#but god it feels good to be (mostly) rid of the tories!

[several-unidentified-creatures]

[kkusuka]

alright alright, these are what i think the aftermath of them fucking you really well! HQ!! eddition <3

boys: ushijima, bokuto, iwaizumi, aran, miya twins, tendo, sakusa, and komori

implied smut ( ˘ ³˘)♥︎

pt. 2

ushijima wakatoshi ☽

shaking legs ᴥ︎

you knew it wasn’t as hard as he could go, but shit was it still rough

you could stand, barely, but you could

although it was obvious what had happened the night before, one look from Toshi shut that down

but~ that didn’t stop Tendou, oh no it didn’t

“aw, y/n! your legs are shaking pretty bad huh? i could always talk to Wakatoshi-kun for you!”

all that matters is that toshi likes to see the evidence of how good he made you feel

(and in the morning when you can barely stand he gets to hold you and bring you into the shower with him and he’d ruin your legs every night if it meant he could do that every morning)

aaaaannnd you let him massage your legs when it happens

basically toshi thrives off of touching you

bc he isn’t the best with words so he has to find a better way to let you know he loves you

omg, he is so precious 🥺

bokuto kotaro 

𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕘𝕙 𝕙𝕚𝕔𝕜𝕖𝕪𝕤 ♡︎

if bokuto had it his way, he would never have to leave your thighs

he just goes and goes until you’ve bagged him to fuck you

to which he happily abides

but that doesn’t take away the spots of purple and red adorning you inner AND outer thighs

and they are soooo hard to cover, especially when you want to wear shorts

it’s like a nightmare

the shorts have to cover at LEAST until your mid thigh point, unless you want to look like you were beat up :/

you were never going to tell him though, no way he was too good for you to ask him to stop

iwaizumi hajime

𝚋𝚛𝚞𝚒𝚜𝚎𝚍 𝚊𝚜𝚜 ♕

daddy iwa-chan hits it from the back more often then not

and we’ve all seen how strong he is too

in the middle of blowing your back out he’ll grab your hair in one hand and start to spank you with the other

and he won’t stop smacking until your cheeks are red, then he’ll rub them a bit, attempting to soothe your already bruising ass

this doesn’t even include the finger marks of when he groped your ass during you quick make out session

(he slapped your ass during that too. multiple times too)

his is an aftercare king tho

he’ll rub some soothing cream on your cheeks and give them and your upper thighs a little massage/rub thing

but nothing could completely get rid of the pain :/

you WILL not be sitting comfortably for the next few days

it’s the Iwa guarantee ;)

atsumu miya

🇷 🇦 🇼  🇹 🇭 🇷 🇴 🇦 🇹  𖣔

(raw throat)

two reasons

anytime you try to give him a blowjob

it any time you have his dick in your mouth somehow

he fuck your throat like he’ll never experience it ever again, like a man possessed

AND he doesn’t stop fucking you until your screaming for him

sadistic fuck :|

if you couldn’t guess, all of your neighbors hate you two but are too embarrassed to say anything to your face

needless to say, you gargle salt water after every round to try and save your voice

it literally never works, like ever

and what makes it even worse is taht the next morning tsumu would ask you questions knowing you couldn’t answer

“babe, do you want eggs?.....babe?.....ohhhh right, guess you’ve gotta write everything down for now huh?

osamu miya

🅑🅡🅤🅘🅢🅔🅓 🅢🅒🅐🅛🅟

he will pull and pull your hair

even if you cut it super super short, he’ll just grab your head

he literally uses you as leverage to fuck you harder

he has a method to making sure you feel good too!

when he’s pulling out he’s only lightly pulling your hair

buuuuuuuut

when he’s slamming back in he’ll yank your hair so your body crashes into his

as you could imagine it hurts your head

it’s happened so often that when the team hears you talking about a headache they already know what went on

you’ve had to ice your head because he pulled so hard

he does make it seem worth it when he makes you onigiri and god you a head massager (like the ones cats use)

you both have a joke now, that you purr when he massages you

he always makes it better <3

sakusa kiyoomi

i͜͡m͜͡m͜͡o͜͡b͜͡i͜͡l͜͡i͜͡t͜͡y͜͡

he makes sure you can’t move

it’s like a game to him

we all know omi is into some freaky shit, and if you didn’t know now you do now

in your apartment he has a gym, so he built in a hook that he said was for a punching bag

but really? he ties you up by your wrists which after some times make you unable to move your arms

then if hs not up to fuck, he had a machine that will do if for him!

but when he does fuck you, he can go and go and go and go

either of these leave your lower half completely immobile for the next few hours

by the time he takes your arms down your convinced that they’ll never get a blood flow again

but Omi isn’t a monster and he is the true BDSM aftercare king

he’ll wash you in a bubble bath and you guys will cuddle in the tub until he decides to carry to to bed

wake up cuddles are mandatory after hard-core scenes

and he’ll let no one know that he could die happy cuddling with you

can you tell i love omi more than life?

tendou satori

𝔯𝔞𝔴 𝔴𝔯𝔦𝔰𝔱𝔰 (ʳᵃʷ ʷʳⁱˢᵗˢ)

we know satori’s bondage kink goes far beyond the wrists

but sometimes it a lot to get all the rope and leather

by if you are having sex, your wrists are tied one way or another

mostly with a rope, hence them being rubbed raw

he’ll tie them to the bed frame and make you whither under him for hours

and when your convulsing on his cock you aren’t thinking about how you’re trying to free your wrists for their restraints

but when you’re done and he unties them all red and burning, it’s all you can think about

at first neither did you really knew what to do

but as time went on you two made a little post sex routine!

tori goes to get your skin cream while you rearrange the bed and get ready for cuddles and movies!

you learn in a very weird way that cream does not fix the bruises that come from the rope

it all came to a stop when Ushiwaka asked if tendo had hurt you because of the purple and red blemishes on your wrists

and after satori laughing at you for about ten minutes he explained that it was all ok and Toshi didn’t need though worry about your health.

you don’t think Wakatoshi can look at you the same :|

aran ojiro

𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑟 𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑛𝑒𝑐𝑘 𑁍

just like osamu, it’s like leverage to fuck you better

he knows just where to press and he does it so much you the end of the night that your neck has finger prints forming

it never helps that when he wants to switch positions he grabs your neck an pulls you by it

as delicious as it feels, this habit has left the both of you in some pretty awkward situations

like the time atsumu exclaimed “damn aran, if i don’t know any better i’d think that you were trying to strangle poor y/n!” in front of the whole cafeteria

or the time suna asked you if aran could hold your neck with one hand while the other was busy “opening your legs” right in front of your english teacher

aran also got into a habit of apologizing for choking you all the time

and all you have to tell him that you could always just wear more turtlenecks ❤︎

komori motoya

𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙥𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙨 𝙤𝙣 𝙝𝙞𝙥𝙨 ☃︎

to say that komori loves your hips, is a complete understatement

whenever you two are “making loooove~” ,as he refers to it, he has two hands on your hips

he doesn’t look like it, but this man is stroooooong

so when he gets excited, he squeezes your hips extremely hard

this leaves some pretty noticeable hand marks on either side of you

luckily a lot of your clothes cover that general area

but that doesn’t take away any soreness

but that means you can squeeze a full dose massage out of him

which he gladly does, anything for his pretty baby <3

[thessalian]

Thess vs Good News

There’s gonna be a Vote of No Confidence on Johnson toniiiiiiiiiiiiight! His own party’s finally had enough and sent in their no-confidence letters and now that the platinum jubilee is over, they’re coming for him and some of his shithead cabinet with the long knives! There are no words for the schadenfreude I am feeling about this right now.

I mean, we’ve got Jacob Rees-Mogg talking about how “If we get rid of Johnson, Brexit will never get done!” And people should hopefully be going, “Weren’t you guys saying just last week that we should have confidence in Johnson because he got Brexit done? One of those statements therefore has to be a lie...” But honestly, Rees-Mogg is just afraid for his job, and for his hard Brexit which follows the lines of his father’s book on how to profit from disaster capitalism. And as for Nadine Dorries ... the minister who insists that she is a MP because God wanted her to be knows full well that she’s not going to stay in government under any other prime minister, Tory or not.

Now, thing is, Theresa May faced a vote of no confidence and even though she won, she still resigned, because she felt she needed the full backing of the party to accomplish the Brexit she kind of got thrown into having to deal with. Odds are not good that Johnson will do the same thing even if he by some dark miracle wins the vote of no convidence. I mean, when he broke the ministerial code, and thus should have resigned ... he just changed the ministerial code. So however this turns out, win or lose ... it’s going to get ugly.

It’s too late to fix a lot of the damage Johnson’s government has done. Some things are now enshrined in law and it’ll take a lot to rescind them. The Elections Bill. The Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Bill. Hopefully we can at least stop this horrible thing about sending refugees to Rwanda. But mostly, while I know there will be a lot of political upheaval in the next little while, I just want Johnson gone. He is not a politician. He is not a leader. He is a campaigner, and that is all he is. He did not ‘get Brexit done’; he spewed a few slogans about his ‘oven-ready deal’ and apparently felt it was his right and duty to ignore the bits of it he didn’t like. Covid? Locked down too late because ‘herd immunity’, insisted that hospital patients be discharged to care homes without being tested for Covid, and then leaned on the “world-beating vaccine programme” which wasn’t down to him at all. All he does is swan around the country and the world for photo opportunities. He lives his life on the campaign trail, and he does not fucking lead.

I just want someone who can and will actually lead, and govern for the people instead of so blatantly for themselves. I don’t think that’s wrong.

Anyway, I’m going to go play video games so that I don’t end up hovering over the news liveblogs like some kind of vulture. I’ll find out after 8pm tonight what happened. Cross your fingers, guys - I don’t care how much political upheaval it causes; I just want him OUT.

[sincerelyella]

All In My Head Part 6

Book: The Royal Romance (AU)

Pairings: Liam x MC (Ella)

Characters belong to Pixelberry; MC Ella Brooks belongs to me.

Song Inspiration: All In My Head by Tori Kelly

A/N: This is the first mini series I’ve ever written and I am so nervous about it! This is set in book 2 chapter 1, after the mess at the coronation takes place. MC has been stuck at Ramsford doing her daily lessons with the Beaumont brothers. Some cannon but mostly went left with this!

A/N2: Liam’s social season lasted about 5 months. He and MC had been carrying on their relationship since the beginning, they just had to do this in secret. I do work in healthcare, however, my specialty isn’t Obstetrics. If there are errors please don’t hate me.

Thank you @burnsoslow for prereading and letting me bounce ideas off of your brilliant mind!

Warnings: Angst; Fluff

Words: 1689

Ella vaguely smelled cleaning solution and hand sanitizer mixed with … Liam’s cologne? Her stomach did a little flip. She tried to open her eyes but her eyelids felt so heavy. Maybe one at a time. She slowly opened her right eye, then her left. She squinted and tried to focus on the items in the room around her. Where am I?

Then she heard him. “Love? How are you feeling?”

Liam pressed the button on the call light to alert the nurses that Ella was awake. She focused on his face and finally the blurriness cleared. “Oh, hi,” she gave him a sheepish smile. “What happened? Where is everyone?”

Liam stood from his chair beside the hospital bed, leaned over and softly pressed his lips to hers. “You fainted yesterday, fell off the bar stool. Everyone is in the waiting room, I’ve been texting them updates. Thank goodness Hana was with you in the kitchen,” he looked at her sternly. “Why didn’t you tell me you haven’t been feeling well?”

Ella let out a breath, feeling guilty in that moment. “The dizziness and headaches were a new thing. I just figured the whole nausea and throwing up thing was from whatever Max bought me to eat.”

“So, you’ve learned to not eat everything Maxwell brings you right?”

“But he brings me food when I’m hungry,” she pouted. He couldn’t resist that pout. He leaned over, caught her bottom lip between his teeth and pulled gently.

“I’ll need to have a talk with Lord Beaumont if he fed you something that caused you to have food poisoning.”

The couple was interrupted by a loud knock on the door, a female doctor and nurse stepping inside the room. They both curtsied to Liam. “Hello, Your Majesty, Ms. Brooks. It’s good to see you awake. I’m Dr. Parrish and this is my nurse Angela. How are you feeling today?”

“I just have a headache, it’s kind of been ongoing since the day I fainted. Wait, what day is it?”

Dr. Parrish chuckled. “It’s Wednesday, Ms. Brooks, you’ve only been here for a night. Are you nauseated at all?”

Ella shook her head. “Not right now. I remember having some weird metallic taste in my mouth though.”

“Metallic taste?” Dr. Parrish frowned. “Could be from all the vomiting. I do want you to try to eat something, just clear fluids for now; if you can hold down the liquids we can advance your diet accordingly. Did you want any medication for your headache?”

“No thanks, right now I’m okay.”

“Alright, sounds good. I’m going to check on your lab results and be right back.” Dr. Parrish curtsied to Liam and walked out the door.

The nurse Angela looked at Ella, “All you have to do is press the call button if you need any pain medications.”

Ella nodded, “I will, thank you.” Angela nodded, curtsied quickly to Liam and walked out to give the couple some privacy.

Liam reached over and grabbed Ella’s hand. “Love, I didn’t get a chance to tell you what happened when I spoke with my father,” he gave her a sad smile.

Ella slowly sat up straight in bed. “What happened? What did he say?”

Liam sighed. “He … was not apologetic. He stood by his actions and basically said he still believes Madeleine was the better choice for queen.”

Ella slowly nodded. “Well, what he thinks doesn’t matter. As long as we’re together and he allows us to live our lives.” She looked down at their joined hands and noticed his knuckles were swollen and had dried blood. She met his eyes and gave him an inquiring look; not missing the way his jaw clenched before answering.

“Ahh, so the conversation didn’t end … well,” he said.

“What about Madeleine? Have they found her yet?”

He shook his head. “Bastien thinks she fled Cordonia after I called off the engagement. Probably to Karlington, where her father has a duchy.”

There is another knock on the door and Dr. Parrish walks back into the room with papers in her hand.

“Ms. Brooks,” she said with a smile on her face. “We got your lab results back and everything looks normal except your hCG levels are through the roof.”

Ella looks up at the doctor with wide eyes, knowing exactly what that meant, her nursing education coming back to her. How did I not think of this before?

Liam had a puzzled look on his face and finally spoke up. “What does that mean doctor?”

Dr. Parrish smiled at the couple. “Your Majesty, it means Ms. Brooks is pregnant. I’ve consulted with an obstetrician to do an ultrasound to confirm the pregnancy and also answer any questions you may have.”

Ella and Liam looked up at the doctor, then looked at each other, eyes wide.

“Congratulations to you both. The specialist will be in shortly.” Dr. Parrish left the room.

“You’re pregnant,” Liam said. He couldn’t wipe that grin off his face as he leaned in to kiss Ella on her lips.

“You’re happy about this?” Ella asked incredulously.

Liam laughed. “Of course I am. I’ve always wanted a family, and I’m over the moon with excitement that I get to start a family with you.” He caught the look on her face and his smile faded slightly. Oh my God is she not happy about this? “Are … you happy?”

Ella looked at Liam and burst into tears. Damnit! She’s definitely not happy about this. Liam’s eyes went wide and immediately moved to sit on the edge of the bed.

“Love, what’s wrong?” He wrapped his arms around her and pressed a kiss into her hair.

“No … wonder I felt … so sick!” Her words were muffled against his chest as she sobbed. “And hungry! I am so … hungry! All the … time!”

She hiccuped, then suddenly she pulled away from Liam’s arms, eyes wide. “Oh my God … I ate *hic* raw … chicken!!” She started to sob even harder and covered her face with her hands.

God I love her. Liam tucked his lips between his teeth to keep the laugh building in his chest from coming out. “Love … it’s going to be fine. We get to see our baby,” he tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear and stared into her eyes. “Were you not happy about having a baby with me?”

“I am … happy *hic* … Liam! So so so happy! I love you! *hic* I want this baby … *hic* so much!”

Liam turned to grab a cup of water on the bedside table and handed it to Ella. As she took a sip to get rid of her hiccups he smiled. He took the cup and put it back on the table, then pressed his lips to hers. “Me too,” he whispered. “I love you, a whole lot.”

They both jumped when there was another loud knock at the door. A woman wearing a white coat walked into the room. “Your Majesty,” she curtsied. “Ms. Brooks, I’m Dr. McCloud, it’s nice to meet you both. I’m the obstetrician that will be doing your ultrasound today. We do the ultrasounds differently when you’re in the early stage of pregnancy.” She instructed Ella to scoot closer to the edge of the bed and place her feet in stirrups.

“Okay, so I’ll be using this transducer, or ‘wand’ as we like to call it, to do the ultrasound,” Dr. McCloud explained. “This will help me see how the baby is doing and take some measurements. Do you have any questions before I start?”

Ella shook her head, then looked at Liam who also shook his head.

“Alright then.”

The doctor had Ella lay back and instructed her to try to relax. Liam grabbed one of Ella’s hands and they both fixed their gazes onto the screen. The couple watched in awe as a black and white fuzzy picture popped up.

“Hmmm …”

Both Liam and Ella snapped their gaze over to where the doctor was positioned.

“Is everything okay?” Liam asked.

“Uh, yes! Everything is fine. Sorry, I didn’t mean to alarm you. You are having twins and this explains your lab results. Your hCG levels were very high, Ms. Brooks,” the doctor pointed to the screen. “Here is Baby A and right here is Baby B. You’re measuring about nine weeks along,” she explained as she labeled the babies for them.

Ella and Liam stared at the computer in shock, tears falling from their eyes. Dr. McCloud took two pictures of the screen, printed them and handed them to Ella.

“Here’s your babies,” she said with a grin. The doctor began to gather the equipment and had Ella slide back up on the bed. “Do either of you have questions for me?”

“Can I have something for nausea? It’s been really bad over the last week,” Ella said, sheepishly looking at Liam who gave her a look.

“Absolutely. I’ll have the order sent to the pharmacy and once we discharge you, you can bring them home. Take them sparingly.”

“Doctor, does she need to follow certain … dietary restrictions?” Liam arched his brow at Ella as he spoke.

Dr. McCloud laughed at Liam’s expression. “Well, just try to eat well in general. Lots of fruits, veggies, and protein. I’ll have you follow up with a primary obstetrician, they can even come see you at the palace if needed.” Liam nodded and thanked the doctor for all her help.

“It was a pleasure meeting both of you,” she said with a smile. “I’ll let Dr. Parrish know that you’re cleared for discharge. It’ll be up to her to discharge you home.” Dr. McCloud curtsied to Liam, turned and shook Ella’s hand then walked out of the room.

Before they could say a word there was a knock at the door. “Come in!” Ella called.

In strode Hana, Drake, Maxwell and Leo, all wearing wide grins on their faces.

“Hey, Blossom! We have a surprise for you!”

[lhs3020b]

Post Mortem

I promised some thoughts on the nightmarish debacle that has happened. Here they are.

TL;DR I am scathing about everything. Everyone who should have helped us, failed.

It's the morning after. They've won. Continuity Remain is dead; there isn't going to be any second referendum and Article 50 won't be revoked. You cannot imagine how I feel right now, typing those words. However, I have never sought to deny reality (however lovely denial might be) and reality is what it is. We've lost a referendum and two general elections; we're finished. There is no come-back from this. The country has made a sick, twisted, greedy, myopic and stupid decision - but that's the decision it's made. I have nothing good to say for what happened, except that it did happen.

Well, let's look at the one tiny silver lining: since the ship has now sailed, I can indulge my deep, seething pool of vitriol for our collection of useless opposition parties. I'd held back previously because I didn't want to add to the circular firing squad. But they've all shot each other now and the corpses have largely stopped twitching. So off we go. (Before we start, I won't be writing about CUK/TiG/Change-UK, because they were just annoying, and I can't be arsed. I think we've all spent enough time on that shower of idiots.)

Here's the core reason for why I'm so angry: all this was completely avoidable. The media will, of course, spin BoJo's victory as a paragonic triumph of political conservatism. Like that infamous Pravda article from the 30s, on the Soviet constitution, they'll fawn over BoJo and declare him a visionary and a victor, a veritable genius of the ages, dripping with lyricism and wit. He isn't. He's an over-promoted buffoon who lucked into the top office due to the self-destruction of his inept predecessor, aided and abetted by a lying and sycophantic media - and, by a collection of opposition parties whose sole interest was in fighting each other.

Here we have the real core problem. The people on our side only switch on for fighting each other. There's little sign that they actually really care about Brexit, or the wider state of the UK. But pursuing partisan vendettas against each other? Wheeeeeeeeeee!

Let's think back to the summer, when BoJo was faced with stalling polls and a hung parliament. He could have been ousted then - but, of course, the Lib Dems were adamant that they couldn't countenance the idea of Mr Corbyn as Prime Minister. They'd had this tendency for a while - it's not new - but it accelerated and was nurtured under Jo Swinson.

When she was elected as leader I was initially a bit sympathetic - it seemed reasonable to give her a chance. Unfortunately, it turned out that she might be the most rightwing leader they've ever had - I actually suspect now that she might be to the right of Clegg. And she went and turbocharged all of their most self-destructive tendencies. I think what she thought she was doing was clawing Tory Remainers off of the Tories. This ran into two problems; 1) there weren't that many Tory Remainers to begin with and b) most of them are more Tory than they are Remain. So they mostly stayed put, and they few who did leave (thank you, to those of you that did) just weren't enough. Meanwhile, the hard-right tilt scared off the Lib Dem's left-leaning supporters.

A while back I predicted they'd lose seats at this election; I'm sad to have been proved right. I am, however, grimly-amused that Swinson herself lost her seat. The other problem with Swinson's rampany anti-Corbynism was that it partially demobilised continuity!Remain. A lot of people sensed that she was more anti-Corbyn than anti-Brexit; that also implied no plausible chance of an anti-Brexit coalition. Hoenstly, given how overt and personal the vitriol between her and Corbyn got, it's hard to see how it could ever have worked. And there's no point voting for something that you know is impossible. I do wonder if maybe this switched some left-leaning people off, or perhaps even sent a few ditherers back to the Tories (under the assumption that any sort of government is better than no government, I suppose).

As for the Lib Dem campaign, it was a mess. At one point their leader went on air to deny killing squirrels (yes, seriously, this actually happened). She got all excited about thermonuclear genocide at one point, because that's not at all weird and creepy, amirite?! Then there was the bizzarity that was "skills wallets" (don't ask - basically, the sort of policy abortion that happens when a collection of wonks are locked in a room with a boxed set of the West Wing and too much cocaine).

[OK, I'll expand this one. Briefly, skills wallets were a weird continuing-adult-education idea, where you'd have a pot of money that you could access at certain ages, apparently to take some kind of training or re-education or something. Why the ages in question, why that amount of money, and why not just make adult-ed free at the point of use, were never really explained. Then there was the can of worms that was additional voluntary contributions - what I took away from this was it was the adult-ed version of pensions auto-enrollment. I spent the last four years fighting a corrupt auto-enrollment fund, so I have strong feelings here!]

As for general themes, really, the LD campaign didn't have one. There was a lot of "Corbyn, THE MONSTER, the monster, Corbyn!". And, kind of oddly, there wasn't actually that much about Brexit. It actually didn't figure very strongly in their campaign. You came away from watching it all with a) a bad taste in your mouth and b) a nagging feeling that these people didn't know what they were doing.

To be fair to them, their vote share did go up, a bit - from 7.4% in 2017 to 11.4% yesterday. Which is, uh, not exactly dizzying. And it seems to have happened in all the wrong places, so they still managed to lose seats overall.

OK, we've gawped at the piss-stained ashes of the old Liberal Party, lying in state where some eggregious family-member has dumped them, on a roadside verge in the middle of nowhere. (Perhaps some enterprising squirrel has buried a nut amongst them.) Let's move onto the other vast, soul-sucking black hole of despair, also know as the Labour and Co-operative Party.

Oh dear god. The Labour Party.

The Labour Party is Britain's perennial second party, and nothing that happened last night challenged its second-place status. Their vote share dropped by 7.8 percentage points on 2017; this is what produced the Tory landslide, essentially. The Tory vote went up a little, by about 1 point, but otherwise stayed largely flat on 2017. This time, though, Labour collapsed. They lost a swathe of seats across the country, including places like Bolsover and Blyth Valley, which were previously rock-solid.

What went wrong? Everything. Basically, the stars aligned against us, in every single way.

First of all, Labour's campaign was dogged by the antisemitism scandal. And you know what? It was bloody well right that it did. The leadership dealt with antisemitism by ... doing nothing. Anyone who tried to raise the issue instead would get "Corbyn outriders" dumping on them on Twitter. Apparently we're suddenly not allowed to be concerned about racism on the Left anymore? Frankly, fuck that.

What they should have done was a quick-and-brutal party purge, perhaps early in 2018, when there was still time. Take some initiative, get control of the narrative again, and get rid of people who are only going to shit all over your campaign. But, uh, no. That didn't happen. I'll note that the Chris Williamson show in particular went on far, far longer than it should have.

Then we come to Brexit itself. Corbyn spent three years equivocating on the issue. OK, I'll allow that in hindsight, perhaps strategic ambiguity made some sense back in 2017 (though note that they still lost that election too). It didn't by 2019. But Corbyn was still trying to stand in the middle of the road as late as the summer - and by doing so inadvertently opened up political space for the (brief) Lib Dem revival, which in turn shunted Labour onto the defensive. And as I believe Paddy Ashdown once said, if you stand in the middle of the road, you get hit by traffic.

Eventually, the Labour leadership reluctantly adopted a second referendum position, but by then the damage was done. Basically, Corbyn had convinced Leavers that he was a Remainer, and Remainers that he was a Leaver. Labour appears to have lost votes about evenly across both Remain/Leave areas(!). In a way, he actually did unite the country - just against him. Ooops.

The rest of Labour's prospectus was a mess this year. Home Office reform was de-emphasized (arbitrary deportation by the Home Office is a huge concern amongst ethnic minorities). Drugs-law reform seems to have fallen off the agenda. There was no obvious theme to the campaign - surprising given that 2017's "For the Many" theme did cut across. Instead the "offer", such as it was, appeared to be a largely-incoherent grab-bag of spending promises, some of them with very large headline numbers. (The £58 billion for the WASPI pensions thing stands out there.) A lot of people simply didn't believe the country could afford it. You don't vote for things that you fear will bankrupt you.

Also, in a way, there's a parallel to the skills wallets thing here. Labour would have been better off, I think, just doing something straightforward like saying, "If elected we'll raise disability, sickness and unemployment benefits by £x per week, and we'll get rid of the ATOS fit-for-work assesments". It would have the advantages of simplicity, clarity and a clear political theme. Instead we got this weird fiscal machine that would produce some of those effects, except via a complicated multi-part kludge (which probably wouldn't even work properly anyway). I don't know how this came about; presumably it was an after-effect of one of the party's unending internal power-struggles.

Corbyn himself is a controversial figure, from his past associations with the IRA (more vague than the press would have you believe, but still a drag on the doorstep) to the perception of socialist extremism. Again, let me note that the "but he's a Communist, because that starts with 'C' too!" stuff is disingenuous, but this perception exists, and the Party have not found any apparent way to challenge it. Honestly? If your candidate is a ship that's holed below the waterline, yes it is horribly-unfair and all the rest of it, but you do need to run someone else. (I see no point softening that punch ; while Corbyn's been leader, the whole UK has voted 4 times, at 2 general elections, 1 referendum and 1 EU Parliament election. Every time, Labour has bombed. It's hard not to see a pattern here.)

Finally, the Labour Party itself has failed to ever re-unite. It's effectively two political parties in one - or possibly three, depending on how you want to look at Momentum. On a fair day with a strong wind, the Parliamentary portion sometimes manages to move just-about-consistently, but nothing else seems to have that behaviour. Honestly I suspect a lot of people's real fear about a Labour government is not that it would be a socialist tyranny, but rather that it would implode within about six months. Labour has lost its way amongst a storm of factional infighting. To be fair to Corbyn, this isn't new. Ed Milliband's desperate tenure was derailed by internal struggles. Even the 1997-2010 period had the ongoing squabbles between Brownites and Blairites (remember them?).

So yeah, Labour's campaign was an absolute shambles this year, and the whole country is suffering now for that.

Lastly, let's have a quick look at the Green Party. Where were they this year? With Extinction Rebellion making headlines, the Amazon burning, Australia on fire and weather records being smashed everywhere - remember that day when we had summer back in February? - it should have been the Greens' year. Environmental concerns are going up in salience - people are starting to get genuinely worried. And, uh, where were they? I can't recall hearing a single peep from the Green Party during the election. Whatever it was they were doing, it seems to have completely failed to capitalise on the moment. Perhaps they should have been a bit more visible.

The only people who come out of this with any credit are the SNP. I haven't heard anything teeth-grinding about them - though, that might just be because I live in southern England.

Oh, and let's take a final kick in the teeth, shall we? If you add up the shares of the votes received by pro-second-referendum parties ... guess what it comes to? Yup: 52%, versus 48% for the pro-Brexit parties. 52/48 - aaaaargh! Yet, the 48% had a narrative that kept their vote all in one place, so they won an absolute majority at Westminster. Ours got scattered to the four winds by several separate inept campaigns and several useless party leaders. Had there been a second referendum, we could have won it. But we never got the chance, because everyone supposedly on our side were completely, perfectly, useless.

Sigh :(

[faunahudson]

settle | self para

Who: Fauna Flanagan and Percy Flanagan with mentions of Rory Flanagan, Conor Flanagan and Sawyer Hudson Where: Belfast When: Feburary 2020 What: Fauna and Percy discuss his opinions on her future Warnings: emotional abuse, derogatory language, Percy Flanagan

It’s pouring with rain the night in February that her father comes to collect her from uni. It was an odd thing that in her adult life she’d begun to rely on lifts, since her and Rory had almost never been collected from school beyond primary. This had partially been because Percy had accused Mary of coddling them by doing so, but mostly because they liked the independence of walking or getting the bus. Fauna had always enjoyed the opportunity to read one of the many paperbacks that she kept crammed in the bottom of her bag. While Rory claimed to like the social aspect of the bus referring to him and Dobsy accusing Tired Pete in the year below of having a gay love affair with the bus driver because he always got off with an under twelves fare way into his teens. It also made people suspect them less of being Tories because their parents didn’t drive them, made them seem more normal. Fauna had liked it that way less reason for people to look at them, and with her headphones in she could ignore the commentary on her sex life that had always followed her back then.

It had been funny, appearing at uni in Belfast. Despite being the new girl things actually weren’t all that weird, she wasn’t ostracised the last way she had been during high school, everything was different in her new classes. In the weeks leading up to her first day there had been the bubble of fear that it would be like it had been in Dublin, that the videos would be found and the rumours would start up all over again. But instead she had been greeted warmly. After classes there were invites to pubs and cups of tea offered, everyone wanted to get to know Sawyer. A few people had even asked about Alexis, which they laughed about over their daily FaceTimes. How funny it was that people liked her when she didn’t really need them to anymore. This new warmth from people had meant that she seldom needed to walk or to take the bus because there was always someone’s car she could cram into, but on this particularly rainy Tuesday she’s been at the clinic later than she expected and there’s no bus for an hour. She knows Sawyer will be working, so she calls her home phone hoping to catch Maurie or her Ma to beg a lift and maybe some dinner. The phone rings twice, when it picks up she goes to talk immediately the way she usually would but she’s halted by.

“Fauna.” Her father says obviously having recognised her number, his tone not annoyed or accusatory for once which makes her immediately wonder if he’s drunk.

“Hey Da, is Maurie there?” She asks, hoping that if he is truly good and drunk he’ll just pass the phone over and she won’t have to prolong their interaction.

“No, her and your Ma went over to your grandparents.” He isn’t drunk, she can tell that by now. If he was drunk he would have put the phone down after delivering that message. “What did you need them for?” If he’d been any other person in the entire world she would have told him it was nothing and then tried to rummage around in her bag for enough change for a cab into town. But she knew if she told him that it was nothing then it would start a fight where he’d demand to know what she was hiding from him, and her feet ached too much for that.

“Oh I was just gonna try and beg a lift from the clinic, scran something from Ma. You know how I am.” She says, though it’s not true. He barely knows her at all. There’s a pause, which lasts longer in her head than it probably did in real life because she’s so fucking cold.

“I’ll pick you up, we’ll go for a pint.” Those were the last words that she expected to come out of his mouth, and she blinks in surprise.

“Why?” She asks before she stop herself, it’s always a terrible idea to question Percy and her heart sinks as soon as she says it. That’s always the problem with living with someone who you can completely be herself with, she forgets that she has to put her guard back up with other people.

“Because you need a fucking lift and I’m the only one in, god it’s not complicated Fauna Eloise.. sometimes I wonder what they teach you up there because it’s not bloody common sense.” Percy snaps.

“Sorry Da.. you’ve just never picked me up before.” Fauna responds, trying to mollify him. “Thanks though.” She adds, he’s not actually punished her since that time at parents week but she doesn’t really want to go through it again.

“Text me the address.” He says, and honestly even though she’s sure she’ll probably live to regret it right now she’s just grateful to think about getting out of the cold. A pint, is a pint after all. Though Percy hadn’t done anything particularly heinous since Sawyer punched Harold at new years, so she supposed she was about due for him to do something to remind her why she hated him so much.

Percy has brought his favourite Porsche coupe and it arrives a lot sooner than Fauna thought it would. She’d almost expected he’d keep her waiting, to punish her for questioning his motives. She dashes through the rain and slips into the front seat, to find Percy listening to the rugby. “Thanks for the lift Da, it’s vile outside.” The weather is usually a pretty safe topic, Percy hates the rain. There’s a brief conversation about the state of the roads, and what she was doing at the clinic before he looks at her and says.

“You can drive can’t you? Why don’t you have a car?” Fauna has to bite her lip hard to keep from laughing at this question. God he really didn’t have any idea what life was like did he? As if her and Sawyer could think about running a car when all they had to live on was the few shifts that she could take at the ER, his barely minimum wage earnings at the pub and what was left of her savings. They could barely afford groceries some weeks, and she’d been shoving the council tax bills underneath the freezer until Maurie had insisted that they take an envelope of ‘Christmas money’ to get rid of them.

“Yeah I can drive, you gave me a lesson once remember?” She reminds him. That was probably the last time that he’d volunteered to spend time with her that wasn’t to give her a bollocking. The lesson hadn’t been terrible to be honest, mostly because Percy liked feeling in control and like he was the smarter one of the two and Fauna didn’t mind learning when she thought the skill was useful. “Canne afford a car though, don’t really need one anyway I only really go to uni and to the pub. Sawyer borrows Glens car sometimes.. if we’re gonna go visit Nana or something.”

He grunts in recognition of the lesson. “You’d have more than enough money if you lived at home.” That’s the second time that evening that he’s stunned her to silence, and so she just stares at him like a fish. Was he really suggesting that she should move home?

“I mean.. I guess. But me and Sawyer are happy where we are I think. It’s nice to have a place of our own, weren’t really supposed to live together at school. ” She responds eventually, she wants to ask him why she would ever want to move home when he’d all but shoved them out of the door when they’d lived there for the month after Ohio. “Besides my single is a bit small for both of us. Sawyers a big lad.”

“Hm.” Is all her father replies it’s not like she expected him to laugh, she doesn’t think he’s ever laughed at one of her jokes but she does have to wonder where he’s going with all this. Her hands fidget in her lap as she waits for the penny to drop but he doesn’t press her on the topic. After a brief silence they pull up to one of the fancy country restaurants that Percy loves where the prices make her teeth hurt. She’s been uncomfortable with this kind of thing since she was a little girl who wore her wellie boots to church. As a kid she used to say she wasn’t hungry anymore and she didn’t want to go inside, which would usually cause him to call her ungrateful and all but yank her from the car while Rory wailed that he wanted Mcdonalds. Even now as an adult she wants to tell him that she’s not dressed for this kind of pint, and that she still stinks of the clinic. But again she knows that it’s not worth fighting over so she pulls the hood of her coat up and trudges with him inside. 

Percy knows the girl on the door, and he speaks to her in an odd charming voice that Fauna knew he had but had never experienced first-hand. She thinks about this version of her father occasionally though, when she’s wondering how Maurie or her Ma ever ended up with him. It’s this charming Dominant they thought they were getting claimed by, not the bad-tempered man who can never be wrong, that ended up raising their kids. They’re shown to a table, and handed expensive looking leather bound menus. Fauna almost doesn’t want to open the thing, but her stomach is growling so she scans the print for the cheapest thing on the menu.

“It’s on me.” Percy says as if reading her mind. It’s early in the dinner for him to declare this, one of his favourite games when he brought her and Sawyer out was always to order and then ask them to pay at the end of the meal. Watching them try to scrap around for enough money to cover the extortionate tab, before the waitress told them that Mr Flanagan had already paid. It was the kind of humiliating mind game that Percy specialised in, always reminding them that they relied on him, that they needed him. Fauna considers asking him whether or not he’s sure he wants to pay but that’s another question so instead she says.

“Thank you very much Da, you didn’t have to bring me out here. I’d have taken a half eaten bag of crisps.” She jokes, her stomach rumbling as her eyes scan over the options. While she’s not a fan of fancy places, she is looking forward to eating something that she didn’t make in that one pot that never seemed to have quite lost the burned crust that she’d created when Sawyer had distracted her while she was trying to make red wine gravy.

“I know, you’ve always been willing to eat any old shit.. Take shit from everyone. You shouldn’t settle though, not about food and not in your life Fauna.” Percy says, and Fauna is starting to wonder if this is all about Sawyer somehow. Percy had been awfully nice to Sawyer since the incident at new years and she now had a creeping suspicion that he’d just been biding his time, lulling them into a false sense of security.

“I mean I actually do just really like cheap food to be honest with you Da, I really enjoyed the American preoccupation with junk food while I was there. As for everything else, I don’t really think I’m settling. I thought I was doing pretty well to be honest, I left a school that I didn’t think was gonna give me a fair shot, I’m studying to be a doctor at the best school around and I’ve got an amazing boyfriend.. what more could I want?”

“You live in a pokey one bedroom flat and you can’t afford a car, you and Sawyer should be thinking about a house of your own.” Percy declares, and honestly Fauna is just glad that Sawyer was included in whatever weird fucking conversation they were about to have. 

“I mean once I’m qualified Da.. we’ll work on a claim and then we can start to think about getting a house and stuff. But I’m in med school right now, that’s you know.. expensive.” She wants to mention her trust fund, because it would solve every single problem that he keeps talking about. But she’d rather try to work out where he’s going with all this first. 

The waitress arrives at that point, and Fauna hasn’t even really thought about what she wants though she decides to use this to her advantage. “Can you order for me Da? You know what’s good here better than me” Percy actually almost cracks a surprised smile at this, letting a Dominant order for you is good manners in his book. Fauna has never been opposed to this kind of power exchange when it’s consensual, though usually not with her father. But she knows that he thinks she’s a terrible submissive, that she’s not willing to follow any kind of rules so little gestures like this can occasionally help with keeping him in a good mood. He orders her something with goats cheese that Maurie apparently likes and a regular pint. 

“I know you think I’m some kind of monster, because I won’t just let you and your brother waste your lives. And you act like I’m a cunt because Ive always tried to stop you from parading yourself around like a whore and acting like a nasty little brat.” Percy says, and Fauna takes a long drink of the pint that’s just been put in front of her. Vodka would have been better. Just when she was thinking this was going well. “But I push you because I know you can have more, and because I always wanted you to find a decent claim. Unlike your moron of a twin, I always knew you had potential. You’re decent looking like your mother, and nobody would ever shut up about how clever you were even when you were a kid. Though it was always like pulling teeth getting you to show it. Obviously there was no chance of you going into the business because you’ve always been submissive and overly emotional.. but I pushed you to do what you were good at.” Fauna wants to say that yelling abuse and emotional manipulation go a little further than ‘pushing’ and that if he really wanted to push her he could have offered to help with medical school but she holds her tongue. “I’ve always been trying to teach you not to be a chump and to be able to stand on your own two feet like I had to. Nobody gave me a hand out.” 

In a world where Percy wasn’t the worst person on the planet , Fauna might have spoken about him with pride. He was self made after all, his friends were always clapping him on the back and talking about his clever investments outside of the business. But he’d soured every page of his biography with his actions, and left her uninterested in knowing how he made the money that he so loved to hold over her and Rorys heads. The money that he used to manipulate her mother and Maurie into submission, and literally the only thing that made him any difference from the drunks that he sneered at on a Saturday night. 

“You’ve been making improvements though I’ve noticed, since our talk in Ohio. You’ve been more like a submissive should be, less crass, not dragging yourself out of bars like a tramp. Minding your manners.” Percy says, and Fauna raises an eyebrow. “And New Year reminded me something.. that I’ve been too hard on you particularly in a way. I always lump you and Rory in together because everyone else does. Which was never good for you, you don’t want people thinking you're a layabout junkie like him. I gave you the same treatment because I thought you needed the same push to succeed. But you’re a submissive and so I shouldn’t expect you to be able to do things for yourself. You’re supposed to be weak, you should be obedient.” In her mind Fauna punches him square in the jaw, and she stays visualising that as the waitress puts something that smells delicious in front of her. “But when the Yank fucking battered Harold, I realised that getting you under control was about finding you the right Dominant and shaping him. At first I thought the Hudson boy was a total waste of fucking air since he’s a skint drifter, with no decent family to speak of, American and he seemed like a pansy. But then I realised he’s got balls, and he seems to have enough of a grip on you that you’re no longer spreading your legs for anything that breathes.”

There’s a part of Fauna that feels some sort of twisted pride that her father is starting to approve of Sawyer, the words that are coming out of his mouth in many ways disgust her. But that stupid little girl who just wouldn’t give up hope that her Dad would someday be proud of her was jumping up and down that her Dad thought Sawyer could be a good match for her. 

“I am committed to Sawyer.” She confirms for the millionth time, always feeling a little sick when he brought up the idea that she might have sex with anyone else. “And he’s a really, really good Dominant.”

“Hm.” Percy responds as he tucks into his steak. “It’s his future I’m interested in, like I said you two can’t spend your life in that dirty little flat. You need to be looking ahead, and I mean to help with that. You need to keep focusing on uni obviously, and on being a decent submissive. But I can help give him a push in the right direction.”

Fauna has no idea how to respond to this decision making process, because on one hand she wants to try and shield Sawyer from everything that comes along with having Percys attention. But if Percy warming up to Sawyer meant that he might relax on his one strike and you're out policy, then it would help them both sleep a little easier at night. So she doesn’t really say anything for the rest of dinner, he makes a cruel remark about her being greedy when she wants to order dessert, and takes several very underhanded digs at how much Rorys rehab costs which she can’t ignore and has to bite back on. But it’s probably the longest they’ve ever been alone in a very long time. 

When he drops her off back at her apartment he reaches into his wallet, and pulls out a wad of twenties. “Buy yourself a bottle of decent booze.” He instructs. “You should be able to serve something that’s not shite when you have people over.” She has no intention of using the money for that, but she thanks him all the same and gets out of the car without feeling totally like shit for once. Which in turn makes her feel guilty, like she was betraying herself and Rory somehow for not totally hating every second that she spent with Percy. For letting him get away with at least half of what he’d said, Rory would never have sat there passively while he insulted the flat that her and Sawyer worked hard to afford and Sawyers parents who were good hard working people. Yet despite all that he’d said, Fauna considered the meeting to have gone well, and she just didn’t know if that made her a bad person or not. 

Glancing up at the apartment building she could see a light on, and that familiar relief of knowing that she could talk to Sawyer about what was worrying her spread over her body. So without agonising further, she punched in the key code and disappeared out of the rain. Leaving what she could of her guilt and unease behind her.