#because i agree that it would be fascinating and this poll has been bouncing around my brain since i first saw it

[sophieswundergarten]

(From @nobody33333333's poll about which characters it would be interesting to see under Curtain's Happiness Brainwashing)

This is such a good point!! All of these characters would be extremely intriguing to see, because it would say so much about their personalities!! Kind of like how you only miss something when it's already gone, there's a lot about each of them that wouldn't be easy to notice until they start acting different.

(Other options included Kate, Reynie, Sticky, Martina, and Cannonball)

Cannonball would be a lot less intense, so I think he'd be alright with the concept of stowaways and wouldn't be angry at seeing the kids again or anything. But I bet he never stops using nautical terms all the live long day. He starts a knot tying club/class and then it progresses into artistic macrame. He's honestly probably having a great time except for the fact that he's brainwashed and possibly going to go catatonic.

The most fun thing in my opinion would be S. Q. being forced to be happy, because while initially it might come off as innocent, like Mr. Benedict, it would quickly escalate into horror movie levels of creepy. Excessive positiveness goes against his personality so much, and he's such an attentive kid that him being all oblivious and passive would be wildly uncomfortable. (There are so many points that could be used in a multitude of ways in this scenario and I definitely agree that it would be great to read about it)

Even without the threat of going catatonic, any of the children getting brainwashed would be incredibly sad because of how much it changes them. In a way, it could be pushed as sadly ironic, since most of them had some kind of wish at one time or another to be more "normal" and be able to make friends, and this would technically give them that.

Martina is a whole other story, because while I don't think she'd be compliant even when she was Happy (Her passion is too much to be contained by Curtain's tricks and she'd probably start a tetherball team at the compound), she is probably highly susceptible to it because of how insecure she is. She puts a lot of pressure on herself to be perfect enough to win her parents' attention, and she is also struggling at that point with not fitting in with her new team.

Garrison definitely needs some relaxation, but I think she's too smart to fall for it for long. She helped invent half of Curtain's ideas, I doubt she doesn't know how the whole process works inside and out. She might decide to surrender to it just so that she doesn't have to be engaged with his harebrained scheme.

Jeffers, on the other hand. He would definitely be under it in a heartbeat, and, honestly? It might actually make him more competent at his job because he's not constantly seeking Curtain's approval.

I actually think that it would be kind of neat to see Jackson and Jillson brainwashed, because being Happy doesn't necessarily mean that they'll automatically listen to Curtain. In contrast to Jeffers, they might be worse at their jobs, because they would lose all their critical thinking skills. I guess that's why Curtain didn't brainwash them or the Grays, because he needs at least a few people who can do things. Aside from S. Q., I think that these two might be the most likely to get Curtain to realise what he was doing is wrong. (Maybe once he sees how much he misses them, he can recognise that he's making a terrible decision. Probably not, but one can hope)

Personally, I really like the concept that when we see Curtain talking to himself in the mirror in Season 2, he isn't practicing as much as he's attempting to brainwash himself because he feels awful and is slowly falling apart because even though Nicholas is there he isn't himself and Curtain is feeling very alone. So there's that whole angle, but I don't think that, especially as the creator of the technique and someone who's probably as smart as Mr. Benedict, he can ever fully be under. So he's constantly warring with himself, between his despair and his need to be in control but his growing fear of hurting the people he loves (Mainly Nicholas).

[the-pontiac-bandit]

catch your dreams

in which amy santiago and jake peralta watch a presidential primary debate with their children, and one of those children is enamored with governor knope of indiana. 

also on ao3

“Welcome to the first debate of the 2036 election! My name is Cecile Stafford, and with me tonight is my co-moderator Cooper Liddell. We’re thrilled to welcome you to this exciting primary contest--”

“MOM!” Ana’s shout from the kitchen table drowns out the TV. “I CAN’T FIND MY FOLDER!”

“Oh! I think I saw it earlier!” Jake shouts back from the master bedroom down the hall.

“Um...where?” Ana sounds surprised--his father loses things even more frequently than he does, and only twice in the thirteen year-old’s memory has her father ever been the one to find something lost.

“UNDER YOUR BUTT!” Jake’s uproarious laughter draws eye rolls from his wife and older daughter, seated side-by-side on the couch, and a giggle that matches his own from the small boy seated between them. Rey has a journal open on her lap, a pencil (she would never dare use a pen on the couch--those things can stain) already scratching away at the top of a new page. Her social studies teacher promised her extra credit for her thoughts on the debate, and she’ll be damned if she isn’t going to earn it.

Her mother pipes up from next to her, for the benefit of eight year-old Eli, curled up in the crook of her arm. “Jake, potty words stay in the…?”

“Potty,” comes the somewhat subdued response from the bedroom. Satisfied, Amy turns her attention back to the kitchen.

“Ana, did you check your backpack? It’s by the front door.”

Ana’s sigh of annoyance is audible, even over the audience applause coming from the TV’s top-of-the-line surround sound speakers (Jake had purchased them in order to better appreciate Avatar in all its cinematic glory). “Mom. I already checked there.”

“Well--” Amy starts to reply, ready to list the other places where her seventh-grader habitually leaves her possessions (it’s truly a miracle how easily the Jake and Ana manage to lose things in an apartment so small she has to share a bathroom with her teenage daughters).

“AHA!” Ana cuts her off triumphantly. Then, her voice turns sheepish. “I found it.”

“Where?” Amy asks, a hint of smugness in her voice betraying her certainty that the folder was in her daughter’s sequin backpack, thrown unceremoniously by the door five hours before.

Ana’s voice is sheepish. “...I was sitting on it,” she admits reluctantly, sticking her head around the door to the living room.

Then, a clatter from the bedroom startles all of them. Jake emerges with a triumphant shout, “I was right! It was under your butt!”

None of them hear him, though. They’re all too busy staring--while they’d been peacefully doing the dishes, Jake had been pulling a Tupperware bin of costumes out from the hall closet and adorning himself with every bit of red-white-and-blue attire the Santiago-Peralta family possessed.

“What?” he says, in response to the four pairs of eyes trained on him. “I had to get ready for the debate!” On the word debate, he leaps into the air, doing his best to imitate his fifteen-year-old ballerina daughter. He lands loudly, rattling the decorative plates hung on the wall behind him, and looks up at his family, a mohawk wig worn six years ago to Charles’ Fourth of July barbecue sitting crooked so his graying curls are visible underneath.

The entire family pauses for a second, a commercial about some adult-onset asthma medication droning on in the background. Then, everyone is laughing. Jake hops on the sofa next to his daughter, bouncing everyone around while his son’s cheeks turn rosy pink with his deep belly laugh and his more serious daughter’s soft giggle fills the room.

Jake and Eli are still laughing, Jake’s wig now perched on Eli’s much smaller head, covering his eyes, when a sudden swell in patriotic music and applause jerks them back to reality.

Rey has her hand on the volume button, eyeing them defiantly. “It’s starting,” she informs her father seriously as the speakers approach their maximum volume.

Ana, now laying on the floor with the previously-lost folder full of crumpled pages of math homework, grabs a pillow to cover her ears with an eye roll as Amy snags the remote from Rey. “Quick, turn it down!” she says, still breathless from laughter. “Before the neighbors call again!”

She switches the volume back to acceptable levels, but Rey doesn’t even seem to notice. Jake leans over and notices that she has columns for each candidate in her notebook, with her neat handwriting listing names, previous qualifications, and current offices.

“Our senator’s running, you know,” Rey announces. “Foster Cromwell. He’s supposed to win. It’d be cool to have another New York president. I think I’d vote for him.”

“You shouldn’t vote for someone just because they’re from your state,” Amy explains. “You want to vote for the person with the best ideas.”

“But you think he has good ideas! You voted for him last year!” Rey retorts.

“I do,” Amy concedes. “Senator Cromwell is very smart. But let’s see who else is on stage before we start committing our votes!”

Rey nods, writing furiously in her notebook as Harris finishes his opening statement. Seven candidates follow him, with opening statements so rehearsed and identical that Jake starts to nod off by the time the eighth candidate gets her minute.

“My name is Leslie Knope, and I’m the governor of Indiana. I may be new to the national political scene, but I’ve worked in government longer than any of the people on stage with me. My career began in the local Parks and Recreation department in--”

Something in her voice makes Jake snap to attention. His eyes open, and out of the corner of his eye, he can see Amy sitting up straighter, too. Even Ana, pretending to be entirely disengaged from her spot on the carpet, has stopped writing.

The moment only lasts a few seconds, but it captures Jake’s attention. The tiny blonde woman on the far edge of the stage is electric, and her story about a swing, national parks, conservation, and hard work feels like it could be much longer than a minute.

The audience in the room seems to agree, with a swell of applause so loud that Amy has to turn the volume down another few notches.

“Who is she?” Amy asks her daughter.

Rey consults her notebook. “Governor of Indiana. She used to work at the Department of the Interior, and in the National Parks Service before that. She’s from...Pow-nee, I think is how you say it.”

Eli laughs. “Pow-nee’s funny.”

“Pow-NEE, Pow-NEE,” Jake repeats, poking his son in the stomach on each syllable while his son giggles.

“Shh!” Rey shoots a death glare--scarily like Amy’s--at her father as the moderators ask the first question.

Jake rapidly gets lost again in the technical language about public options, data privacy, and global trade pacts, so he settles on watching his wife, who clearly seems to know what’s going on. She’s enthralled, fascinated by the detailed policy discussion. Meanwhile, Rey is scribbling furiously.

“Governor Knope, one of your most-discussed achievements in Indiana is your prison reform bill, which aided the state’s recovery from the opioid crisis and restructured policing in the face of drug crimes. “Which such reforms are necessary at the national level, and how would you pursue them?”

As Governor Knope launches into a response about her work with the local police chief and how that translated into statewide work on bias training and accountability, Rey stops writing, her jaw slowly dropping.

When Governor Knope finishes, the debate cuts to a commercial break, and Rey turns sharply to her parents.

“Grandpa Ray talks about that stuff all the time!”

Amy smiles at her daughter. “He does. He’s worked hard on some of those policies in the NYPD for years.”

“But government people do it, too?”

“They can.”

“Do government people in New York do it?” Ana pipes up.

“Sometimes, but not as much as we want them to. That’s why Grandpa Ray has been working so hard--to change those things from the inside, since people aren’t changing them from the outside.”

“Oh.” Rey looks thoughtful. “Do you have to be a governor to do that? Change it from the outside?”

Amy looks thoughtfully at her daughter before starting an explanation about the endless nonprofit groups, researchers, and government employees who help elected officials make decisions like Governor Knope’s. She’s quickly cut off, though, by the music indicating that the debate has returned, which cues her daughter’s attention back to the candidates and her notebook.

----------

Amy’s surprised the next day when her daughter brings home five books from her high school library about the history of government and criminal justice reform. Rey dives in headfirst, and it’s all she talks about for months. Later that year, Amy’s just as surprised when Governor Knope surges from behind in the polls and captures the nomination, and even more surprised when she denies a strong Republican president a second term.

By April of her oldest daughter’s senior year, Amy’s only a bit surprised when Rey confidently announces that she’d like to turn down NYU and move to Washington, D.C., and study political science. When Jake and Amy are on a train back from Georgetown the next fall, having just moved Rey into her new dorm, Jake can’t stop crying about their baby moving away. Amy smiles as she pats his shoulder as their two younger children roll their eyes.

And six months after that, when her daughter calls screaming about an internship with President Knope’s special commission on national criminal justice reform, Amy’s hardly surprised at all.

[midwinterblinder]

Will you help me?

A/N: Hey everyone! I wanted to start writing for Peaky Blinders, so here’s the first taste of it. It’s only the prologue, but the chapters will follow soon. Let me know what you think!

Summary: The war changed everything between Tommy and Y/N and there's a lot they don't know about each other nowadays. Polly's insistence and Tommy's 'business' reveal things they would both rather keep locked away. Will she help him? And will he help her?

Pairing: Thomas Shelby x fem!reader

Prologue

A sigh leaves Y/N’s lips as she hears the first brawling men come into The Garrison. She knows more will be arriving soon and she usually makes sure she’s gone by the time most of them arrive, but today she has work to catch up on, so she’ll be stuck here for a bit longer. After a while she throws her pen down in frustration; all the noise is making it impossible for her to focus. It’s actually somewhat of a relief when the door opens, and someone stumbles into the room.

A laughing John Shelby enters and gives her something to focus on other than her growing frustration with Harry’s bookkeeping. “Yeah, yeah I’ll be right there!” John shouts into the pub before he turns around and notices her. “Ey Y/N didn’t know you were still here. What are you doing here this late?” He asks as he closes the door behind him to shut out some of the noise.

“I was ill for the past two days, so I have some work to catch up on.” Y/N tells him as she gestures to the paperwork in front of her. “What are you doing back here?” She asks in return.

“We’re running low out there and Harry said there was a crate of whiskey back here.” John explains as he looks around the room until his eyes find the crate in the corner. “You should join us for a drink, we haven’t seen you in ages.” He says as he lifts up the crate. She shakes her head but before she can say anything John steps closer and speaks up again. “C’mon just one drink. We’ve all missed you. Aunt Poll is out tonight as well.”

Y/N is still somewhat hesitant. She tends to avoid pubs nowadays. The noise combined with the pushing and shoving and handsy men make her feel uncomfortable in ways she never would have imagined a few years ago. She has however missed interacting with people and it would be nice to properly catch up with the Shelby’s instead of the short conversations when they run into each other on the street; she hasn’t spoken to Polly in a while. “Alright, one drink.”

“Good.” John grins as he heads to the door. Y/N quickly restacks the papers on the desk and follows John. John hands the crate over to Harry as Y/N closes the door to the office. She makes sure to stay close to John in order to avoid at least part of the crowd as they part for him. She’s relieved to see John heading towards the private room; at least that will be a little calmer. “Oi guys guess who I found!” John's voice bounces off the walls as he steps into the room.

Four pairs of eyes focus on him as his body is still keeping them from seeing Y/N. “Well?” Polly asks as she raises her eyebrows. “Who did you find?” As soon as the question has left her mouth John moves further into the room and Y/N comes into view. “Y/N how lovely to see you. It’s been too long.” Polly smiles as she gestures for the younger woman to step into the room.

“Yeah sorry about that, life has been busy.” Y/N says as she steps inside and closes the door. A quick look around shows her that the only seat left that wouldn’t require her to climb over anyone is next to Tommy, so that’s where she sits down. She's actually somewhat glad to be sitting next to him; she's sure that unlike his brothers he won't get too rowdy as the night goes on.

“Well whatever’s the reason, it’s good to see you.” Arthur grins at her from the other side of the table, where he’s sitting with Finn. “Here have a drink.” He says as he pours some whiskey into an empty glass and slides it to her side of the table.

She sends him a grateful smile as she picks up the glass and takes a sip. As she puts it down, Tommy wordlessly offers her a cigarette. She accepts it with a slight nod, which he returns before he lights it for her. They maintain eye contact for a bit longer, before they both turn their heads to blow out the smoke. As always Polly observes the exchange between the two. There’s something strangely intimate about any interaction between Tommy and Y/N, and it fascinates Polly.

Y/N feels herself relax as the conversation starts up again and she’s glad she agreed to join them. Arthur is in the middle of a story when she feels Tommy’s eyes on her. He doesn’t look away when she turns her head to face him, so she gives him a questioning look. “You’ve barely touched your drink.” Tommy states as he gestures to her glass.

Her eyes drift to the glass on the table. She finished her first glass and plans to drink her second as slowly as possible, so Arthur won’t fill up her glass for a third time. It has been quite some time since she last drank more than two glasses of alcohol a night, and for good reason. “I’m starting work early tomorrow, so it’s best if I don’t drink too much. You know what I’m like after a few.” She forces a smile as the lie falls from her lips.

Tommy simply nods in reply. He does know what she’s like when she’s drunk, but the last time he saw her like that was before the war and that definitely took more than two drinks. He had actually always been impressed by how well she could handle her liquor, so her excuse makes no sense. He knows she’s not telling the truth, but if she doesn’t want to tell him she probably has her reasons. Besides, they’re not as close as they were before the war, so it’s really not his place to pry. Though that doesn’t stop him from thinking about what the truth may be.

Polly once again sees the exchange and notices that Tommy’s eyes don’t waver from Y/N’s face even when her attention is already back on the others. Polly, and everyone else for that matter, knows that if it hadn’t been for the war Tommy and Y/N would probably be married now. But the war did happen, and they were both never the same again. Haunted by grief and trauma the two went their own ways. Tommy put all his energy and focus on creating a better future for his family by whatever means necessary. While Y/N desperately started to avoid large gatherings and rowdy men, just wanting to live out her days with as little commotion as possible. There is no bad blood between the two, Polly doesn’t even know if they ever officially ended their relationship, or if they just stopped talking and left everything unsolved. She does know that her nephew still keeps an eye on Y/N. And that Y/N seems to be less tense when she’s near Tommy. In all honesty Polly doesn’t understand why the two don’t just try again, because from what she can see they could both use the help.