#Junior state of america | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ceceswithnopizza · 3 months ago

Text

3.46k words

A seemingly disappointing birthday turns into a little getaway for Maryn after she wins miss world and who better to spend it with than Aaron. Masterlist

This contains mentions depictions of staying at a poor mental health facility and nothing else to heavy, I want to speed up Maryn and Mabel’s journey to really get to Aaron and Maryns love story… so bear with me please.

Timeline Maryns met Aaron at the gala in Feb, it’s now May. This chapter takes place over the weekend. The dinner is Sat and the kiss happens on sun.

ꨄ

Here I was, once again, on the stage that started it all. Well, not the exact same stage, but the sash around me felt just as heavy, the fabric the same. Only the words were different now. The girls standing beside me were new faces, but their whispers and side glances—their shit-talking—felt eerily familiar. The lights burned as hot as I remembered, searing into my skin like they were part of the ritual. I was such an idiot for thinking it would ever be over. In the pageant world, you can’t just win and stop.

You start with the baby contests, then you move to junior competitions, and eventually, you make it to the big leagues. Beautiful girls from every corner of life—nepo babies with their air of entitlement, and girls who, like me, clawed their way up from nothing. Some girls used pills to coke, tapeworms to anorexia, anything to stay on top. To win Modeling contracts, movie roles, music deals—whatever the prize, you gave up pieces of yourself to get it.

I’d jumped through every hoop. I’d sashayed and smiled before the judges, even Marlon Beck. He was all too eager to forgive my past "mistakes" and save my ass with Mabel, of course—for a price. Nothing in this world comes without a price. And the more you want, the stranger the currency.

Back to where the sterile air reeked of bleach, All the monotone voices with their passive smiles—smiles faker than mine.

“I just want to help you,” the counselor would say, her words syrupy with insincerity. “They’re worried about you.”

Lies. Every word ignited something deep inside me, but I swallowed the flames, knowing that speaking out would only make it worse. Her notepad, its yellow pages already scrawled with lies, sat perched in her lap like a loaded weapon. The scratching sound of the rubber pen with a dull tip as I signed my name. Over and over bored out of my mind.

Then there was the medicine—the taunting voices it silenced in my head were replaced by a heavier, darker fog. The pills weighed on my brain, turning it into thick, heavy soil where no clarity could grow.

I’d give anything to never go back to that place.

“You have less than a minute to answer, Ms. United States of America. The question is: Is this your dream?” The pretty woman read from the prompter, glancing at the countdown timer projected on the wall.

No. Hell no. This was nothing like it should’ve been the farthest thing from what I deserved, what I had earned. That was what I wanted to say, but my game face held steady. I smiled with practiced poise and delivered the winning answer, the words flowing like honey, sweet and insincere.

The applause roared around me as I walked back to my place, standing beside Ms. Canada. My hands clutched the folds of my gown, my heart pounding beneath my chest. This wasn’t my dream. But on this stage, under these lights, it had to be.

The real beating came backstage. Everyone else may have been satisfied with my performance, but Mabel wouldn’t be. I could feel it in the air, her eyes on me, like she was waiting for me to slip up. Ricardo had saved my ass those few weeks ago, but I knew it couldn’t be him again. It was either me or him, and I couldn’t keep being selfish. It hurt, but I couldn’t let him suffer for me.

Ricky had been Mabel’s godson since he was born. His family had money, so did Mabel. They were close, grew up together, and when Ricky’s mother, Honey, caught his eye, I could see the anger in Mabel. Honey had something she’d wanted for decades, but she settled and played her role.

When Ricky was born, Mabel was his emergency contact, and after James and Honey died, it was all hers—Ricky and the money. Everything went into her hands, including the memories. She could’ve kept the photos, the videos, the moments of a life she didn’t care about, but she burned them. What remained was just the money, and she held it like a prize. That’s all she cared about, that’s all she ever would.

I could feel my body start to betray me. I hadn’t eaten all day, and the emptiness in my stomach was becoming a black hole. My vision blurred, spinning, as I stumbled backstage, dizziness taking over. The world felt too heavy.

"Ricky, where is my lancet? I think I need sugar," I murmured, barely able to catch my breath.

"Where did you pack it?" Ricky’s voice, frantic, cut through the haze, searching for it.

I felt my body slump. “I—. She didn’t pack it. I did.” Mabel said cutting me off standing against the door like a lion about to pounce. “Just like I do everything around here. And for that fat, ditzy bitch to embarrass me like that, and then stuff herself with sweets. Ha. No. I don’t think so."

Mabel sneered and shoved it into her pocket. She didn’t even care that I could go into shock. I had diabetes since I was 15 years old.

I leaned back into the couch, my head swimming, when she grabbed my face with sharp, cold hands. Her nails dug into my skin, her fingers like vices. She twisted, pushing in my jaw, and I could feel the scrape of her nails along my neck. It hurt. It hurt more than I could handle, but I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t give her the satisfaction. Not now.

I hissed, trying to blink the pain away, but the tears formed, and I could feel them threatening to fall. The last thing I needed was to cry. I needed to be strong, even though the strength was slipping away with each second.

“You have the audacity to cry when you’re the one who slapped me in the face?” Mabel spat, her voice like acid. She jerked my head roughly to the right, tilting it painfully, forcing me to look at her. My chest tightened. The cold, judgmental light above us made everything feel so sterile, so clinical. Like I wasn’t a person, just something to punish.

“I-I’m sorry,” I stammered, my voice breaking. “I didn’t mean to... really... the medicine....” I swallowed hard, hoping my words would make sense, hoping they would lessen the wrath that was building inside her.

She cut me off with a sharp, cruel laugh. “No. It didn’t.”

I froze. The small, weak part of me that had hoped for some kind of mercy, some kind of understanding, crumbled. I whimpered like a child being told no for the first time, and all I could do was stare at her, helpless.

She stormed out, slamming the door behind her, leaving me there on the couch, heart pounding, chest tight with fear. Alone.

“Ssh, it’s okay. Here,” Ricky’s voice was a lifeline, soft and calming. I didn’t deserve it, but he was there, kneeling beside me, pulling a ziplock bag of my favorite candies from his pocket. I didn’t feel like I could move. I felt paralyzed, the weight of everything pressing down on me. Every part of me just wanted to escape. I didn’t want to feel anymore.

Ricky fed me a piece of candy, his hand gentle, guiding it to my lips. I let myself take it, even though I didn’t want to. His actions felt like the only thing keeping me tethered to reality, even though part of me wished I could just let go.

The weariness washed over me, pulling at my limbs like I was being swallowed whole. My head rested back, and the harsh, cold air stung my skin for a second before Ricky put his hoodie around me, the warmth of it wrapping me in a fleeting comfort.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, his thick Dominican accent brushing against my ears.

“It’s okay” was all I could say before sleep took over, drowning everything else out.

But as I drifted off, my thoughts spiraled. What was I doing? How had it come to this? I had no control, not anymore. Mabel had me trapped in a cage of her making, and all I could do was survive it. I wasn’t strong enough for anything else, and maybe not even that.

Eventually, I got up, the sun outside dimming as it faded into a golden-orange hue, casting long shadows across the room. I sat on my pink silk sheets, my eyes trailing aimlessly around my space. There was a heaviness in my chest I couldn’t shake, but I pushed it aside. Despite everything, I couldn’t deny the small spark of satisfaction I felt in the plumpness of my lips and the way my lashes framed my eyes. Little things, but they made me feel... okay. Maybe even pretty.

I stretched my arms toward the ceiling, letting out a yawn that ended in a deep sigh. There was no avoiding it—I had a job to do tonight. My task was simple enough: look my prettiest and flatter Marlon Beck until his ego inflated like a balloon. The thought made me cringe, but I couldn’t afford not to.

The warm embrace of a hot bath called to me, and I answered, stepping into the steamy water I’d filled with Epsom salts and a frothy bubble bath. The lavender scent wrapped itself around me as I lowered into the tub, letting the heat ease the tension in my body. My head rested against the cool porcelain edge of the clawfoot tub, my eyes fluttering closed.

For a brief moment, I allowed myself to exist.

Birthdays used to mean something. Now, for the last five years, they’d been nothing but a source of sadness—a reminder of what I’d lost. The edges of those dark thoughts crept in, like unwelcome guests at the door of my mind, threatening to pull me under. But no. Not this time. I was tired of being sad.

And then I heard it: a small, familiar voice, soft at first but growing louder.

“Whose birthday is it?” Mama asked, her tone warm and full of love.

The memory unfolded like a movie reel. I saw myself as a little girl, standing beside her. My store-bought Princess Tiana dress had deep creases from being folded too long in its plastic bag, but I didn’t care. The matching plastic heels clicked and clacked as I jumped up and down, the plastic strap with Tiana’s smiling face barely keeping my feet in place.

“It’s my birthday, Mama!” little me chirped, her voice high-pitched and brimming with excitement.

“And how old are you?” she asked, her smile so wide it could’ve lit up the room.

The kitchen had been transformed. The cluttered counters and table had been replaced by a large white folding table, its front draped with a “Happy Birthday” banner that sagged slightly in the middle, with presents littered everywhere.

“I’m 10!” I exclaimed, my grin nearly splitting my face.

“Ten years old,” Mama said, clapping her hands together. “Let’s all sing happy birthday!”

The memory swelled. My older cousin walked in carrying a cake, and the smile on my face grew impossibly wider. They set the cake down on the table, and the familiar birthday tune began.

“How old are you?” they sang, their voices overlapping.

“10!” I shouted, my voice bursting with pride.

“How old are you?” they repeated, louder this time.

“10!” I screamed again, puffing my chest out like it made me bigger.

The song ended, and I leaned over to blow out the candles. The sound of cheers and laughter filled the air as the candles went out, replaced by the smell of melting wax and sweet frosting.

The memory faded, leaving me sitting in the tub with a bittersweet ache in my chest. That little girl—the one jumping up and down, her plastic heels clicking, her heart full of pure, untainted joy—I was so jealous of her. I wanted to be her again. I wanted to feel that kind of happiness again.

Maybe... maybe that started with a choice. A choice to fight.

I sat up, the water rippling around me as I scrubbed myself clean. When I was done, I dried off and coated myself in lotion and perfume, determined to put the memory to good use.

The familiar sound of knobs turning and a door clicking open pulled me from my thoughts. I sat at my vanity, wrapped in a soft robe, my cluttered makeup station lit by the warm glow of the bulbs around the mirror. I scrolled through my phone, searching for outfit inspiration.

“Maria, are you decent?” Ricky’s voice called out my middle name from the hallway. He pushed the door open a crack, his hand covering his eyes.

“Why’d you come in if you thought I wasn’t dressed, perv?” I teased, a small smirk tugging at my lips.

Ricky rolled his eyes, clicking his teeth. “Happy 25th birthday!” he said, stepping inside with a pink gift box in one hand and a small cake in the other. He pulled a tiny confetti popper from his pocket and let it off with a grin.

I couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled out of me as I rushed to hug him. “Thank you,” I whispered, my voice softer than I intended.

“Come here,” he said, beckoning me over to the bed. He placed the pink box in front of me and opened it to reveal a heart-shaped mini cake.

“Your favorite,” he said proudly. “Red velvet. And I made sure to tell them you like it dense.”

He began singing “Happy Birthday,” his deep voice filling the room. When the song ended, he sat beside me, waiting expectantly.

“Aren’t you going to eat your cake?” he asked. “It’s your favorite.”

I hesitated, glancing at the cake before shaking my head. “I can’t,” I said, standing to adjust my robe. “I’ll get bigger.”

Ricky frowned. “Maria, you’re barely a hundred pounds soaking wet. A slice of cake isn’t going to change that.” He picked up the knife and cut a piece, holding it out to me. “Forget what Mabel says. It’s your day, and she won’t even be back for another two weeks.”

I crossed my arms. “But she left prepped meals. She’s going to know if I don’t eat them. She’ll notice if I gain weight.”

Ricky’s jaw tightened. “Let me deal with Mabel,” he said, his tone firm. “She doesn’t need to know everything.”

“She always finds out,” I whispered, my voice trembling. “She told me I’d be nothing more than an addict. Do you think she’s right?”

Ricky crouched in front of me, his eyes searching mine for an answer. “No. Of course not. You’ve been sober for six months, Ricky. You’re doing amazing.”

“She doesn’t have power over me anymore,” he continued. “She only did because of the drugs. But I’m free now. I found my brother, and he has pictures, videos—proof of everything. I’m going to settle this. She won’t be able to hurt us anymore.”

He kissed my forehead, lingering for just a moment, before walking out.

Could I finally be free?

The restaurant was cloaked in an air of quiet sophistication, the kind of place where the conversations were low, the laughter subdued, and the clink of cutlery against fine china almost hypnotic. The ambiance was steeped in luxury, the dark wooden walls polished to a gleam, their antique charm complemented by ornate golden inlays. Everything here seemed timeless, as if the room itself was frozen in a moment meant to impress.

I sat a few feet away from the balcony’s intricate wrought-iron banister, the design curling like ivy vines, each detail catching the faint light of the crystal chandelier hanging above. The chandelier was massive, the kind of centerpiece that drew your eye even when you didn’t want to look. Its crystals refracted soft greens and yellows, casting an ethereal glow over the glass shelving lining the walls. The shelves were filled with gleaming bottles that sparkled like jewels, their liquid contents shimmering in the chandelier’s light.

My chair was a deep maroon, upholstered in velvet so soft it felt like sinking into a cloud. Golden details were woven into the armrests and back, their intricate patterns catching the light with every slight shift. I tried to let the elegance of my surroundings distract me, to lose myself in the hushed murmur of conversations coming from the floor below. There, couples and groups sat in matching maroon chairs at circular tables draped in crisp white tablecloths. The flicker of candlelight played across their faces as they laughed and sipped wine, their plates piled with food that looked almost too beautiful to eat.

But none of it could keep my mind from wandering. I checked my watch again, the time staring back at me like a cruel joke. Marlon was an hour late. An hour. The realization settled heavily in my chest, making my heart ache in that dull, familiar way.

He had forced me into this date, had insisted with that charming, condescending smile of his that I clear my schedule. And now he had the audacity—the gaul—to stand me up.

The soft hum of the restaurant couldn’t drown out my spiraling thoughts. My gaze drifted to the empty seat across from me, its maroon upholstery mocking me. A lump formed in my throat, hot and humiliating.

If even Marlon Beck—someone who’d sleep with just about anyone—didn’t want me, what did that say about me?

The question clung to me like a wet cloak, its weight dragging me further into the darkness. It wasn’t just about this date or him not showing up; it was about everything. Every rejection, every misstep, every time I had felt like I wasn’t enough. The restaurant seemed to grow quieter, the glow of the chandelier dimming in my mind as my thoughts consumed me.

I was sinking into that familiar pit when a soft voice broke through.

“Ma’am, could I get you anything?”

The waitress’s voice startled me, pulling me back to the present. I blinked up at her, her kind eyes framed by dark lashes, her expression gentle but professional.

I straightened in my chair, trying to shake the heaviness off me, if only for a moment. “Um…” I hesitated, my thoughts catching up to my surroundings. My mind flitted back to the menu I had studied earlier.

“I’ll have the six-ounce filet mignon, medium rare, with the white veggie rice,” I finally said, my voice steadier than I expected.

She nodded, her smile softening the edges of my embarrassment as she leaned forward to pour water into my glass.

As she walked away, I sank back into the maroon chair, the plush velvet cradling me. I looked down at my watch again, though I already knew what it would say. Marlon wasn’t coming.

The flickering light of the chandelier caught my eye again, the greens and yellows reflecting faintly on the golden inlays of the banister. Somewhere below, a burst of laughter erupted from one of the tables, sharp and bright. It made me smile.

I reached for my water glass and took a slow sip, letting the cool liquid slide down my throat. My thoughts felt heavier now, like stones stacking one on top of the other. Still, a small part of me wanted to believe this didn’t mean anything. That it wasn’t about me. But that part was small, and tonight, it felt impossibly far away.

The restaurant’s quiet hum wrapped around me, a stark contrast to the storm brewing inside my chest. I kept my gaze fixed on the chandelier above, the delicate greens and yellows refracting off the crystal, as if willing the sight to distract me from the empty seat across the table. But it didn’t. I traced my finger along the edge of the white tablecloth, a nervous habit that felt more pathetic with each passing second.

Marlon wasn’t coming.

I let out a soft sigh, trying to push the hurt down. It didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. If I let myself wallow, I’d only fall deeper into that pit I’d been clawing my way out of for years. Instead, I reached for my water, taking another sip as I focused on the faint ripple in the glass.

And then, I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye.

A tall figure stepped into the dining area, scanning the tables. His warm brown eyes landed on me, and his face broke into a relieved smile. Aaron.

“Aaron?” I said aloud before I could stop myself, my voice tinged with surprise.

“Hey, Maryn,” he greeted, his tone soft and unassuming as always. He hesitated for a moment, his hand gripping the back of the chair across from me. “Is this seat taken?”

I blinked, glancing at the empty chair Marlon was supposed to fill.

A pang of disappointment surged through me, but I pushed it aside. “No, go ahead,” I said, offering him a small smile.

Aaron sat down, his movements careful, as if he didn’t want to disturb the fragile air around us. He adjusted his jacket and looked at me with a sheepish grin. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here tonight.”

“Same,” I replied, watching him closely. Aaron had always been... different. Steady. Kind in a way that didn’t demand attention but lingered in the little things he did.

“I, uh, saw you sitting here alone,” he continued, his voice dipping lower, “and I thought maybe you could use some company. If that’s okay?”

I hesitated for a fraction of a second, my mind briefly flickering back to Marlon and the sting of rejection. But then I looked at Aaron’s earnest face, and something in me softened. “Of course it’s okay,” I said, my smile growing a little wider.

The waitress returned just then, her eyes flicking between the two of us before settling on me. “Would you like me to add anything to your order?”

Aaron looked at me questioningly, but I waved him off. “I already ordered. But Aaron, you should get something.”

He glanced at the menu, quickly scanning it before nodding. “I’ll have the vodka pasta please,” he said before handing the menu back to the waitress.

As she walked away, Aaron turned his attention fully to me. “So, what brings you here tonight? Fancy dinner for one?”

His teasing tone was gentle, but it still made my cheeks warm. I shrugged, “It was supposed to be something like a date I guess but it’s also my birthday.” I said

His eyes lit up and he gave me a toothy grin raising his eyebrows. “ May 29th you’re a fellow Gemini!” He pointed out making me scrunch my face playfully.

“Oh don’t tell me you’re one of those people.” I said with a blissful laugh.

“No- no I’m not that into it like those people who blame everything on mercury.” He belled laughing with me. The night went on a turned into an amazing evening.

Somehow we ended up on the streets of the city having a great time walking on the dark empty beach, talking, having non stop smiles of pure joy on our faces.

“How do you think people will react to this.” His accent flushing my moonlit skin.

“I don’t care I having fun!” I said I haven’t felt this good in a very long time. “I love them but forget the people who’ll care. It’s weird because I’m a public figure and all but people are just way too invested.” I drew out the brandy I had clearly speaking in innards.

“Yeah we need to get you some water.” He said making me burst into laughter I looked to my left where we were sitting in the sand.

His eyes even prettier in the dark this glistening skin smelling thick and rich. He sat next to me in a dark button up and dark slacks the sleeves rolled up showcasing the lion tattoo on his forearm. I could already tell he knew what I was laughing at.

“Can I? please.” I begged as he rolled his eyes at me before nodding his head.

“Wha-uh!” I exaggerated going into another fit of laughter.

“Alright Ms.Queen let’s get you home.”

I woke to the faint aroma of coffee and the soft hum of a bird outside the window. For a moment, I wasn’t sure where I was. The ceiling above me wasn’t mine, nor was the slightly lumpy cushion beneath my head. My jacket was balled up beneath me, stiff and uncomfortable. Then it hit me. Maryn’s place. Turning over to my left reaching out for Maryn only to feel the coldness of where I layed her down.

I opened my eyes fully, squinting against the pale morning light that filtered through the curtains. The faint clatter of dishes came from the kitchen, followed by the sound of water running. I didn’t need to see her to know it was her.

Maryn had a presence that lingered, even when she wasn’t in the room.

Turning my head over to the left to see the toiletries shed layed out for me. As well as a t-shit and some basketball shorts.

I hadn’t planned on staying over but after dinner. I just couldn’t bring myself to leave.

Maryn intrigued me in ways I couldn’t quite explain. She had this strength about her, a quiet defiance that masked something softer underneath. She had a lively spirt I could feel.

I saw it in the way she brushed off the sting of the date that didn’t show, pretending it didn’t bother her when I knew it did. And I saw it now, in the way she moved through her space with purpose.

I glanced around again, taking in the details I’d missed last night the colors, little trinkets and cozy blankets she has sprawled in her home and on various things.

The sound of her voice startled me.

"Good morning," she said, poking her head around the corner. Her hair was tousled, and there was a smudge of flour on her cheek. She must’ve been baking something.

"Morning," I replied, my voice raspier than I expected. I cleared my throat and offered a smile. "You’re up early."

She shrugged, leaning against the doorway with a mug in her hands. "Couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d make some tea. Want some?"

"Let’s see if an American can impress me with tea," I said, standing and stretching. Her lips curved into a smirk. "It’s an earl gray I put honey in mine." She said in a decent British accent.

I laughed, following her into the kitchen. The space was small but cozy, with mismatched mugs hanging from hooks and a calendar on the wall, each day marked with tiny scribbles.

She handed me a mug, and I took a sip, the warmth spreading through me. "All right, I’ll give it to you," I admitted. " at least one American knows how to make tea."

Her grin widened, and for a moment, All I could think about was how effortlessly beautiful she looked, standing there in her little kitchen, as if she belonged in a storybook. Her hair big and coily in a quick bun in a cropped large t-shirt and some plaid boys boxers.

I watched her move around, tidying up and humming softly under her breath. There was something grounding about being here with her, something I couldn’t quite put into words.

“Do you eat sausage?” She asked me turning around back to the stove.

“I do darling.” I tried my chances with a nickname as not looking out from her pots but I could tell she was smiling as she said “darling is that just a British thing or are you trying to flirt?” She said in her sweet southern accent

“This is some cheese grits, a biscuit, eggs, sausage, and some chocolate chip pancakes.” She briefed.

“This is a scone.” I said looking at the biscuit.

“No it a delicious biscuit, you wish you had these in London.” She said eyes sparking as she waited for me to take a bite.

As soon as I went to taste it she yelled “wait! Try it all together like make it a sandwich everything but the grits.” She said showing me hers. Doing as she said making my sandwich I dug in and relished in the flavor.

“I know thank you.” She cockily said

The sun was higher now, casting long shadows across Maryn’s living room. I stood by the window, coffee in hand, staring out at the lazy streets of the city. For a moment, I let myself forget that I wasn’t in London anymore. I wasn’t in some quiet corner of the world—no, I was in the whirlwind of Maryn’s life. The world outside wasn’t just any street; it was lined with the ever-present hum of fame, of cameras and eyes that would be watching her every move.

I turned, looking at the glossy kitchen island, the still-warm plates, and remnants of our breakfast. The intimacy of it all felt surreal, almost too normal for two people like us—celebrities who lived their lives under constant scrutiny.

“Hey,” Maryn’s voice cut through my thoughts, and I turned to find her leaning against the doorframe, wearing a comfortable oversized sweater and leggings. She had that soft glow that came from the sun casting on her brown eyes.

Is this how people feel about my eyes?

“Hey,” I replied, giving her a soft smile.

She took a breath, then pushed herself off the doorframe. “Wanna share favorite movies?” She asked me walking over to the couch.

“Yeah I need to show you some real classics.” I told her throwing her head back she let out a laugh before turning to me.

“Yea, okay we’ll see about that.” She said in another accent.

“This one is The color purple and it’s my favorite movie of all time.” She said as she flicked through Hulu putting the movie on.

The movie flickered softly on the screen, its warm glow casting fleeting shadows across the room. Maryn’s knees were tucked under her, the oversized hoodie slipping slightly off her shoulder, revealing soft skin that caught the light in a way that felt almost hypnotic. She smelt like vanilla in an intoxicating way.

I leaned back into the couch, pretending to watch the movie, but my focus kept drifting to her. The way her fingers curled to match Celies “Until you do right by me everything you do will crumble.” She said in sync.

My gaze lingering longer than I meant to. There was something about the way she tilted her head slightly, her everything enticing, making my chest tighten. She must have felt it because she shifted slightly, her movements slow, deliberate.

She turned her head, catching me in the act. Her eyes met mine. For a moment, neither of us said anything. The movie played on, but its sound faded to a distant murmur. It was just her, her eyes searching mine, as though she was trying to figure out what I was thinking, and I didn’t have the words to explain it.

Her lips parted, not to speak but as if she wanted to ask a question she wasn’t sure she should. My heart pounded, the air between us suddenly feeling heavier. She didn’t look away, and neither did I.

Her fingers, which had been idly tracing the blanket, stilled, her hand now just resting there—close but not close enough. Slowly, carefully, I reached out, my fingers brushing against hers. Her skin was soft, warm, and when she didn’t pull away, I let my hand settle over hers.

She didn’t look down at our hands, though. Her focus stayed on me, her eyes wide, I could feel her breath hitch softly, her chest rising and falling in time with mine,I was itching to having her in my hands. Skin to skin, bare with us.

I leaned forward, closing the distance an inch at a time. I could feel her hesitation, not in fear but in wonder, as though she was trying to decide if this was real. Her eyes flickered to my lips, then back to my eyes, and that was all I needed.

When my lips met hers, it was soft, tentative, as though we both wanted to take our time, to let this moment unfold naturally. Her lips moved against mine, slow and searching, and my heart thundered in my chest. Her hand turned under mine, her fingers lacing with mine as she leaned into the kiss, her weight shifting closer, her presence enveloping me.

Time disappeared. The movie became a distant hum, the world around us fading into a blur of muted light and the warmth of her touch. When we broke apart, her breath mingled with mine, the tip of her nose brushing against me as neither of us moved far. Her eyes opened, meeting mine again, and there was something raw and vulnerable in her gaze—something that made my chest tighten all over again.

Feeling the kiss still on my lips, I needed more. Ours heads buoying for a moment, leaning and her soft lips on mine. Breaking apart catching our breath.

“Do you want this?” I asked her my eyes etched on hers.

#dreamy💤wrote this #aaron pierre x reader #maryn and aaron #aaron pierre x black reader #aaron pierre fanfic #aaron pierre x black!oc #aaron pierre #lights off fic

99 notes · View notes

captainpikeachu · 14 days ago

Text

So a post discussing new Thunderbolts promotional arts appeared earlier today in the John Walker tag trying to single out John as the odd man out of this Thunderbolts team, saying how everyone in the team deserves to grow and heal but John deserves to die and never be redeemed because he's not like the others.

I'm here to explain why what you see below is totally wrong and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of John and the Thunderbolts movie.

"this man willingly joined the military"

I don't know if the poster is American or not, but this claim ignores the very important context of how John joined the military and when he joined the military. You see, John is canonically stated to have gone to West Point for college, that is a military academy, which means that during high school when John was underage, he would already have been preparing for his application process, getting letters from his congressman or senator or even the president. The selection process is incredibly stringent. You don't decide to go to West Point and apply on a whim like you do regular colleges. Attending a military academy is a long term commitment because after you graduate, you are automatically put into active duty service as an officer, your contract is signed by you agreeing at 17/18 years old to go to this military college.

Some people may not understand, but America has a hugely active military recruitment system that targets children, especially kids from disadvantaged communities. Military recruiters are literally legally given access to high schools across the country, they're allowed personal contact information of kids, they get to show up at career fairs and other activities to actively recruit children to be soldiers and lie to them about all the good things they will do and the opportunities and benefits they will receive. And THIS IS NORMALIZED in American society. The exploitation of children and turning them into soldiers is NORMALIZED. Even celebrated.

So tell me, in an environment that already normalizes and praises the idea of being a soldier and protecting your country and giving yourself for true heroic service, is it that illogical and surprising that a young underage John would have bought into the idea of service as so many other young kids do? Not to mention we don't even know if his school had a mandatory JROTC (Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps) program that funnels kids straight into military service. Or if the MCU follows John's comics history and his father and his older brother both have served. Either way, John lives in an environment and a country that idealizes soldiers to kids, actively recruits and exploits kids, and heavily showers them in heroic military propaganda. A propaganda that even Steve in the 40s buys into and is eager to serve, and Steve was already an adult in his 20s. Meanwhile John was a young teenager when 9/11 happened, when the country was actively rallying its citizens through lies and getting people to buy into a war to defend freedom and protect our loved ones. If people older than John bought into this, then why is it surprising that a teenager surrounded by all this rhetoric and propaganda would buy into it, thinking that he is doing a good thing to help?

Just because indoctrination is normalized by society doesn't mean it's any less harmful indoctrination. Just because John wasn't kidnapped or forced into being a weapon doesn't mean he wasn't turned into one by the military industrial complex as a teenager. And just because he willingly signed up for something that his at best 18 year old self wouldn't have ever properly been mature enough to fully comprehend, doesn't mean he was not abused by a violent system that doesn't care about him beyond using him as a tool. The same way that violent systems of control used and abused the other members of the Thunderbolts team.

We all understand abuse and exploitation and power imbalance when an 18 year old is dating a 35 year old. When abuse happens in that context, we don't say "well the 18 year old willingly got into that relationship so who cares", so why is this kind of dismissive tone taken with John? If a domestic abuse victim stays in a relationship because of complicated feelings, do we blame the victim? What's happening here with John is a form of victim blaming. A very easy kind of victim blaming because the illusion of choice makes some people, like the above poster, think that John asked for it. So John can't be like the others. Nevermind that John's experiences likely mirrors Alexei's yet this poster never seems to call out Alexei for anything.

Yes, John willingly joined the military, but pretending that there isn't a more nuanced context of why and how he joined is to be ignorant to exploitation and indoctrination beyond just the garden variety kidnapping and forced brainwashing, and the insidious nature of that kind of trauma and exploitation. And it also ignores that John's decision was likely made when he was underage and under the influence of a hugely active military recruitment and exploitation apparatus. The creatives behind the Falcon and the Winter Soldier even once stated that the military was John's only family, which implies that he was a vulnerable and lonely child looking for a home, and the military took advantage of that so that they would ensure John would be loyal and grateful to them. They groomed him to be their weapon, no matter how "willing" he made that decision as a teenager.

------------------------

"willingly decided to try to become Captain America"

This comment shows a lack of understanding of how the military works. John didn't ask to be Cap, he didn't even know what the government and military was doing until they showed up one day to give him a new job duty two weeks before they were gonna officially unveil him. There is no willing or unwilling in the military when you're a soldier, you follow your orders. Sure, you can disobey unlawful orders, but guess what, being the next Captain America is not an unlawful order. John didn't get to choose. The military made the decision and it was his job to obey. Because if he didn't obey, he would end up in court martial and in jail. There is no agency in this. You are not an individual, you are property of the US military to do as they wish. And if you don't obey, they will make your life and your loved ones' lives hell.

-------------------------

"willingly killed people in a way that everyone knows Steve never would have"

What people? John killed one person. One person in the heat of the moment in the middle of grieving his best friend who he just watched be killed right in front of his eyes. If anyone would have understood why John did what he did, it would actually be Steve. Yes John doesn't have Steve's restraint, but let's not act like Steve doesn't know the anger and rage that comes in those moments. And if Bucky had watched Sam be killed, he would have done what John did. In fact, most of the MCU would have done what John did. Tony did. Thor did. Wanda did. Peter Parker and Peter Quill did. Yelena did. Clint did. T'Challa did it twice even after learning the lesson of letting go of revenge. Are all those heroes irredeemable and deserve to die?

Hell, in a post that accuses John of not being like the other Thunderbolts, John does the same thing that Yelena and Ava have both done, wanting to hurt and kill and lash out in pain and revenge. Yelena was going to kill Clint for revenge. Ava literally did not care if her actions would have killed civilians if it got her what she wanted to fix herself, was even ready to threaten Scott's young daughter Cassie. Both of them were no longer under the control of their abusers at that point, yet what makes their chosen rage and lashing out okay and understanding but John's somehow the most evil thing a person has ever done? What makes his pain and loss any less than theirs? In fact, in the Thunderbolts trailer, we watch Yelena just gun down guards left and right, does it make her irredeemable for choosing to still do killing when she no longer has to? Why is all this hypocritical judgment only against John?

And if we even want to address the people John killed in war and how Steve would never, let's just remember that in the Winter Soldier movie, Steve specifically states to Fury that he and the others during the war did somethings that weren't so good, that made them not sleep so well at night, but they thought they were doing it for people to be free. Yes, freedom, the same thing that the US military has been peddling since its conception. So why is it okay when Steve does terrible things in war for freedom, but John is a monster for also doing the same?

John wasn't running about happily wanting to shoot every bad guy. He never had any intentions of hurting anyone, only arresting them, even though the Flag Smashers tried to kill him and Lemar from day one. Even after Karli blew up a building with innocent people still inside it, John wasn't going to kill them but only arrest them. He only killed one Flag Smasher in the heat of the moment because he just saw Lemar die. You know what T'Challa said to Natasha after losing his father and thinking that Bucky did it? He said he would kill Bucky himself, even though Natasha pointed out that there was due process and a task force would arrest Bucky.

Why is it that violent desire for revenge is understood when other MCU heroes/protagonists do it, but John is somehow uniquely evil and not-like-the-others because he lashed out in a very human way? Why is John not allowed his humanity?

----------------------------------------

I will be the first to say John is flawed, he is imperfect, he did make mistakes. But he is not this willful evil monster that this poster tries to paint him as. He is someone whom for essentially 20 years has been trained and groomed to be a perfect weapon for a violent and abusive system that he thought of as his only family. And when this system no longer had any uses for him, it threw him out like trash and left him to drown. This poster talks about other Thunderbolts members rebuilding themselves and their sense of identity, yet this is John's struggle too. Who is he if not a soldier?

The showrunner of TFATWS literally stated that John and Bucky were two sides of the same coin of a veteran's story, of what happens when you give everything for a cause that abandons you and doesn't care for you back. Even the writers of this show understood and deliberately wanted to link John and Bucky's mutual struggles as veterans. Yet this poster wants to exclude John, because the illusion of choice made his trauma and indoctrination and grooming less "real" than the others somehow. This isn't trauma olympics. John is a broken and abused and abandoned weapon, just like every member of the Thunderbolts team. And quite frankly I'm sick and tired of people ignoring this reality because their own hate of the character blinds them to nuance and context.

Death is not the only acceptable character arc for John. He can grow to be a better person and learn to stand up against the system that harmed him and many others. And they can and will redeem him, you know why? They already did. Because John already in TFATWS finale chose to walk away from easy revenge so he could save lives. He has already proven that he could be worthy of that shield and title even if he no longer has it. And the Thunderbolts movie is about ALL of this team learning to overcome their past trauma, of learning to love and accept each other, yes even John. He isn't the exception. He is a integral part of this new team and family. And if you think that Thunderbolts is just gonna be a movie that is designed to kick John out and otherize him, then you've missed the point of this story that the cast and director have stated many times in interviews already. Hopefully Thunderbolts will teach you some important lessons about bias and judgment.

The poster of the comments says that they need to still rewatch TFATWS, and I would say to that, yes, yes you do need to rewatch, preferably rewatch with your eyes, ears, brain, and heart open, because you have missed many important contexts and nuances in your desire to only see John as some unforgivable monster.

By the way, Alexei and John are literally characters sharing the same background, Alexei is just as willing of a participant, yet the fact that those comments never once judge Alexei for actively participating in child trafficking and letting the abuse of little girls keep happening, and somehow Alexei still isn't so irredeemable and could be counted among the others who should get to learn to heal and grow is certainly a choice.

Anyways, here is hoping that when Thunderbolts finally releases, people will learn a lesson about John and how wrong some of yall are.

#i'm sick of this shit #john walker #us agent #marvel #mcu #thunderbolts #mcu thunderbolts #thunderbolts*

62 notes · View notes

ahedderick · 5 months ago

Text

When I was a child, I counted the books in my mother's library. It was thousands. She couldn't ever bear to purge or part with any. They stayed there, on the shelves, for the years that my father lived there alone. Gathering Dust. And now - Hurray! - they're my problem.

After his death I spent 6 months cleaning relentlessly, then burned out big-time. In that period I did manage to weed the books quite a lot, and found many that could be thrown away, donated to the high school art program for art projects, or donated to a free library at a nearby store. Now I'm back at it. The top two shelves, here, have cracked loose at one side. Although it's hard to tell in the picture, they are sloping backward, and need to be shored up.

When I cleared books off, I found a lot of them were college textbooks, literary collections, history books, and even highschool/junior high texts. Many I was able to simply throw away. However, a history or geography textbook that is sufficiently old can go out the other side of being "outdated" and become of interest again as a time capsule.

"College Geography" and "The Human Face of Changing Africa" - from the 1960s. A four-volume history of England - from the 1860s (Jeez). United States History published 1909, with a school board sticker inside. "The Essays of Elia" by Charles Lamb, which is only of interest to me because it's mentioned as an important plot point in "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" (which was SO GOOD,and it was made into a movie, too)

Anyhoo. Point is, I will give any of these away to anyone who wants them and can send me a few bucks for shipping costs. As far as shipping goes, It would probably be best to keep it to North America.

#books #old books #vintage books #book lover #book life #bookblr #history

87 notes · View notes

coimbrabertone · 16 days ago

Text

The Long Beach Grand Prix: the F1 Years.

I had initially intended to post about the history of the Long Beach GP daily on twitter/bluesky, however, brevity is a foreign concept to me and character limits are oppressive, therefore, I've decided to do it here instead. Leading into the Long Beach Grand Prix this year, I'm going to do a blog on the initial F1 years, then the CART/Champ Car years, and finally look at the Long Beach GP since the unification of American Open Wheel Racing.

Today is the F1 years.

So naturally, we start with Formula 5000.

Formula 5000 was born in America as a junior Formula series that originated in 1968. The idea was essentially to take a Formula Two sized car and pair it with a 5000cc production V8, something that made a lot of sense in America.

It did not make as much sense when the series was exported to places like Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, however, with the likes of Lotus, McLaren, and Brabham no longer producing mass amounts of customer F1 engines, F5000 became the fastest cars these series could get their hands on. Thus, F5000 spread regardless.

By 1975, F5000 was big enough and professional enough that F1 used it as a pilot event to test out the Long Beach street circuit in September 1975, ahead of a full on F1 Grand Prix the following spring.

This 1975 F5000 Grand Prix of Long Beach drew in big names too, with the grid including:

Reigning SCCA F5000 champion Brian Redman of the UK, driving for Carl Haas' racing team.

USAC stars Mario Andretti and Al Unser for Vel's Parnelli Jones Racing.

Australia's Vern Schuppan for Eagle.

South African Jody Scheckter and Englishman David Hobbs for Hogan Racing.

New Zealand's Chris Amon in a Talon.

Gordon Johncock for Patrick Racing.

And many more from the worlds of F1, Indycar, sports cars, junior racing, etc, etc - even some names you might recognize from completely different things, like Graham McRae who I talked about in my last blogpost, or Bill Simpson, who now makes safety equipment throughout the racing world.

Chip Ganassi also once set him on fire.

That's a story for another time though.

Mario and Al would take a Vel's 1-2 in qualifying, while Theodore's Tony Bryce would win the first heat race. Al Unser won the other. This set the stage for the main event.

28 cars would start the race but only eleven would finish, and only three of those were on the lead lap. These lead lap cars were:

Brian Redman in a Lola-Chevrolet on his way to another SCCA F5000 title in 1975.

Vern Schuppan who finishes about thirty seconds behind in his Eagle-Chevrolet.

Canadian Eddie Wietzes in another Lola-Chevrolet.

This was the first win for both Carl Haas and the Lola-Chevrolet combination at Long Beach, but it wouldn't be the last. Carl's team, later rechristened Newman/Haas Racing thanks to investment from Paul Newman, would become a regular winner at Long Beach, while the Lola-Chevrolet was the dominant chassis/engine combination in late 80s and early 90s CART.

Interestingly enough though, that particular pairing of Newman/Haas and a Lola-Chevrolet would only win once more, with Mario Andretti behind the wheel in 1987.

Most of Newman/Haas' success at Long Beach would come with Cosworth power.

That's another story for another day though, the important thing is that the pilot event was successful.

Thus, on March 26th, 1976, F1 came to the streets of Long Beach for the United States Grand Prix West.

1976 is a famous season for the battle between James Hunt and Niki Lauda, with Niki in the Ferrari initially building up a massive gap before a brutal crash at the Nurburgring opened the door for Hunt in the McLaren to claw enough ground back that he was in contention at the final race in Fuji.

Another wet race, Lauda's first since the accident.

Lauda would famously retire from this race, declaring conditions were unsafe, while Hunt would drive through adversity as a puncture and a botched pitstop nearly threw the championship away for McLaren, but in the end, Hunt did just enough. His third place gave him the title by one point.

Nobody saw that scenario coming at Long Beach, however.

Lauda had swept the first two races at Brazil and South Africa, and while Hunt took both poles and gave Lauda a fight at Kyalami, ultimately, Lauda won and he finished second.

Lauda was on 18 points from two wins, Hunt had 6 from his single second place.

It wasn't even enough for second place in the championship, as Patrick Depailler in the Tyrrell - not yet the six-wheeler, that would be introduced in Spain - had taken second in Brazil and a seventh in South Africa, so he was ahead of Hunt with the same number of points thanks to quality of results.

All this set the stage for round three, Long Beach.

The first of two US races in the season, with Watkins Glen hosting the traditional USGP while Long Beach had the USGP West, this was the second time the same country hosted two races. The first was Italy in 1957, which hosted both the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, and a Pescara Grand Prix on a circuit so fearsome, even Enzo Ferrari didn't send his drivers.

The guy who they called Saturn, devourer of sons, thought Pescara was too dangerous to race at.

Thus, Pescara was a one-off, but Long Beach was hoping to be a more permanent edition.

There were some problems though, because between rough American city streets and the close proximity of concrete walls, the field would have to be limited to twenty cars.

Jacky Ickx, driving for the merged Wolf-Williams team, would be one of the seven cars going home.

Ferrari's Clay Regazzoni, meanwhile, would take pole. Patrick Depailler would take second, James Hunt was just behind in third, while Niki Lauda qualified fourth. Tom Pryce in a Shadow was fifth, while everyone else was half a second back from Pryce or more. These guys were going to be the contenders.

Regazzoni would rocket off the grid and lead, while Depailler and Hunt would battle for second - something that was no doubt made an even fiercer battle by the fact that they were both ahead of Lauda, so whoever finished second amongst them would not only move into second in the championship, but they'd gain on the championship leader in a real way.

Unfortunately, they got a little bit too focused on this scenario and wound up screwing themselves.

Depailler forced Hunt to go around him in the hairpin, which ended in disaster as Hunt crashed into the wall on lap four. Hunt was out of the race, and he'd make his feelings known, shaking his fist at Depailler every time the Frenchman passed him.

Patrick didn't necessarily get away scot free either, because Lauda would pass Depailler for second on the very next lap.

Things then went from bad to worse for Patrick as he spun around and dropped to seventh. He'd get back two positions within six laps as he passed Jean-Pierre Jarier in the Shadow for sixth followed by Ronnie Peterson in the March for fifth.

Next up on the list for Patrick was the other Shadow of Tom Pryce, who retired on lap 32. This gave Depailler fourth place.

Then Patrick's own teammate Jody Scheckter retired two laps later with a suspension failure, moving one Tyrrell onto the podium at the cost of the other.

Depailler was on a charge and he'd close the gap to Lauda to just 7.5 seconds at the end, which is remarkable given the utter odyssey of a race that he had, but it wasn't enough to stop the Ferrari 1-2.

It was a career day for Clay Regazzoni who took pole, led every lap, took fastest lap, and won to take a grand slam victory. Niki Lauda in second extended his championship lead, while Patrick Depailler's third place kept him second in the championship.

Ligier's Jacques Laffite, McLaren's Jochen Mass, and Copersucar's Emerson Fittipaldi completed the points.

The race played into the themes of 1976 perfectly, with Ferrari dominant in the early stages, Hunt being devastatingly quick but not having the consistency, and the Tyrrells being just fast enough to play the role of spoiler.

Indeed, Scheckter and Depailler would finish third and fourth in the standings, ahead of both of Lauda and Hunt's teammates.

Thus, the first F1 race at Long Beach was a success.

1977 would bring the first American win at Long Beach as Mario Andretti in the Lotus 78 took the victory.

1978 was back in Ferrari's control as Carlos Reutemann won and became the first driver to sweep the American races in the season as he'd also win Watkins Glen at the end of the season.

1979 would go to Ferrari again as Gilles Villeneuve took his third career win. Gilles would repeat Reutemann's feat and win both Long Beach and Watkins Glen.

1980 and 1981 would prove interesting, as Nelson Piquet in a Brabham won 1980 before Alan Jones in a Williams won 1981, inverse of their championships (Jones won 1980, Piquet won 1981).

This actually brings up an interesting bit of trivia about Long Beach: the winner of the USGP West never won the F1 championship in that season.

Jones in 1981 would, however, become the third driver to sweep the US rounds, as he won the opening race in Long Beach and then won the season finale, the Caesar's Palace Grand Prix, which had just replaced Watkins Glen as the season finale.

1982 would bring Niki Lauda winning the USGP West for McLaren, his first win post-retirement.

1983 would be the last Formula One race at Long Beach and it would once again go to McLaren, this time with John Watson leading a 1-2 finish over teammate Lauda.

By this point, not only was Renault running their turbo, but Brabham had adopted BMW engines, Ferrari and Alfa Romeo introduced their own turbos, and even McLaren themselves would switch to TAG turbos at the end of the season, along with Lotus who adopted Renault power and WIlliams who'd test out Honda engines in the final race of 1983.

The golden age of the Cosworth DFV was truly over, and the turbo era was beginning.

Thus, by 1981, 1982, and 1983, it became notable that turbocharged engines had never won the USGP West. The Ford-Cosworth DFV kept chugging along, and in rather absurd fashion too, as Watson and Lauda started that 1983 race from 22nd and 23rd respectively.

A Cosworth shouldn't've won in 1983, and yet they did anyway.

The minnows could still fight the turbo teams here.

That would change in 1984, as promoter Chris Pook announced that due to the high costs of sanctioning fees and shipping equipment in from Europe if there was no preceding race, or places as far flung as South America or South Africa if there was, Long Beach would leave F1 and switch to a CART race.

And in CART, the dominant engine at the time was the Cosworth DFX, a turbocharged variant of F1's old faithful. I guess if you can't beat them, join them!

More on that next week.

#motorsports #racing #f1 #formula 1 #formula one #indycar #long beach #grand prix of long beach #usgp #usgp west

41 notes · View notes

capsfriendly · 2 months ago

Text

with the caps at home vs the panthers tonight, i wanted to come on here and say a couple things about the panthers’ visit to the white house.

i’ve seen some people on here and on twitter pointing out the hypocrisy of certain players who have vocally supported diversity initiatives in hockey turning around and doing a photo op with a man who is nakedly trying to strip marginalized people of their rights. the sense of betrayal those fans are feeling is completely justified. despite appearances, conservative politics are incredibly popular among nhl players. i’m not writing to defend any of these men (my views lean pretty far left), but to share my understanding of the ways north american hockey as an institution perpetuates conservatism.

1) barrier of entry

ice hockey requires a lot of equipment to play. to be able to put a child through the decade or more of club dues and equipment fees required to begin seeing returns on investment—in men’s hockey, this begins with stipend pay at the major junior level in north america—requires an amount of money that many families simply cannot pay (though there are a bevy of charities trying to combat this). sports like soccer and basketball, which require comparably little equipment, are far more popular among both players of color and players from low-income families, especially in countries where hockey isn’t a national pastime.

because of this economic disparity between those who can play hockey and those who can’t, locker rooms can turn into echo chambers of privilege.

2) lack of higher education

i’m not sure of the data for other countries, but in the united states, there is a high positive correlation between holding a college degree and voting for democratic candidates. north american players are drafted to the nhl from major junior and collegiate teams, and entrance to professional leagues cuts their education short.

nhl players drafted from collegiate teams often enter the league without completing a bachelor’s degree, getting a year or two of higher education. during those years, many pick classes that they already have a strong knowledge base in, aware they’ll need to keep their grades up to maintain their university’s gpa requirement for athletes. because of this, many miss out on subjects that would teach them about systems of inequality like statistics, sociology, and studies of groups of historically marginalized people.

major juniors players, who move away from home in their mid teens, are even worse off. they leave school, usually completing the bare minimum requirements of a high school diploma to focus on their development as players and travel for games. and up until a recent vote, athletes from the canadian major junior hockey leagues were ineligible from playing ncaa hockey.

3) body economics

like all athletes, hockey players’ bodies are their jobs. the natural decline of their bodies over time limits their playing careers to the years of their lives when they can physically compete with both opposing players (to win games) and their own teammates (for roster spots).

the mean nhl career is 7 years. many hockey players don’t learn another trade and have no guarantee of making a successful career transition after retirement from playing (though some go on to coaching and media positions).

this creates a pressure to make as much money as possible while they still can, knowing that every time the take to the ice to do their jobs, they risk the very things they use to earn money: their bodies.

the physical nature of hockey means that a career-ending injury could come at any point. holding onto their earnings, knowing they’ll likely make up the bulk of income over their entire life, is essential to ensuring the comfort and health of themselves and their families.

earning high paychecks for an inherently limited number of years, it becomes attractive to these players to support candidates who promise to cut taxes for the rich, something popular among conservative politicians. while players may bear no ill will to members of historically marginalized groups and may even support their rights and freedoms, their personal economic situations lead them to vote for politicians who perpetuate that marginalization.

there are plenty of straight-up bigots playing major league sports. the panthers shouldn’t be singled out for visiting 1600 pennsylvania avenue. not because supporting the current administration isn’t reprehensible, but because it isn’t unique among hockey players—or even among athletes.

#again i’m not defending anyone’s political views #public statements #or voting histories #this is meant to be informative #other thoughts:#1) it’s a massive oversight on the part of the biden administration for not inviting them as soon as they won #2) sid and ovi both visited trump in the white house. there was discourse then too #3) while i’m extra happy to learn a player shares my views and makes efforts to uplift underprivileged groups #a players political affiliation is not a direct reflection of whether i enjoy watching them play #if it was i never would have become a hockey fan #4) i was lucky enough to visit the west wing back in 2016 and it was pretty cool #discourse #hockey discourse #florida panthers #panthers #politics #panthers lb #matthew tkachuk #trump

50 notes · View notes

mariacallous · 17 days ago

Text

Sharing this because of interest and not because of agreement

Chris Murphy, the junior senator from Connecticut, hardly exudes the energy on the stump of the leading populist progressives in his party, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He is preternaturally calm, and, when he says that his “hair is on fire” about the Trump Administration’s destruction of public norms and the rule of law, it is not initially convincing. And yet, in recent months, Murphy has tirelessly argued—on television, on TikTok, on The New Yorker Radio Hour—that unless the Democratic Party broadens its coalition with a primarily populist economic message and takes risks to oppose the destruction of democratic institutions, it will fail to mobilize popular support, continue to lose elections, and squander (as in Hungary, Turkey, and beyond) democracy itself.

Murphy, who is fifty-one, was a wunderkind, winning election to the House at thirty-three and to the Senate before his fortieth birthday. He argues not only that Donald Trump and the MAGA movement are threatening myriad institutions and making them bow to executive power but that the midterm elections of 2026 might be rendered undemocratic through the erosion of the infrastructure necessary for opposition to exist. And Trump, or a member of his family, may well be in position to take the White House two years later. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Senator, I wonder if we could try to define the crisis that we’re in. I’m of the opinion that the Trump Administration is intent on creating an American-style authoritarian situation. Do you agree with me?

I do. Long ago, the Republican Party decided that they cared more about power than they did democracy. That’s what January 6th was all about—regardless of who won the election, they wanted to make sure that their person was in charge. They believe, and have long believed, that the Democratic Party progressives are an existential threat to the country, and thus any means justifies the end—which is making sure that a Democrat never again wins a national election. So, this seems pretty purposeful and transparent—this decision to rig the rules of democracy so that you still hold elections, but the minority party, the opposition party, is rendered just weak enough, and the rules are tilted toward the majority party just enough, so that Donald Trump and Republicans and the Trump family rule forever. And, of course, this is not an unfamiliar system. This is Hungary, this is Turkey, this is Serbia. There are plenty of countries, all around the world, that hold elections—it’s just that one party continues to win. And that is, I think, the very concrete, very transparent plan that Trump and his White House are implementing right now.

Why do your Republican colleagues put up with this? Do they fess up to it when you talk to them in private?

They do not fess up to the plan behind closed doors. They are living in a self-created delusion. Most of them will tell you that it’s not as bad as you think. Yes, Donald Trump is acting in a way that previous Presidents have not, but we will still have a free and fair election; what he’s doing is not enough to topple essential democratic norms.

They are, of course, also deeply scared of him. They have worked very hard to become United States senators. You’ve sacrificed a lot to get to this point, and you don’t want to stop being a United States senator once you’ve gotten here. And for Republicans, the only thing that keeps you a United States senator is staying on Donald Trump’s good side.

I have to ask you why. Is the job so great—is being called “senator” by young staffers so great—if you have to give up and cede your principles?

Of course not. Of course not. And maybe this interacts with the third thing Republicans will tell you, which is, “Hey, listen, I’m trying to make this better.” Republicans in the mold of John Thune—and I’m not saying that he personally has said this to me, but people in his mold will say, “Well, if I cross Donald Trump, I’ll get replaced by somebody infinitely worse. And I can try to work behind the scenes to make this better.”

So, what’s the difference at this point?

Well, I’m telling you how they rationalize it. I’m not defending it. Of course, it is all treachery to lie down with Donald Trump, who is actively trying to destroy our democracy.

And then the majority of Republicans in Congress are fully on board with the idea that the rules should be rigged so that Democrats never rule again. There is just an exhaustion with democracy among a lot of Republicans.

This has only been going on for a couple of months—the Administration began January 20th, and it’s quite different from the first term. How bad is this, and where is it going, in your estimation?

I mean, it can be true that some of the orthodoxy of the left put us in the position of being unelectable. It is also true that the bureaucracy inside the federal government, the state governments, and local governments has become so big and cumbersome as to make it impossible to get things done in this country. But that is not mutually exclusive with the belief that we have months—not a year—before our democracy is rendered so damaged that it can’t be repaired.

I do think that over the last four years, those surrounding Donald Trump put together a pretty thoughtful plan to destroy democracy and the rule of law, and you are seeing it being implemented. Just in the last week—and you and others have covered this well—the assault has been trained on academia, institutions of higher education, and the legal community, the biggest law firms in this country. In democracy after democracy, those two institutions—higher education and the legal profession—are, in many ways, the foundation that undergirds the rule of law. Those are the places where people think about the rule of law, protect it, warn when it is being undermined. The legal profession is the place where people contest efforts to try to destroy the rule of law. And so it is not coincidental that Trump is trying to force both higher education and the legal profession to capitulate to him, and to commit, often through very explicit bilateral agreements—for the most important institutions—to essentially quelling protest.

And, of course, what the Administration is doing by taking on these very high-profile institutions is sending a warning to other law firms and to other colleges: if you take us on—if you file lawsuits against the Administration, if you support Democrats, if you allow for campus-wide protests against our priorities—you’ll be next. And so what will happen here—what inevitably happens in every democracy in which this tactic is tried—is that the Administration won’t have to go after every institution or every firm, because most of them will just decide in advance to stay out of the way. When students are filing a petition for a massive protest against a Trump Administration policy, they may just find it much harder to be able to exercise free speech on campus.

This is how democracy dies. Everybody just gets scared. You make a few examples, and everyone else just decides to comply.

That brings us to the real crux of our conversation today—the Democratic Party. What is the Democratic Party going to do about it? Every indicator that I see, in terms of public-opinion polls, shows widespread dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party. What are the Democrats going to do in a concerted way in the Senate and the House?

First, I do think there is a vast overestimation of the power that Democrats have. We are in the minority in the House and the Senate. We don’t have the Presidency. There are some people out there who think we should just be able to stop this. And the fact of the matter is that we don’t have an army, and thus we are relying on public mobilization and the courts.

Second, I do think that there’s an element out there that doesn’t actually want to have the really hard conversation about why we lost. I mean, people knew who this guy was. He said he was going to be a dictator on Day One. He told you he was going to pardon the January 6th protesters. He still won.

People thought he was fooling around.

Nah. I mean, that might be true, but I don’t know that that’s the whole story. I think we’re a pretty broken brand right now, and some of the people on the left don’t want to go through that hard rewrite of what the Democratic Party stands for.

What’s at the core of the brokenness, if we can be specific?

Well, we have become the status-quo party, and so we have reverted to defending democracy instead of explaining how we are going to break it down and reform it. We have not been a pugilistically populist party, where we name the people who have power and we build very easy-to-understand solutions about how to transfer power to people who don’t have it. And then we’re a pretty judgmental party, filled with a dozen litmus tests. We don’t let you in unless you agree with us on everything, kind of—from gender rights to reproductive rights to gun control to climate.

We’ve got to be a party that invites people in as long as they agree with us on the basic economic message, and build our party with a little bit more acceptance of people who have diverging views on social and cultural issues.

How would that conversation and that process come about, among the Democrats?

Well, I think first is making the decision that economics is the tentpole. And populist economics. That means that you are going to have a party that, frankly, sounds a little bit more like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. You are talking about billionaires and corporate power. You are proposing really easy-to-understand ideas on how to shift that power—whether it be a cap on rent increases, or a massive increase in the minimum wage, or the regulation of every single drug price, not just the ten highest-priced drugs. And then it is just making that decision to go out and ask people to come into the coalition who might not be with us on issues that I care about, like guns, and to nominate candidates that signal that the Party is a big tent—people who are populist economically, but may not line up with us on all the social and cultural stuff.

Can you explain the split we’re seeing between Democratic senior leadership and more junior members of the Party?

I don’t know that it really breaks down along generational lines, but I can explain what the basic argument is right now. Is this a normal moment, where you can just keep on punching Donald Trump, and pushing down his approval ratings, and eventually win the 2026 election, and set up a potential win in 2028? Or is there a pretty good chance that we’re not going to have a free election in 2026?

You believe that’s a possibility?

A hundred per cent. Every single day, I think the chances are growing that we will not have a free and fair election in 2026.

What does that look like?

It may not even be that the mechanics of the election are rigged. I’m not suggesting that there will be election officials out there stuffing ballots. What I’m talking about is that the opposition—the infrastructure necessary for an opposition to win—will have been destroyed. No lawyers will represent us. They will take down ActBlue, which is our primary means of raising small-dollar contributions. They will threaten activists with violence, so no one will show up to our rallies and to our door-knock events. This is what happens in lots of democracies around the world; the opposition is just kept so weak that they can’t win. That’s what I worry about being the landscape as we approach 2026. And, if you believe that, then everything you do right now has to be in service of stopping that kind of weakening or destruction of democracy.

So, to me, the essential difference in the Party right now is that some people think that that has a very low likelihood, and so we should just engage in normal politics—try to become more popular than Republicans. And people like me believe that it won’t matter if we’re more popular than them, because the rules won’t allow us to run a fair election; and so everything we are doing right now, both inside the Capitol and outside the Capitol, should be geared toward trying to make Republicans stop this assault on the rule of law and democratic norms.

Do you think it’s possible that Donald Trump wants to stay in office past 2028? How would he do it?

I think it’s absolutely possible. People very close to him are saying that it’s already a foregone conclusion. If he breaks the Supreme Court and breaks the Constitution and pays no consequence for it, we could ultimately be living in a situation in which the President just declares that he will stay in office. He could also hand power to a relative—maybe Donald Trump doesn’t run, but a Trump family member runs and the Trump family just stays in power. I think all of those things are possible.

The Democrats ran, in no small measure, on the preservation of democracy, and that failed. Why do you have any confidence that the public would mobilize for democracy in the future, if not now?

The public was not convinced by our argument, in 2024, because we were shilling for the existing version of democracy—which is deeply corrupt, which does not work. When I got into politics twenty-five years ago, something like campaign-finance reform, government reform, democracy reform, was a top-three issue for Democrats. It was something we talked about every single day. Somewhere along the line that stopped; somewhere along the line we stopped talking about reforming democracy. So it became easy for voters to just believe that we were all corrupt, and that neither Republicans nor Democrats were actually sincere in fixing what was wrong with democracy.

Trump is giving us this opportunity—because this is the most corrupt White House in the history of the country—to run on an anti-corruption message. But we will only win if we actually run an anti-corruption platform. And so, for me, the two things that matter most are populist economics and government reform. If Democrats run on cleaning up Washington with real, actual plans—to, for instance, get private money completely out of politics; to pass the STOCK Act, to make sure that not a single person inside government can use insider information to trade to benefit them financially—and we run on populist economics, I think that’s a winner, and it’s a way for people to stand up and support democracy, but only a reformed version of democracy.

You mentioned corruption, and we now have a situation where members of the Trump family earn tremendous fees from foreign governments. Seems to me that that’s a colossal form of corruption, and it’s not something we don’t know about. It’s published all the time, and then it falls into a black hole. Why?

Trump has been so public about his corruption that it ends up being normalized. If it were so corrupt, why would you do it in public? It must not be corrupt if you’re doing it in public. We’re used to corruption being done in secret. We’re used to there being a sort of shamefulness about it. And so it is interesting that his boasting of his corruption ends in people believing that he might not be corrupt.

I’m just shocked that the Trump meme coin isn’t, like, the only thing that we’re talking about. It’s probably the most massive corruption scandal in the history of the country. You literally have an—I guess—legal, open channel for private donations to the President and his family in exchange for favors. And we just think that it’s part of Trump’s right to do business in the White House. It’s gross. It’s disgusting. It’s deeply immoral. And the fact that we didn’t talk about that every hour of every day, once he released that coin, was kind of a signal to the country that we weren’t going to take the corruption seriously.

Senator Murphy, is Chuck Schumer the right leader for the Democratic Party in the Senate for this moment?

He can be. Listen, it’s not easy to be leader of this party. There are diverse views inside the caucus, and the whole caucus has to make up their mind that we are going to start fighting, that we are not just going to do business as usual. The State of the Union was an interesting moment. We could have engaged in an extraordinary act of protest: we could have chosen, as a party, to not go; to decide that we were not going to legitimize this President, this level of corruption, and the amount of lying in the State of the Union speech, by not showing up.

Did that conversation take place among the caucus?

I mean—it was judged, I think, too extraordinary and too risky a tactic.

Were you for it?

I chose not to go, and I certainly made the case that we should at least consider not going as an option.

Chuck Schumer’s argument about voting the way he did on the continuing resolution was that, if you shut down the government, it gives the Trump Administration carte blanche, for a potentially boundless period of time, to do whatever they like in terms of shutting down agencies—not that they’re not doing it to a great degree now, but that it would be open season. The opposing point of view—let them do it, let them own it—seemed to Schumer a gamble that one couldn’t take.

He has a compelling argument. It does feel odd for Democrats to protest Republicans shutting down the government by shutting down the government. And it is also true that the President would have extraordinary powers during a shutdown.

I came to a different conclusion. I thought that the public would actually blame Republicans for the shutdown of the government, because they saw them shutting down the government. But it is true that voting no on the continuing resolution would’ve been a big risk for Democrats. Not showing up for the State of the Union would’ve been a big risk for Democrats. Both could have backfired.

But we need to be engaged in risk-tolerant behavior right now. Because ultimately, the only way to save the democracy is for there to be a national public mobilization—of not thousands, not tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands of people—when the five-alarm fire happens. If the public doesn’t see us taking risks—tactical risks, daily risks—then they are not going to take what will be a risk on their part, standing up to a repressive regime where it��s clear that the government is willing to make you pay a personal price if you exercise your voice.

This is in line with what you said to Jon Stewart recently. You said, “I don’t think you can ask the people of this country to do these exceptional things that are going to be necessary to save our democracy if we are not willing to take risks”—meaning yourselves. What kind of risks should you and your colleagues be taking right now going forward?

In the Senate, the minority has power—you cannot proceed to any legislation without the consent of the minority. Now, we have regularly been providing the votes to the Republican majority to move forward legislation that they care about, including the continuing resolution. We could choose not to do that. We could say to Republicans: Unless you work with us on some targeted measures to prevent the destruction of our democracy, we are not going to continue to pretend like it’s business as usual. We could make that decision as a party. Now, that would mean that occasionally Democrats would need to vote no on legislation that, on the merits, they may support. But, if you think that democracy is the No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3 story, then you have to act like it, and you need to show that you’re willing to take a political risk, like voting against an otherwise popular bill in order to increase and create leverage to try to save the democracy.

You mentioned the possibility of public involvement, public demonstrations, people out on the street. What would bring them there?

Well, there aren’t daily political rallies happening in the country. But anytime you set one up now, you’re seeing not thousands of people, but tens of thousands of people attending. You saw what happened with Bernie and A.O.C. over the weekend.

I think they reached thirty thousand at one of the rallies.

And Senator [Richard] Blumenthal, my colleague in Connecticut, was telling me that he went to this tiny, last-minute Tesla protest at a dealership in Milford, Connecticut, and there were six hundred people who essentially shut down Route 1 in Connecticut. People are ready to mobilize. We just haven’t been organized enough to give them those opportunities. And this speaks to the actual need of the Democratic Party right now. We have to be better when it comes to our tactics inside Washington, but we actually have to build a political infrastructure that can plug people in. And that’s what we’ve been really terrible at doing over the years. The Republicans have a permanent political infrastructure—mobilizing, legal, messaging, intellectual. The Democrats have a very thin permanent infrastructure.

So how do you go about winning back voters who don’t agree with you on some of what you say are orthodoxies, without ceding ground on things that you believe in?

I think about a really transparent ask of people, which is to say: we want you to work with us because you believe the minimum wage should be ten dollars higher. You believe that corporate power has become so consolidated as to become an evil. And we’re willing to hear you out, we’re willing to listen to you about your concerns, about how far our party has moved on guns or climate or cultural and social issues. To just have a little bit less judgment when it comes to the non-economic issues. I think that that builds a bigger coalition.

I get that. But, if you read Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” or “Why We Can’t Wait,” he is addressing centrist, or center-left, clergy and activists who are always counselling him: You have to wait a little longer. It’s not time yet. And I think a lot of people, a lot of groups—and the most obvious one that Trump took advantage of in his ads were trans people—want their rights, want respect, and they want to be able to exist in the world as easily as you and me. Are we asking them to wait?

No. Listen, we’re trying to win power so we can protect those people. We just aren’t going to be able to protect them if—

If we mention them.

No. If we don’t build coalitions that allow us to win elections. Listen, one of my colleagues, [Georgia Senator] Jon Ossoff, gave a great speech over the weekend. He talked, in the meat of his speech, about the trans community, as I do, and said, “Listen, don’t let the right blame your problems on trans kids or on immigrants. Your problems are created by a fundamental corruption inside government. Your problems are created by a government that prioritizes the billionaires and rigs the rules against you.” That is a message that can win. So I don’t think you run away from your defense of those communities. You talk about those communities in the context of a message that is anchored in fighting concentrated economic power, and fighting the billionaire class that is taking over our government.

Senator, you’ve been on TV a lot lately. You’ve been out there quite a lot. Are you in the process of asserting yourself for national office?

No. And to the extent that my messaging has broken through a little bit more than others, I ascribe to the fact that there is not actually a personal motive attached to it. Sometimes, even if you’re not saying it out loud, people can kind of tell when you’re putting yourself out there for personal political gain. I actually believe that there is a good chance that we are not going to have an election in which people can make an actual choice in 2026. My hair is on fire about it. So to the extent that people are picking up what I’m putting down, I think it’s because they see that I am motivated—first, second, and third—by my fear that we are going to sleepwalk through the transition of our country from a democracy to an autocracy.

And you believe that’s what we’re doing right now?

I think we are at risk of sleepwalking through this transition. We desperately want to believe that we can play politics as normal because it’s uncomfortable—really uncomfortable—to play politics as not normal. It involves taking really big risks. And, of course, you just want to wake up and believe that you live in a country where people wouldn’t make a conscious choice to move away from democratic norms. But while some people are being hoodwinked into being along for that ride, others are making the conscious choice because our democracy has been so broken for so long.

So, yes, I believe that there is a chance that we miss this moment. We just wake up one day and we are no longer in a democracy, which is why I think we have to start acting more urgently right now.

And is it like the boiling of a frog? Or is there a more immediate flash point, when you know that you’ve passed the point of no return?

No, I think it’s like the boiling of a frog. We believe that there are these Reichstag moments, but there normally aren’t. Normally, you just lose an election, and then you lose another election, and then another one. And you start to look around and say, wait a second. I don’t think the minority party can ever win again.

48 notes · View notes

m0mizi · 3 months ago

Note

is there any info on what josef was like as a lover? and if not, what do you think he was like?

thank you for your ask! it is an interesting question, and i will try to share some details of his love life!

⟡ irene was the daughter of a university professor. she met josef when she was 19 while he was a resident junior doctor in leipzig.

⟡ at the time josef fell in love with irene, he immediately ended things with a norwegian girl named almuth. (it is implied he had been seeing her.)

⟡ josef later told rolf that irene had “won his heart”, but at the time she was at the time upset by the thought of josef’s previous relationship.

⟡ their son, rolf, found that they never had a “proper marriage” due to the war.

⟡ while away, mengele would share written correspondence with irene. in his letter he would refer to her as “butzele” and himself as “butz” or “papili” as shared terms of endearment.

⟡ in 1944, shortly before irene was supposed to depart from her visit, she contracted diphtheria. she had to stay in the camp’s hospital for over a month. during that time, josef would visit her three times a day and read to her from le diamant by honoré de balzac.

⟡ they shared a second honeymoon together shortly after irene was released from the hospital.

⟡ in the process of fleeing, josef had an intimate affair with a nurse, whom he does not name in his writing. he trusted her to hold onto his research notes.

⟡ for a while after fleeing, josef met with irene in secret. due to the absence of josef, irene began seeking male companions. according to rolf she was on friendly terms with many men, but there weren’t any affairs. however, when josef discovered this he was infuriated, and they began fighting during their meetings.

⟡ irene never came with josef to south america, and they were divorced in 1954.

⟡ josef married his widowed sister-in-law, maria, in 1958.

⟡ during his later stay with the stammers, there is evidence that he had an affair with gitta stammer until 1974.

⟡ one account from a then worker on the farm states that they were “"always together. they walked everywhere together and were always sitting and talking to each other."

⟡ another account emphasizes, “mr. stammer seldom came to the farm. their children once told me that peter [mengele’s then pseudonym] and gitta locked themselves in the bedroom to be by themselves, making it clear they had a romance.”

⟡ wolfram bossert, who later sheltered josef, also stated that josef and gitta had an “erotic relationship.”

⟡ the most evidence comes from mengele’s personal diaries, where he wrote of gitta’s “beauty” and dedicated poems to her.

⟡ here is one of the poems [translated] which he wrote:

⟡ gitta denied having an affair with josef, but claimed that he would have brief erotic affairs with the young female farmhands hired by the family to satisfy himself.

i hope maybe this has some interesting information, but i apologize for a bit of it is quite mundane (i.e. common knowledge)! ⸜(*ˊᗜˋ*)⸝

if you feel there is anything inconsistent with what you know or would like to see sources, please let me know!

#josef mengele #reichblr

51 notes · View notes

fandomnerd9602 · 6 months ago

Text

First Meetings

Petra Parker x Stark!Reader

Set during Captain America: Civil War

For @omniman65 and @supercorpdanbeau

Being the son of Tony Stark has perks and it’s disadvantages. On one hand, you have the coolest avenger for your father and unending resources to be able to create your own iron suits. On the other hand, you have the fact that everybody wants to get close to you just they could be with your dad

So besides your best friend and future college roommate, Harley Keener, it could be very lonely being the son of Tony Stark, the invincible Iron Man.

It all started during the Sokovia Accords incident. You naturally chose your father’s side, not all willingly but you understood where he was coming from. You thought you’d be able to revise it from the inside. Maybe create a special council for it.

But that was less on your mind as Dad had you track down Steve and Bucky to an airport in Germany. You had Natasha, Vision, and a new guy in a panther suit in a hanger on the outskirts of Schkeuditz, Germany.

Your dad walked in a little more serious than usual as he approaches you. “Junior,” he states, “please show Ms. Parker here around”

He gestured to a young woman, close to your age. Brunette hair, hazelnut eyes and the cutest smile with dimples that you had ever seen. If you weren’t dating Wanda, you would’ve asked her out right then and there.

She turned to you and smiled, "H-Hi there I'm Petra. Petra Parker."

"Hey" you gave her hand a quick shake, "I'm (Y/N). (Y/N) Stark. Codename - the..."

"Iron Knight!" She giddily interrupts you, "sorry I'm just such a fan of yours. I'm Spider-Girl."

"Always nice to meet a fan" you try to go back to your task of fixing your armor. She looks over your shoulder, "anything you need Spidey?"

"I was just thinking you should add titanium couplers to your routers, should allow for faster cooldown and energy retention"

You put down your tools in amazement, you put on your Edith glasses, "Edith run Ms. Parker's hypothesis for me"

A female, robotic voice answered, "Ms. Parker's titanium couplers would in theory do exactly as she stated."

You turn to Petra in amazement, "a gal after my own heart."

"I just love fixing things. You learn a lot when you make your own equipment." She says with a blush. Petra pulls out a makeshift suit with cumbersome looking web shooters

"Gotta be difficult on the wrists" you remark

"Kind of is," she tries to hide her embarrassment. You inspect one of the web shooters.

"Give me a couple hours" you state with a smirk

"Huh?"

"We can't have you going into battle wearing a set of PJs, Parker" you smile at her, "besides I owe you for the whole coupler idea"

"I think you and I are gonna get along just fine" you smiles.

And you did. You got Petra her new suit and web shooters. Dad transitioned you to being a liaison for an idea he dubbed the Young Avengers initiative, this meant that you and Petra would be spending a lot of time together in New York as ground level heroes after class.

Class. Yeah Tony didn't tell you that it also meant you would no longer be home schooled by Pepper or Edith and would instead by transferred to Midtown High. You were in shock. Pepper was happy you'd be socializing with people your age. Meanwhile, Happy was just glad that Petra would be calling you rather than him.

77 notes · View notes

aealzx · 1 year ago

Text

Letting the drape over the infirmary entrance drop closed to muffle some of the external noises, Don made his way to the kitchen to finally oblige Mikey’s demand to feed everyone. It was normal to have a commotion coming from the room, so he wasn’t surprised at the noise of boisterous chatter filtering out from the entrance. Especially since it looked like Casey and Mom April were there early, already seated at the table and asking questions.

“Actually, the Donnie is the feisty one.”

Don reached the kitchen entrance as Raphael responded to Casey’s comment, Raphael’s voice saturated with amusement at the fact. Don hadn’t caught what Casey said before, but it was easy to hear him now.

“What? You gotta be kidding. Don is the hot head in their family?” Casey gawked, looking over at Don in disbelief.

“Not a hot head, just aggressive. Kid totally bit through someone’s arm and broke the bone. It was awesome, if not for the fact it was some scientist treating him like a lab experiment,” Raphael corrected, folding his arms. If it weren’t for the situation Donnie and Lil Mikey had been in many of their feats would have been subject of quite the boastful conversation.

“You’re kidding!” Casey gawked again.

“Not even. We saw it on camera. He was completely restrained and then just chomped down on some lady’s arm and didn’t let go even though she punched him in the nose. It was impressive,” Mikey chimed in, semi miming some of the actions. “They’re both crazy strong. AND the Leo. He showed up a little while ago, and get this, the kid can teleport.”

“Okay I don’t believe that. They’re not superheroes Mikey,” Casey retorted, wrinkling his nose a little. Teleporting mutant turtles? That sounded like something that would be from the Justice Force, not the sewers of another world.

“‘Course they aren’t. Lil me said they’re actually super soldiers. Like Cap’n America and Winter Soldier. Sick, right? The lil guy can totally fling those giant mechas around like they’re baseballs,” Mikey countered, hopping up to lean across the table with a huge grin.

“Are they alright?” Mom April asked yet again as Casey took Mikey’s taunting bait and jumped up to tackle him. She was looking up from where she was helping Junior with some mash Mikey always had on hand these days, and seemed more concerned about the visiting groups’ health than their abilities.

Giving a bit of a sigh that was a mix between amused and exasperated, Raphael looked over to Don, gesturing a hand at him to answer. Maybe if the doctor of the house answered she would finally be reassured that the kids were going to be fine. “They’re alright,” Don assured confidently. “They’re all sleeping now, I don’t think they got much lately. But their wounds have been taken care of, and they seem comfortable. All four of them are here, and they even have their version of you with them too.”

“Me?” Mom April sputtered slightly, having not thought about the possibility. She was definitely more assured of their state now that Don gave her an answer along with the others, making room as he took a seat on the other side of Junior as her.

“Yeah, she’s nothing like you either,” Raphael laughed, rocking back on two chair legs after Leo chased Mikey and Casey out of the kitchen before they broke something.. “She’s a spunky lil gal. Fresh out of highschool it seems, and could probably crack my skull if she wanted to. I almost thought she was an alternate Angel instead.”

“It seems to run in the group. They’re all a lot more… brazen than I would expect. They don’t seem to have much discipline,” Leo commented, noting that many of the comments so far about their guests had been about how rambunctious they were.

“What makes you say that?” Mom April asked. She knew Leo had always been the one of the brothers that was more strict about discipline, following Master Splinter’s teachings the closest. But over the years he’d become less prone to associate an abundance of energy with lack of discipline.

“We fought their Leo a bit when he first came here – there was a misunderstanding that got cleared up – but his movements aren’t refined. It’s almost as though he was self taught,” Leo pointed out, having to quickly reassure Mom April that there hadn’t been too bad of a skirmish.

“You noticed it too, huh,” Don voiced his agreement. “We all had Master Splinter training us since we were kids, but Leon seems to only recently be getting some sort of structured tutelage for his martial arts.”

“He fights like he learned from watching movies,” Raphael huffed, amused at the thought. “It’s surprising he’s figured out how to make it work.”

“He does seem to learn fast though. I wonder what he would have done if you had actually shoved him off,” Don added, his mind wandering off to consider the possibilities.

“You let him catch you?” Leo’s incredulous voice snapped as he rounded on Raphael, a scolding lecture quickly rising.

“Duh,” Raphael snorted, narrowing his eyes at Leo and leaning away from him. “The kid’s a toothpick. You really think he could keep me pinned like that?”

The retort only served to rile Leo up more though, and he smacked his hands on the table to lean over Raph. “Oh, that’s great. So what was your plan if he actually slit your throa-”

The words were interrupted by a piece of chicken from Mikey’s stew smacking him in the side of the head. As both Raphael and Leo blinked in surprise they broke off their conversation to look towards the source of the launched food only to see Don giving them a pointed stare. He didn’t have to say anything. They’d had this lecture from him many times before. Walking them through their word choice barrier that only caused fights instead of helped. It caused Leo to shrink down in his usual embarrassed retreat as he forced himself to reanalyze his distress and word it in a way that Raphael would understand better.

“.............. You scared me,” Leo finally muttered, keeping his gaze elsewhere. “I thought…. I didn’t want to see you gushing blood from your neck.”

Oh. So that’s what it was. Like always Raphael didn’t see how the previous lecture connected to what Leo admitted, but he still understood by now that this was just the way Leo reacted. Blinking as the dots connected in his own brain, it was Raphael’s turn to shrink in mild sheepishness as he fully realized what could have happened. Sure, Don could have taken care of the injury if it had happened. But was it worth the mental and emotional distress he would have caused the others? “...My b-.... Sorry,” he responded, equally muttering and switching for words he knew Leo took to heart better. “I guess I was just more focused on getting the kid to stop moving and calm down.”

It made sense, and Leo let out a sigh as the tension from that fight finally eased away into his normal pool of anxiety over possibilities and not actualities. Letting himself droop forward a bit, Leo awkwardly knocked his forehead against Raphael’s shoulder to let him know he accepted the apology and reasoning. As Raphael raised a hand to roughly pat the back of Leo’s head, Don exchanged a soft chuckle with Mom April over the interaction while Master Splinter hid a smile with his teacup. With the bubbling argument abated, Don pulled them back to thoughts that had returned to his mind after one of Raphael’s comments

“Speaking of getting Leon calmed down,” Don spoke up, grabbing their attention. “I think Leon suffers from traumatic flashbacks.”

The sudden shift into a more sensitive topic caused the others in the room to still, and Leo quietly pulled a seat over to settle in. Raphael shifted uneasily, making an uncertain connection that he had to clarify. “...Like the waking dreams Leo sometimes had after Shredder’s men put him in a coma?” he asked, feeling a little bad for mentioning it when Leo fidgeted.

“Yes, but I think they’re worse,” Don answered, forgetting his half eaten meal in front of him for now as he started to explain his reasoning. “When he was attacking us it was calculated at first, but I noticed at some point something happened and he got… frantic. His attacks had more force behind them and were less structured. Almost like a panicked fight response to keep from freezing up. I thought it was weird at the time, but it wasn’t until he was with Lil Mikey that I had the thought he may have had a flashback. It was quiet, but I heard Lil Mikey asked Leon ‘are you here?’ And when I mentioned everyone’s concern about a secondary mutation I noticed he was using a grounding technique while April answered. Pressing his fingers into his arm to distract himself.”

The revelation caused an uncomfortable silence to fall over the room. But Don remained quiet as well to give them time with their thoughts. There was no rush anyway, they had time.

“....... So… what? We can’t exactly ship him off to the Ancient One like we did with Leo,” Raphael was the first to speak up, having already run through his own thoughts and not finding an answer to why Don was bringing this all up.

Don had to give a bittersweet chuckle at the thought, and shook his head. “Nothing serious. I just wanted you guys to be aware of it. I know we don’t know them very well, so it’ll be a little hard to tell if he’s not acting like himself. But, if he suddenly gets violent again for no apparent reason I just want you to realize he probably doesn’t recognize it’s you.”

“.... Fair enough,” Leo agreed, still trying to figure out how he felt about the whole topic. He didn’t think the same ‘fix’ for his own issues would work with Leon. But he also didn’t think it was appropriate for them to ask why he was having flashbacks either. There was a question that bubbled up in his mind that he ended up asking though. “...Are any of the others affected as well?”

Don seemed mildly surprised at the question, and had to pause when Raphael voiced his own thoughts that had sprung up with the question. “Mikey said the scars on Donnie’s back were also from their version of Shredder. You don’t think it was caused by the same dude, do ya?”

It was an unexpected fact to hear, but Don just switched his surprised expression for a soft smile. “Not unless Shredder has been harassing them until just recently,” he admitted. “The scars on Donnie’s back are a few years old already. But the ones on the other three; the scars on Leon’s legs, the crack in Leon’s shell, the piece missing from Raph’s shell, his scarred eye, and the… rather odd burn scars on Lil Mikey’s arms are all only a few months old. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were from the same event… And I also wouldn’t be surprised if the others were similarly affected in their mentality. We’re already seen how protective they are of each other.”

Hearing that the scars the teens had were almost all fairly recent gave Raphael a bitter taste in his mouth. While one part of his mind argued that they had seen similar injuries when they were teens, the other part of his mind argued that it didn’t matter, they were still way too young to have to go through something like that. “...The little guy did deliberately avoid talking about his arms when I asked,” he commented, not sure if that was support for or against the possibility of Lil Mikey having trauma like Leon. And he ended up giving a frustrated sigh and rubbed his head. “Man, I feel like I’m gonna have to walk on eggshells around them now. So what? Am I not allowed to ask anything to them now?”

This time Master Splinter was the one who answered, setting his empty cup down and rising to walk over and place a hand on Raphael’s shoulder. “You have always been instinctually aware of the nuances of childrens’ emotions. Trust your instincts, don’t overthink it, and I’m sure you’ll be fine. And remember, an uncomfortable emotion is not necessarily one to be avoided,” he assured, giving Raphael a pat when Raphael’s shoulders relaxed and he gave Master Splinter a reassured smile.

Then Master Splinter turned to Leo, resting a hand on his shoulder as well. “And my advice for you is to have patience. Continue to allow them to come to you instead of you running to and chasing them, as you described to me before.” And then his gaze shifted to Don. “Donatello, be careful with your vast, and wonderful knowledge. Remember that the mind cannot often be treated overnight. Try not to overwhelm them.” Don hadn’t been expecting to be given his own warning. But after Master Splinter mentioned it, he realized that he very easily could have ended up stressing the kids out by unloading too much information on them to try to help. As he sheepishly scratched his cheek Master Splinter looked to Mom April as well. “For our dear April, I suggest giving them their space when they need it. Affection can sometimes be the perfect medicine, but from a stranger sometimes it can only serve to cause distress instead of comfort.”

“...Thanks Master Splinter,” Mom April responded, also appreciating the caution she hadn’t even considered she’d needed.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me I’m going to make sure those two hooligans haven’t destroyed any furniture or bones. There has been enough surgery for one night,” Master Splinter sighed slightly, giving Leo another pat before he shuffled out of the room, walking stick thumping against the tile.

The three sons chimed in with their own vocal gratitude and well wishes, and after Master Splinter was out of sight Raphael heaved a sigh and flopped onto the table. “Man. Thirty years and he still somehow has the best advice.”

“You said it,” Leo agreed, feeling a mix of relief and also chagrined by what felt like having his flaw called out before he’d even made a mistake.

“Mhmm,” Don chimed with a hum and a nod, returning to the rest of his dinner turned breakfast. “...Do we still have orange juice?”

____________________

Previous Next

____________________

Huuuuaaaaagh why does time pass so freaking fast sometimes =<= I totally got caught up in 2 new projects |D that's why the longer delay this time. Wys got me into trying to make a doll of my OCs, and then I started designing a cosplay outfit to try out.....

Anyway 8'D enjoy a little 03 fam only section. Baby Jones having red hair was picked by Wys not knowing what she was choosing between red or black for X'D He's also wearing a dinosaur onsie, compliments of Don.

#my art #rottmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #cross dimension kidnapping #tmnt 2003 #rise + 2003 crossover #writing #long post #fanfic #03 April #03 Casey

226 notes · View notes

whencyclopedia · 2 months ago

Photo

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was an American lawyer, statesman, philosopher, and a Founding Father of the United States. A prominent figure of the American Revolution, he wrote the Declaration of Independence and later served as the first secretary of state, the second vice president, and the third president of the United States (served 1801-1809).

Early Life

Thomas Jefferson was born on 13 April 1743 at Shadwell Plantation in Albemarle County, Virginia. He was the third of ten children born to Peter Jefferson, a wealthy planter and land surveyor, and Jane Randolph Jefferson, a daughter of one of Virginia's most influential families. When Peter Jefferson died in 1757, 14-year-old Thomas inherited 5,000 acres of land as well as 60 enslaved people. From 1758 to 1760, he was privately tutored by Reverend James Maury before going on to the colonial capital of Williamsburg to attend the College of William & Mary. In his first year at college, he spent lavishly on parties, horses, and clothing, but he would soon regret this "showy style of living" (Boles, 18). His second year, therefore, was much more studious; he would apparently spend 15 hours a day at his studies, pausing only to exercise or to practice his violin.

The studious Jefferson soon became the protégé of mathematics professor William Small, who he would fondly remember as "the first truly enlightened or scientific man" he had ever met (Boles, 17). Small introduced Jefferson to the two other great intellectuals in Williamsburg – law professor George Wythe and Lt. Governor Francis Fauquier – and, at their weekly dinner parties, the four men would discuss politics and philosophy, greatly influencing the young Jefferson's political and intellectual development.

After completing his formal studies in 1762, Jefferson remained in Williamsburg to study law under Wythe and was admitted to the Virginia bar five years later in 1767. In 1768, he was elected to the House of Burgesses, representing Albemarle County. That same year, he began construction of a new home atop an 868-foot-high (265 m) mountain that overlooked his plantation. Called Monticello – Italian for "little mountain" – the house became the passion of Jefferson's life, and he would spend the next several decades designing and renovating it. The actual labor, of course, was mostly performed by his slaves; over the course of his lifetime, Jefferson owned approximately 600 enslaved people, most of whom were born into slavery on his property.

In 1772, after several failed romantic pursuits, Jefferson was finally married to the beautiful young widow Martha Wayles Skelton. Five years his junior, Martha shared his passions for literature and music; indeed, they often played music together – she on the harpsichord, he on the violin. The couple would have six children, only two of whom – Martha 'Patsy' (1772-1836) and Mary 'Polly' (1778-1804) – would survive to adulthood. When Jefferson's father-in-law died in 1773, he and Martha inherited 11,000 acres of land and 135 more enslaved people. By then, Jefferson had become involved with Virginia's struggle against Great Britain. Parliament's attempts to tax the colonists without their consent were vehemently opposed by the American Patriots, who saw such taxes as violations of their 'rights as Englishmen'. In 1774, Jefferson argued as much in his A Summary View of the Rights of British America. In it, he asserted that the colonies had the right to govern themselves, that they were tied to the English king only through voluntary bonds and that Parliament had no right to interfere in their affairs. This work earned him recognition as a Patriot leader in Virginia and led to his appointment as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia in the spring of 1775.

#History #AaronBurr #Adams #AmericanRevolution #WHE #[#]

24 notes · View notes

matttgirlies · 1 year ago

Text

Matt & Me 🎀

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

a story heavily based on Priscilla Presley’s Book “Elvis & Me” based in the 1950’s - 1970’s.

fem! reader x singer! matt

disclaimer!! - in no way am i saying matt would ever support or do these kind of things, for the sake of the book certain unethical things do happen at times.

warnings - age gap,, i think thats all

all of the songs and celebrities mentioned in here are from the time periods this was written if you are confused🩷

Chapter 1

It was 1956. I was living with my family at the Bergstrom Air Force Base in Austin, Texas, where my father, then Captain, Joseph Paul y/ln, a career officer, was stationed. He came home late for dinner one evening and handed me a record album.

“I don’t know what this Matt guy is all about,” he said, “but he must be something special. I stood in line with half the Air Force at the PX to get this for you; everybody wants it.”

I put the record on the hi-fi and heard the rocking music of “Blue Suede Shoes.” The album was titled Matt Sturniolo. It was his first.

Like almost every other kid in America, I liked Matt but not as fanatically as many of my girl friends at Del Valley Junior High. They all had Matt T-shirts and Matt hats and Matt socks and even lipstick in colors with names like Hound Dog Orange and Heartbreak Pink referencing names of his songs. Matt was everywhere, on bubblegum cards and Bermuda shorts, on diaries and wallets and pictures that glowed in the dark. The boys at school began trying to look like him, with their fluffy hair and turned up collars.

One girl was so crazy about him that she was running his local fan club. She said I could join for twenty-five cents, the price of a book she’d ordered for me by mail. When I received it, I was shocked to see a picture of Matt signing the bare chests of a couple of girls, at that time an unheard-of act.

Then I saw him on television on Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey’s Stage Show. He was sexy and handsome, with his deep brooding eyes, pouty lips, and crooked smile. He strutted out to the microphone, spread his legs, leaned back, and strummed his guitar. Then he began singing with such confidence, moving his body with unbridled sexuality. Despite myself, I was attracted.

Some members of his adult audience were less enthusiastic. Soon his performances were labeled obscene. My mother stated emphatically that he was “a bad influence for teenage girls. He arouses things in them that shouldn’t be aroused. If there’s ever a mothers’ march against Matt Sturniolo, I’ll be the first in line.”

But I’d heard that despite all of his stage antics and lustful, tough-guy looks, Matt came from a strict Southern Christian background. He was a country boy who didn’t smoke or drink, who loved and honored his parents, and who addressed all adults as “sir” or “ma’am.”

I was an Air Force child, a shy, pretty little girl, unhappily accustomed to moving from base to base every two or three years. By the time I was eleven, I had lived in six different cities and, fearful of not being accepted, I either kept to myself or waited for someone to befriend me. I found it especially difficult entering a new school in the middle of the year, when cliques had already been established and newcomers were considered outsiders.

Small and petite, with long y/hc hair, y/ec eyes, and an upturned nose, I was always stared at by the other students. At first girls would see me as a rival, afraid I’d take their boyfriends away. I seemed to feel more comfortable with boys—and they were usually friendlier.

People always said I was the prettiest girl in school, but I never felt that way. I was skinny, practically scrawny, and even if I was as cute, as people said, I wanted to have more than just good looks. Only with my family did I really feel totally protected and loved. Close and supportive, they provided my stability.

A photographer’s model before her marriage, my mother was totally devoted to her family. As the oldest, it was my responsibility to help her with the kids. After me, there were Don, four years younger, and Michelle, my only sister, who was five years younger than Don. Jeff and the twins, Tim and Tom, hadn’t yet been born.

My mother was too shy to talk about the facts of life, so my sex education came in school, when I was in the sixth grade. Some kids were passing around a book that looked like the Bible from the outside, but when you opened it, there were pictures of men making love to women, and women making love to each other.

My body was changing and stirring with new feelings. I’d gotten looks from boys at school, and once a picture of me in a tight turtleneck sweater was stolen from the school bulletin board. Yet I was still a child, embarrassed about my own sexuality. I fantasized endlessly about French-kissing, but when my friends who hung around our house played spin the bottle, it would take me half an hour to let a boy kiss my pursed lips.

My strong, handsome father was the center of our world. He was a hard worker who had earned his degree in Business Administration at University of Texas. At home he ran a tight ship. He was a firm believer in discipline and responsibility, and he and I frequently knocked heads. When I became a cheerleader at thirteen, it was all I could do to convince him to let me go to out-of-town games. Other times no amount of crying, pleading, or appealing to my mother would change his mind. When he laid down the law, that was that.

I managed to get around him occasionally. When he refused to let me wear a tight skirt, I joined the Girl Scouts specifically so I could wear their tight uniform.

My parents were survivors. Although they often had to struggle financially, we children were the last to feel it. When I was a little girl my mother sewed pretty tablecloths to cover the orange crates that we used as end tables. Rather than do without, we made the best of what we had.

Dinner was strictly group participation: Mother cooked, one of us set the table, and the rest cleaned up. Nobody got away with anything, but we were very supportive of one another. I felt fortunate to have a close-knit family.

Going through old albums of family photographs showing my parents when they were young fascinated me. I was curious about the past. World War II intrigued me, especially since my father had fought with the Marines on Okinawa. He looked handsome in his uniform—you could tell he was posing for my mother—but somehow his smile looked out of place, especially when you realized where he was. When I read the note on the back of the picture about how much he missed my mother, my eyes filled with tears.

While rummaging through the family keepsakes I came upon a small wooden box. Inside was a carefully folded American flag, the kind that I knew was given to servicemen’s widows. Also inside the box was a picture of my mother with her arm around a strange man and, sitting on her lap, an infant. On the back of the photo was inscribed “Mommy, Daddy, y/n.” I had discovered a family secret.

Feeling betrayed, I ran to phone my mother, who was at a party nearby. Within minutes I was in her arms, crying as she calmed me and explained that when I was six months old, my real father, Lieutenant James Wagner, a handsome Navy pilot, had been killed in a plane crash while returning home on leave. Two and a half years later, she married Paul y/ln, who adopted me and had always loved me as his own.

Mother suggested I keep my discovery from the other children. She felt it would endanger our family closeness, though when it did become known, it had no effect on our feelings for one another. She gave me a gold locket that my father had given her. I cherished that locket and wore it for years and fantasized that my father died a great hero. In times of emotional pain and loneliness he would become my guardian angel.

By the end of the year, I’d been nominated to run for Queen of Del Valley Junior High. This was my first taste of politics and competition and it was especially trying because I was running against Millie Collins, my best friend.

We each had a campaign manager introducing us as we went from house to house knocking on doors. My manager tried to talk each person into voting for me and donating a penny or more per vote to a school fund. The nominee who collected the most money won. I was sure that this competition would jeopardize my friendship with Millie, which was more important to me than winning. I considered quitting but felt I couldn’t let my parents or my supporters down. While my mother was out looking for a dress for me to wear to the coronation, my dad kept reminding me to memorize an acceptance speech. I kept putting it off, certain I was going to lose.

It was the last day of the campaign, and a rumor began circulating that Millie’s grandparents had put in a hundred-dollar bill for their vote. My parents were disappointed; there was no way that they could afford to match that much money and even if they could, they objected on principle.

The night they announced the winner, I was all dressed up in a new turquoise blue, strapless tulle net formal that itched so badly I couldn’t wait to take it off. I sat beside Millie on the dais in the large school auditorium. I could see my parents with happy, confident looks on their faces though I was sure they were going to be disheartened. Then the principal walked up to the podium.

“And now,” she said, hesitating to heighten the suspense, “is the moment you’ve all been waiting for . . . the culmination of a month of campaigning by our two lovely contestants: y/n y/ln . . .” All eyes turned toward me. I blushed and glanced at Millie. “ . . . and Millie Collins.” Our eyes locked for a brief, tense moment.

“The new Queen of Del Valley Junior High is . . .” A drum roll sounded. “ . . . y/n y/ln.”

The audience applauded wildly. I was in shock. Called up to the stage to give my speech, I had none. Sure that I was going to lose, I’d never even bothered to write one. I walked, trembling, to the podium, then looked out at the crowded auditorium. All I could see was my father’s face, growing more disappointed as he realized I had nothing to say. When I finally spoke, it was to apologize.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m not prepared to give a speech, as I did not expect to win. But thank you very much for voting for me. I’ll do my very best.” And then, looking at my father, I added, “I’m sorry, Dad.”

I was surprised as the audience graciously applauded, but I still had to face my father and hear him say, “I told you so.”

Being elected Queen was a bittersweet victory, because the closeness that Millie and I once shared was restrained. Still, to me that crown symbolized a wonderful, unfamiliar feeling: acceptance.

My newfound tranquility ended abruptly when my father announced that he was being transferred to Wiesbaden, West Germany.

I was crushed. Germany was the other side of the world. All my fears returned. My first thought was, What am I going to do about my friends? I turned to my mother, who was sympathetic and reminded me that we were in the Air Force and moving was an unavoidable part of our lives.

I finished junior high school, my mother gave birth to baby Jeff, and we said our goodbyes to neighbors and good friends. Everyone promised to write or call, but remembering past promises I knew better. My friend Stephanie jokingly told me that Matt Sturniolo was stationed in Bad Neuheim, West Germany. “Do you believe it? You’re going to be in the same country as Matt Sturniolo,” she said. We looked at a map and found that Bad Neuheim was close to Wiesbaden. I said back, “I’m going over there to meet Matt.” We both laughed, hugged each other, and said goodbye.

West Germany

The fifteen-hour flight to West Germany seemed interminable, but finally we arrived in the beautiful old city of Wiesbaden, headquarters of the U.S. Air Force in Europe. There we checked into the Helene Hotel, a massive and venerable building on the main thoroughfare. After three months, hotel living became too expensive and we began looking for a place to rent.

We felt lucky to find a large apartment in a vintage building constructed long before World War I. Soon after we moved in, we noticed that all the other apartments were rented to single girls. These Fräuleins walked around all day long in robes and negligees, and at night they were dressed to kill. Once we learned a little German, we realized that, although the pension was very discreet, we were living in a brothel.

Moving was out of the question—housing was too scarce—but the location did little to help me to adjust. Not only was I isolated from other American families, but there was the language barrier. I was accustomed to changing schools frequently, but a foreign country posed altogether new problems, principally that I couldn’t share my thoughts. I began to feel that my life had stopped dead in its tracks.

September came and with it, school. Once again I was the new girl. I was no longer popular and secure as I’d been at Del.

There was a place called the Eagles Club, where American service families went for dinner and entertainment. It was within walking distance of the pension and soon proved an important discovery for me. Every day after school, I’d go to the snack bar there and listen to the jukebox and write letters to my friends back home in Austin, telling them how much I missed them. Drowning in tears, I’d spend my weekly allowance playing the songs that were very popular back in the States—Frankie Avalon’s “Venus” and the Everly Brothers’ “All I Have to Do Is Dream.”

One warm summer afternoon, I was sitting with my brother Don when I noticed a handsome man in his twenties staring at me. I’d seen him watching me before, but I’d never paid any attention to him. This time, he stood up and walked toward me. He introduced himself as Steven Wright and asked my name.

“y/n y/ln,” I said, immediately suspicious; he was much older than me.

He asked where in the States I came from, how I liked Germany, and if I liked Matt Sturniolo.

“Of course,” I said, laughing. “Who doesn’t?”

“I’m a good friend of his. My wife and I go to his house quite often. How would you like to join us one evening?”

Unprepared for such an extraordinary invitation, I grew even more skeptical and guarded. I told him I’d have to ask my parents. Over the course of the next two weeks, Steven met my parents and my father checked out his credentials. Steven was also in the Air Force and it turned out that my father knew his commanding officer. That seemed to break the ice between them. Steven assured Dad that I’d be well chaperoned when we visited Matt, who lived off base in a house in Bad Nauheim.

On the appointed night I tore through my closet, trying to find an appropriate outfit. Nothing seemed dressy enough for meeting Matt Sturniolo. I settled on a navy and white sailor dress and white socks and shoes. Surveying myself in the mirror, I thought I looked cute, but being only fourteen, I didn’t think I’d make any kind of impression on Matt.

Eight o’clock finally arrived, and so did Steven Wright and his attractive wife, Carole. Anxious, I hardly spoke to either of them during the forty-five-minute drive. We entered the small town of Bad Nauheim, with its narrow cobblestone streets and plain, old-fashioned houses, and I kept looking around for what I assumed would be Matt’s huge mansion. Instead Steven pulled up to an ordinary-looking three-story house surrounded by a white picket fence.

There was a sign on the gate in German, which translated as: autographs between 7:00 and 8:00 p.m. only. Even though it was after eight o’clock, a large group of friendly German girls waited around expectantly. When I asked Steven about them, he explained that there were always large groups of fans outside the house, hoping to catch a glimpse of Matt.

I followed Steven through the gate and up the short pathway to the door. We were welcomed by James Sturniolo, Matt’s father, a tall, gray-haired, attractive man, who led us down a long hallway to the living room, from which I could hear Brenda Lee on the record player, singing “Sweet Nothin’s.”

The plain, almost drab living room was filled with people, but I spotted Matt immediately. He was handsomer than he appeared in films, younger and more vulnerable-looking with his haircut. He was in civilian clothes, a bright red sweater and tan slacks, and he was sitting with one leg swung over the arm of a large overstuffed chair, with a cigar dangling from his lips.

As Steven led me over to him, Matt stood up and smiled. “Well,” he said. “What have we here?”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I just kept staring at him.

“Matt,” Steven said, “this is y/n y/ln. The girl I told you about.”

We shook hands and he said, “Hi, I’m Matt Sturniolo,” but then there was a silence between us until Matt asked me to sit down beside him, and Steven drifted off.

“So,” Matt said. “Do you go to school?”

“Yes.”

“What are you, about a junior or senior in high school?”

I blushed and said nothing, not willing to reveal that I was only in the ninth grade.

“Well,” he persisted.

“Ninth.”

Matt looked confused. “Ninth what?”

“Grade,” I whispered.

“Ninth grade,” he said and started laughing. “Why, you’re just a baby.”

“Thanks,” I said curtly. Not even Matt Sturniolo had the right to say that to me.

“Well. Seems the little girl has spunk,” he said, laughing again, amused by my response. He gave me that charming smile of his, and all my resentment just melted away.

We made small talk for a while longer. Then Matt got up and walked over to the piano and sat down. The room suddenly grew silent. Everyone’s eyes were focused on him as he began to entertain us.

He sang “Rags to Riches” and “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” and then with his friends singing harmony, “End of the Rainbow.” He also did a Jerry Lee Lewis impersonation, pounding the keys so hard that a glass of water he’d set on the piano began sliding off. When Matt caught it without missing a beat of the song, everyone laughed and applauded except me. I was nervous. I glanced around the room and saw an intimidating life-size poster of a half-nude model on the wall. She was the last person I wanted to see, with her fulsome body, pouting lips, and wild mane of tousled hair. Imagining Matt’s taste in women, I felt very young and out of place.

I glanced up and saw Matt trying to get my attention. I noticed that the less response I showed, the more he began singing just for me. I couldn’t believe that Matt Sturniolo was trying to impress me.

Later, he asked me to come into the kitchen, where he introduced me to his grandmother, Minnie Mae Sturniolo, who stood by the stove, frying a huge pan of bacon. As we sat down at the table, I told Matt I wasn’t hungry. Actually I was too nervous to eat.

“You’re the first girl I’ve met from the States in a long time,” Matt said, as he began devouring the first of five gigantic bacon sandwiches, each one smothered with mustard. “Who are the kids listening to?”

I laughed. “Are you kidding?” I said. “Everyone listens to you.”

Matt seemed unconvinced. He asked me a lot of questions about Fabian and Ricky Nelson. He told me he was worried about how his fans would accept him when he returned to the States. Since he’d been away, he hadn’t made any public appearances or movies, although he’d had five hit singles, all recorded before he’d left.

It felt like we’d just begun talking when Steven came in and pointed to his watch. I had dreaded that moment; the evening had gone so fast. It seemed I had just arrived and now I was being hurried away. Matt and I had just started to get to know each other. I felt like Cinderella, knowing that when my curfew came, all this magic would end. I was surprised when Matt asked Steven if I could possibly stay longer. When Steven explained the agreement with my father, Matt casually suggested that maybe I could come by again. Though I wanted to more than anything in the world, I didn’t really believe it would happen.

a/n - thoughts on this story so far? all the fashion and technology and things is still based in the time period its set in but i promise it gets better as the story goes on! i know the age gap is crazy but back in the day it was normal and its the age gap in Priscilla’s book so i just stuck with it. I in no way support this at all🎀

Excerpt from: "Elvis and Me" by Priscilla Beaulieu Presley. Scribd.

This material may be protected by copyright.

#matt stuniolo fanfic #matthew sturn #matt sturniolo #matthew sturniolo #sturniolo edit #sturniolo fanfic #sturniolo x reader #sturniolo triplets #chris sturniolo #christopher sturniolo #sturniolo imagine #sturniolo smut #nick sturniolo #Spotify

107 notes · View notes