#or you’re the U.S president

[faceyourphobia]

annoys you

Ah, but you see..

I can never be annoyed

[fictionandmusic]

“they don’t even both suck” are you fucking kidding me.

is this the same joe biden who’s turned his back on every disabled person in this country by promoting the eugenicist LIE that the covid pandemic is over??? who’s never said the words long-covid or acknowledged it exists?? (incredibly reminiscent of reagan’s response to hiv/aids….)

is it the same guy who has been continuously sending weapons to the Zionist occupation of Palestine, regardless of their unrepentant genocidal behavior?? who’s willingly swallowing their lies & propaganda because it benefits the united states? who said “if there were not an Israel, we’d have to invent one”?

who gives a fuck if he’s “negotiating a ceasefire” it hasn’t fucking worked. hamas has proposed multiple ceasefire plans that have been rejected every time. we wouldn’t need a ceasefire if the USA stopped fucking arming & funding the zionist entity in the first place!!

[mugiwara-lucy]

Hello, everyone! While I am VERY proud of the Democrat voter turnout for Early and Mail In Ballots; here's ANOTHER thing to keep in mind.

Two of the Supreme Court's chairs will be up for grabs and the next president will be able to put in two new justices that are younger. Currently there's a 6-3 demographic in the Whitehouse with 6 being Republican and 3 being Democrat. SHould Kamala win, she can put two more Democrat court younger justices in and we'll be 5-3 (the five being Democrats!) and we'll have a less corrupt SCOTUS.

Should Trump win......he'll stack the Supreme Court with younger justices and the Supreme Court will be locked HARD RIGHT for AT LEAST 30 years.......do we REALLY want that??

And keep in mind, one of the justices (Clarence Thomas) was talking about giving a look at gay marriage if he comes back into office.

And I bet one of the Supreme Court justices that Trump will put will be Aileen Cannon, the person who threw out Trump's stolen documents case. We ALL KNOW he stole those documents for nefarious reasons......do we REALLY want someone like that in office??

Here is the link below to register to vote along with the deadlines varying by state! Also, your own vote isn’t enough! Get as many people as you can to vote for Kamala be it your friends, cousins, parents, grandparents, old friends from high school and college, coworkers, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, stepchildren (if they’re 18 and over) and the list goes on and on but every vote counts! ALSO PLEASE check your registration DAILY because MAGA WILL purge your voter registration!!!

And early voting has started! And if you don’t wanna vote on November 5th, Early Voting is another option! Like I said get as many people as you know and try early voting that way you can avoid MAGA fuckery on November 5th! Down below is a list of dates by state:

And Mail in Ballots are ANOTHER option I highly recommend!! And like I said get as many people as you can to take advantage of this option! BUT if you decide to go with Mail In/Absentee Ballots; PLEASE mail your ballots at the ACTUAL USPS office!! That way MAGAts won't fuck with it.

And if you’re an American who lives overseas; PLEASE use the option of voting overseas since I know every country other than North Korea, Russia and China do NOT want to see Trump’s stinky ass back in the Oval Office! Here’s a link below:

Like I said last night....because of Trump's first term, we had Roe v Wade, Affirmative Action and Chevron overturned. I bet all the money in my savings and checking accounts that Interracial Relationships, Women’s right to vote and Gay Rights will be done away with should he be back in office. BET MONEY.

We're doing well....let's NOT get complacent like 2016.

THANK YOU.

[destielmemenews]

"District Judge Matthew Barrett told former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters — after earlier sparring with her for continuing to press discredited claims about rigged voting machines — that she never took her job seriously.

“I am convinced you would do it all over again if you could. You’re as defiant as any defendant this court has ever seen,” Barrett told her in handing down the sentence. “You are no hero. You abused your position and you’re a charlatan.”

Jurors found Peters guilty in August for allowing a man to misuse a security card to access to the Mesa County election system and for being deceptive about that person’s identity.

The man was affiliated with My Pillow chief executive Mike Lindell, a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election from former President Donald Trump. The discredited claims trace back to Trump himself, whose supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol because of them and who still hints at them in his third run for president."

source 1

source 2

source 3

[robertreich]

How Wall Street Priced You Out of a Home

Rent is skyrocketing and home buying is out of reach for millions. One big reason why? Wall Street.

Hedge funds and private equity firms have been buying up hundreds of thousands of homes that would otherwise be purchased by people. Wall Street’s appetite for housing ramped up after the 2008 financial crisis. As you’ll recall, the Street’s excessive greed created a housing bubble that burst. Millions of people lost their homes to foreclosure.

Did the Street learn a lesson? Of course not. It got bailed out. Then it began picking off the scraps of the housing market it had just destroyed, gobbling up foreclosed homes at fire-sale prices — which it then sold or rented for big profits.

Investor purchases hit their peak in 2022, accounting for around 28% of all home sales in America.

Home buyers frequently reported being outbid by cash offers made by investors. So called “iBuyers” used algorithms to instantly buy homes before offers could even be made by actual humans.

If the present trend continues, by 2030, Wall Street investors may control 40% of U.S. single-family rental homes.

Partly as a result, homeownership — a cornerstone of generational wealth and a big part of the American dream — is increasingly out of reach for a large number of Americans, especially young people.

Now, Wall Street’s feasting has slowed recently due to rising home prices — even the wolves of Wall Street are falling victim to sticker shock. But that hasn’t stopped them from specifically targeting more modestly priced homes — buying up a record share of the country’s most affordable homes at the end of 2023.

They’ve also been most active in bigger cities, particularly in the Sun Belt, which has become an increasingly expensive place to live. And they’re pointedly going after neighborhoods that are home to communities of color.

For example, in one diverse neighborhood in Charlotte, North Carolina, Wall Street-backed investors bought half of the homes that sold in 2021 and 2022. On a single block, investors bought every house but one, and turned them into rentals.

Folks, it’s a vicious cycle: First you’re outbid by investors, then you may be stuck renting from them at excessive prices that leave you with even less money to put up for a new home. Rinse. Repeat.

Now I want to be clear: This is just one part of the problem with housing in America. The lack of supply is considered the biggest reason why home prices and rents have soared — and are outpacing recent wage gains. But Wall Street sinking its teeth into whatever is left on the market is making the supply problem even worse.

So what can we do about this? Start by getting Wall Street out of our homes.

Democrats have introduced a bill in both houses of Congress to ban hedge funds and private equity firms from buying or owning single-family homes.

If signed into law, this could increase the supply of homes available to individual buyers — thereby making housing more affordable.

President Biden has also made it a priority to tackle the housing crisis, proposing billions in funding to increase the supply of homes and tax credits to help actual people buy them.

Now I have no delusions that any of this will be easy to get done. But these plans provide a roadmap of where the country could head — under the right leadership.

So many Americans I meet these days are cynical about the country. I understand their cynicism. But cynicism can be a self-fulfilling prophecy if it means giving up the fight.

The captains of American industry and Wall Street would like nothing better than for the rest of us to give up that fight, so they can take it all.

I say we keep fighting.

[threeacttragedy]

Entry 11: The One About the Heart of the Ocean

My father is a big history buff. He fancies himself a bit of an expert about the U.S. Civil War, U.S. Presidents, and World War II. In fact, he’s gifted me with the Useless Knowledge of which four U.S. Presidents were assassinated while in office (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy – you’re welcome for that little addition to your own Library of Useless Knowledge).

But, more importantly, my dad has instilled in me the importance of a timeline. The idea that, if you’re collecting information, it’s vital to keep it in chronological order, that way you can look at it, (try to) understand it, and theorize about what happened before and after an event. If the facts are out of order, the conclusion you reach may be in error.

My father and I also like to solve True Crime together. When he visits, we spend hours on the porch studying some random, usually cold, true crime event. We timeline the shit out of it, connect the puzzle pieces together, and exclaim in the end, “We’ve solved it!” I suppose that is part of what keeps me interested in Lukola – not that there is anything criminal in Lukola, except perhaps the “Single White Female” that pops up behind Nicola from time to time – I just enjoy the game of trying to put the pieces together.

Lukola has become a rather intriguing puzzle, don’t you think? It’s definitely one to which I do not have all the pieces. I do, however, enjoy collecting the information and chronologizing it, and now I find it enjoyable to scribble my thoughts out on Tumblr.

So, how did I get here?

Well, it started with boredom and ended with a timeline.

My first entry to the timeline?

July 20, 2024.

What happened on that date?

Well, nothing spectacular really, except JVN posted –

HOLD UP!

HOLD THE FUCK UP!!

OH SHIT!!

YES!

YES, you guessed it! After blowing JVN off for at least three, maybe four, posts in a row, I’m finally getting around to dedicating an entire entry to Their Royal Highness.

JVN is such a fascinating creature. I mean, you get beautiful, witty, and intelligent wrapped into one human being. Oh, and they are kind of a catty bitch, too, and who doesn’t love one of those? That’s why they're the Heart of the Ocean on the USS Lukola; they just give off this very rare blue diamond vibe. Well, that, and because something they did marks the focal point – the heart – from which the rest of my timeline branches.

*I will cut in here to note that I am referring to JVN as they/their in this entry as their Instagram bio indicates they accept “they/he/she.”

Okay, back to July 20.

On that date, JVN posted to TikTok their version of the Charli xcx “Apple” dance. You know that annoying TikTok trend that took over our summer? Yeah, that’s the one – the same one Antonia tried doing – she just couldn’t pull off the JVN version of it. Dear girl couldn’t come close to matching JVN’s “enthusiasm,” and JVN’s version was only made more enjoyable in that they were seemingly mocking Antonia!

But, all’s fair in love and war, right?

JVN’s bestie, Nicola, had already spent the entire summer subtlety combating Antonia over social media. The vibe in the fandom was that Antonia was always trying to one-up Nicola, with Nicola always coming out the victor. I’m sorry, Antonia, you just can’t beat some perfectly timed BTS drops.

So, why did JVN’s TikTok post intrigue me? It wasn’t because it was that amusing. It was because they’d done something I hadn’t noticed before – they’d taunted Antonia on a public forum.

Curious, that.

Now, I’m not saying it was the first time JVN mocked Antonia, but July 20 was the first time I noticed it. That date is the heart of my timeline, but it does not have to be the heart of yours. We can all start at different times but still reach the same conclusions, so long as we keep the information in order.

You would think one wouldn’t mess with the “girl friend” of your best friend’s “best friend,” at least not publicly. But, here was JVN shamelessly mocking Antonia on TikTok. And, just so we’re clear, the public opinion of what JVN was doing with this TikTok is available to view in the comments of their TikTok post. It wasn’t just me that came to this conclusion – and JVN has left these comments up for four months at this point.

JVN’s “Apple” dance was only made more interesting the following day – July 21 – when they included it in their Sunday Dump post on Instagram.

And, Nicola liked it.

Hmm, things were becoming curiouser and curiouser.

Let’s not even pretend that Nicola isn’t street savvy and didn’t understand the context of that video. And, let’s definitely not underestimate the length of her claws.

To be honest, I hadn’t paid too much attention to Lukola since mid-June. It was an “it is what it is” thing for me. Even though I believed the relationship between Luke and Nicola was complicated (see my first blog for that story), Luke had also apparently disappeared into the summertime sun with his friend group, which included Antonia.

Something about JVN openly making fun of Antonia, and Nicola, at the very least acknowledging it with an Instagram like, made me realize something in Luke’s situation must be shifting.

What have I said about little changes? That deviations in modus operandi are what make people start giving the side-eye to a situation.

And, side-eye I did!

I started paying attention to JVN and, on July 25, they posted a series of photos on TikTok and Instagram showcasing “What I would wear if you invited me to your…” We will fast-forward through all the slides until we get to the last one, which read, “…just got dumped and going to take 8 shots dinner at Lupe’s in SoHo.” Was it possible that JVN was hinting at a dumpster fire at the Soho Farmhouse?

If you don’t know what the Soho Farmhouse is, it’s the place where Luke and his friend group, including Antonia, frequented, probably on Luke’s dime (*insert wicked laugh – oh, and a disclaimer that this is all speculation).

Funny that Nicola liked this post on Instagram, too, and it wasn’t even buried in a Sunday Dump.

At this point, JVN had really sparked my damn interest. Like, dear one, what are you hinting at?

On July 29, Deux Moi creeped out from under its rock and reminded the fandom to hate Luke by rehashing Papsmear. Thank you, we needed that. I mean, half of us almost forgot how much we hated him! That’s me being a sarcastic tart, by the way. If we were to fast-forward to today, I’d argue that Luke was the most darling thing to come out of Bridgerton.

Any ways, again, thank you, Deux Moi, for those suspiciously timed Papsmear pictures because they aligned perfectly with the pap pictures People dropped the following day – July 30.

Yep, I am talking about those strangely awkward pap pictures of Luke hanging out in the murky waters of Sorrento with Antonia. Oh, and let’s not forget the video footage of that encounter, which I am sure still upsets and confuses people to this day. In fact, I know it does because, as I was researching this, I had a couple of people get annoyed after I asked them to view it. Funny thing is, that shit never bothered me (I didn’t say that it didn’t later confuse me!). The first time I saw them, I was like, “Luke is not into that girl at all,” and my next thought was, “I wonder how old these pictures are because I would have sworn JVN was hinting at something.”

Now, this story wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t address the rumor portion of it.

First rumor? That Antonia set up the entire Italy pap photo-op because she seemingly knew where to find the cameraman. So, let’s discuss that video everyone seems to hate to acknowledge exists. In the video, you can see Antonia maybe looking in the direction of the cameraman. She then leans into Luke, either to whisper something to him or to reach for something behind him. In my opinion – and this is strictly my opinion – it looks like she’s pretending to reach for something over his shoulder. Still shots of this interaction are the photos People published, presumably because Luke and Antonia looked like they were cheek to cheek.

Okay, notice I said, “first rumor,” because, yeah, there’s a second rumor, too! But, it fits snuggly into that first rumor. Almost immediately – because that’s how fast the Lukola Sleuths get to work around here – rumors began to circulate that Antonia was following on Instagram the photographer that took the Italy pap pictures. In fact, several people I’ve spoken to swear that they witnessed during a TikTok Live a host prove that Antonia was following this photographer. That’s a bit suspicious, isn’t it? Yeah, it fucking is.

Let’s keep moving.

That same day, we had that video drop of Luke watching fireworks, at night, with sunglasses. Speaking of sunglasses, I guess Luke found those motherfuckers because he sure as shit didn’t have them while floating around in that dirty ass water. Any ways, at the end of the video, Rory appears behind Luke, looking in the direction of the camera and smiling like a condescending, sneaky little shit. Now, who was the cameraman? Well, a possible suspect would be Antonia since she was not seen in the video. Go figure.

Alright, so that day finally ended and on July 31, JVN posted to TikTok a cutesy video of themself at the market titled, “When you catch someone trying to sneak a pic but you were born for these moments.” They prance around the market and randomly look at the cameraman (Mark) with a smile and a pose. The caption reads, “I welcome sneaky pics but I can’t guarantee I won’t sneak some back or put on a show for you.”

WAIT A MINUTE!

Did JVN just inexplicably confirm Luke was getting papped by his own friends?

Yeah, I kind of think JVN did.

And, Nicola liked this one as well when JVN posted it to Instagram on August 8.

Didn’t I tell you JVN was a fascinating creature? And, to be honest, JVN only gets better as this Lukola ship continues on its voyage.

Oh, strangely enough, a few days after the Italy pap crap, Luke returned to London alone. The friend group became unsettlingly silent, and Nicola started to get really, really loud – Chaos Week was incoming! And, so were some more JVN crumbs (and nicely timed clap backs).

[cybersyndicate]

Okay real shit, I know this isn’t my usual content, I don’t care. I need y’all, ESPECIALLY queer, disabled, BIPOC, and/or anyone born a female to genuinely lock in NOW.

Below is a petition that calls for a recount and revote for the 2024 U.S. election. Trump has been suspected of cheating and rigging the election, there have been ballot boxes BURNED, there are people out there who’s votes have NOT been counted.

It doesn’t matter if you’re not American. It doesn’t matter if you can’t vote for any reason. It doesn’t matter if I have the same beliefs as you when it comes to some online discourse or whatever. This is real life, and people’s lives are at stake. The LEAST you can do is share this.

I don’t know how well this petition will work, and I don’t know if my words will fall on deaf ears, but as someone who’s black, queer, born a woman, and more than likely neurodivergent, I feel like I need to have at least some hope and drive left in my body. I REFUSE to go down without a fight and I need all of y’all to do the same.

To anyone who sees this. PLEASE. SIGN. AND SHARE.

UPDATE:: THE PETITION IS DOWN

Hope is not lost though!! Contact government officials directly. Putting this here to hopefully spread some awareness since this post is getting attention.

[lieutenantfloyd]

Top Gun: Maverick Fic Recs

Hey y'all! Here are 21 of my favorite TGM fanfics of all genres and ships, listed in no particular order.

Some of these fics are 18+ so read at your own risk. None of these works are mine and all credit goes to the amazing authors! <3

X READER

Safe Zone by @sunlightmurdock — (Series // Rooster and Hangman x reader)

A team of elite naval aviators holding down the fort at the North Island Air Base while they wait for reinforcements after a virus sweeps the continental U.S. - only, it’s been three months and no one has shown up.

Hold My Hand by @labyrinth-runner — (Series // Cyclone x Reader)

Jag! Reader is assigned to defend a pilot, finding the job to be more complicated than she thought.

Rooster’s Flight or a Manual for the Marooned by DontLetThemTakeYouAlive (Series // Rooster x Reader/OC)

"Rooster's Flight: A Manual for the Marooned" follows Madeline, a pastry chef escaping scandal in Amsterdam, and Bradley, a lost naval aviator stationed in Japan. Fate brings them to sunny San Diego, where their friendship blossoms amid career challenges and a clashing of characters. Madeline's culinary journey intertwines with Bradley's self-discovery, navigating love and loss.

Resilience, self-discovery, and the unpredictable paths of career and matters of the heart shape their narrative in this tale of second chances and unlikely connections.

Fine Piece by @dragon-kazansky (Series // Cyclone x Reader)

You have it bad for Vice Admiral Simpson. But to prove you’re fit for the job; you need to put that aside and focus on the flying.

Someone Special by @fanboygarcia (Oneshot // Cyclone x Reader)

What happens when the Dagger Squad catches on to the fact that known grump turned lovesick fool Admiral Simpson has someone special in his life?

Invisible String by @halfway-happyyy (Oneshot // Rooster x Reader)

the one where rooster’s about to leave on a mission he doesn’t know if he’ll be back from, and he wants you in every way imaginable. as always, soft feelings ensue! 

Do you wanna make somethin’ of it by @theharddeck (Oneshot // Rooster x Reader)

turns out, our favorite WSO has a side hustle, as quinn's favorite cowboy.

@bullet-prooflove's entire TGM masterlist

Everything she writes is outstanding, but the Beau x Ally fics (The First Time Series, The General Series, Deployment!Series, and Syria!Series) are something I think about literally everyday.

i don’t know, blame the air force? by @gretagerwigsmuse (Oneshot // Rooster x Reader)

in which lieutenant commander bradshaw feels his girlfriend’s wrath after she gets her year end bonus and uncle sam takes a pretty penny out of it

There Are Rules by @tongue-like-a-razor (Series // Maverick x Reader)

Your risky flying seriously pisses off your instructor at Top Gun and you're about to find out why.

Through the Hourglass by @bratshaws (Series // Rooster x OC)

Rooster x Plus Size OC!

Happy Birthday, Mr. President by @rhettabbotts (Oneshot // Bob x Reader)

after a hard week, the last thing bob wanted to do was attend his birthday party. so instead, he plays out one of his biggest fantasies with you.

Whoever's in Lemoore by @cherrycola27 (Oneshot // Bob x Reader)

A fic based on the Reba McEntire song "Whoever's in New England"

Angels Don't Always Have Wings by @bradshawssugarbaby (Series // Rooster x Reader)

a series of oneshots revolving around baseball player!Bradley Bradshaw x reader (nicknamed Angel)

Do I? by @bradshawssugarbaby (Oneshot // Cyclone x Reader)

Inspired by Do I? by Luke Bryan. (this fic was so good I had to go take a walk after reading it for the first time)

Road to Perdition by @sailor-aviator (Series // Hangman x Reader)

The Great Depression wasn't called a depression for nothing. Jobs were scarce, and the price of food and other necessities were rising higher and higher with each passing day. What little money you were able to make went straight to the bank and out of reach from your booze-swilling lech of a brother. It's on one such run that you come face to face with members of the infamous Dagger Gang; a group of, admittedly handsome, men who steal from the banks to hand it back out to the poor. You want nothing to do with them, but that blond-headed devil might just have something to say to the contrary. (1930s!Mobster!AU)

His Best Friend's Wedding by @ereardon (Series // Rooster x Reader)

Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw has been your best friend for a decade. He’s also your fiancé’s best man. So when he shows up at your hotel room the night before your wedding, it’s just because he’s your friend, right? 

OTHER SHIPS

Mistaken Identity by @ladylanera — (TGM x Mission: Impossible crossover)

What should be a joyous homecoming quickly unravels after it's discovered a nefarious, unknown group has put a hit out on Captain Mitchell, mistaking the Navy captain for being a covert IMF operative by the name of Ethan Hunt who has an uncanny likeness to the captain for some reason. Enter a twisty web of lies that threaten the very existence of the family as we know it.

**Fic contains spoilers for Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One**

Flower Power by ReformedTsundere — (Icemav)

Flowers, Pete reminds himself, slamming the last of the books closed, are the worst.

New Chat Created: North Island Daggers by Comin2U — (gen fic)

Harvard: why Whatsapp and not just a basic text message? Hangman: because one of us has an android and ruins the ability to message with just internet. Coyote: Screw you too hangman. ________________________________ In which 12 daggers, the best of the best of naval aviators, are all a bunch of kids and thrown in a group chat.

come fly with me (let's fly, let's fly away) by GatheringBlue — (TGM x 9-1-1 Crossover)

It's a common misconception that Buck trained to be a Navy SEAL. For as long as he could remember, flying had been his dream. Most little kids wanted to be a firefighter or an astronaut, but Buck had always wanted to be a pilot. He wanted to fly far, far away from home, where his parents’ comments that might as well have been slaps for how badly they stung couldn’t get to him. Flying was his way out. His escape. If he was thousands of feet up in the sky, way up with the clouds, then his parents couldn’t touch him. No one could. When Buck got pulled from the reserves just after the lawsuit, it seemed like perfect timing. There was nothing left for him in LA. Not anymore. So, it looked like Buck was heading back to Top Gun.

[mandy-malady]

Like to make everyone aware of this little Bill that is super important to reinstate checks and balances after that fiasco earlier this year.

Please call your senators to vote in favor of this bill.

Here's some petitions about it too:

[mariacallous]

Glad people are finally finding out that these Pro Palestine protestors are ratfuckers-by-design at best (and Republicans at worst) and that's why they support Trump:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/08/dnc-palestinian-gaza-protests/679524/

One month ago, an NBC News headline reported:

Protesters made a tiny footprint at the RNC in Milwaukee. Other than a modest daytime march on Monday afternoon, the first day of the Republican National Convention, there were virtually no protests over the event’s four days and nights.

Obviously, the story from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago is already proving different.

This is part of a pattern. Gather any large number of Democrats together, in almost any city or state, whether at rallies, fundraisers, or presidential appearances, and pro-Palestinian protesters will try to wreck the event. These actions have been building to threats of outright violence. Pro-Trump and Republican events, meanwhile, are almost always left in peace.

Of the two big parties, the Democrats are more emotionally sympathetic to Palestinian suffering. The Biden administration is working to negotiate the cease-fire that the pro-Palestinian camp claims to want. The administration has provided hundreds of millions of dollars of humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza. President Joe Biden’s terms for ending the fighting in Gaza envision a rapid movement to full Palestinian statehood.

By contrast, former President Donald Trump uses Palestinian as an insult. His administration moved the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights. In 2016, Trump campaigned on a complete shutdown of travel by Muslims into the United States; Trump now speaks of deporting campus anti-Israel protesters. He has pledged to block Gaza refugees from entering the United States.

Trump wants to tell the story that he and his party will enforce public order. He alleges that Democrats cannot or will not protect Americans against chaos spread by extremist elements. The pro-Palestinian movement works every day to create images that support Trump’s argument. As a visibly annoyed Vice President Kamala Harris asked protesters in Detroit earlier this month: Do they want to elect Donald Trump?

Not all pro-Palestinian demonstrators are thinking about the election. Many seem driven by moral outrage or ideological passion. But for those who are thinking strategically, the answer is obvious: Yes, they want to elect Trump. Of course they want to elect Trump. Electing Trump is their best—and maybe only—hope.

To understand why, cast your mind back a quarter century.

In the election of 2000, Vice President Al Gore faced Texas Governor George W. Bush. Gore probably would have won in a straight two-way contest. But that same year, the progressive advocate Ralph Nader entered the race as a third-party challenger—and he pulled just enough of the vote to tip the Electoral College and the presidency toward Bush.

Nader later professed regret for running as a third-party candidate. But at the time, Nader understood exactly what he was doing. Defeating Gore and electing Bush was the intended and declared purpose of Nader’s candidacy. Nader detailed his logic in many speeches, including this one to the summer-2000 convention of the NAACP:

If you ever wondered why the right wing and the corporate wing of the Democratic Party has so much more power over that party than the progressive wing, it’s because the right wing and the corporate wing have somewhere to go: It’s called the Republican Party. And so they’re catered to and they’re regaled—like the Democratic Leadership Council, they’re catered to and they’re regaled. But if you look at the progressive wing … they have nowhere to go. And you know when you’re told that you have nowhere to go, you get taken for granted. And when you get taken for granted, you get taken.

To paraphrase his argument even more bluntly: If progressives caused the Democrats to lose the presidency in the election of 2000, then Democrats would take progressives more seriously in all the elections that followed.

Nader’s logic was not altogether wrong. In many ways, the post-2000 Democratic Party has shifted well to the left of where the party was in the 1980s and ’90s. But catering to the party’s left has cost Democrats winnable races, and with them, key priorities: The Iraq War and 20 years of inaction on climate change head the list of progressive disappointments since the 2000 election, and the list extends from there. Whether or not the shift was worth the price, Nader was neither ignorant nor deceived. He identified his goal and willingly accepted the risks for himself and his movement.

So it is now with the pro-Palestinian demonstrators of 2024.

They start with a fundamental political problem: Their cause is not popular. Solid majorities of Americans accept Israel’s war in Gaza as valid and fiercely condemn the Hamas terrorist attacks as unacceptable. The exact margin varies from poll to poll depending on how the question is asked, but when presented with a binary choice between Israel and the Palestinians, Americans prefer Israel by a factor of at least two to one.

The brute fact of those numbers makes it very difficult for pro-Palestinian activists to win elections. In this cycle, despite all the emotion stirred by the Gaza war, two of Israel’s fiercest critics in Congress lost their primaries to pro-Israel challengers.

From the point of view of any practical politician: If a cause is so unpopular that it cannot help its friends, why listen to its advocates?

The only answer to that question, again from the practical point of view, is the message of the protesters in Chicago: Maybe we can’t help you if you do listen to us, but we can hurt you if you don’t!

Think of it another way. Since the bloody attack by Hamas on October 7 and the Israeli response, pro-Palestinian protesters have marched and agitated all over the United States. They have occupied college campuses. They have impeded access to Jewish schools, businesses, and places of worship. They have posted impassioned words and images on social media.

Yet all of their militant action has barely budged U.S. policy. Arms, intelligence, and economic assistance continue to flow from the United States to Israel. U.S. military forces cooperate with Israel against Iranian proxies in Lebanon and Yemen. Although the U.S. has imposed restraint on some Israeli operations, Israel has mostly been allowed to fight its own war in its own way.

These were President Biden’s decisions, not Vice President Harris’s. But she was the second-highest-ranking member of the administration. If Biden’s deputy inherits Biden’s office, the message is clear: His administration’s record of support for Israel carried no meaningful political price. All of those street demonstrations and campus occupations will have amounted to so much empty noise. All of those articles arguing that Gaza explained Biden’s troubles with young voters would be exposed as ideological wishcasting.

If Harris wins, the pro-Palestinian movement will have lost.

If Harris loses, however, pro-Palestinian protesters can claim that they were responsible for her defeat. That claim might not be true—in fact it probably would not be true—but try disproving it. The pro-Palestinian movement would have at least some basis to argue: You lost because you alienated us.

If Harris wins, she may want to do something about the pro-Palestinian cause—for humanitarian reasons, for reasons of diplomacy and geopolitics, for reasons of Democratic-constituency management in particular congressional districts. But she won’t have to do it. She’ll know that the protesters tried to beat her, and they failed.

If Harris loses, however, future Democratic candidates will tread more carefully on Israeli-Palestinian terrain. Even if they privately doubt that the party’s position on Gaza explains anything truly important, they will be worried by advisers and donors who will believe it or who will want to believe it.

But what about Trump? Why aren’t the pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Chicago more fearful of Trump’s possible return to the presidency?

Although the pro-Palestine cause attracts support from progressives, it is not exactly a progressive cause. Americans associate progressivism with secularism, feminism, and gay-rights advocacy, among other causes. The Palestinian national movement, especially now that Hamas has effectively replaced the Palestine Liberation Organization as leader of “the resistance,” has become markedly religious, patriarchal, and socially reactionary. But it is also a movement fiercely opposed to American global hegemony—and that is its “anti-imperialist” appeal to Western progressives.

If you oppose American global hegemony, Trump is your candidate (as a long list of anti-American dictators have already figured out). Trump fiercely opposes the alliances and trade agreements that magnify American power and make the U.S. the center of a huge network of democratic, market-oriented countries. Trump’s “America First” bluster is actually a pathway to American isolation and weakness that will further remove American power from the world.

If you wish America ill, of course you wish Trump well. The far left and far right of U.S. politics may disagree on much, but they agree on that.

The protesters in the streets of Chicago are not acting aimlessly or randomly. The people on the receiving end of their protests would benefit from equal clarity. The protesters want chaos and even violence in order to defeat Harris and elect Trump. They are not ill-informed or excessively idealistic or sadly misled. They are not overzealous allies. They are purposeful adversaries.

The Chicago-convention delegates should recognize that truth, and act accordingly.

[magapatriot64]

A brutally honest take on Ukraine from a U.S. Army Veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq that is also a Purple Heart recipient (edited):

I have never and will never support the war in Ukraine. I now understand the Military Industrial Complex and the trillions spent off of the lives of US, the people.

If you do support the war, this post is going to offend the shit out of you.

And I honestly don’t care what you think. Some of you may agree, and some of you probably truly need to hear this.

I have been shot at, blown up, returned fire, everything imaginable. War is serious shit. This is not Call of Duty, this is real fucking life. The term “War is hell”, is coined for a reason.

First: I will start with NATO and Europe.

Why the hell are we in NATO if they don’t barely lift a finger for shit? Why is America always the one that will carry the burden of these asshats. Even President Trump commented TODAY and was almost begging for an end to this. To NATO: If you want this war so badly, then grab a compass and head due East.

Second: You can say whatever you want about President Trump. You can like the man, or you can hate him. However, you cannot argue the point that none of this bullshit was going on when he was President. Just throwing that out there. This is an undeniable fact.

Third: Why is it that it took an Airman to leak classified documentation to totally disprove the efforts in Ukraine? Don’t you notice how this story has been completely wiped from the mockingbird media? They are concealing the truth as well. American taxpayers have been lied to since this began.

Fourth: Where is all of our American taxpayer money going? Let’s be honest about it. How do you “over-calculate” over $6 BILLION DOLLARS of our money for this effort? Where exactly is it going? Into Politician or Zelenskyy’s pockets? If any of us made an “accounting error” on our taxes, we would all be in prison now. This is fraud, waste and abuse putting it lightly.

Fifth: This brings me to another point. Are politicians making money off of this war effort? If so, sorry to say, but you belong in prison. Plain and simple. And that is bipartisan speaking. There are Americans working 2-4 jobs at times just to make ends meet. People are recovering from a lockdown that YOU created.

Sixth: To the Americans backing this war. Why don’t you book yourself a flight to Kyiv and partake in this fight? It’s easy as fuck to be okay with war, while you’re chilling with your Starbucks in your comfortable environment. You love to criticize our country but have never contributed a fucking thing to it.

Last: Why are we not discussing diplomacy? There have been ZERO attempts to sit down like grown fucking men and come to an agreement. None. It is all too clear that they want this war to continue.

I sure as hell don’t claim to know everything, but this bullshit has gone on long enough.

To the dickheads who will inevitably cherry-pick this tweet know this, your opinion does not matter to me. You can comment, but I won’t give you the benefit of replying. Thanks for playing.

I know this is a very long-winded post. But if you took the time to read, thank you for listening.

[gigabyte-flare]

He Comes Alive (Part 7)

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

Summary: You awake in a top secret facility where you learn of Leon's true nature

Word Count: 5.9k

Pairing: vampire/plagas!Leon Kennedy x fem!reader (afab)

Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. Actions depicted in this story are not condoned in real life. You are responsible for your own content consumption. If any of the following warnings trigger you, please read at your own risk. Minors do not interact, this story is 18+ only.

Warnings: Biting, blood, gore, murder, unprotected p in v, masterbation, oral (m and f receiving), stalking, pet names, kidnapping, breeding kink, blood play/kink, age gap, dubcon, pregnancy, monster f*cking, body horror, lactation kink, DEAD DOVE: DO NOT EAT [More warnings may be added in future entries]

A quick reminder that I no longer do tag lists

“Where’s Leon?”

“In this building.”

“Where am I?”

“At the BSAA North America headquarters in Washington D.C..”

“BSAA?”

“The Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance.”

“Did Leon do something wrong?”

The man called Clive lets out a chuckle, leaning back in his chair, “that’s a loaded question.”

You feel a lump form in the back of your throat. You swallow it back, remaining silent in hopes that Clive will continue.

“Nine years ago, the president’s daughter was kidnapped by a cult in Spain called Los Illuminados. D.S.O. Agent Leon S. Kennedy was sent to rescue her. Both of them had become infected with a bioweapon-- a parasite the cult called Las Plagas. Leon had successfully removed the parasite from the president’s daughter, however…”

Clive pauses and you can feel your heart start to race at the implication, but still you press, “however, what?”

Clive clears his throat, “by the time the U.S. government realized Leon was still infected, he was long gone, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. He’s been on the run for nine years.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The hikers? That man at the festival? Your father? They’re all his victims,” Clive states.

“You’re lying!” you shout, standing up from the chair and slamming your hands onto the table.

“The plaga feeds on blood in order to survive; it seems to have an affinity to human blood, too.”

“You do realize this sounds absolutely insane, you’re making it sound like Leon’s a vampire or something.”

Clive chuckles again, “that honestly wouldn’t be that far from the truth,” you watch his eyes glance to your swollen belly, “I take it that’s Leon’s baby you're pregnant with?”

“Yes,” you reply curtly before sitting back in the chair, crossing your arms, “it is.”

“Shit…”

“What?”

Clive takes a deep breath before continuing, “I hate to tell you this, but your baby isn’t entirely human.”

Your eyes widen, “excuse me?! Now you’re fucking with me, this is insane!”

“Don’t you find it odd that Leon hasn’t taken you to a single prenatal appointment? Odd that your pregnancy seems to be progressing awfully fast?”

You stand back up again, angrily shaking your finger at Clive, “you are full of shit!”

“Deny it all you want, it’s the truth. Unfortunately you’re too far along in your pregnancy to safely abort, we’ll have to wait until you give birth so we can euthanize it; we’ll make sure it’s done humanely.”

“No one is coming near my baby! You’re just trying to scare me!”

You watch Clive reach into his jacket, pulling out a photo and placing it on the table in front of you. What you see immediately makes you pause and stare. It’s a poorly lit room, a person is tied to the support beam, covered in blood and what you assume is bite marks on their neck.

“This was taken in Leon’s basement after we apprehended him. This is why he kept the basement locked.”

You can’t take your eyes off the photo, especially after you realize you recognize the clothes; it’s a woman that had gone missing after coming out of a work Christmas party in Plymouth; you had seen a photo of her at the party on the news. You feel chills go up your spine.

"Unfortunately she died from blood loss when we were transporting her to our clinic," Clive states.

You swallow hard before making eye contact with Clive, “what the hell is going on…?” 

“I think it will be easier to show you, come with me,” Clive replies, standing up from his chair and motioning for you to follow him. 

You hesitate for a moment before you decide to follow, going back out into the hallway. The two of you eventually make your way to a single elevator, watching Clive swipe a card and then call the elevator. It beeps before the doors slide open and the two of you step inside. 

“How long have you been watching us?” you ask, figuring out that based on what Clive had said to you about Leon not taking you for prenatal check-ups, that someone was watching you and Leon’s every move.

“Shortly after Halloween, a police officer in Oakvale had reached out to the FBI to ask about Leon; in turn the FBI reached out to us. We had to ensure that it was definitely him before making our move.”

You nod, shifting uncomfortably on your feet and unconsciously rubbing your belly. After a couple minutes, the elevator door opens and Clive steps out, you follow him closely. Several men in lab coats turn and greet Clive.

“Director O’Brien! For what do we owe the pleasure?” one of the scientists asks before looking at you, “is this…?”

“Yes she is,” Clive replies, “has he been fed yet?”

The scientist looks back at Clive, shaking his head, “not yet, we were just about to get ready to.”

“Excellent, bring us to the observation room.”

“Of course, director.”

The scientist leads the way bringing you down another hallway that’s barricaded with several large steel doors. At the end, he turns to a door on the left, swiping a keycard and inputting a passcode, causing the door to slide open. You can’t help but feel like you somehow woke up in a science fiction movie. You pinch yourself again to make sure you’re definitely not dreaming.

Once in the room, the scientist pulls up the blinds on a large window and you see Leon, still in just his sweatpants, sitting on a basic metal bed hunched over, staring at the floor. Your heart seemingly skips as you rush up to the window, putting your hands on the glass.

“Leon…” you say softly.

From what you can see, there is nothing out of the ordinary about Leon and you start to reckon that they have the wrong man. Leon wouldn’t hurt anyone. Looking around the room, you notice there is a purple hue. You look up at the room’s ceiling and see that between each fluorescent light is a purple one; the same lights that you saw when you and Leon had gotten ambushed at home.

“What are the purple lights?” you ask, turning to Clive as you remove your hands from the glass.

“High powered ultraviolet lights. The plaga can’t stand sunlight. That’s why he only hunts at night.”

Suddenly, a walkie talkie that is sticking out of Clive’s outer jacket pockets goes off, “We’re ready to commence feeding if you are, director.”

Clive grabs the walkie talkie out of his jacket and replies, “proceed.”

On the left side of the room, a door slides open and a blindfolded man is pushed in and the door closes. The man practically falls onto his face. The man sits up on his knees and you see that his hands are bound behind his back.

“He’s a death row inmate,” Clive says, answering a question you hadn’t even asked, “we have a partnership with the penitentiary and they supply us with inmates that are going to be executed.”

Your attention is drawn back into Leon’s room when the UV lights are switched off and the fluorescent lights dim. Your eyes are drawn to Leon when he suddenly lifts his head, his eyes locked on the man that’s in the midst of a panic attack in the middle of the room. Before your eyes, you watch dark, inky veins start to spread over Leon’s exposed skin. Leon suddenly stands up, walking towards the man like a predator stalking its prey. Movement coming from behind Leon makes your breath hitch; a long, jet black tail comes out  of Leon’s back; the closest thing you can compare it to is a scorpion’s tail.

That isn’t all, four more appendages come out of his back, these looking like claws. You want to close your eyes, you want to run, but you can’t; your eyes remain locked on Leon. In a split second, Leon pounces onto the man, the man’s cries for help going unanswered as you watch Leon’s mouth latch itself onto his neck. The four claws latch onto the man as his tail whips itself back and forth as Leon feasts upon him. You suddenly feel your baby shift in your belly.

Leon suddenly stops, unlatching himself from his meal and looking directly at you. 

“Can he see us?” you ask, your voice shaking.

“No, it’s a two way mirror,” Clive replies, rubbing his chin with his fingers.

Leon stands up walking right up to the window, his eyes locked onto you. To your horror, you see his eyes are red, seemingly glowing in the dim light. His blood stained mouth hangs agape and you can see that all four of his incisors are elongated and sharp. Leon puts his hands onto the glass, his gaze still locked onto you.

“Angel?” he says, his eyes widening, “is that you?”

His tail moves back and forth as he stares at you and that’s when your baby inside you starts moving erratically, causing you to wince in pain as you grab your belly. 

“I’m sorry you have to see me like this,” Leon continues, his hands running down the glass, leaving trails of blood behind, “this is not how I wanted to show you my gift.”

“Gift?” you whisper, taking a couple of steps back from the window.

“He’s referring to the plaga.” Clive replies.

“Our little girl has the gift, too,” Leon continues, his right hand pets the glass as you watch his gaze shift to your belly, made even more unsettling knowing that he can’t see you, “isn’t that right, sweetie?”

Your baby shifts again, feeling your baby’s foot go up your rib cage, causing you to yelp as you once again grab your swollen belly. 

There’s no way your baby is reacting to him right? Right?

You watch as Leon’s crimson eyes narrow, one of his fists balling up and punching the glass, causing it to crack. You scream, stumbling backwards and falling to the floor as Leon throws another punch at the glass, cracking it further. Clive rushes over, picking you up off the floor as he grabs his walkie talkie.

“Turn those damn UV lights back on! NOW!” he shouts into the walkie talkie as he pulls you out of the observation room.

You turn and look back as the UV lights are powered back on, Leon letting out the most inhuman scream you’ve ever heard in your life and in an instant, you watch his grotesque appendages retreat back into his body as he stumbles away from the glass, clutching his head with his hands.

As you and Clive retreat back to the elevator, Leon’s cries of your name fill the halls.

You have no idea how much time has passed since the incident with Leon. Clive had you relocated to a more comfortable room at the facility; it has furniture, a small refrigerator and a window to look outside. You’re sitting in a rocking chair next to the window, rubbing your pregnant belly unconsciously as you watch a gentle snowfall outside. Over and over, your brain plays out the last few months since you returned home from dropping out of college.

Every little thing you had noticed that was odd suddenly made sense: eating the rarest meat imaginable, that one time you thought he had sharp teeth when he bit into his burger, him suddenly going into the basement, him getting up in the middle of the night to ‘check traps,’ the day they found what was left of your father, that smile he had on his face was burned into the back of your mind. Your eyes unconsciously widen at another revelation; the red eyes you saw in your window that night, they were Leon’s.

“It was him… he was the B.O.W. the whole time…” you whisper to yourself, a single tear rolling down your cheek. 

The sound of the door opening startles you and you watch Clive walk in, giving you a gentle smile and wave as he steps into the room.

“I just spoke with your mother,” Clive says, taking a seat on your bed across from where you sit, “I let her know you were experiencing complications in your pregnancy and that you had to be taken to a specialist in D.C., so she at least knows where you are. I didn’t mention Leon to her.”

“Thank you,” you reply softly, letting out a sigh as you return your attention back out the window.

“How are you feeling?” he asks, the concern evident in his voice.

“Empty? Lost? I’m not sure what to feel… I feel like the last few months have been a cruel lie,” you reply honestly, wiping more tears that run down your face away with the back of your hand.

“I know and I’m sorry. I can’t even imagine how hard this has been for you.”

“Is it true that you can’t cure him?” you ask, looking back over at Clive.

Clive nods, “unfortunately. The parasite has completely taken over his body, if we try to remove it, he will die.”

“How… how is he?” you ask, not really sure you actually want the answer.

“He’s refusing to feed. We’ll have to execute him sooner than we intended,” Clive replies, leaning forward, resting his forearms onto his legs.

“Execute?!”

Clive nods, “yes, he’s too dangerous to keep alive. Our hope was to study the plaga inside of him before putting him out of his misery, but he’s making that difficult.”

“Is there any chance I could say goodbye to him before he’s executed?”

Clive stares at you puzzled for a moment before replying, “I believe I can have that arranged.”

“Good,” you say with a soft sigh of relief.

Despite everything, you still love him. You still love the baby growing inside of you. The thought that both of these things that you love so dearly are going to get taken from you absolutely kills you.

“I’ll make sure to come get you when that time comes,” Clive says, standing up from the bed and walking over to the door, “don’t hesitate to give us a holler if you need anything.”

You believe another few days passes, you awake one morning to the sound of wind howling; a blizzard seems to have come in. Just after you get yourself dressed and cleaned up, Clive once again comes into your room.

“It’s happening tonight,” Clive says, his look solemn.

You acknowledge him with a nod before following him out of your room and back to the elevator that brings you to the underground research facility. This time, instead of bringing you to the observation room, Clive brings you to the door leading to Leon’s containment chamber.

“Remember,” Clive begins, causing you to draw your attention to him, “we’ll be watching. We won’t let him hurt you.”

You nod as the door to his containment chamber slides open. You step inside the small chamber inside the door, it sprays some kind of mist on you which you suspect is some kind of sanitizer. After that, the final door opens and you see Leon, laying on his back staring at the ceiling. You step inside, listening as the door slides shut and locks, making your heart jump in nervousness. At first, Leon doesn’t acknowledge you, instead he continues to stare at the ceiling.

“Leon?” you finally speak up, your voice soft.

Leon lifts his head, staring at you for a moment before he sits up, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, practically running to you. He places his hands on your shoulders, looking at you in disbelief.

“Angel! You’re ok, I’ve been so worried!” he exclaims before planting a kiss onto your forehead.

Now you’re able to get a good look at him. His skin is extremely pale and you can see the faint, inky black veins all over his exposed skin. It reminds you of the time you had gone to the festival, before he had killed that man behind the fairground. Now you know why Leon had looked so terrible that day.

“I’ve been worried about you, too,” you say hesitantly, avoiding eye contact with him.

“What’s wrong Angel? It’s just me,” Leon coos, his hand gently grasping your chin, forcing you to look at him. 

His gaze shifts down to your belly, a smile slowly overtaking his lips as he stares down in awe; once again feeling your baby move inside you.

“My God… you’ve gotten so big! Our little girl is growing like a weed!” he says, the excitement evident in his voice as he places a hand on your belly, rubbing it slowly.

A hint of sadness hits you, knowing that as soon as your baby is born, it’s going to be humanely euthanized, but you don’t want to do anything that could cause Leon to lash out, so you keep that knowledge to yourself. 

“How do you know it’s a girl?” you ask, genuinely curious.

“She told me,” Leon explains, his gaze shifting back to you, “because of our gift, we are constantly connected.”

You feel your pulse pick up, feeling your baby continue to writhe inside you as Leon continues to rub your belly.

“I’m going to give you the gift, as well. We’ll be together in both body and mind. Isn’t that wonderful?”

Before you can even process what he just said to you, you notice there’s a sudden change in the lighting; your eyes dart around to see what changed when you notice the subtle purple hue is gone. The UV lights have been turned off. You want to panic, but you take deep breaths to try to keep yourself calm. You reckon it must be a mistake, they’ll turn the UV lights back on in any second. However, more agonizing seconds go by and you realize that they are not coming back on.

Leon slowly looks up, a smirk spreading across his lips when he realizes the UV lights are off, “well… that's convenient.”

He closes his eyes, rolling his neck and shoulders as you watch in horror as the dark veins on his skin get even darker. When he opens his eyes again, you are once again met with the crimson eyes that have haunted your subconscious since the day you saw Leon from the observation room. But now that he’s right in front of you, everything inside you is telling you to get away. You take a couple steps back away from him, his smirk immediately turning into a frown.

“No, no, no! It’s ok, I won’t hurt you, Angel,” he pleads, reaching out to you and grasping your upper arms to stop you from moving away, “I just want to take care of you.”

You watch as his tail snakes out from behind him, moving between the two of you. The end of it goes under your shirt and you watch as the blade-like end of his tail moves upwards, slicing through your shirt. Once your shirt is completely sliced open, his fingers gingerly push the remains of the shirt off you, exposing your swollen breasts to him. He brings one hand up, brushing one of your sensitive nipples under his thumb, causing a small white bead of liquid to come out before running down your breast, pooling onto your pregnant belly.

“Aw look, you’re making milk. Our little girl will need blood, not milk. No matter, I’ll make sure it won’t go to waste,” Leon says before leaning down, wrapping his mouth around the leaking nipple and sucking hard.

“L-Leon!” you cry out, trying to push him away.

You look over at the mirror, knowing that there are people watching. Does Leon know there are people watching? You want to cry out for help, to get someone to come get you out, but you can’t; you don’t want to risk invoking Leon’s fury. After what seems like an eternity, Leon unlatches himself from your breast, his crimson eyes staring down at you lustfully. A grin slowly forms on his face, showing off his long, sharp canine teeth.

He grasps you gently, coaxing you over to his bed where he spins you around, forcing you to bend over onto the bed with your knees on the floor. You rack your brain over what on Earth he’s doing when you feel a very sudden sharp pain in your shoulder, causing you to scream. You then hear a low moan; Leon’s mouth is latched onto your shoulder, his fangs sinking deep into your flesh as blood starts to pour out from the wound. 

He releases his mouth from you briefly, his breaths heavy as he grips onto your waist, his hands then reaching around to undo your belt and pants, “you taste just as divine as I remember, Angel,” he purrs into your ear.

You start to question mentally what he’s talking about until you recall back to the first night you stayed at Leon’s house when the two of you had sex for the first time. He wasn’t just eating you out that night. He was feeding off you. This newest revelation causes a sudden wave of nausea to come over you, causing you to gag. You quickly cover your mouth with one hand while the other grips the sheets on his bed, tears burning the corners of your eyes, threatening to pour out. 

He bites back down into your shoulder as his hands make quick work pulling down your pants and underwear, his fingers rubbing your slit slowly, gathering up the slick of your body’s arousal on his fingertips. While still feeding off you, he pulls down his sweatpants and you feel the head of his cock prod at your entrance. Your eyes widen when you watch two of the claw-like appendages stab down onto the bed in front of you while the other two wrap around your waist, trapping you against him; you feel one of his hands rest on your hip while the other grips your hair, pulling your head back. It takes everything in you not to scream.

With a quick thrust of his hips, he buries his cock inside you, unlatching his mouth from your shoulder with a loud moan as his grip on your hair tightens. You cry out at the feeling of him practically splitting you in half; he feels so much larger than you remember. There’s also another sensation inside you, one you don’t recognize at all. It’s almost hard for your mind to even describe; like a thousand fingers are stroking your inner walls and your cervix and with each quick thrust of Leon’s hips, it feels amazing. You can’t help but let out a loud moan as Leon pistons himself into you, hurtling you towards your release. 

“That’s it Angel, you’re doing so well for me. My perfect mate,” he purrs as he picks up the pace of his thrusts, the hand on your hip gripping so tight that it’ll surely leave bruises, his other hand running down your neck before resting onto your other shoulder, “now, be a good girl and take my gift.”

Against your better judgment, you turn your head to look at him. Leon is opening his mouth and you watch as four mandibles come out from the depths of his mouth and you can hear something squealing from inside his throat. No longer able to put on a brave face, you start to scream, thrashing your body in a desperate attempt to get away from him. The strange sensation you noted inside you suddenly starts to sting as you try to get yourself off him and you feel the claws wrapped around your waist start to cut into your skin as they grip you tighter. 

The door to Leon’s room suddenly opens and Clive along with two men with tactical gear and guns swarm in. Clive holds up a large UV flashlight, shining it directly at Leon’s head. Leon roars, the mandibles going back inside his mouth as he falls backwards, freeing you from his grasp. You quickly pull your underwear and pants back up before running over to Clive, using your arms to cover your exposed breasts. Clive positions you behind him as the two men move to either side of Leon, their guns drawn and pointed at him. One of the scientists then rushes inside the room, Clive turns his head to address him.

“What the fuck were you thinking?!” Clive shouts at the scientist right before the UV lights turn back on.

You wince when you hear the inhuman cry come from Leon as he scrambles to crouch himself into the corner of the room, gripping his head and trembling.

“We just wanted to see what he would do, that’s all!” the scientist says, pleading with Clive.

“She nearly got infected! Was that part of your plan?!” Clive shouts, walking up to the scientist, getting in his face.

“Well, no…”

“The lead researcher will be hearing about this, now get out of our way, I need to take her back to her room,” Clive continues, practically shoving the scientist out of the way as he gently grasps your upper arm to lead you out of Leon’s containment chamber.

As you walk out, you turn and look at Leon, who’s still crouched in the corner; his eyes are locked onto you, a smirk spread across his lips.

Leon stays seated in the corner of his containment chamber for the majority of the day, only moving to relieve himself in the toilet inside his containment chamber. Scientists have been in and out of his containment chamber as well, almost as if they’re preparing for something, though he didn’t have the slightest clue of what that could be until the lead researcher comes in with his young assistant, who looks vaguely familiar to Leon. 

The lead researcher takes Leon’s vitals and a blood sample, staying completely still through it all, watching the assistant take a seat on Leon’s bed, taking notes with a clipboard and pen.

“Dr. Jacobs, a question if I may?” the assistant suddenly asks.

“Go ahead, Chambers.”

Chambers. Rebecca Chambers. That’s why I recognize her…

Rebecca was a former member of S.T.A.R.S. Bravo Team prior to the Raccoon City outbreak incident on September 30, 1971; Leon’s first day as a police officer. A part of him wishes he had died that day.

“How did he manage to infect the fetus? I thought you said it was transmitted via the bloodstream, hence why he bit her.” she asks, setting the clipboard and pen down onto the bed next to her.

Dr. Jacobs swallows hard as he turns to address her, “we believe there are plaga larvae in his semen, which fused with the embryo upon fertilization even though we found no larvae in the semen samples we were able to get. Somehow… the plaga inside him can control when a larva is released… absolutely extraordinary, a real shame we’re executing him tonight.”

Leon subtly raises an eyebrow.

“What about the baby?” Rebecca presses.

“The baby will be humanely euthanized upon birth, the BSAA wants to put the plagas parasite to bed for good even though the child could provide valuable data. I tried to fight it but O’Brien wouldn’t budge.”

What?

Leon remains calm on the outside, but on the inside, he is panicking. He has to protect his offspring at all cost, but how? That answer comes on a silver platter when he watches Rebecca stand up from the bed, grabbing the clipboard but leaving the pen behind on his bed. He waits a couple minutes to see if they realize she had left the pen in here. When he’s confident they’re not coming back in, he stands up, walking over to the bed and collapsing onto it, clutching the pen in his hand as he lays down. He turns, his back facing the camera that’s on the opposite wall pointed towards the bed. 

During his stint in the military after surviving the Raccoon City outbreak, Leon picked up a few tricks, one being how to make lockpicks out of just about anything. He meticulously takes the mechanical pen apart, using the metal parts to make a crude lock pick, small enough to fit into the palm of his hand.

Later that evening, the door to his containment chamber opens and Dr. Jacobs comes in along with another man in tactical gear with an AK-47 slung over his shoulder and a pistol strapped to his leg. Dr. Jacobs is carrying a metal folding chair, which he hands to the guard for him to set down onto the floor after opening.

“Sit,” the guard orders Leon, pointing at the chair.

“Yeah, yeah…” Leon replies, standing up from his bed and sitting in the chair.

“Hands behind your back. Now,” the guard barks.

Leon does as he’s ordered, putting his hands behind his back around the back of the chair. The guard walks behind him, handcuffing his wrists together. Unbeknownst to the guard, Leon has his makeshift lock pick wedged between two of his fingers, completely concealing it. The guard walks back around, standing in front of Leon as Dr. Jacobs prepares a syringe of bright green liquid. Slipping the lock pick out, he begins to pick the lock on his cuffs.

“It pains me to do this Leon, it really does,” says Dr. Jacobs as he approaches, the guard moving to the side of Leon to let him through, “you were a brilliant agent. I admit this will not be pleasant, but you won’t suffer for long, I promise.”

Leon manages to free himself just as Dr. Jacobs kneels down to inject him with the deadly serum in the syringe. In the blink of an eye, Leon snatches the syringe from Dr. Jacobs, stabbing it into his neck and pushing the syringe. Dr. Jacobs’ expression contorts as he collapses onto the floor, his body going into a seizure in what Leon imagines is the painful thralls of death.

The guard curses as Leon stands up from his chair, pointing his AK-47 at him to shoot. However, Leon’s too quick, he side steps and grabs the AK-47, using the strap slung around the guard’s body to strangle the man, all the while, the gun is still firing, shooting out all the lights in the ceiling, including the UV lights. Inky black veins quickly envelope Leon’s body and his eyes shift into the deep crimson as Leon bites into the guard’s exposed neck, drinking as much blood as he can in a short period of time.

He then kneels down to Dr. Jacobs’ lifeless body, searching his pockets to find a fob. With this fob in hand, the door to the containment chamber opens, allowing Leon to make his escape. He can sense his offspring is several floors above where he is, so he quickly finds the elevator, the fob allowing him access to it. 

When the elevator doors open, several guards are waiting for him, guns drawn. In an instant, Leon’s tail and back appendages emerge and he practically leaps out of the elevator pinning one of the guards down and ripping out his throat while his tail whips around, decapitating and fatally stabbing the other guards. Just when Leon thinks he’s in the clear, he hears more footsteps coming towards him. He looks up, blood dripping from his mouth and chin and finds Director O’Brien with about 10 more guards behind him.

“I should have known you wouldn’t go quietly, Leon,” Director O’Brien says, crossing his arms.

“Where is my mate?” Leon growls, standing up to face them, using his back claws and tail to make himself look bigger.

“In a place you won’t get to, Leon. You’re not leaving this hallway alive,” Director O’Brien replies.

“We’ll see about that.”

Leon begins to step forward, his legs and arms mutating, turning black like his claws and tail. His fingers become more claw like and his legs contort to become more insect-like; his feet also transform into three toed claws. His jaw splits open to reveal rows of sharp elongated teeth, his four incisors still longer than the rest. His four mandibles also come out of his mouth and he lets out an inhuman roar as he charges towards Director O’Brien and the guards. This is the furthest Leon’s ever let himself transform and he’s honestly eager to see what he can do.

The guards shoot at him, but the bullets do little to no damage to Leon as he rips through them like paper with his razor sharp claws, blood and guts spilling everywhere. In the chaos, Director O’Brien slips away, running down the hall. Leon sees this and quickly gives chase, what’s left of the guards strewn all over the white marble floor in his wake. Director O’Brien comes around the corner with his angel, his mate in tow, both of them stopping in their tracks upon seeing Leon.

Leon opens his mouth wide, letting out a loud hiss as he glares at Director O’Brien. Unfortunately in his current state, he’s unable to speak. His crimson stare shifts over to his angel, who to his dismay, is visibly frightened.

Angel, don’t be afraid, I won’t hurt you. I could never hurt you…

He curses internally about not being able to give her his gift; if he had been successful, he would be able to communicate with her easily. His gaze then shifts to her swollen belly, sensing his offspring is strong and healthy inside her. He watches as she grips her belly, flinching.

“Back off, Leon!” Director O’Brien shouts, pulling out a small flashlight from inside his dark green coat and turning it on, pointing its purple beam directly into Leon’s face. 

Leon, turns his face away, growling as he feels the light sting his mutated parts. His tail whips forward, slicing off the hand holding the UV flashlight before he turns back to Director O’Brien, stalking towards him and using one of his clawed hands to pick him up and pin him against the wall. Letting out a guttural growl, his mouth and mandibles open wide only stopping when he feels his mate’s hands on his arm.

“Leon, don’t kill him, please!” she cries, “don’t kill him and I’ll… I’ll go with you…”

His mutated mouth closes, turning to her to see her bloodshot eyes staring up at him, pleading with him. He lets out a soft purring sound, turning back to Director O’Brien and abruptly dropping him. He falls to the floor with a gasp, Leon’s attention back onto his mate as he grabs her by her wrist. She looks up at him, the fear evident in her eyes as she starts to panic, pulling against his grasp as she hyperventilates. 

Angel, don’t do this… it’ll be ok, I promise…!

She then faints; Leon’s quick reflexes catch her before she collapses onto the floor. He picks her up into his arms bridal style, stalking into one of the rooms that has a window. Using his tail, he smashes the window open, the blizzard raging outside now blowing snow into the room. Leon leaps out of the window, carrying his mate into the stormy winter night.

Part 8

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

1968 [Chapter 11: Hephaestus, God Of Fire]

A/N: Only 1 chapter left!!! 🥰💜

Series Summary: Aemond is embroiled in a fierce battle to secure the Democratic Party nomination and defeat his archnemesis, Richard Nixon, in the presidential election. You are his wife of two years and wholeheartedly indoctrinated into the Targaryen political dynasty. But you have an archnemesis of your own: Aemond’s chronically delinquent brother Aegon.

Series Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, character deaths, New Jersey, age-gap relationships, drinking, smoking, drugs, pregnancy and childbirth, kids with weird Greek names, historical topics including war and discrimination, math.

Word Count: 5.4k

Let me know if you’d like to be tagged! 🥰

💜 All of my writing can be found HERE! 💜

Here is our final interlude. Do you have the patience?

President Lyndon Baines Johnson has halted all U.S. attacks on North Vietnam: no bombs from the air, no infantry on the ground, no artillery shells launched by destroyers cruising in the South China Sea. The election will determine what happens next. If Nixon wins, military operations will resume until the South Vietnamese are in a sufficiently advantageous position to defend themselves from the communists. If Aemond is the victor, troop withdrawals will begin shortly after he is inaugurated on January 20th.

Regardless, it will not be until almost a full year from now, in October of 1969, that it becomes illegal for employers to reserve positions for men; the common practice of refusing to hire women with preschool-aged children will not be outlawed until 1971. Unmarried people will not be guaranteed access to contraception until 1972. Abortion will not be legalized across all fifty states until 1973. Women will not have a right to their own bank accounts or credit cards until 1974. It will not be illegal to exclude women from juries until 1975. The first female Supreme Court justice, Sandra Day O’Connor, will be appointed in 1981. There will be no female president of the United States, not for at least half a century after our story ends.

Each night on CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite recaps the latest poll numbers. Nixon appears to have a slight advantage, due in large part to pulling ahead in Florida, Illinois, Ohio, and his home state of California. Aemond has comfortable leads in Texas, Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey. George Wallace will likely sweep the Deep South: Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas. From their hovels, the racists rejoice. From her grave, Lurleen Wallace rests uneasily, scratching at the lid of her coffin with the bones of her fingers, entombed in dark oblivion like all the rest of the world’s discarded wives.

~~~~~~~~~~

You go for the door, but Aemond is faster; he catches you just as your hand is twisting the handle and the hinges creak. He throws you against the wall so hard the paintings rattle: replicas of Monets and Warhols, Almond Blossoms, The Birth of Venus. You fight, clawing at him, ripping off the eyepatch that Alys must have at last convinced him was no defeat to wear. The hollow, gore-colored abyss of his left eye socket beckons you to fall in and be burned: Hestia’s eternal hearth, the volcanic forge of Hephaestus. He’s fire all the way down, hunger and fury, bones charred black and brittle. You think of the uninhabitable furnace of Jupiter’s moon Io, lethal radiation, poisoned air, lava bubbling up like blood through a bullet wound.

“You can’t hit me,” you gasp. “You need me for photos—”

His knuckles are in your belly, crosshairs made of scar tissue. The air collapses out of your lungs; your vision dims like twilight, like an eclipse. You’re on the floor and trying to crawl away from him. Aemond’s fingers hook into the fabric of your robe; it matches the silk nightgown you wear beneath, a pale anemic pink, something soft and young and desireless, something eternally at others’ mercy, something to be guarded or gutted. He’s dragging you towards him.

He’s going to hit me again, he might even kill me.

“Stop, stop,” you plead, still struggling to breathe. “What if I’m pregnant?!”

You almost certainly can’t be, but Aemond doesn’t know that. Yet his lone eye glints like metal, like coins, no weak mortal compassion. “I would have no way of being sure it was mine.” And then he tries to cover your mouth as you scream for help. You bite at his fingers; your bare feet kick the wall. Your hair, long and loose and wild, flows around you like a bride’s veil.

Too late, Aemond realizes that the door is still open a crack from when you grabbed the handle. There are footsteps and a voice that crescendos as it approaches: “What on earth is going on in here…?” Fosco appears in the threshold, yellow tweed jacket, tight olive green trousers. He stares thunderstruck down at where you and Aemond are entangled on the floor.

You beg: “Fosco, help me.”

“No, no, no,” Fosco says, jolting from his paralysis and holding a hand out towards Aemond. “No, you cannot do this, whatever has happened, you cannot touch her like—”

“She’s not your wife,” Aemond says. She’s not your property. Fosco hesitates; his large dark eyes shifting between the two of you from behind his glasses.

“Aemond, brother, listen to—”

“Get out.” Aemond’s voice is low, searing, malignant.

“Fosco, please don’t leave me,” you whimper. You try to pry Aemond’s fingers off your robe; they dig in deeper, bruising the flesh underneath. “Don’t leave me, don’t let him hurt me.”

Abruptly, Fosco turns and sprints out of the room.

“No!” you shout after him before Aemond grabs your face, his hand like a claw, fingernails leaving half-moon indents in your cheeks, crushing pressure on your jaw.

“You’re trying to sabotage this campaign.”

“I didn’t see the reporters, I swear to God.”

He knocks the back of your skull against the wall so hard that you see momentary flashes like stars, that all the words vanish from your throat, that words cease to exist at all. “You’re a traitor. Do you know the penalty for treason? The U.S. Army would have you executed by firing squad. Zeus would chain you to a rock so your liver could be carved out.”

“You betrayed me first,” you hiss through clenched teeth, your head pounding hot and maroon.

“I have been working for this since before you were born. You can’t take it away from me. I won’t let you.”

“I did everything right and you still couldn’t love me.” You swing at Aemond and he catches your wounded hand, squeezes it, digs his thumb into the spot where the doctors stitched you closed. The pain is excruciating, incapacitating. You wail as scarlet flowers bloom through the white of your bandaged palm.

Now the door flies open again and Aegon collides with Aemond, sends him sprawling, crouches over you. He’s screaming something at Aemond, gripping your shoulder to keep you under him, his too-long hair hanging in his face, black turtleneck sweater, one of Daeron’s frayed army jackets thrown over it, ripped jeans, bare feet. Aemond grabs his brother by the lapel of his army jacket and draws back his fist. His golden wedding ring flashes in the grey November sunlight that streams in through the windows. Aegon doesn’t flinch. He’s taken knuckles to the face before; you remember cleaning blood off his skin under a streetlight in Biloxi, you remember not wanting to wash him away.

“Don’t you see what it will look like?!” Fosco is saying, trying to coax Aemond to relent. “If he is photographed with a busted face after that story comes out? If she has bruises or a black eye? By harming them you are confirming what your enemies have printed, and the voters will believe it is the truth.”

“They already know it’s true!” Aemond snatches the Wall Street Journal off the table and hurls it at Fosco. Then he paces back and forth through the room, glaring at where you are still crumpled on the floor, sobbing, cradling your bleeding hand to your chest. “It’s right there, three goddamn photographs, and that’s all it will take to bring down a lifetime of work!”

Fosco studies the pictures again, shaking his head, one hand covering his mouth. At last he offers weakly: “It could be worse, Aemond.”

“How could it be worse?!”

Aegon scrambles to Fosco to rip the newspaper out of his hands, then returns to you. He hasn’t seen the front-page story yet. He skims it frantically. “This? This is what you’re losing your mind over? It’s dark, it’s blurry, they can’t even see what’s going on!”

“I have one fucking eye and I can see it!”

“So come up with another explanation, this doesn’t prove anything.”

“If she costs me the election—”

“If you lose, it won’t be because of her!” Aegon roars back. “It will be because the Democrats have held the White House for eight years and the world has gone to hell on our watch, it will be because of Kennedy, and Johnson, and Vietnam and the riots and the hippies and the drugs and the assassinations, it will be because Nixon is promising law and order in a time when nobody is safe, it will be because you just weren’t good enough. But she has given more to your cause than anyone. You hit her and you’ll lose your other eye.”

“They were in conversation,” Fosco says, meaning the photos. The four of you know that’s not true; it is a lie for the rest of the world, it is hope for Aemond’s campaign. “On the beach. They were whispering, comforting each other. Because of Mimi. That is all.”

Aemond scoffs, his remaining eye fierce and wrathful as it lands on you again. Aegon grips your shoulder, still crouching over you, still shielding you. “You bitch. I should have left you at that party in Manhattan to be the dope-smoking whore you were when I found you.”

“I shouldn’t have helped save your life in Palm Beach.”

And Aemond blinks at you, not hurt but bewildered, like he doesn’t understand your words, like what you said is impossible. He doesn’t believe you saved him. He believes it was God’s will.

Otto storms into the hotel room and takes in the scene: you and Aegon on the floor, Aemond pacing furiously, Fosco attempting to mediate. “Nobody says anything,” Otto commands, deep booming voice, black suit like he’s going to a funeral. “The Wall Street Journal hates Aemond. Everyone knows that, they’re probably the only national publication that would run the story. Our newspapers are already pushing the counternarrative, that this was a shameful, deceitful, desperate attempt to discredit Aemond right before the election. Our supporters will insist upon an innocent explanation. Nixon’s will use the photos as evidence of our degeneracy, our amorality, us immigrants with our strange faith and our progressive politics. Everyone else in the country will be warring over this headline. We will say nothing. We will conduct business as usual. The best thing we can do now is go out there and keep our schedule as planned.” He looks meaningfully at Aemond. “And your wife must be at your side. Smiling, unscathed, devoted.”

“I lost my composure,” Aemond says to you, more collected now, businesslike. He is smoothing any wrinkles out of his suit jacket. “I was wrong to put my hands on you. I apologize for that. It was beneath me.”

You reply: “Very little is beneath you, I’ve learned.”

“You have been.” A trace of a grin, crooked and cruel. “Plenty of times. And you will be again.”

Aegon is watching is brother, seething but terrified, sheltering you with power that is only illusory, never real. It is a mirage that Aemond or Otto could punch through at any moment. It is glass that would shatter into crystalline dust.

“If I win, you will beg on your knees for forgiveness,” Aemond tells you. “You will beg in private, you will be perfection in public, and I will magnanimously overlook this indiscretion in which you were taken advantage of by my notoriously dissolute brother. There was no affair. There was a fleeting moment of weakness on your part and depravity on Aegon’s. We will put it in the past. I will be the president of the United States and you will be my first lady. You will spend every second of your existence in service of my career, my country, and my legacy. You will give me children. You will obey me entirely. And you and Aegon will never be in a room alone together for the rest of your lives.”

“You can’t keep me away from her,” Aegon says.

“I just did. I make the rules here, I am the heir to this empire. If you wanted that responsibility, you should have seized it. You squandered it, you cursed it. It’s mine now.”

A whisper: “Aemond, it’ll kill me.”

“Then have the dignity to die quietly. It will be the most useful thing you’ve ever done.”

“Aegon must be seen in public too,” Fosco says, trying to sound like he isn’t defending him. “If you appear to be punishing or excluding him, it will be used as evidence of his guilt.”

Aemond nods, then turns to his brother. “As soon as the election is called, whichever way it goes, I want you gone. I don’t care where you go. I don’t care what happens to you once you’re there. You will disappear. We will say it was your choice, and if you comply you can keep your children and receive a modest amount of severance pay to get you started. And as long as you abide by my terms, my wife will not be harmed.”

Aegon doesn’t reply. His large Atlantic-blue eyes glisten, his lips tremble, his hand is still on your shoulder. You think through the throbbing pain of your bleeding palm: Is this the last time he’ll ever touch me?

Otto grabs Aegon, wrenches him away from you, drags him yowling and clawing at the carpet through the doorway.

~~~~~~~~~~

Your hand is freshly bandaged, pristine white gauze that people in the crowd jostle to touch like the relic of a saint, to pray over, to kiss. Men tell you how brave you are to bear the pain without weeping. Women give you komboskini, stained not with their husband’s blood but with only the clean, colorless ether of hope, faith, reverence, love.

Fosco and Helaena have been dispatched to accompany the children on a tour of the Franklin Institute, one of the oldest centers of science education in the nation. Aemond is giving a speech in front of the Liberty Bell at Independence Hall. You and the others are arranged around him like a starving crescent moon. You are standing immediately on Aemond’s left side, Aegon placed at his right. He looks drunk, he looks drugged; you aren’t sure if anyone else can tell, but you can. His cheeks are flushed. His eyes are pools of murky, desolate indigo like the night sky between stars. A few attendees give the two of you curious glances, but no mention is made of the accusations in the Wall Street Journal. You get the sense that if someone took it upon themselves to ask a question on the subject, they would be jeered, reviled, banished like President Johnson, who is currently besieged in the White House by the ghosts of Vietnam.

When you look to Aemond, you see his scar, his prosthetic eye, fierce and stoic determination in the lines of his face. He is quoting the inscription on the bell: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof…” The bronze metal has a crack in it like one of Zeus’s lightning bolts. The smile on your face is frozen, demure, humble. Aegon’s eyes accidentally catch on yours—a childlike vulnerability, a deep raw woundedness—and then swiftly dart away.

“America is the Land of Opportunity, but some have forgotten that,” Aemond says into the microphone, and vengeance creeps into his voice like a spider up a wall. “Unfortunately, for as long as new communities have arrived at our shores, vile and prejudiced lies have been used to demonize them. Greek immigrants have been crossing the Atlantic for over a century. In 1909, rioters violently expelled them from Omaha, Nebraska. In 1922, an anti-Greek initiative was launched by the Ku Klux Klan. In 1924, Congress drastically restricted my people’s entry in favor of migrants from Northwestern European nations like Britain and Germany. Greeks have been condemned as unintelligent, immoral, and unworthy of the glorious opportunities of this country. We have been barred from jobs and universities, we have been used as cannon fodder in the World Wars. Discrimination against any group is antithetical to the American Dream. I have given an eye for this nation, my wife has bled for it, my brother has—even in the midst of personal tragedy—uprooted his life and the lives of his children to fight alongside me for a better America, and I will not stand by silently as the Targaryen name is tarnished by bigoted falsehoods…”

Now you can no longer hear him over the thunder of the applause, and you remember all the other faces in all those other cities, their eyes illuminated as if by fire, as if by the sun. You imagine devotees of the Greek gods bowing low in temples of white marble and flickering torches, bringing offerings of gold and livestock, grain and blood, murmuring prayers, bargaining for miracles. Did the gods hear them? Do the gods love anyone but themselves?

Alicent and Criston are watching you and Aegon with the same eyes: large, dark, shimmering, a curious combination of horror and profound sympathy. You can feel yourself becoming a ghost, a legend, a myth. One day people will read about you in textbooks and academic journals, in plaques erected at Aemond’s alma mater, Columbia University, and your own, Manhattanville College; and they will know only the fabled version of you. Who you really were will fade into nothingness like Echo, like Icarus into the waves, like Eurydice when her lover Orpheus dared to glimpse back at her.

That night in your penthouse suite at the Ritz-Carlton, you get out of the bathtub—dewy with steam, donning your pink robe—and then go to your side of the king-sized bed and slide open the top drawer of the nightstand. The card Aegon gave you at Mount Sinai isn’t there. Your heartbeat quickens; your stomach lurches.

“What…?”

You get down on your knees to reach into the back of the drawer, to see if the card has snagged somewhere. You hear footsteps and whirl to see Aemond standing in the doorway between the bedroom and the living room. He is holding the card. The cartoon cow beams jubilantly at you. You recall what Aegon wrote inside after crossing out the manufacturer’s message: I thought this was blank…congrats on the new calf! As your eyes widen, Aemond rips the card down the middle.

“Don’t!” you scream, rushing for him. “Please don’t, it’s all I have from—!”

Aemond shoves you back and then, with a grin more like a wolf baring its teeth, tears through the remnants again and again until the card is nothing but shreds. He opens the sliding glass door that leads out onto the balcony and throws them into the cold night wind, where they scatter in a flurry like snowflakes, like bones turned to splinters by cluster bombs in the swamps of Vietnam.

The paper fragments spiral down thirty stories towards the zooming headlights on South Broad Street, and you think about following them. Then Aemond pulls you into his arms as frigid air blows through you and whispers: “You don’t need Aegon anymore. You just need me.”

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s Monday, November 4th, and you are walking alongside Ludwika on Broadway in Astoria, Queens, the part of New York City known as Greektown. She chats about the modelling jobs she did here before meeting Otto, her Louis Vuitton stilettos clicking on the sidewalk, her Camel cigarettes smudged with red Yardley lipstick. It is an act of kindness; she is trying to distract you. A few yards away, Fosco is telling Aegon about how he just won $500 by betting on the NASCAR Peach State 200, held at Jefco Speedway in Georgia. Aegon nods along, preoccupied, miserable. He has dark shadows around his eyes and is smoking one of his Lucky Strikes. He is wearing a green knit cap, windblown curls of his blonde hair escaping from underneath. You’re not supposed to stare at Aegon, but sometimes you can’t help it. You miss him. You’re worried about him.

The Targaryens have suites reserved at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, where the family will stay through Election Day to witness the results as they are tallied on the evening news. The children are there now, enjoying pizza from Little Italy with Helaena and the nannies. But you and the other adults are being photographed by flocks of journalists as you head for lunch at one of the oldest Greek diners in the United States, paying homage to Aemond’s ancestry. The candidate himself is locked in a fraught conversation with Otto and Criston: polls gaining here, polls slipping there, Nixon inching further ahead in Florida, the state you were supposed to help Aemond win.

“What should I order?” Ludwika asks you. “Not spinach pie, oh, horrible, worse than Hitler. Something else. Why can’t we go to a Polish restaurant for once? I will take you sometime. You will see. You will try a pierogi and never look back. We invented bagels, you know.”

“Beagles?” Fosco says. “What an accomplishment! They are so cute!”

“Bagels, stupido.”

“Do not bully me. I am suffering too. I should be back at the hotel eating a prosciutto pizza.”

As you pass an electronics shop with stacks of televisions in the windows, all turned to NBC news, the journalists begin to gasp and chatter excitedly amongst themselves. The flashbulbs strobe madly, shutters clicking and reporters shouting for Aemond to give them a comment. The youngest Targaryen brother has appeared on the screens, bruised and gaunt and missing teeth. He looks twenty years older than he is. His once-golden hair is turning white.

Otto sputters: “What…what the hell is that?!”

“Oh my God, Daeron!” Alicent howls, and then bursts into the shop so she can hear what her lost son is saying. The rest of you hurry after her, locking the front door behind you so the journalists can’t follow. Through the windows, they take photographs until Fosco and Ludwika lower the blinds.

Inside the maze of electronics, three adolescent employees gawk at the presidential candidate and his retinue. “Out,” Otto instructs them, and then, when they are too stunned to immediately vacate the premises: “I said, get out!” The teenagers scurry into the backroom and slam the door.

“Daeron,” Alicent moans in front of a Zenith color television. Tears flow torrentially from her huge, horrified eyes. Criston holds her, arms circling, his cheek pressed to hers, and you are reminded of how Aegon touched you in your hotel room in Houston, in his basement at Asteria, on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean.

Daeron is saying: “The United States has committed war crimes in Vietnam. I am ashamed of the actions my country has taken here. We have burned children with napalm, executed innocent civilians, and interfered in matters that we have no legitimate jurisdiction over…”

“He is reading from a script,” Fosco says. “You can see his eyes following the words.”

“Shh,” Otto snaps.

Daeron continues: “The only honorable course of action now is to immediately withdrawal all American soldiers from Vietnam…”

“I think this will help us, actually,” Otto says. “People will know he’s being forced to make propaganda for the communists, and they will have sympathy for him and the family. They’ll want to rescue him and all the other servicemen too. He’s obviously…under duress.”

Aegon drops to his knees and puts his palm against the screen over Daeron’s face, just like the shadows of your fingers once fell over Ari as he fought for his life in an incubator in Mount Sinai Hospital. “Do you see what they’re doing to him?” He turns to Aemond with tears in his eyes. “What you did to him? You left him there, you abandoned him, and now he’s being tortured.”

Alicent looks to Aemond, puzzled, petrified. “You tried to get him out, didn’t you?” Aemond doesn’t answer. Otto averts his gaze, counting the tiles on the floor.

“Dear lord,” Ludwika mutters, lighting a fresh Camel cigarette and puffing on it anxiously.

“Was it worth it?” Aegon demands. “Selling your soul?”

Aemond is steely, resolved. “It’s almost over.”

“You were all right.” Aegon stands, wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his green-striped sweater. “I don’t have what it takes to win the presidency. I couldn’t do something like this. Me, the perennial fuckup. Me, the godless degenerate.”

“Aegon,” Alicent whispers. “Please…please don’t…”

He turns to his mother, insurmountably sad. “Mom, I tried to stop him.” Alicent sobs and covers her face with both hands as Criston embraces her. She can’t even look at Aemond. She can’t believe what he’s become. Her long coppery hair flows like blood.

You reach for Aegon, your fingertips brushing his ruddy cheek, and immediately he folds into you, burying his face in the curve of your neck, breathing in your warmth as you inhale his smoke and rum and pain and terror. “Daeron will be home soon,” you say, not knowing if it’s true. Your bandaged hand aches; your throat burns.

“I should have gone instead. It should have been me.”

“No, Aegon. Your children need you, I need you. I wouldn’t have made it without you.”

Then Aemond yanks you away, his grip on your wrist like an anchor, like chains.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Dad, play us something,” Orion says; and it is the first time you can remember him calling Aegon that. Aegon smiles. He’s sitting on one of the couches in the penthouse suite you share with Aemond, the Gibson guitar he bought back in July lying across his lap as he strums it absentmindedly. The television is on and turned to CBS News. It’s just before midnight on Tuesday, November 5th, Election Day. The children are thrilled. It’s the one night they’re allowed to stay up as late as they’re physically able to. This allowance is not purely altruistic; Aemond wants them awake and ready for photographs as soon as the winner is announced.

“What should I play?”

“Frank Sinatra,” Fosco says. He is beside Aegon on the couch, smoking a cigar and flipping through the Sports section of the New York Times, which he’s not really reading.

“Marvin Gaye,” Ludwika suggests. They are both on your side of the room. Aemond, Otto, Sargent Shriver, and a number of campaign staffers are huddled around the television, transfixed by the ever-updating vote totals. Alicent and Criston are between your factions, murmuring back and forth to each other, flutes of golden champagne in their hands. Helaena is on the floor entertaining Violeta, Daphne, and Neaera with Crayolas and coloring books full of scenes from gardens. You recall how eerily calm Helaena had been the night Aemond was shot in Palm Beach, like she somehow already knew he’d survive. Now she is nervous, looking fretfully around the room, wringing her hands, filling outlines of butterflies with ten different shades of blue.

“The Beatles,” Orion tells Aegon, casting Fosco and Ludwika a judgmental teenage glance.

“Any particular song?”

“You can pick.”

Aegon sips at his rum, ice cubes clinking in the glass. He looks over to the coffee table, where you are embroiled in a game of Battleship with Cosmo. He’s getting better; he’s genuinely sunk your destroyer and submarine so far. Then Aegon’s eyes drop to his guitar strings and he plucks the opening notes of In My Life. His voice is soft and low, almost secretive.

“There are places I’ll remember

All my life, though some have changed

Some forever, not for better

Some have gone and some remain…”

Cosmo turns to watch his father. Orion, Spiro, Thaddeus, and Evangelos are gathered around Aegon’s feet, gazing up at him with admiration, with love.

“All these places had their moments

With lovers and friends, I still can recall

Some are dead and some are living

In my life, I’ve loved them all...”

Cheers erupt over by the television; Aemond has just won Michigan. But then tense, indistinct deliberations follow. Florida is still too close to call, a bad omen. You wonder where Alys is as she watches the results come in. There must be some part of her—however small, however smothered—that fears Aemond will win. If he captures the presidency, she could be separated from the man she loves for the better part of a decade. You drink your Pink Squirrel, wishing it was stronger. You think of sea sponge divers down in the depths and imagine what that first gulp of air tastes like when they resurface, when they shed their rubber suits and brass helmets and step back into sunlight, warmth, freedom like Persephone returning from the Underworld each spring.

“But of all these friends and lovers

There is no one compares with you

And these memories lose their meaning

When I think of love as something new…”

You wear a sapphire-colored gown that Aemond chose for you, strings of silver around your wrist and throat, diamond teardrops hanging from your ears. Your hair is up, your fingernails painted a tasteful opalescent shade, the aching of your bandaged hand dulled by booze and Vicodin.

“Though I know I’ll never lose affection

For people and things that went before

I know I’ll often stop and think about them

In my life, I love you more.”

More triumphant shouts and applause across the room by the television: Aemond has won Washington state. From his own suite at the St. Regis Hotel a few blocks south on 5th Avenue, Nixon’s people must be celebrating that he just secured Ohio’s 26 electoral votes. He needs 270 to be the next president of the United States.

Florida, you think. If Nixon can take Florida, I think he’ll win the whole thing.

As Aemond and Otto are distracted, as Fosco and Ludwika watch with pitying, knowing eyes, Aegon sets his guitar aside and walks by you with his rum in hand, taps your shoulder, disappears onto the balcony. You wait a few minutes—Cosmo wins Battleship and goes to color on the floor with Helaena—and then follow Aegon.

Outside the night sky is moonless, starless, thick with clouds. Rain is beginning to fall, soft hushed pattering. Far below taxis and limousines are still rushing and blowing their horns on West 59th Street. You can see the vast forested shadow of Central Park and streetlights like constellations. In apartments and office buildings, windows are illuminated as Americans sit numbing their fears with beer, wine, shots of liquor, smoldering hand-rolled joints.

Aegon is cross-legged at the ledge, one hand on the iron bars of the railing, staring out at the nightscape of Manhattan. His hair lashes in the cold November wind. His nose is pink, his eyes wet and faraway. He passes his Lucky Strike cigarette to you as you join him and says: “I don’t think Aemond can win without Florida.”

“No,” you agree, taking a drag.

Aegon snatches a rattling orange bottle from the pocket of his olive green army jacket, pops it open, and swallows three pills with a swig of straight rum, dark amber poison.

“Don’t do that,” you say, you plead.

“I need it, babe.”

“I want you to still be alive in ten years.”

Aegon smiles and reaches over to pat your cheek twice. “I think that ship might have sailed, little Io.” Can decades of self-destruction be undone, uninflicted, nullified like Heracles becoming immortal? Can the Underworld be escaped? “Come with me. No matter what happens tonight.”

“Aegon, I can’t.”

“I’m in love with you.”

“If I leave, he’ll hurt you. He’ll hurt me worse.”

“It’s not fair,” Aegon says, his voice breaking.

“Nothing is.”

There is an uproar inside the hotel room, screams that could be horror or triumph, realized dreams, breaking bones, bullets through flesh. You and Aegon are on your feet, hauling the balcony door open, stepping through the threshold into the rest of your lives.

Glasses are being toasted until champagne rains down onto the carpet. The telephone is ringing so Nixon can concede. On CBS News, Walter Cronkite is reporting that Aemond has won Florida and thereby accumulated 270 electoral votes. The blue text on the screen reads: Senator Targaryen will be the 37th president of the United States.

[mrs-stans]

Sebastian Stan Shows His Range in New Films 'The Apprentice' and 'A Different Man'

The 'Pam & Tommy' star appears unrecognizable in two projects that prove he's a master of transformation

JASMIN ROSEMBERG

"I have these very vivid memories,” says 42-year-old actor Sebastian Stan of growing up in Romania during the 1989 revolution.

“One of them being this Dacia car, driving by with screaming people holding the flag. The flag had a hole in the middle, which they had cut out — [erasing] the communist symbol at the time. And then I remember being on my couch with my mom and my grandmother and neighbors, watching Ceausescu be shot.”

What propelled them was the “obsession” Eastern Europeans had with the American Dream. “All I ever heard about was America: the land of the free, the land of opportunity,” says Stan, who at 8, moved with his mother — a pianist, who named him after composer Johann Sebastian Bach — to Vienna before heading to the U.S.

“I remember coming to this country when I was 12 with my mom and seeing the big Twin Towers of New York City and feeling overwhelmed,” Stan says. “And my mom looking at me and saying: “Now you have a chance to become someone.”

Stan takes a seat in an Amiri look with a ring by The Crown Collective.

The memories rushed back to him in 2019, when he was first reading the script for The Apprentice — the biographical film about Donald Trump directed by Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi (Holy Spider, The Last of Us) and penned by Gabriel Sherman (who wrote the Roger Ailes biography The Loudest Voice in the Room).

“I was intrigued there was a movie being made about [Trump’s] earlier years,” says Stan of The Apprentice, which details Trump’s rise as a real estate businessman in New York during the ’70s and ’80s after being taken under the wing of ruthless attorney Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) — who dealt in blackmail and had prosecuted the Rosenbergs in the espionage trial that led to their 1953 execution. “I was excited about [Abbasi] as an Iranian-European filmmaker approaching the story.” But after receiving the script, he heard nothing … until 2022.

“Of course, you have hesitation,” says Stan, who takes on the role of the former president and 2024 Republican nominee. “You’re wondering, ‘Why tell the story? What is there to add?’ Or, ‘What can I contribute here? I don’t look like him.’ There were plenty of reservations and my own personal judgements.”

But Stan tried an exercise: “I went back to the script, crossing out the character names and just trying to read it [without] bringing any baggage with me. And I found it to be much more relatable than I had anticipated, in terms of what I felt it was saying about the American Dream. [It was] this point of view of, ‘You’ve got to get there, you’ve got to be perfect, you’ve got to win, you’ve got to get more.’”

Now you have a chance to become someone.

Stan in Christian Dior Irvin Rivera for LA Magazine

“You have to find parts of yourself through which you can understand the people you’re playing,” he says. “For me, [it was] that moment coming to New York and remembering how grateful I was to finally have a chance — and what my mom was telling me. But I also suddenly felt this burden, which I still feel now sometimes, which is, ‘When is it enough?’”

In the film, Trump goes from being the impressionable, wide-eyed son of an impossible-to-please real estate developer to a megalomaniacal wheeler-dealer who speaks in hyperbole, is obsessed with appearance (his own and that of his first wife, Ivana — played by Maria Bakalova — a relationship that escalates into sexual assault) and surpasses his master in heartlessness and corruption.

“We can see how easy it is to make a Faustian deal with the devil in order to win,” Stan says. “‘What is the cost of this American Dream?’ I related [to] seeing a person so determined to get there, no matter what, that he was abandoning who he was in the process.”

Stan’s ascent has been just as remarkable. After acting in school plays in New York’s Rockland County, he studied at Rutgers University before scoring a recurring role on the CW series Gossip Girl. “The next really big shift I felt was [landing] Marvel, in 2010,” says Stan, who played Captain America colleague Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier, a role that led to his signing a nine-picture deal with the studio. He’s also worked with a string of award-winning directors and actors in films such as Black Swan, The Martian and Destroyer.

Irvin Rivera for LA Magazine

His first experience portraying a real person was in 2017 biopic I, Tonya as figure skater Tonya Harding’s husband opposite Margot Robbie. For 2022 Hulu miniseries Pam & Tommy, he transformed into Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee, husband to Lily James’ Pamela Anderson — which earned him Golden Globe, Critics Choice and Emmy nominations. The projects “had one thing in common, which was Craig Gillespie,” Stan says, “an incredible director, who taught me a lot of things about myself I didn’t necessarily know I could do.”

In becoming Trump, Stan wanted to rely on prosthetics as little as possible. “But we were very aware we don’t look very similar,” he says. “And so, about two months before we started shooting, Ali told me that I should start gaining as much weight as I could in my face.”

Stan’s nutritionist advised him to drink beer — but because Trump doesn’t drink, the actor preferred ramen with sodium-packed soy sauce. He adopted the precise way Trump spoke and moved through a process he equates with osmosis: “Subjecting yourself in an obsessive way to watching and listening and reading everything [about Trump] you can find.”

He credits Strong for elevating their work. “We improvised a lot,” Stan says. “And Jeremy was so prepared that I had to do my research to keep up. Like that scene where [Trump and Cohn are] meeting: I would have to know what school [Cohn] went to, and who his last client was, and that he was from the Bronx and had a photographic memory — in case it came up in the improv. Because he knew who was pitching for the Mets in 1976! It was a really immersive experience and we were on our toes together.”

Maria Bakalova as Ivana Trump and Stan as Donald Trump in 'The Apprentice'

After premiering at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival in May, The Apprentice had a hard time finding a U.S. distributor due to Trump threatening legal retaliation. But after Tom Ortenberg’s Briarcliff Entertainment acquired the film in late August, it hit theaters Oct. 11.

Stan also stars in A Different Man, in which he plays Edward, an aspiring actor with neurofibromatosis — a rare genetic skin condition that produces tumors. Edward undergoes a medical procedure in the hopes his new appearance will win him a woman (Renate Reinsve) and better his life. Like The Apprentice, Stan considers this film — which scored him the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance when it bowed in Berlin — to address self-acceptance.

Stan with Renate Reinsve and Adam Pearson in 'A Different Man'

“It’s this idea, of ‘the grass is greener on the other side’ — and the truth is, you don't know,” says Stan, who lobbied for the role after seeing director Aaron Schimberg’s 2018 Chained for Life. Both that film and A Different Man, released theatrically by A24 in September, star British actor Adam Pearson, who has neurofibromatosis. “I spoke to doctors, I’ve spoken to Adam in-depth about his upbringing,” says Stan, who sat in Mike Marino’s makeup chair for up to two hours to transform into Edward.

“The prosthetics were so realistic that when I started to walk around, nobody recognized me ... and it was scary,” he says. “You see firsthand how we respond to somebody who looks different.”

Irvin Rivera for LA Magazine

Stan next stars in Marvel’s Thunderbolts* with David Harbour, Wyatt Russell, Florence Pugh and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, out in May 2025. “It's a funny group of not-perfect antiheroes that are trying to come to terms with their pasts, and I think people will get behind them," he says.

He’ll reunite with Pam & Tommy’s James on horror thriller Let the Evil Go West, about a railroad worker who stumbles into a fortune that comes at a price — “a very different movie than our last experience," he notes. And he’s producing Blue Banks, from Romanian writer-director Andreea Cristina Bortun.

“It’s this really personal film about a single mother’s journey with her son in Romania, which reminded me a lot of my humble beginnings with my mom — and how tough it was after the revolution, as a single parent, to take care of your kid and at the same time, provide,” Stan says.

“A lot of parents had to leave their kids behind to get a job somewhere else — which is what happened with me for a couple years, until I started living with my mom again. I was with my grandparents," he adds. "It explores the implications and the suffering that comes at the hands of a system that has oppressed people for so long. And then they’re left with trying to find their way.”

SEBASTIAN STANLEADING MEN OF 2024 NOVEMBER 2024

[isolated-r0b0t]

The GPDA stands for all 20 Formula 1 drivers, giving them a strong, united front to address their issues and interests.

The association is led by former driver Alex Wurz, alongside prominent and notable directors like George Russell and Sebastian Vettel.

Recent Collective Statement:

The drivers recently released a firm statement criticizing the FIA’s policies, especially regarding how drivers are treated and the fines being imposed. This marks their first united public response since 2017, showcasing their growing frustration and the urgent need for change.

Financial Transparency:

The GPDA has consistently demanded clarity from the FIA about how monetary fines are used. They stress that the current fine system is vague and lacks clarity on it's benefit the sport.

Treatment of Drivers:

In their statement, the drivers take issue with the FIA's condescending approach, likening it to treating them like children—especially when it comes to recent penalties for swearing. They highlight their professionalism and make it clear they don’t need to be lectured on mundane topics like dress codes.

Public Critique of FIA Policies:

This statement acts as a public outcry against the FIA’s policies under President Mohammed Ben Sulayem. The drivers want an open dialogue and collaboration to constructively tackle their concerns.

Call for Respect and Understanding:

The GPDA calls on the FIA to adjust their tone and approach with drivers, advocating for mutual respect in their interactions. The drivers remind everyone that they are professionals who make significant contributions to the sport and deserve respect in return.

Now, let’s get real. Those tearing down the GPDA and their statement are missing the bigger picture.

These drivers are not just performers; they are real people facing serious challenges, and yes, they are often exploited workers!

NEWS FLASH!!Anyone who doesn’t own the means of production—yes, even in sports—is, in fact, an exploited worker.Even highly compensated athletes are subject to this reality.

To reiterate: Athletes ARE exploited workers.

They are here, putting their bodies on the line, putting on a show entertaining fans and boosting the profits of team owners, the FIA, and sponsors. So it’s absolutely commendable that they’re advocating for their rights and asserting their collective strength.If you find yourself mocking their wording or claiming their statement should have been polished by a ghostwriter, or saying these drivers must not be educated—guess what? You’re missing the mark! Every worker, drivers included, deserves applause for calling out the FIA and the governing bodies that try to keep them down.

Furthermore, suggesting that the drivers should postpone their advocacy because of external political events—such as the recent U.S. election—is shortsighted. Multiple struggles for justice can and must occur simultaneously. There should be no requirement for drivers to wait for unrelated political drama to subside before voicing their concerns.

The GPDA is finally stepping up as a united front, and it’s time we all support them. If you genuinely care about these drivers and believe they deserve justice, care, and their rightful rights, it’s time to back their efforts to improve their working conditions.

fin.

[cloveroctobers]

NO STRESS — Armando Aretas [Fall Crumbles] 🤎

A/N: Going back to my roots of my first official drop on this man, which was a angsty-based Armando piece. It’s a kinda short thing and what I do best! Believe me I’m not pushing for a sad girl autumn by any means and I don’t think this is that?

WARNINGS: Language! + Moving onto bigger things? You tell me. Definitely inspired by current events but this won’t be too deep on that, especially if you’re looking for a break, yet I always find Novembers to be full of grievances but still looking at the positives towards the end of the month and thanks to this album dropping during this time…also helped inspired these chapters I’ve been writing.

SYNOPSIS: Set some time in the future in which every state in the U.S. solely has a president now and Armando Aretas holds that title. What happens when your easy going or dysfunctional? nature becomes too much after Armando’s new actions hits headlines?

ᯓ★ ᯓ★ ᯓ★ ᯓ★ ᯓ★ ᯓ★ ᯓ★ ᯓ★ ᯓ★ ᯓ

“Mami, don’t piss me off.” Armando spews at you, eyes locked on you from the moment you walked through the doors of your shared palace.

The way you sauntered along the marble floor, natural sway in your hips, with a strut in your step as your heels clacked along the texture, and your jacket slightly hung off your shoulders as you made your way over to the grand table, implied you were onto something lethal.

You oozed luxury as you took your seat so elegantly at the opposite head of the table, fixing your Prada shades back along your fresh silk press, all while beaming to your right, Mike’s hand going out to grab yours with a smile, as you almost pressed your glossed lips to your other fingertips to silently kiss at him in greeting.

One of your young servers—named Romil—you did the simple task of learning all of your employees names, immediately came to your left, your fizzy speciality already awaited for you in a flute glass, which you plucked into your grasp and always thanked your workers with a warm smile, “Thank you, Rom.”

He quickly sent a smile your way with a dip of his head before moving to stand away from the table in one of the corners. The servers were always supposed to give those at the dinner table space, waiting hand and foot on you. At times you found it ridiculous, knowing you can do these basic tasks on your own, (which you often did) especially on holidays when they should be off with their own loved ones, but you always made it a oath that they were included on gifts every year.

As the First Lady of Miami (Technically it was Florida but “Miami” just sounded better, especially since that’s where you all resided), it was not in your nature to ever treat anyone as less then. You were not that type of bitch, Lady of Georgia, the nasty shady Southern Belle, gratefully held that title.

A loud clearing of a throat and a side of a fist hitting the table, made the utensils on the table jump, and eyes turn to Armando, except for you who took your time facing your husband as you swallowed the Prosecco.

“Excuse me? Did you hear what I said?” Armando hissed.

Your smile could make anyone weak in the knees but Armando looked right past that since you were irking his nerves, “Hello to you too, baby. And No, I didn’t. What’s wrong?”

The way Armando’s eyes went into slits while resting his elbows on the table and pressed his clasped hands to his lips for a moment made his father, Mike Lowrey mumble to himself, “Oh shit.”

“What’s wrong?” Armando repeated, “Where were you huh? You weren’t there at the press meeting—

With a dramatic sigh you interrupted as you picked up a utensil to stab into the kale salad, “You mean the press meeting where they slaughtered you for the fuck shit you’ve been pulling? Why would I need to be there for that?”

Armando raised his brows, “You’re my lady, did you forget? You’re supposed to be beside me whenever I speak to the public, why are you acting brand new?”

Covering your mouth as you let out some laughter, you finished eating your portion of an appetizer, “That’s the thing, I’ve been by your side and when I don’t want to? I won’t be. I had better things to do today. It’s that simple.”

Armando’s eyes went to everyone else at the table, to make sure that he wasn’t hearing things. It shouldn’t be a shock to him, neither of you two were strictly by the book and marched to your own drums, just ask the people of the state who were not a fan of you two, they automatically felt like Armando was and still is a crook. Then there were those who felt like you could do better.

The opinion of sheep in some cases, right?

He was just a businessman that got shit done.

Like it or not.

“A First Lady’s obligiation is to be involved in social affairs. That’s just one of many.” Armando states which makes you tilt your head to the side, laughing once more.

He should be the last one preaching to you.

“Sure and my obligation today was to prioritize self care.” You inhale as you return back to your plate of salad, “I’m glad that I don’t have to beg for your attention, since you apparently miss me so much that you care more about how the public is labeling you. That’s something you should have thought about before you picked the streets over your queen, no?”

Armando immediately knew what you were getting at. It was tossed at him by one of the journalists who outed that the woman Armando was seen spending many outings with behind your back, had been talking about their quality times together for the right price. Fresh off the press, it was something you were aware of at 2 this morning which was sadly confirmed by Dorn over the phone before it hit news.

You had no issue collecting your things around 5 in the morning, when you could have slapped Armando awake but you couldn’t bring yourself to be blind sided. It was suspected every time Armando extended his trips in Key West. You can’t fix stupid and choices have consequences. This has all come to a hilt and this is exactly what the people wanted, to see you upset so why bother trying to save face when you already knew the truth?

“Maybe we should let you two have this conversation in private?” Theresa, Marcus’ wife speaks up, already placing her handkerchief on the table.

Shrugging your shoulders you say, “We’re all a family here right? What happens in the palace stays in the palace. Except…not with what’s her name? Dinah. Thee aspiring photo journalist who comes from a lineage of racist assassins…I know her family is having a field day with this one. How many nights did you let her stay in one of these rooms or better yet, our bed?”

“It was never our bed.” Armando snaps, making Marcus widened his eyes, and lightly scratch at his ear at what his new nephew let slip through his lips.

This time you cackled with your head thrown back.

Armando glared at you, “I don’t know what you’re laughing at because ain’t shit funny.”

Wiping the tears from the corner of your eyes, you nod in agreement as you stared over at your husband in the dim dining hall, “You’re right. It’s hilarious because I just realized I can’t be bothered anymore.”

This is what November’s are for. Saying no to things that no longer have use to you. Getting rid of things to allow the growth to start all over again.

So why was this man playing in your face?

It did sting because it felt like your time was wasted, with a man that should have loved you better. If he wanted to play around, he should have just said that instead of trying to make you out to be a fool. Shouldn’t have even married you if he was going to later second guess your time together. Maybe that wasn’t Armando’s intentions but you just didn’t have the energy to do too much back and forth tonight.

The both of you got into this position of power because of Armando’s mother mainly. Isabel and her husband, Benito—although Mexico City natives—had strong ties to Miami but with their power was also handed down to Armando. It turns out that this was what they were training Armando so hard for as a kid. It was an ugly business, gritty and brutal with the way it turned out but with the way the government was forever changing? Thanks to Benito who had connections with the (dirty) American government, Armando was next in line regardless and knew if he didn’t take his shot, he would miss out on this big opportunity and he wanted nothing more than to take you right with him. Once upon a time, Armando couldn’t picture anyone else ruling this state with him.

Power can make you do questionable things and Armando unfortunately fell into that.

“What does that mean?” Armando quizzed.

“It’s means you’re not as calculated as you think you are,” you pointed the fork in his direction, “And I’m going to move on. Consider this a lesson learned.”

Armando tightened his jaw at your words, “I should have known that you’ve been working against me.”

“No, no. Don’t try and spin this.” You express, “I’m the only one that gets to point fingers. I loved you through your flaws, which is why I don’t love you any less after you’ve been shitting where you shouldn’t eat. You don’t know who to trust and I’m your wife. We’re supposed to be some sort of a union but I guess we’re not. Doesn’t that sound problematic to you?”

Armando scoffed as he let his back rest against the extravagant chair, “What’s problematic is you secretly plotting against me.”

Kelly can’t help but to step in, although Dorn attempts to firmly squeeze her thigh underneath the table, a signal for her to not get involved but she shoves his hand off her, “Look Armando, I’ve been working with you for a good while on this term and your paranoia is out of this world. We can blame your mother for that sure but you got to work through that shit at some point man. You got in your head and now look at you, about to lose your wife. Someone you loved enough to want to spend an eternity with just to let this presidency get to you. It’s clown behavior, I’m just saying.”

“Well nobody asked you, Kelly.” Armando muttered with a strong side eye.

“I don’t care.” The dark haired woman sassed, “I’m not going to be the one enabling you. You’re a dumbass.”

That made you smile.

Kelly scrapped her chair back, looking at all the faces that sat at the table, “And neither should the rest of you, especially you two.” She stared hard at Mike who raised his brows at Kelly’s usual bluntness and Marcus who raised his hands in innocence, “I know where I’m going once you don’t win a second term.” She finishes, looking at Armando one last time before giving you a sharp nod and taking her exit.

Armando stared after her in disbelief, although his usual blank facial expression shielded that well. Yet when he settled his eyes on Dorn, who looked torn, since the two managed to build a solid friendship and partnership—it was actually Armando, Dorn, and Reggie that were the main faces of his term.

“Sorry man,” The blond found himself apologizing but Armando just shrugs his shoulders, knowing Dorn had no true aim on leaving—at least he didn’t have that conversation with Armando.

Wait a minute…

Armando tightened his gaze on you, “You mind telling me what Kelly is getting at?”

It was your turn to shrug your shoulders, “Not everyone can be yes men, ladies, or people. People want balance, I wanted balance. You couldn’t even give me that because you value chess over love and it’s really sad.”

The tone you were taking with him, speaking so at ease with a wicked smile at the corner of your lips, and the glint in your eyes did not feel warm. There was a chill right underneath it. The longer Armando searched your eyes, he started to feel his heart race.

And not in a good way.

“Oh those gears are turning now aren’t they, Mr. Soon to be Ex-President?” You grinned.

Armando stands up so fast that he knocks the chair he was sitting in back, “You can’t be fucken serious?!”

Giggling, you dabbed at the corners of your mouth, “Why wouldn’t I be? Always best to be a few steps ahead right? That is what you once said. And I have you to thank for that, so, thank you. Thank you for making me realize what’s worth my time since I’m not yours. Are you ready to be my First Gentleman?”

Armando felt his eye twitch at the ball you just dropped. “Did you know?” He turns to his father.

Mike shakes his head, “No ‘Mando I didn’t but can you fault her?”

“So you’re taking her side?!”

Christine speaks up so her husband didn’t also raise his voice, “Honey, I know you’re upset but let’s turn it down a notch and just hear each other out.”

Before Armando can say more, you shake your head, “I don’t have anything else to say quite frankly. I’m running and if I don’t win then that’s fine too but as long as you don’t get a second term? That’ll be even better. Too much stress isn’t good for the baby.”

All the older adults whipped their heads to you at this news.

“What did you just say?” Mike splutters out.

Christine and Secada both shared a deep frown.

Marcus said, “I know I’m in no position to ever speak on a woman’s body…were you not just sipping on some fizz?”

You scanned all the faces in the room, and the amount of times Armando caressed his facial hair made you think he was about to pass out.

“Ah, I had y’all going didn’t i?” You winked, which visibly made everyone relax, “Can you imagine? Me trying to take over the world while carrying a heir? Real queen shit but…hopefully Dinah doesn’t pop back up talking about a bundle of joy of her own within the next few days because I might just actually have to bury your ass, and pretend you went missing, I don’t know.”

You said all this with a smile that made Christine share a worried glance with Theresa who couldn’t blame you. Reggie quietly finished his meal, wanting to finish it all before they all got kicked out but it’s not like he would have said much in the first place but he was definitely listening. He was the only one who knew what Armando was up to with Dinah until you approached Dorn to gather information (hack into Key West’s cameras and common areas Armando would be at out there) that was slowly about to released into the world.

“Don’t joke like that.” Armando muttered, palms flat on the table.

You blink, “Why? You took this marriage as one.”

Armando shakes his head, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, so we’re gaslighting now? Were you or were you not involved with another woman?” You interrogated.

“I wouldn’t do that to you.” Armando tried to tell you, he wasn’t physical with Dinah at all but if he looked back at it, it was still a form of cheating.

“Screencaps say different. Yapper Dinah says different…but no stress…maybe there will be a divorce or open marriage if that’s more your speed…I’m not sure what I’m feeling just yet though. TBD?”

Armando clasped his hands above his head, low lidded eyes settled on you as he tried to control his breathing, “Are you loca?”

“Nooo! Don’t say that.” Mike immediately shook his head already aware that was the wrong thing to say, shifting his gaze from a collected you and his iritated son.

Marcus also tried to intervene, “Nope.”

Instead all at the table watched you give off another round of laughter. This was not a good sign, it sounded chaotic and everyone can sense you were over it.

Resting one arm along the table and resting your cheek against the knuckles of your other hand you respond, “I could show you but I’ll let the universe do her thing, baby.”

With that you take your entree plate and start to leave the table but not without saying over your shoulder followed by a wave, “Thanks for coming to dinner everyone, my apologies for my late arrival but most importantly, I’m sorry Arman wasn’t the best host. Have a great night, I know I will.” You sing-song, feeling giddy at tonight’s plans.

Armando began to walk after you but Mike was already up and on his feet as well. He latched onto his son’s shoulder, “Aye, you gotta eat this one. Let some steam off before y’all can have a civil conversation, without us being your audience, ya know?”

“You might need some witnesses just in case she murder yo ass.” Marcus attempted with a chuckle, just to be slapped on his chest by Theresa, “Ow! Y’all all heard what she said right?”

“Shut up, Marcus.” Theresa tells her husband before Mike can.

Armando felt his eyes close once the guards shut the door behind you. You being out of his life out of something so one sided, was frustrating and not only that? Now you wanted to run against him during the next election? Then on top of that, you were considering ending this marriage and being so at peace with it too? That didn’t sit well with Armando.

So yeah, he was stressed.

“You know, you screwed up right? When a woman is that calm over your mishaps…that means deep shit.” Secada tells Armando at the front door of the palace, who huffs and rolls his eyes, “Hey as your SecDef who did just see you get your ass handed to you, again, I’m just stating the obvious and trying to help.”

“If I wanted your input, I would have asked.”

“Don’t take it out on me.” Secada affirms, “Usually your defense is better than this which already tells me, whatever you got yourself wrapped into with Dinah, is clearly messing up your judgment and now there’s consequences.”

Armando waved his hand along, still holding the front door open, “Tell me something I don’t know, General.”

Secada placed her hands on her hips as she now stands outside, “…Sitting on top of the world can be lonely, Aretas. Look at your mother—hell just talk to Mike. Don’t let that be your story when you truly have someone who only wanted to be loved by you and has loved you in return.”

“…Heard you.” Is all Armando says with a dip of his head, and Secada can tell that he was taking that part of her words in.

With a final hug of the night to tía Theresa, Christine, and a unwanted one from tío Marcus, Armando shares another somewhat lengthy chat with Mike on not pressing the issue anymore but after Armando remembered that you were trying to go out tonight, that went in one ear and out the other.

He wasn’t shocked to not find you in the primary bedroom, searching one of the ten rooms, finding you on the east wing, tucked far into the palace and out of sight. Armando knew you were in there based on the music vibrating from the door and a bowl you had resting outside the door on a tray.

Armando knocks hard, knowing you should be able to hear him over the bass. You take your time, coming to the door now dressed in a corset, mini skirt, tall boots, and hair in a claw clip. There was no shame in Armando’s game as he drank you in with his eyes, damn you looked good, but that was not the point.

“Where you goin’?”

“A girls night out on the town and that’s all I’m saying on that.” You announce with your chin up in the air before spinning to head back into the room, “Are you going to try and hold me hostage in here? If so, then you’re really asking for a fight.”

“No,” Armando lifted his shoulders with his lips pushed out a bit, “I’d prefer it if you didn’t go out tonight though.”

With a long sigh, you picked up your necklace, placing it in Armando’s palm so he could put it on you. “Well…we can’t always get what we want, right? It’s just like auntie Whitney said, it’s not right but it’s okay, I’m gonna make it anyway.”

Once clasped you turned back to face your husband. Your fingers went to his forehead to smooth out the lines there, “Stress brings wrinkles.”

“Kelly keeps telling me to get Botox…just in case, although my melanin should work in my favor.”

You snort, “Your body your choice, baby. Anyways! I’ve got to run, don’t wait up.”

It was Armando’s turn to grab your wrist, which you halt although you wanted to snatch it right back. However you kept your breathing steady and slowly faced the brown eyed man, questioning what he wanted silently. Something the both of you commonly did, socializing with just your eyes.

“…I hope you’re not for real thinking about ending things?”

Brushing a strand that fell into your eye, thanks to tilting your head to the side you say, “is that really a conversation you want to get into tonight? It’s been a long day.”

“Mine’s longer.”

He was the damn president after all.

“Ah yes, a competition with my unfaithful husband.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

How else could he have meant it?

“What is it exactly you want from me?” You question Armando, “To yell, scream, or cry? All the above? Drag your name through the press so you really end this term in a dumpster fire? That’s not me, never has been and I thought you knew that. I’m just done…probably numb? If I look into your eyes long enough, I can feel my heart wanting to race because I’ve really adored all parts of you until now. Then there’s this stronger side of me that says, maybe I’ve had enough too and just waited too late to see that.”

Armando can feel you fading from his grasp but he only had himself to blame for that. He cleared his throat, scratching at the side of the bridge of his nose as he followed you down the hallway before speaking up, “I think we still owe one another a final convo…once we sleep on it.”

“Okay, Arman,” is all you say texting away on your phone to let him know you heard him but still dreaded that, you knew the most important part of that talk would be the election because over the last few years, that became more important than your marriage, “Goodnight, don’t let the thoughts bite.”

And he stops following you, letting you disappear from his sight.

In bed, Armando lays on his back staring up at the ceiling constantly checking his socials, skipping over the constant talk of his fuck ups with Dinah being put on blast, ignored her texts, and searched for you, to see what you were up to.

Ultimately he would be the one up all night stressed over you.

And if you really chose to think about it, that would be fine by you.

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Read my final autumn anthology slice here.