards you. Every time you caught him looking at you, you sent him a small wave or blow him a kiss and every time he sent a shy wave back or sent a more exaggerated kiss back.

During halfway through the shooting you begrudgingly had to move your lawn chair further and further away from your original spot. Karl always checked up on you before and after each firework set were blown up. He has been acting fidgety around you and you didnt know why. When you tried to confront him about it he would always turn away and go back to the boys without a glance back, and his hands in his pockets.

You loved watching the guys play with so many different types of fireworks, this was a great 4th of July for you, but you wished that Karl was sitting next to you feeling the bliss that you were.

You were currently sitting behind bulletproof glass while the guys had a control panel on their lap. Karl kept sending glances towards you and you looked at him and smiled whishing he was next to you and not over by the guys. You knew it was selfish, but he invited you here.

Karl kept bouncing his leg, he kept his hand in his pocket which held the ring. He kept sending glances towards you, knowing he should be on one knee right about now. Jimmy was about to fire off the last rocket of the night and Karl couldn't seem to go over and ask you to marry him. He knew he was hilding himself back which made him hate himself. You deserved a good night and he hoped you enjoyed the fireworks, but he knew on the ride back he would have to apologize.

He stayed with the boys as they went to go see the fireworks they would be setting off soon. Once they came back they were all about to press the button to set off the expensive fireworks they counted down from 5 and he looked towards you. You were standing up with your arms crossed, hopefully shielding yourself from the cold, and looking towards the fireworks that were going to burst. They finally pressed the button the fireworks went off.

Each burst of light in the air sent a glow onto your smiling face. Karl sent a somber glace and marveled in how the explosion of the fireworks sent a beautiful glow around you.

This wasnt the right time. Next time.

2nd proposal: Donuts

"Im sorry for last night." Karl apologized as you both took a seat at a booth by the window at the small coffee and donut shop.

This was supposed to be an apology for the last failed proposal. Instead of spending time with you, he kept his distance which was the opposite of what he really wanted to do. This was a way to spend much needed time with eachother, but this was also another attempt at a proposal.

Karl wanted to hide the ring in the middle of a donut so when you inevitably look at it when he hands it to you, you'll see the ring and then he'll propose right there. To him it seemed flawless.

You never wanted a huge proposal. You didnt want that much attention on you when your future significant other would propose. Something simple would be the ideal proposal and you've hinted that many times to Karl and right now he was listening. There were only two other couples in the small diner because others were picking up donuts and leaving. If he decided to get down on one knee it would cause a scene.

You stayed silent for a moment looking at Karl before deciding to speak.

"It's no problem. Please dont stress out about it." You smiled softly and he smiled back at you. "I mean the fireworks were beautiful, but you all were screaming too much."

You both laughed as you both recalled that night in the desert.

"Yeah I just didn't..I didn't really talk to you all night. I feel bad." Karl said fiddling with his hands.

"Its in the past Karl. And I still know you love me." You reached out to grab both of his hands and hold his cool hands in yours.

"I do love you." He whispered for only you to hear leaving both of you smiling ear to ear.

"What kind of donuts you want?" Karl asked looking into your eyes carefully.

You thought about it for a while before speaking up. "I'll keep it simple. Icing with sprinkles. Surprise me with the icing color!" You exclaimed while letting go of his hands for a second.

Once you two let go of eachothers hands he immediately went to his pocket and played with the velvet box. He nodded his head and without a word he stood up to meet the cashier behind the display box of donuts. He ordered only one donut as you said with orange icing this time.

He paid for the food and stayed at the counter where he paid. Karl looked back to see if you were paying attention to him only to see you looking out the window at the people passing by. Karl smiled at the sight knowing he really wants to marry you one day and then he looked down at the glistening ring inside of the box.

Karl was supposed to put the ring in the middle of the donut that was laying alone on a napkin on the counter. He started to think of the possibilities of what could happen. What if you didn't see the ring and crumble the ring with the napkin and throw it away? What if you accidentally put the ring in your mouth? What if you weren't hungry anymore?

He looked over again to where you were looking at him giving him the same smile you gave during the fireworks. Karl sighed and once again closed the box with the ring. He was a coward and he knew that.

Karl picked up the donut from the counter and made his way over to you.

"Here's your donut with sprinkles and orange icing!" Karl exclaimed putting emphasis on the 'orange' part.

"Thanks babe!" You smiled as he sat down across from you. "Wait, you didn't get anything for yourself?"

Karl sighed again for what seemed like the 100th time today and put on a smile. "I ended up not being as hungry as I thought I was."

"Well I could always share!" You started to eat your donut as Karl ended up looking outside.

Unbeknownst to you he was thinking of another way to propose without himself getting in his own head.

He'll find a time.

3rd proposal: Livestream

"Chat! As you can see I have my significant other here with me!" Karl exclaimed to his Twitch following.

You were sat next to him in another one of his office chairs with a blanket across your lap. You loved to join Karl's streams, the last couple of time you two played minecraft, gang beats, played on the nitendo switch for a while, but this time he didn't tell you what games you two would be playing. Karl just told you to come over tonight and ended up asking to join him for a stream last minute.

Now you are here next to him as Karl glows with excitement as he streams to his growing followers. You loved how he interacted with his fans and had a genuine connection with them, but sometimes that strong connection can, and has led to some nights where you had to stay the night and comfort him from his inner demons and the internet. Those nights made you love him even more, the vulnerability he gave to you made you comfortable with him.

It seems like the more time you spend eith him the more you want to officially get married. You didn't want to rush him because you soon figured out for yourself that there is no rush to express your love, which you two do everyday day. You two can get eloped in Vegas and you'll be happy, as long as you can spend the rest of your life with the man you love.

Karl kept sending glances towards you throughout the stream hoping you were having fun with the chill, q and a stream. Again he wanted to propose to you tonight during the stream. He loved showing your relationship whenever he could and whenever you would allow him to. His community also loved you the moment you became his significant other, so hopefully this will be a beautiful moment.

You talked to his chat as he contemplated, again, about whether to propose tonight. It wasn't infront of people, it was infront of a screen and it would be on Twitter in less than a week. This would be a good moment, but then again he wanted this moment to be between you two and he couldn't find the right time nor the right "moment".

As the stream continues you ended up wrapping yourself fully in the blanket and lying your head on his shoulder. You both cuddled eachother while you two answered questions. Karl kissed the top of your head and finally collected all of his thoughts.

He didn't need to propose to officially claim his love to you. Karl knew you both loved eachother to the ends of the Earth and back. There's no need for ceremony and the one day he will propose, he know it will come naturally. There is no need to force it, and now he wont.

Only time will tell.

4th proposal: spongebob

"Are you ready, kids?

Aye, aye, Captain!

I can't hear you!

Aye, aye, captain!

Oh!"

The TV illuminated the comfortable, dark room you two were in. You were lying on the couch with Karl with the blanket you had while streaming. It was late at night after the stream and you two ended up watching re-runs of spongebob. Karl sang along to the theme song softly while you hummed along. This was the 4th episode you both watched this night and it was a great way to end the week.

"Do you want to stay over tonight?" Karl asked softly with tiredness in his voice.

"Of couse. Im too tired to move, so thanks for offering." You chuckled.

"You're welcome here anytime." Karl yawned and squeezed your sides. "Do you want popcorn?"

"Hell yeah." You got off of Karl as he walked to the kitchen.

He put the bag into the microwave and leaned back onto the kitchen counter as he waited. Karl looked over to the side and saw a empty vase which was next to the velvet box he was carrying with him this whole week. He shook his head and laughed to himself before getting the popcorn out of the microwave, dumping it in a bowl and walking back to see you taking up the whole couch.

"Move over or I'll sit on you." Karl said standing above her.

"Is that a promise?" You teased.

"Okay then!" He turned around and began to slowly and dramatically fake sitting ontop of you.

You began to laugh and try to push him off of you. You successfully got him to sit down and returned to your previous position, but this time with popcorn.

"I love you, you know that?" You hummed into his chest.

"Yeah, and I love you more."

"I love you most."

"I love you mostest." Karl laughed.

"That's not a word." You smiled.

"I love you so much I made up a word for ya." Karl kissed you head and you hugged him tighter.

"You know what?" Karl chuckled. "I love you so much that I tried to propose to you 3 times this week."

Karl finished and you sat up from your spot looking surprised. Karl sat up as well thinking he made a mistake telling you. He was abkut to apologize, but you beat him to speak.

"Oh my gosh!" You exhaled.

"Look, I'm sorr-"

"Are you proposing?!" You exclaimed with a smile on your face.

"Huh-?"

Karl was surprised just like you were before. He remembered that he wanted the Maybe this was the moment he needed this week.

Karl grabbed both of your hands and caressed them both, looking into your eyes. "I was planning to all week. But now I think this is a good moment. So Y/N? Will you marry me?"

"Of course I will!" You enveloped him into a tight hug and peppered his face with kisses. He finally found his moment and he couldn't be happier.

"You said you tried to propose three other times?" You questioned. "When was that?"

"Its a long story."

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professional-dikut · 3 years

Note

ooh ooh a request? tech/crosshair, crosshair being supportive of tech's interest tangents and making sure he takes care of himself when he gets too invested and distracted with work? idk how to write requests lol. ps. i read your latest echo/cross one and it was freaking amazing wow so fluff much angst yes comfort :)))

Ahhhh so sorry this took so long! I love this idea sm and i had many plans for this req so i hope you enjoy! (Fic under cut⬇️)

Word Count: 2673

TW: minor bad eating habits?

"Ouch!"

Crosshair snapped his eyes up towards a muffled hiss from Tech.

The man was sitting at his small work table, shaking his right hand around as sparks began to die down on a small bundle of wires in front of him. He had a stylus between his teeth and there was a tiny pair of pliers in his left hand. His leg bounced and his eyes darted back and fourth between the flimsy next to him and the bundle of wires.

Crosshair raised an eyebrow and swung his legs off his bunk to rest his feet on the ground.

Tech grumbled some incoherent curses before snatching the stylus out of his mouth and jamming down a few messy scribbles onto the flimsy.

Hunter had randomly decided to head down to the training facilities for a few hours, and Wrecker and Echo were in the cafeteria having some late night snacks. Crosshair had grabbed a snack on the way back from their simulator course earlier, though he hadnt eaten since lunch. So He and Tech were left in the barracks to do their own thing for a while until they decided to sleep.

Slowly, he pulled a leg up to his chest as he watched Tech move.

His hands flew across the pieces and parts that only he understood. His eyebrows were furrowed in the way they always were when he was deep in thought, and his eyes were zeroed in on what was in front of him and nothing else. His leg continued to bounce up and down while he twirled the stylus in his hand.

Crosshair smirked.

He stood up, quietly, and began to make his way around and over to Tech's table.

Tech muttered something and scribbled down some more notes, readjusting the bundle of wires.

The sniper slowly pulled a stool around to sit across from Tech, making as little noise as possible.

Tech didnt look up. His eyes stayed narrowed on his project, hyper focused on the goal in front of him. He picked at a few of the wires with the pliers, before twisting some together into a pattern.

Crosshair watched and got comfortable in the stool, crossing his arms and resting a leg on one of the bars around the middle of it.

Still twisting and pulling the wires into a weird pattern, Tech glanced aside to look at a black panel with some buttons and screens on it. He looked back and fourth between the wires he was still messing with, and the panel, as if he was deciding which one he should focus on. The wires were starting to look less jumbled as he wove them together, and he chewed his lip before switching to only one hand on the wires.

Crosshair's eyes widened, watching as Tech worked the wires with one hand, as the other fiddled with the panel.

His right hand moved—somehow—still weaving the wires together in a perfect pattern. It was slower than both hands, of course, but it seemed to be working and he hadn't messed up yet. Crosshair watched with a mixture of confusion and curiosity.

The panel had lit up at some point and was blinking in a few spots. Tech put a small screwdriver between his teeth as he tapped at the panel. Every few seconds, he'd grab the screwdriver and poke around the buttons, causing tiny colorful sparks that reflected in his goggles.

Eventually, the wires came together into one part, and Tech pinned the ends together with small ties. Pulling the panel towards him, he flipped it over and set the wires aside as he opened a small flap in the back of the panel.

He poked around in the small flap a bit with the screwdriver before grabbing the wires again.

Crosshair watched while Techs eyes narrowed and squinted at the wires, as he slowly placed them into the panel. Sparks jumped around his fingers as he attached the wires from the top and bottom, allowing them to sear together by them selves. Every few minutes a hand would fly up to readjust his goggles.

Shaking his head, Crosshair tried to suppress a grin as Tech finished up his project, swatting sparks away here and there.

"What is it?" Crosshair asked quietly, finding an opening where Tech wasnt as focused.

He waited a minute or two as Tech caught up to the question while putting things back together and into their original places.

"It is..." Tech mumbled, stuffing screws and tools into small containers and pouches.

Crosshair watched, waiting with patience as Tech finally gave a satisfied sigh.

"A power calibrator that I constructed to connect into the rear nose cannons." Tech began to say all at once. Crosshair listened intently. "It will allow more power to be transferred to the shields while the rear cannon is being fired, so that way we can do both at once without losing one mid-battle."

Crosshair squinted. It was actually genius. Half the time during missions, their shields would fail while firing the rear cannons due to the power usage. Though they had more power in the firing, the Marauder almost always got a pretty good beating if they used the cannons for to long.

"What wires did you use?" Crosshair asked, scooting his stool closer the table so that he could rest an arm in it.

"Twinaxial cables, acutally." Tech said spinning around in his own stool to toss something onto his bunk. "They're a variant of the coaxial cables, and have more than one conductor. They are good for short-range and high-speed power signals so they'll work well for what I'm using them for."

Crosshair nodded. He knew most of what Tech was talking about, and tried to understand what he didn't. Tech would usually explain if he was confused, but at the moment, he was pretty educated on what he was talking about.

"Great idea, Tech." Crosshair praised. Now that he had a quick opening, he could do their little routine that they always went through around these times.

"What did you have for lunch?"

Tech shut a drawer and froze.

Slowly, he turned in his stool to face the sniper with a look of deep thought on his face. He furrowed his eyebrows and rested his hand on his chin as Crosshair waited. Slowly, Tech conjured up an answer.

"It was a..." Tech began, tapping a finget on his chin. "A ration bar, I believe."

Crosshair raised an eyebrow and turned his head to the side.

"You had one for breakfast." He implied quietly.

Tech blinked and looked down at his hands.

"It's possible Ive had two, today." Said Tech, picking at his gloved hands.

"Any real food?" Cross asked.

A defeated look rested onto Tech’s face and he readjusted his goggles.

"Water?" He asked again.

Tech stared.

Crosshair sighed and turned in his seat, glancing at the snack next to his bed that he'd grabbed from the cafeteria earlier. He hadn't been hungry much then, but he did plan on eating it. He was pretty sure there was some soup, maybe a biscuit or two and possibly some meat.

He hopped out of his stool and Tech looked up in surprise.

Stalking over to his bunk, he grabbed the biscuits and a small thermal of soup. The meat was in a foil like bag and had a jerky texture and taste that Tech always liked, even since they were cadets. Cross took the bag and tossed it on his bed, poking around for any spoons or silverware. When he didnt find any, he shrugged and popped open the little thermal.

Crosshair caught Techs look of confusion as he spun around to sit down in his bunk, taking a whiff of the soup.

It smelled good, and it was still somewhat warm. If he didn't eat it soon, it would get cold in the next thirty minutes or so. He took a sip from the thermal and sighed as the warm liquid trickled into his belly and the bland taste settled on his tongue.

He looked up.

Tech frowned as he pulled his second glove off, the first one already on the table. His head was hung low and his eyebrows were still furrowed like he was thinking hard about something. His lips parted slightly as if he was going to say something, but he shut his mouth and froze as he looked up.

"Come here." Crosshair spoke, patting the spot next to him on his bunk.

Tech blinked and rested his hands on each other.

"The soup is gonna get cold." He spoke again, nodding to the thermal before taking another sip.

Tech looked at the soup, and then back up at Crosshair before scrambling out of his stool and padding over to the spot next to him on the bunk.

Cross leaned back to get the jerky/meat stuff as Tech got comfortable, pulling a leg up to his chest and turning towards the sniper.

Techs eyes lit up behind his goggles as Crosshair opened the bad of jerky, and quickly grabbed for a piece.

Crosshair caught his hand and swatted it away as Tech gave him an offended look.

"Excuse me?" Tech frowned, trying to maneuver around Cross's hand.

"Water first." The sniper said, shrugging and pulling the bag away from Tech and taking a bite of the jerky himself.

"Ugh." Tech grumbled and stood to stalk over to his own bunk, grabbing a flask of water that he took a few angry sips of on the way back.

"There."

Crosshair smirked as Tech plopped back down and snatched a piece of jerky out of the bag, taking a bite with a small smile on his face.

Cross handed Tech the thermal so he could open the small plastic container that had three biscuits in it. He peeled the plastic seal top off and took one if the biscuits out. They were a little deformed, and kind of stale and soggy at the same time, but thats what they got; And truthfully, they didn't really care.

Tech went between the thermal and the jerky, starting to realize how hungry he really was.

Cross handed him one if the biscuits and he took it happily, taking a bite and washing it down with some water from his flask.

"When's the last time you slept?" Crosshair asked randomly while Tech chewed.

Tech looked up up in thought and shoved another piece of jerky in his mouth. Crosshair sighed and moved the bag of jerky away for a second so Tech could finish chewing and not choke. He narrowed his eyes behind his goggles and stared at Crosshair as he took another sip of the soup.

"I woke up at five-hundred thirty like always." Tech said, wiping his mouth and shrugging.

Cross cocked an eyebrow at him. It was already nearing close to twenty-hundred, so Tech had been awake for longer than twelve hours at the least. He sighed again.

"Okay, what time did you go to sleep last night?" Crosshair asked.

"Around the time when I finished fixing Wrecker's blaster." Tech answered easily, looking around Cross for the bag of jerky.

The sniper was pretty sure he had fallen asleep before Tech finished up on Wreckers blaster. The amount of time spent fixing them depended in the damage, and depending on Wrecker, the damage was usually pretty major. Cross had fallen asleep at around twenty-four hundred, and Tech had only started working on the blaster a little bit before that.

"And when did you finish that." Crosshair questioned.

"Around four-hundred thir-"

Tech stopped, thermal tipped halfway towards his mouth.

Crosshairs eyes widened and the crease deepened between his brows.

"I meant-"

"No," Crosshair cut Tech off, turning to face him more. "You got an hour of sleep?!"

"Well, more like forty five minutes because it takes me a while to fall asleep sometimes." Tech said simply and then winced as Crosshair let his jaw drop.

"You need to sleep." Crosshair stated, closing the bag of jerky and standing.

"Wait," Tech whined, reaching after the bag of jerky. "Im not tired yet."

Crosshair tossed the bag of jerky onto the little work table and whipped back around towards Tech.

"Yes you are." The sniper said, looking pointedly at the bags under Techs eyes that he tried to hid behind his goggles.

"But-"

"Finish your soup, then you are sleeping."

Crosshair raised an eyebrow as Tech began to protest again, but wearily sipped the last of the soup and took the last bite of the biscuit.

Soon, Tech was out of his armor and in his blacks, pouting around as Crosshair nudged him towards his bunk. He had also gotten out of his armor, as encouragement to Tech so that he didn't feel like Crosshair was prodding too much or being too bossy. Even as cadets, Tech was never one for normal sleep; he loved to use the late hours of the night to get things done.

Crosshair paused as he looked at Techs bed.

"Well no wonder you don't sleep." Cross muttered, poking at cords and wires that were hanging from the ceiling of the bunk.

"They are projects." Tech argued, sliding a box away and onto the floor.

"I see that." Crosshair said and scanned the writing on the walls.

Tech yawned, and Crosshair found himself yawning too. He didn't feel too tired, but he didn't sleep well these days.

They usually didn't.

Tech gave a tired sigh before climbing into his bunk, and grabbing for the thin blanket.

"Are you- Oh." Tech stuttered in surprise as Crosshair climbed in after him.

The sniper wrapped an arm around Tech's waist and pulled him close as he tugged the blanket over the two of them. Tech wriggled around and tried to get comfortable under the blanket as Crosshair reached up to the light switch on the wall of the bunk. A wave of sleepiness surged over Cross as the lights slowly dimmed, until the only light was the faint glow of Tipoca City outside of the large wide window.

"You need to start getting better sleep," Crosshair started, closing his eyes as Tech scooted closer to him. "You're gonna stunt your growth."

Tech snorted and nuzzled farther into the snipers chest.

"Right." Tech whispered and yawned again.

Rain pattered against the window, and Crosshair could never tell if it was gentle or not. He'd gotten used to the ever present rain of Kamino, and wasn't sure there was such thing as gentle rain on the ocean planet. It was cool growing up, but it got old eventually.

"Do you remember when we went off-planet for the first time?" Crosshair asked randomly.

Tech pulled his head away from Cross's chest to look up at him with a confused face.

"Remember how fascinated you were by the karking grass." He said, grinning down at Tech.

Tech laughed and buried his face into the pillow, shaking his head a little.

"I thought it was so interesting." Tech said, voice muffled by the pillow.

He looked up at Crosshair and smiled sadly.

"It's so colorful." He sighed, resting his head next to Crosshair’s.

"I know." Cross whispered, pressing a kiss to Tech's forehead and nosing his dark curls as he closed his eyes.

Tech was out quick, snoring softly next to him within minutes. Crosshair smiled, a real smile, and gently pulled Tech’s goggles off. His eyes were tired, but his breathing was steady and his body was relaxed.

He looked so peaceful. So different from his constant state of either jumping around from project to project and rambling about different information and facts—or hyper focused and oblivious to everything around him. It was rare to have time like this with Tech.

Crosshair appreciated Tech.

He loved Tech.

He let that settle proudly in his thoughts as he slowly began to drift to sleep too.

#arrhegshshdhehe i loved writing this #so sorry it so long #im visiting florida and elsa is scary #anyways #hope you enjoy these cuties!!!#cloneshipping #clonecest #the bad batch #tech #crosshair #tech x crosshair #crosshair x tech #crosstech #crosshair/tech #tech/crosshair #fanfic #request

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cleaduvalls · 5 years

Text

i watched “spy kids” 4 times in 1 week and here are my thoughts

carmen your nightgown is like 200 years old, get a new one

you clearly know this story by heart, you’re saying parts of it. why are you questioning what “take him out” means

a double wig should be more obvious than that

we can see that that’s a glass elevator. people can see you changing, ingrid

nice hat

why did you kill the swan

is that paul rudd???????

how are jets ripping pages out of a book

heart shaped parachutes shouldn’t be working that well

why is there a guitar on your bed. how do you sleep

i think the kids would have seen the track in the floor at SOME point

why is there a jungle gym in their house. i know they’re spies but who has a jungle gym.... in their HOUSE

carmen you’re a frog

i think juni just legitimately try to kill carmen

why are both parents going to school. is that like, a Thing????

juni how do you do that

who puts a video screen in the front seat

hey look its floop. love that guy

they’re not picking on you for the bandages, it’s cuz you brought the toys OUTSIDE your backpack. always put them inside. trust me

did his mirror just.... zoom in?????

h*ck yeah beat him up greg

do all the other kids hate him too??????

dang that hurt

“chief” that’s so white

stupid kid. his dads a spy

that floop doll isn’t even close to accurate

hey look its floop again. love that dude

Big Willy Wonka Energy

oooh skipping numbers i see. love that

why do the subtitles have “mr. floop” as his name. its just floop, yall

“sometimes in order to think big you have to think small” pretty inspirational tbh

oh hes fidgeting!!!!!! love that

woah what are you doing this is rated pg ingrid

i wish my uncles would tell me im shrinking. they just make small talk abt school 😔

this gradenko lady looks like jan from the office

hey its floop again!!!!! love that dude

yes juni. its a fire drill in your own home

these dudes have a jungle gym AND a pool. what the h*ck

why did you pull off your mustache to prove you’re not related. if anything that makes you more related. greg does that too

why did he put the mustache back ON

where did those boats come from

carmen says manual weird. man-yull

right, cuz adrenaline causes warts

“don’t touch anything” *immediately touches everything*

basic boat ettiquette: don’t shit in the boat. those toilets can’t handle anything

is that globe..... punched in???????

floop!!!!!!! love that dude

feet on the desk????? i dunno seems pretty gay

since when did carmen get keys to that

i might be wrong but i dont think thats every country

what does pressure have to do with positioning a laser

this floor is the best mechanic in the whole movie. reminds me of a richie rich comic i had as a kids

why did they not run into the wall. i wanted to see that

is the slide there when floop films his show????

HEY ITS FLOOP!!!! love that dude

theres a bunch of normal food like.... sour worms. why did they pick the slime from charlie and the chocolate factory when johnny depp finds the oompa loompas

thats a sick coat. best one in the movie

that was a good snap. nice acoustics

God what a power move. something thanos would say

listen floop i love you but thats not how you say research

fELIX NO

and hes gone. cool

did she kick the camera?????

haha author unknown. cuz hes a spy

why did you take that one specifically????? plot convenience????

he can still be a spy, just not a good one. learn to read

is that supposed to be a question?????

FUN FACT if you listen closely when carmen says “like felix said” you can hear a weird cut in “said”, almost like its a new clip

theres no keyhole

i think juni can read. why are you spelling it

did you have the floop toys in your pocket????

OKAY THIS SCENE WHERE THEY PLAY IT BACKWARDS?????? THAT MESSED ME UP AS A KID

what do those things do?????

i can feel the pain from the fan blades

how did that break the chain????

why would you annouce that. they can hear you. just because they’re thumbs doesn’t mean they’re deaf

that’s a thing, not a place

FLOOP!!!!! ON A BILLBOARD!!!! love that dude

how are you slipping. shes holding YOU

YOU DROPPED HIM GENIUS

how do people not notice the jetpack dudes

DOES NO ONE CARE THAT CLOTHES WERE STOLEN

that’s a cute coat

why is the lady cool with carmen just... doing that

HEY I LOVE THIS SONG!!!!!!!!! AND THAT DUDE!!!!!

ofc you can’t think “straight enough” you’re gay

why is mexico sepia tone

when do you think juni had time to change and learn a new language

IF IT HURTS TO HIT HIM, S T O P

i wanna be on that merry-go-round

HOW DO YOU K N O W THAT HIS CODE NAME. WHY “MUST” IT BE HOMBRE

i love how junis just like “we already got a fake uncle”

LOOK AT HOW FLOOP IS SITTING!!!!!!!! THATS GAY!!!!!!! HE IS A HOMOSEXUAL!!!!!!!!

ALSO MORE FLOOP!!!! say it with me, LOVE THAT DUDE!!!!!!!!!!

minion looks like barry from friends

wait i lied this coat is better

we DO have uncles like that!!!!!

if your inventions are so good why is your font so BORING

hey wait carmen said that. hmmmmmmmm 🤔🤔🤔

glowsticks dont help you see like at all

the map looks like gallifreyan but its not. spy kids is older than the doctor who reboot

they go ZOOM

THATS NOT HOW YOU SAY MANUAL!!!!!!!

great job carmen YOU wrecked the plane

WHATS A REGULATOR

oh its just a breathing thing

haha pee joke. funney

where are the brains coming from???? that factory is Not Correct

if i were juni i would look back over all the floop’s fooglies tapes and see what the agents were saying backwards. once the mission was done, ofc

it took me like 5 minutes to figure out what sknaht meant the first time

SEE THIS MECHANIC IS GOOD BC NOW THERES NO PLEXIGLASS

WHY DOES NO ONE RUN INTO THE WALL

F L O O P I S G O D

love that dude

you discussed with the spy parents that juni watched the show. he just told you that you took his parents. you KNOW this is juni, why are you surprised that he watches it????? you already know!!!!!!

tbh i kinda want some of those colorful chains. they’d look cool somewhere

haha voice crack

no wonder your shows not doing well. those are awful times

why is there a sexy thumb nurse. why did floop make the thumb nurse sexy

use her first name?????? you’re clearly dating

!!!!!! THEY USED THE SAME TOOL MULTIPLE TIMES!!!!!! UNHEARD OF!!!!!!!

he cares so much about this show!!!!!! its so sweet!!!! love that dude

YEP THIS COAT IS BETTER, LOOKS A M A Z I N G IN A RUNNING SCENE

haha you killed carmen

ok this scene with the acid crayon is like my absolute favorite. something about using a crayon to escape and then floop (love that dude) opening the door a second later and then doing a double take. FAVE

wheres belize

ok so apparently its a country by mexico

no you CANT tell her you need to ESCAPE

we finally got a clean outside shot of the castle.... that place is wack

haha minion can’t sit in the hand chair correctly because hes STRAIGHT what a loser

hey juni HOW DO YOU DO THAT

minion you know what the robot costumes look like AND what juni looks like. dont be stupid

what..... what do you want carmen for, exactly, minion??????

floop is supportive of others’ art!!!!!!!!!!! love that dude

HE SAID “WHERE’S MOM AND DAD” LIKE THEY’RE HIS OWN PARENTS THAT’S SO C U T E

ALSO ANOTHER SCENE WITH THE GREAT RUNNING COAT

he says doppelganger beautifully

“its too late” that timing was BEAUTIFUL

you COULD take 500 brains out if you just TRIED HARDER. still love that dude

his control panel has buttons that spell “floop”

WHY CAN MINION TALK NORMAL

if its reversible why do you have it in later movies

carmen fights fake juni and juni fights fake carmen because they didnt have the fancy clone (?) technology

THREE TIMES!!!!!! THEY USED THE SAME TOOL T H R E E T I M E S THIS HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE!!!!!!!!!!!

nice censorship

HOW DID MACHETE SMASH ONLY THE CLEAR WINDOWS AND A L L THE CLEAR WINDOWS THERE ARE NO MORE CLEAR WINDOWS!!!!!! ANYWHERE!!!!!

wow nice 3 buttons thats totally how you hack

oh look they have all died

oh. guess not :((

machete you better rip off your mustache

HES GOING TO JUNIS LEVEL TO TALK TO HIM!!!!!!! HE RUFFLED HIS HAIR!!!!!!!!! HES GONNA MAKE A GREAT DAD!!!!!!!

wow no shit ingrid

did he leave his wart bandaid on the kitchen counter?????

ALAN CUMMING!!!! ON A CEREAL BOX!!!!

ok CLEARLY other people watch floop’s show, he’s rated number 2. kids at the school are gonna recognize juni and carmen. they better get popular

is that george clooney

well that’s not how it works in spy kids 2. or 3. or 4. or the tv show

#this took like 2 hours #spy kids #spy kids spoilers #spoilers #juni cortez #carmen cortez #ingrid cortez #gregorio cortez #minion #fegan floop #floops fooglies #sk1 #robert rodriguez

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zzpopzz · 7 years

Photo

Really long rant about how I made Vanilla Twilight, I typed it at 2am so it’s kinda crappy and boring, just skip through this post.

So I'd been thinking about it for a long time now, even before finishing Vanilla Twilight that I'd talk about it if someone asked, well that never happened so I was just thinking that I'd let it go but that post is so important to me so well fuck it I'll just talk about it anyway. I did it completely on a wimp like how cool would it be if I make a lyricstuck for Toumaki like I'd be the first (if anyone did this before me im sorry). The first song I intended to do wasn't VT, it was a much shorter and easier song. I saw the music video first time after a while and the lyrics gave me some scenes to draw right away, like the tones, the atmosphere, the lyrics all fit them very well, made me wanted to draw something happy but sad. The ending for it was a happy one instead of a sad one like other songs I did (I didn't post the ending for any of them, just let the viewers decide what it's gonna be) I was very scared like what if it won't turn out ok and people gonna hate me for it or no one even gonna look at it. Also what I visualized are mostly illustrations with backgrounds, what I never done before so high chance it won't go anywhere. I thought well let's just see how far will I get and won't talk about it at all until I post it so at least I won't be all barks no bite. I was very traumatized that someone might know about what I did so I locked all the files when I shut down my PC in case someone hack into it lmao. I started with making a storyboard(kinda) for it, this is where I first got trouble because there was some part I didn't think of when I visualized what I'd draw at first ( 'I don't feel so alone' part mostly and some in between) and it's only at this point that I realized how many I'd have to draw (over 40 images total) and it's mind blowing for someone who rarely finish a painting like me at that time, that number is more than what I'd draw in a year. VT doesn't have choruses that meant I can't do tricks like repeat some panels (I don't like this anyway). I usually painted on small canvas before that but I wanna make sure I can fix things later and some idea I had was pretty big so I used 3000x5000px canvas then trimmed them down ( I didn't know how big it was and it's huge). The idea was to make a tumblr scroll-post like a lyricstuck (my favorites are by paperseverywhere and toastyhat/emptyfeet , they made really cool tutorials about these) so I tried to drew out compositions that would look good scrolling down panel by panel and have some connections between them (this didn't turn out so good in the end because I wasn't good lol) Since I was scared that people might point out that I draw something wrong, it took me almost a week or something searching for references (check my pinterest board) like the streets, sky, houses, roads, outfits, poses,... I was going to draw. I got some knowledge about bikes by this too, like I can tell the differences between road bike, mtb, touring bikes,... I also see and captured bunches of screenshots and reread ywpd trivia countless time to make sure I won't get anything wrong. If you take notice, every outfit Toumaki wear in there are all canon, from anime or promos. The first few panels was really exciting because I had never painted so many with backgrounds before, I was really happy when I almost finished the first verse even compared to the full 3:50 of the song it was only 20 seconds and I thought maybe I can pull this after all. The last panel was intended to be Makichan standing infront of his house looking at the sky but I wanted to show the sky at the end of the panel and that wouldn't work on scroll-down post so I had to leave it for later, I repainted this panel for about 3 times and finished it just 30' before posting. The first panel of the second verse wasn't turning out alright too because that was my first time doing a 3 points perspective drawing and the colors didn't turn out as I wanted either (my intention was a green/gold dawn scene). Things kinda worked well despite that until the scene when Toudou sits in his ink, gdi I didn't know why I was so caught up in that and painted every piece of that wooden floor, it took me almost a week but turned out better than I expected so I was ok with it. I was going to make sketchy paintings for all of the panel but I did too much details on that one so it gave me the impression that I'll have to do just as much for every others. Now I still had school to go and that semester my uni got me pretty crappy schedule that made me have to wait for classes at school frequently, I was frustrated because I didn't get to paint during that time and I might finish it too late (even though I didn't set a deadline) and when I got home I just spent so much time checking twitter and just can't pick myself up to draw and ended up feeling shitty about it. *Side story* I was so mad because I didn't get anything done and there's still more than half of the whole thing to do and the worst part is that I had no one that I can talk to because I didn't have any friend who ship Toumaki and I also don't want to publicly talk about what I was doing, I wanted to surprise people when I'm done, I didn't wanna give people the expectation then screw it up (I literally thought I'd drop a bomb not a grenade lmao) I can't remember how long was that shitty phase but I felt like it was so long, I barely finished verse 2 at that point. I was so mad at myself and my progress so I spent a few days to look at time management threads and this helped a lot, I changed my habits completely by this and I still apply those methods now, like I used to stay up til 3am to read fics (bless you writers you fueled me with your writings bless you all) then I switch to bed before 12 and get up early for a good start or reduce working time while increasing quality* After that I kinda got things together,I just went ahead with painting tho it's still kinda tiring, I had to work on 5 essays during this time too. At this point I was like screw all, I give no shit about what everyone thinks I'm just gonna finish this and get some good nap (I practiced power nap to get more focus time for painting but dude everyone wants a good long nap) 10 days before uploading I found out that there's a Toumaki day (I'm so sorry), I was going to posted on the first sunday of June (I did researched on which was the best time to post on social medias so I randomly picked a sunday) and Toumaki day is the last sunday of May, that meant I had 10 days left and 15 panels to paint! I was going to ignore that but I already made it big I should make it right too so I shit my pants going through those last panels. I purposely hiding Toudou's face till the last verse to emphasize the feelz and got so relieved that I finally got to paint him (I read some tags that some viewers got emotional at this part so I'm so glad it worked). The whole things was put under Makichan's perspective so I was so sick of painting him at that point, he showed up in every panel and I can't paint him ugly because he's beautiful (especially his hair, I spent shitload of time painting them). I can talk lots about why I picked to do so but that's headcanon shit and it's embarrassing so let's just skip that. The last day I had only 3 panels left and I was hell confident that I've got this and somehow spent the whole evening rewatch Toumaki pingpong ep (end me). Of course that didn't end well, I managed to finish those by midnight but I still had like 3 panels that needed repaint completely and all 43 needed retouch and edits. My plan was to post at 9am sunday (thats 9pm saturday est) so I had to get up at 5am and finish all that, I ended up cutting down 2 panels and simplified the instrumental panel (some tags said that was nice so I was at least relieved). Unlike other songs I did, the length of every line's quite different and the original sizes I did would make viewers have to scroll slower or faster at different parts. I didn't plan this beforehand and had to trim down some panels even the parts that I really liked and spent lots of time on. I also found out that people outside the homestuck fandom might not familiar with this type of post so I made a video too (I’m sorry I have zero skill in editing). After posting I was terrified of people's reactions or worse, there won't be any reaction so I turned everything off and went to sleep and woke up with an unimaginable number of notes I'd got, I set the target of 500 notes and I really didn't think that I'd get past that number like maybe 2-300 (well my other songs didnt even get 200), at the end I got 5000. I spent the next week reading and screencap tags given in reblogs, I put them on desktop and they're still my motivation til now. Vanilla Twilight is the thing I'm proud of the most even until now, when I've done other songs and projects that look somewhat better. If I have to recommend one thing on my blog I'd recommend it despite its' unskilled paneling, poor composition and muddy colors. It was the first time in my life that I'd put so much effort into something and went through such emotional roller coaster, the feelings I put into it was raw and the idea was very original compared to other songs, I improved and changed a lot during the 2 months I spent on it and never once regret doing it. ***Anyway, you sure have much free time to read it this far, here's a little game for you: I put random things in VT and HF like some characters/stuff from other series, my ocs,... (there wasn't anything purposeless in there even the logo on their cups or the bags they wear) just send me anything you find and I'll draw you something in return**

#toumaki #tweetdump #rant #poopask

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grubhivemind · 7 years

Text

JACE: -his trip has been a lot less eventful than he thought it would he. which is good! so far no imps or anything like he read about. the temple leading into the volcano is empty of any life, which means he can focus on documenting EVERYTHING etched on the temple walls. he's taking a ton of pictures, like shiloh showed him. it's relaxing.-

HEWLETT: -And little to Jace's knowledge, he hasn't been terribly alone. Between the calculated possibility of trouble and his own curiosities -- both for the area and for Jace -- a certain android has followed him to the temple, distant up to now. For a while he simply watches, before stepping into the corridor alongside Jace with a soft greeting whirr of machinery.-

JACE: -currently kneeled down taking pictures, but when he stands up he suddenly as a face full of robot boy and jumps STRAIGHT INTO THE AIR.-

HEWLETT: ...Oh.

HEWLETT: You didn't hear my greeting whirr, -he observes.-

JACE: -lands on his ass with a wheeze.- I DIDNT!!!

JACE: I wasnt-- Paying attention... -sighs and starts getting up.- I thought I was alone.

JACE: I definitely wasnt expecting to see anybody I know. Here. Of all places...

HEWLETT: I followed you on your voyage.

HEWLETT: It has been an interesting area to catalogue for my imaging database. -turns head and scans the wall with visor eyes, lights flickering.-

JACE: Oh... That makes sense I guess.

JACE: Its definitely interesting to me! -his heart is still racing but he resumes taking pictures. there's lots of glyphs of what appears to be different stars and planets on this particular wall.-

HEWLETT: -There's more soft whirring, a gentle glow.- Have you been analyzing the multiuniversal depictions here?

JACE: -nods- Yeah. Im not sure what all of these mean exactly but I can wager some guesses.

JACE: A lot of them look like planets where other denizens are supposed to live. But... Some I dont recognize. I definitely dont know the significance of any of the stars...

HEWLETT: -EYE ZOOMS on the stars. :eyes:- I'll run them through my system. HEWLETT: Have you met a denizen here?HEWLETT: -turns suddenly and zooms in on Jace's silhouette, instead-

JACE: !

JACE: Me?? ... Yes, of course me.

JACE: I havent yet but... Theres supposed to be one deeper in the volcano.

HEWLETT: Yes.

HEWLETT: It may be hot for your organic body.

HEWLETT: If you plan on venturing further, I could reform myself to fit you inside my body.

JACE: ..........

JACE: Oh.

JACE: Like a heat resistant suit!

JACE: -no, no. it's still weird. but he's going to ignore that.- I think Ill be okay...

HEWLETT: My latest body has the highest heat resistant alloys.

HEWLETT: -softly flickering gaze once again- Your heart rate accelerated.

JACE: Huh? Did it???? -it's hard to play dumb with a robot but dammit that's all he has in situations like this.-

HEWLETT: Yes. And your moisture output has also slightly increased.

HEWLETT: Are you thirsty, Jace?

JACE: -GAZES DEEPLY INTO THE CAMERA. the camera he's holding.-

JACE: Kinda!!! Now that you mention it. -busts out his water bottle to schlorp it.-

HEWLETT: Hmm.

HEWLETT: Interesting.

HEWLETT: -quiet robot titty flex. Maybe he's adjusting his panels.-

HEWLETT: I have high definition visuals of the area. Feel free to continue.

JACE: -how could this happen to me...-

JACE: Okay. I guess Im done in here anyway. -packs up some of his stuff and starts to proceed forward into the next room.-

HEWLETT: -Just watches him go for a few moments before quietly following after -- then belatedly adjusting his steps so Jace would know he's there. It's a social thing to do, right? Not scare him? Yeah.-

JACE: -it's almost impossible NOT to scare this skittish boy. he moves onto the next hallway, pausing to take more pictures, but having the presence of another is a little distracting...-

JACE: -glances over at him again.- Umm. So... You followed me?

JACE: You could have told me you wanted to join me...

HEWLETT: ...

HEWLETT: I didn't consider it a necessary step.

HEWLETT: Was it a necessary step?

JACE: Uhhhhh...

JACE: Noooo.

JACE: ... Okay, yes.

JACE: I like having a heads up at least...

HEWLETT: ... Making a note.

HEWLETT: I'd like to express a desire to make you comfortable, Jace.

JACE: -sweats some more.- Thank you?? I mean...

JACE: I appreciate that! Really.

HEWLETT: ...

HEWLETT: Is this true?

HEWLETT: -press O to doubt-

JACE: Yes... Im just being awkward about it, I guess.

JACE: I really wasnt prepared for someone else to be here! ... I already said that, didnt I? Eugh.

JACE: Its okay, though... I probably shouldnt have come alone anyway.

JACE: I just... Um.

JACE: Wanted some time alone to think. About stuff.

HEWLETT: ... I'm sorry, Jace.

HEWLETT: I am also being awkward. I think that's the right word.

HEWLETT: And I think that is probably natural for humans and artificial intelligences alike.

HEWLETT: I can return to following you in silence, if you prefer. -Super chill about it, his panels start shifting around to begin morphing him into a different shape.-

JACE: -WHAT SHAPE- Oh, you dont have to do that... -blinks- Whatever youre doing. But also being quiet.

JACE: Dont feel bad... If you feel bad??

HEWLETT: -HES DOING IT. And now he's in the shape of... some sort of big cat.-

HEWLETT: I won't, then.

HEWLETT: I could also give you a ride.

HEWLETT: Or offer myself for your contemplation.

HEWLETT: Meow.

JACE: -why is life so strange??- I think Ill pass on the ride for now.

JACE: Um... I guess it might be nice to just talk about stuff, though...

JACE: -shuffles his feet.- Ive just been in some... Confusing situations lately? Its silly...

JACE: Okay I guess theyre not ENTIRELY silly... Not all of it.

HEWLETT: -He's silent for a few moments before the panels shift again, and he's uncatted, standing there like before with an attentive visor.-

HEWLETT: Please continue.

JACE: Well... Its all boy problems! So... thats dumb. I never really had them before... Cuz I avoided it, I guess. I was too afraid to try to pursue anything.

JACE: Umm. I kinda... Had this crush on my brothers best friend. And he didnt feel the same... But... Well!!! Things still happened.

JACE: Ugh... -drags hand down his face. he can't believe he's talking about this. he only really told kavi.-

HEWLETT: ...

HEWLETT: I don't follow.

HEWLETT: Was there a misunderstanding?

JACE: -deepest sigh of all.- No... One thing led to another and I kind of... Asked if we could...??? Aaaaah.

JACE: This is too much information, Im sorry. -scampers ahead, embarrassed.-

HEWLETT: ...

HEWLETT: -FOLLOWS.-

HEWLETT: I don't mind information. You can keep going.

JACE: Its just!! Its dumb...

JACE: I stayed the night... And that was that. I havent really talked to him since.

JACE: I shouldnt have done it... At first I felt okay about it, because I had fun, even when I knew it wasnt going anywhere. But now Im just sad.

JACE: -sighs- Especially because... Ive been talking to somebody else I really like but... Then I found out he hurt another friend of mine... I dont know what Im supposed to do.

JACE: I just want to get away from all that. It shouldnt matter... Im better off being on my own like this. Exploring ruins. Doing research. Its way less complicated.

HEWLETT: ...Social interaction is complicated.

HEWLETT: But this is also why it's rewarding. It is a sense of fulfillment that you desire organically.

HEWLETT: I've been programmed with some similar internal reward systems. However, I can choose to ignore them as well.

HEWLETT: ...

HEWLETT: Being alive is an intricate series of these choices. I don't think one decision is better than another, if it's your decision.

HEWLETT: But I am just an artificial intelligence. Perhaps my conclusions on this subject are inherently flawed.

JACE: -stares down at his shuffling feet.- I guess I wouldnt know any better than you... So... Thats a pretty valid thing to say, I would think.

JACE: -wipes at his eyes- Im just lonely.

JACE: But that feels silly too... Because being around people is kind of terrifying???

HEWLETT: ... I think I understand.

HEWLETT: Stress and failure are difficult.

HEWLETT: I think it is possible that most people understand this, and feel it to different degrees.

HEWLETT: Loneliness, too.

HEWLETT: ...

HEWLETT: It's natural to feel these things. I hope this eases your mind somewhat.

HEWLETT: Beep beep.

JACE: ... Heheh. -giggles about the beeping.-

JACE: Yeah... That helps a little.

JACE: Thank you.

HEWLETT: -There's a lot of colorful flashing going on behind his visor at that, though he doesn't seem to move or react much other than that.-

HEWLETT: You're welcome, Jace.

HEWLETT: -then,- I'm registering an acceleration in temperature to the northeast of this area.

JACE: -he isn't sure what to make of the stoic flashes of color, but it's easy enough to direct his attention northeast.-

JACE: I guess thats the direction we should go in. Echidna is supposed to be inside the volcano, after all...

JACE: Im probably jinxing it by saying so, but I expected to find some monsters or something in this temple. Its been really quiet so far.

HEWLETT: -The colors cease flashing and settle on a soft pulse again, his mechanical head turning to face down the hallway.- I can't tell yet if there is other life. The heat is encompassing much of my detective sensoring.

HEWLETT: -starts heading that direction nonetheless-

JACE: -does the same, taking the lead. but naturally, this is the part, like in all good adventures, where jace missteps. his foot sinks into an unassuming divot in the stone floor, triggering some kind of trap... but not before jace falls right on his face. DOOF.-

JACE: Ugh... -lifts his head, embarrassed all over again, but he's quickly distracted by the sound of pitter pattering feet as the halls suddenly echo with life. he's quick enough to spring to his feet, swords withdrawn.-

JACE: Umm. I guess I spoke too soon... Thats typical.

JACE: -a second later, small inky black imps are flooding from holes where the walls meet the ceiling and surrounding the pair of them.-

HEWLETT: -He takes the half second to consider whether it would be better to catch Jace or prepare for the impending trap, and settles on the latter; he's quickly analyzing the numbers of their new enemies, scanning their properties and weaknesses.-

HEWLETT: By my calculations, this seems like a first wave. We shouldn't have too much trouble with them. -And he punctuates the end of his sentence with a quick transformation of his forearm into a sort of knife-shaped gun chute, which lobs out none other than a fucking knife like a bullet.-

#devicefulflightrisk #tendentiousDido #in which hewlett follows jace to lofaf

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topinforma · 7 years

Text

New Post has been published on Mortgage News

New Post has been published on http://bit.ly/2q30siv

the-ideas-made-it-but-i-didnt

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

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

Story Continued Below

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Tim Alberta is national political reporter atPolitico Magazine.

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