#the other that their candidate was too big to fail and so the only possible explanation was that the whole thing was rigged

[supreme-leader-stoat]

Aggressive tribalism and doubling down on a broken system aside, it's always struck me as a bit arrogant that the "vote blue no matter who" crowd attributes every non-vote/third-party vote to someone who would otherwise support the Dem's chosen candidate but got cold feet at the last minute. My guy, you keep banging on that "lesser of two evils" drum all you want, but I don't think you're gonna like the outcome if you ever successfully convince a lot of the people who voted third party in 2020.

[akillerbeforeyou]

Anything.

(Kai Anderson x fem!reader)

Authors note: Heyy! This is my first time writing for Kai (and writing on Tumblr in general) so please feel free to tell me how you feel about it! It will be a two-parter (smut in the second part) because I'm lazy and didn't feel like writing more. Also, this is barely proofread.

Also! This fic is heavily inspired by a Kai bot from @fear-is-truth I wouldn't have had the motivation to start writing again if it wasn't for that bot so thank you!

Word count: around 1k

Content warning: implied sexual content, implied violence, that's pretty much it for now.

read part two here

It was my fault. I had fucked up, big time. 

From the very beginning, Kai had taken a liking to me. I've always been good at following rules to a tee with little to no hesitation. So naturally, I became one of Kai's favorites. When the role of his devoted girlfriend was first assigned to me, I assumed it was just that- a role to play- just another tactic to sway the voters in favor of him. I mean, who doesn't love a candidate with family-oriented values? it would be a way to humanize him and soften his image to the public. and who better to play the part than the one woman who had been willing to walk to the end of the world for him since the very get-go? Over time, I realized our relationship was more than just a facet of his public persona. I genuinely cared about him- and in his way, he felt the same. He would ask something of me, and I would do it. Never once since joining the cause did I feel threatened by him. Until now. 

I woke up confused, not remembering having laid down in the first place. As my vision cleared, I recognized the basement, dimly lit and empty. The grogginess I had originally woken up to started to fade as I looked down to find I had been completely tied down in the chair I was seated in. That's when I reminded myself of the previous 'mission' I had gone on with the rest of FIT where we had to retreat early to avoid getting caught after I had been the one to draw too much attention to the group. 

Fuck. Kai wasn't anywhere in sight, but I could feel his presence. I had been by his side since day one and I knew all too well how this would end. The sound of his footsteps broke the silence in the room, followed closely by his voice. 

"Now. What am I going to do with you?" I could feel his hot breath tickling the back of my neck as he leaned over to whisper in my ear. "Divine Ruler. I'm sorry. I really am." I did my best to get out full sentences but every few words I was interrupted by involuntary sniffles. "Good girls don't fail their leaders. I thought you'd learned that by now.." he paused, and I held my breath as I remembered the multiple occasions I had watched others being brutalized for mistakes smaller than the one I had just made. "You know I have to punish you, right? It wouldn't be right for you to get away with screwing up this big." he circled me as I bit my lip, trying to hold back tears and completely unable to respond. "Say something, little lamb." he paused before feigning concern "Aw, are you scared? is that it?" I looked up and nodded my head. "Well, you should be. I'm furious with you. and you know what I'm like when I'm furious at someone." my heart pounded in my chest as I scrambled to find the right words to say- if that was at all possible. "Please Kai-" I stop myself midway through using his name, knowing that will only further my punishment "-Divine Ruler, I'm so sorry I am. you know I would never purposely sabotage you, sir" I say as my lips tremble and hot tears begin to stream down my face. He leans in, impossibly close to me before continuing to speak. "How cute. Look at how much you're crying for me when I haven't even hurt you- yet." "Yet..?" I stutter watching a sadistic grin spread across his face. "That's right, little lamb. I haven't decided how I'm going to punish you yet, but there'll be a punishment, I can assure you that much." Another moment of silence as I try and think of some sort of response- to no avail, of course. "Perhaps it's time I really whipped you into shape, little lamb. Maybe then you'll learn how to behave properly like a good little girl would." His tone is cruel and sharp enough to cut glass. I inhaled deeply "Please- Divine Ruler don't you think there isn't any need for that" I looked up at him with doe eyes "I've never failed you before sir it won't happen again- don't I deserve to be let off with a warning" Normally, talking to Kai like this would be a sure-fire way to end up being thrown in a ditch- but I knew deep down he'd be somewhat more lenient with me than the others, considering our relationship. "Oh, you think you deserve to be let off with a warning? Why's that? Because you're my special little lamb, and you've been a good girl up until now?" he pauses with a light chuckle to himself "Well, I'm in a bad mood now, Y/N, so I don't really care what you deserve. I want to punish you, and no amount of pleading and weeping is going to change my mind." he said, with eyes as cold as ice and words as harsh as nails. "I've been such a good girl" I plead with both my tone as well as my eyes "Please baby, I love you" the second sentence I speak in a whisper, knowing Kai would either react extremely negatively to me calling him baby or extremely positively, but no in between. 

To anyone else, it would seem as if he did not react- but I could see his face soften as he soaked in my pleas. He would never admit it, but he liked it when I called him baby. And he liked it even more when I was begging and at his mercy. 

"Baby" my voice quivers as I look up at the man I adore- as well as fear. Kai's expression softens some more, and the cruelty in his eyes has almost completely faded.

"Again."

I take a deep breath of air and try my best to smile sweetly through the tears "Baby, every single thing I do is for you. for us. please" I watch as Kai's breathing becomes heavier. his mouth curls up into an almost predatory smile as he hears my words. "That was perfect," he says, caressing my cheek. I lean into his touch as his thumb circles over my cheekbone. His gaze remains locked on mine, filled with something seeming more like affection than hatred. He continues in a gentler tone "You are my good girl, aren't you?" 

"Of course I am. I would do anything for you." I watch as his grin returns, less sinister and a lot more warm. As fucked up and unhealthy as it was, there isn't anything that turns Kai on more than devotion. 

"Anything?"  

"Anything."

"Good girl," Kai says sweetly as if he had completely forgotten about his earlier anger

"You know what I want from you now, don't you, my little lamb?" I bite my lip, mascara stains my face "Just say the word, and I'll do whatever you want" "Hm... I could still punish you, couldn't I? You failed me when I needed you most.... you've got to atone for that somehow, don't you?" my stomach flips as he leans in even closer to me. "But... maybe I can forgive this time. I am feeling particularly generous today, after all. I've got a better idea."

"Thank you, divine ruler. you really are good to me. please tell me, what idea are you talking about sir" I ask in my softest tone, letting Kai take the rails. "Don't play dumb with me, sweetheart... you know very well what I'm talking about." he draws his hand even lower, moving it up my thigh, slowly inching upward. I throw my head back and hiss slightly as his hand trails up my thigh, a shock of pleasure courses through my body at the small contact he makes. "I'll do whatever you want. I live to serve you. Just please- untie me from the chair, baby" Kai takes a moment to think to himself before he begins unties to me. As the bonds are undone, I can feel the blood rush to my limbs once more, relief washing over me after what seemed like an eternity of suffering.

 "Good girl. Now... get on your knees."

Feel free to give me constructive criticism! I am also thinking of starting a taglist so let me know if you want to be tagged in part two/future fics. Thanks!

[yourdarkcherry]

Seducing Rafe Cameron || Ch.4

Summary: You were blessed with an easy life since you were born, but it’s all threatened when your dad’s business fails and you find yourself with no prospects and no education and so your only solution is to marry rich. Who’s a better candidate than the older brother of your ex-best friend from high school? So you do everything in your power to seduce Rafe Cameron, not knowing he’s the root to all your problems.

Warnings: toxic relationship, spoiled reader, sexist elements, dark content, blackcoded reader, pregnancy, physical and emotional abuse, manipulation, gaslighting, death threats, eventual smut.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

The environment when you have learned of Sarah’s betrayal wasn’t ideal, but then again you don’t think you finding out in any way could’ve been ideal.

You invited yourself to Tannyhill for an impromptu sleepover, it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary because you and Sarah always did that. But what was strange was the reason that made you even think you had to do this. Sarah was becoming distant, and you can tell that there was something going on with her and she wasn’t telling you.

It was very strange, as you and Sarah told each other everything.

You and her were lounging in the massive L shaped couch in the living room, you curling to yourself next to her and her sprawled on the longer part of it while you two were mindlessly rewatching Clueless. It was an all time favorite of you both.

The house was relatively empty for the weekend, Ward and Rose away on an anniversary vacation, Wheezie also at a sleepover. You hadn’t seen Rafe since you came over carrying your luggage last night.

It was at the scene that Cher asked Dionne her iconic question, “would you call me selfish?” that Rafe stepped inside the house. You didn’t even notice him as you were giggling and quoting Dionne’s answer back. “No, not to your face.”

Sarah only gave you back a tight smile, her eyes clouding over with something like they always do lately.

You notice Rafe then, with visible scars on his face and looking like he was just involved in a fight. The sight made you sit up straight. Sarah still didn’t notice, and you usually would follow her cue in ignoring Rafe.

But you couldn’t. “Oh my god, are you okay?” you asked, squinting as you stared at his face for longer. Possibly the longest time you’ve ever stared at his face. Sarah’s eyes follow where you’re staring, but she’s not that much shocked.

“It’s not a big deal,” Rafe says. “It’s only Sarah’s stupid boyfriend thinking he can land a punch.”

You frown, then you glance at Sarah and see that her face blanched. “Boyfriend?”

“Yeah, Colin Davis.” Rafe answers, and he looks at you as if you had grown three heads—like you were stupid for not knowing that your best friend of ten years had a boyfriend.

Your eyes darted to Sarah, searching her face for any sign of an explanation. Her expression had gone pale, confirming that what Rafe said was true.

You stood up from the couch, with clear anger on your face. “Are you shitting me, Rafe?”

Rafe raises an eyebrow, “do I look like someone who would be lying to you?” With that, you turn to stare back at Sarah in horror. Her eyes are red and wet with tears as she slowly stands up from the couch too.

“Why are you making a big deal about this?” Rafe says exasperatedly, “I don’t even know if he’s Sarah’s boyfriend, all I know is that I see him climb out of her window all the time.”

You gasp in disbelief and blink hastily at him, hoping that this is some sort of elaborate cruel joke. That Sarah’s only doing this just to tell you that she’s right in her suspicions about your new boyfriend. If you doubt him enough to cheat, then you know he isn’t good enough for you.

Though you find yourself not caring about him, you don’t even think you liked him that much to begin with. He was just in the football team, and you were a cheerleader and when he asked you out you thought that it would look cute. Cliche, but cute. A cheerleader and an athlete.

“Colin Davis?” you repeat, your eyes darting between Rafe and Sarah. “You fucked Colin Davis? My boyfriend?”

Rafe’s jaw slightly turns slack, and he too turns to look at Sarah for clarification. Sarah’s tears start slipping down her cheeks, and her chest raises and falls sharply while she sniffles.

“(Y/N) I didn’t mean to—”

“You’re telling me you fucked Colin? My fucking boyfriend?” your finger is pointed at your chest as your own eyes start watering the longer you stare at her.

This has to be a nightmare if it wasn’t a joke. But the feel of your hot tears in your eyes is so real, as well as the biting cold of the North Carolina’s autumn bites on your naked thighs.

“I’m sorry— I didn’t—” a gasp cuts her, and you feel the pain of the betrayal wash over you harshly like a tsunami, each revelation feeling like a punch to the gut.

Tears began to spill down your cheeks, hot and unrelenting. The familiar comfort of the couch and the security of your longtime friendship now felt like a distant memory, replaced by a painful and overwhelming sense of heartbreak.

You raise your palm to stop her from talking, “you’re not denying Rafe’s words—that it wasn’t a one time thing.”

Sarah’s tears were thick as they streamed down her face, her chest heaving with ragged breaths as she struggled to find the words to explain herself. But you didn’t want to hear it, the damage was done, and the trust you once shared was irrevocably broken.

“How could you do this to me?” you repeated, your fingers trembling as you wiped at the tears streaming down your cheeks. “You were my best friend. I trusted you more than anyone.”

The memory of all the years you two had spent as inseparable souls, confiding in each other, supporting one another through thick and thin, now felt like a cruel joke. How could she have betrayed that trust, that bond, in such a devastating way?

“I actually don’t care about what you did, I care that you hold me in such a low regard that you went ahead and threw away our friendship like it was nothing.” Your voice is breaking with each word you say, and your chest is tightening, “If you don’t care about our friendship—fine!” you say, searching the couch for your phone and when you find it you clutch on it harshly.

“If you don’t care about our friendship then fucking fine, cause I don’t fucking care about you anymore.” you say one last time, and instead of wearing your outside shoes you dig in your feet inside the soft house slippers that you always wear when you’re at Tannyhill. You brush past Rafe and head to the door as you see Sarah collapse to the floor from the corner of your eyes.

The tears continued to flow, your heart shattering with each passing second. This was a betrayal you didn't know if you could ever forgive.

The air outside bites on your thighs and naked arms, but the chill was nothing compared to the icy grip of betrayal that had seized your heart. In that moment, you felt utterly alone, your world turned upside down by the devastating actions of the one person you thought you could always count on.

As you stormed away, the sound of Rafe's hurried footsteps reached your ears. "Please, (Y/N), wait!" he called out, his voice tinged with desperation.

You whirled around, your eyes burning with a fury that threatened to consume you. "What do you want, Rafe?" you spat, the words laced with venom.

He approached you cautiously, “look, I had no idea but if I did I would’ve—”

“No, Rafe. There’s nothing you can do. Nothing you can say that will make this right. Sarah…” Your voice broke, the mere utterance of her name like a knife to your heart. “She’s the one that broke my trust, she made her bed and now she has to lie in it. And I never wanna see her again or see anything that reminds me of her, that includes you.”

He watches you with a frown, but you continue anyways, “so please, don’t make me say things I’ll regret and just... leave me alone. I need time to process this, to figure out how I’m going to move forward without that backstabber, I can’t be around anything that reminds me of her.”

You wrapped your arms around yourself, as if trying to hold the shattered pieces of your heart together. The tears continued to stream down your face, a testament to the depth of your pain.

“I’m so angry I could—” you end your words with a sigh as you look down at your slippers. Then you look up finding Rafe opened his mouth to speak.

Though when you’re about to hear what he has to say, the familiar surroundings of the conversation melted away, and you suddenly found yourself jolting awake, the vivid dream dissipating like mist in the morning light.

Your heart pounded, the remnants of the dream still clinging to the edges of your consciousness. The betrayal, the anger, the sense of shattered trust, it all felt so real, so visceral—because it was real. It was simply your mind replaying the most horrid memory of your entire life like a movie. A haunting echo of a reality you had faced years ago.

It’s almost 10 am when you finish getting ready for the day. Your mom is in the living room, looking like she already finished her morning run, and eating a breakfast sandwich while sipping her cafe latte.

“Good morning.” you greet, she greeted back while looking up from her phone then she let out a quiet gasp.

“Honey, you look horrible!” she commented, and set down her cup on the table while looking up at you with clear concern.

“Jesus christ, mom, what a nice thing to say to your daughter.” you sigh, walking to the kitchen as she followed you with her empty plate and cup. She set the utensils in the dishwasher. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” she said, then rounded to face you as you turned to switch on the burner.

“You look pale, and pretty exhausted.”

“Didn’t sleep well.” you respond, then crack an egg on the frying pan. Your mother sighed, still looking at your side profile while you concentrated on cooking.

Your mom leaned against the counter. “I heard about the car,” she said quietly, her voice laced with worry. “Rafe told me what happened.”

You kept your focus on the frying pan, feeling a mix of emotions at the mention of his name. Also feeling like telling her that you rear-ended Sarah’s boyfriend isn’t the best idea. So you just swallow that thought of telling her. “Did he also tell you that he came over? Just for a little,”

Your mom’s eyes widened while she smiled. “I had no idea! But why did he come over?” your cheeks slightly burn at the double meaning of her words, but you ignore it and answer truthfully. “I felt bad that we couldn’t have a proper date because of the accident and stuff, so when he dropped me home I told him I’ll make him a sandwich.”

She gives you a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder. “That was considerate of you.”

While the egg is frying, you move to toast two slices of bread. Then you turn around to face your mother, “I’m having a girls’ day with Wheezie today.”

She raises an eyebrow. “How are you getting there? Do you really feel confident with Wheezie’s driving? She hasn’t even gotten her permit yet. Or are you taking an Uber?”

You shake your head, a faint smile tugging at the corners of your mouth. “Rafe doesn’t trust Ubers. He said he’ll drive us everywhere.”

She nods slowly, and doesn't speak for a few moments. “He’s a bit more old-fashioned than I thought for a guy his age.” The slices of toast shoot up, and you quickly take them out in a plate. “What do you mean?”

Your mother sighs, and you could tell she’s struggling to find words to deliver her point properly. “I mean, I knew he was a gentleman. I could see it in the way he treated all those ladies he took to all those parties and events. But I just… didn’t know he was old-fashioned.”

“Are you trying to say that you get bad vibes from him and that I should back off?” you ask, unwrapping a slice of american cheese and placing it on one of the toasts, you head to the gas stove and flip your egg into it and cover the egg with the other piece of toast.

You walk to the coffee machine and flick it open while you pretend like your life doesn’t depend on your mother’s next words. You trust her more than anyone, you trust her judgment and so if she tells you to abort the mission—you will.

It will hurt you, sure, because you genuinely like Rafe. The sole mention of his name brings butterflies and fuzz to your insides. But your mother knows best.

“No, that’s not what I meant,” You relaxed a bit, letting out a breath you didn’t realize you were holding. “I just meant that it’s surprising, just…” she pauses and you glance over your shoulder when the machine beeps.

“Look, if he doesn’t ask you to be his girlfriend by next month—considering he is an old fashioned man, you’re gonna want to rethink things.”

Your mom’s words hang in the air as you turn to grab your coffee, trying to process what she just said. The kitchen is filled with the warm, comforting aroma of your breakfast, but the conversation has taken a turn that leaves you feeling unsettled.

Your heart skipped a beat at her words. You knew the urgency behind your actions. Your family’s financial situation was dire, and your feelings for Rafe were as strategic as they were genuine. You needed him to propose to secure your future, but you had to play it just right.

“Okay,” you said softly, trying to keep your emotions in check. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

The kitchen was quiet for a moment. Finally, your mom spoke up again. “So, have you and Wheezie planned out what you’re going to do today? Any special plans or just a casual outing?”

You considered her question, a smile forming on your lips. “We’re planning to hit the mall, maybe get our nails done…some shopping, just spending time together.”

She smiles, “that sounds nice.”

When 10:30 am hits, and the sun is bright and shiny, Wheezie calls you.

“Hi Wheezie!” you answer, trying to keep your excitement in check.

“Hey!” Wheezie’s voice comes through bubbly and enthusiastic. “I’m so ready for today! I’ve been looking forward to this all week. I found a bunch of new stores I want to check out, and I heard there’s this amazing new nail salon that just opened. Are you excited?”

You chuckle at her excitement. “Totally! I’m looking forward to it too. It’s going to be a fun day.”

“Great! I’m so glad you’re up for it,” she gushes. “I can’t wait to spend some time together. I was thinking we could start with the mall, hit up a few stores, and then get our nails done. How does that sound?”

“That sounds perfect,” you say, smiling as you gather your things.

“Rafe and I are gonna be over at your house in like…” you hear her voice faint as she sets her phone slightly away, to ask someone a question. “Five minutes!” she answers, and you hear the sound of a door shutting behind her.

“See you in five,” you say and she hums before ending the call.

Despite it being less than five minutes in the clock on your phone, it still feels like the time was stretching forever. You hear the distinct noise of Rafe’s truck rolling down your street, you instantly wear your sunglasses and slip out the door.

As you walk toward the curb, you catch sight of Rafe in the driver’s seat, his eyes meeting yours through the window. Your cheeks flush with a warm blush, and you quickly look away, trying to shake off the sudden rush of nerves.

Wheezie’s figure appears as she rounds the front of the truck. You meet her halfway, and she practically launches herself into a hug, which you return with a big grin. She’s practically bouncing with excitement in her cute summer outfit, and you can’t help but smile at her enthusiasm.

“Wheezie, oh lord, you look super cute!” you exclaim, holding her hand and twirling her around as she giggles uncontrollably.

“Says you!” she laughs, her cheeks flushed with happiness.

Wheezie then pulls you to the back seats of Rafe’s truck, and you softly greet him when your eyes meet before she pushes you inside the car. “Hi, Rafe.”

“Hey, sunglasses.” he comments, and your cheeks burn even harsher as you take them off when you enter his car.

Rafe starts the truck and pulls out of the neighborhood. As he drives, Wheezie continues to buzz with excitement, her voice filled with enthusiasm. “I’ve been checking out all these new stores, and I heard there’s a great sale at one of them. Plus, I have been looking all over pinterest for nails inspo and I found this.”

She takes out her phone and displays some pictures to you as you lean back in the seat, letting Wheezie’s excitement wash over you. The drive to the mall feels relaxed, with Rafe navigating through the traffic. You catch occasional glances of him in the rearview mirror, his eyes meeting yours with a hint of a smile that makes your cheeks warm again.

Wheezie’s chatter is contagious, and you find yourself joining in naturally. But when the conversation starts to wane a bit, Wheezie turns to Rafe with a curious expression.

“You know, I could’ve driven us to the mall,” Wheezie says playfully. “So, what are you going to do while we shop?”

Rafe chuckles, glancing at Wheezie through the rearview mirror. “I thought that as the driver I naturally get a pass to join in?”

Wheezie gives him a skeptical look. “Really? You think you can just tag along? We’re going to be all over the place.”

Rafe raises his eyebrows. “Come on, it could be fun. I’ll even help you pick out stuff.”

Wheezie starts to protest but then hesitates. “But you’ll probably get bored. We’re going to be in and out of so many stores.”

Wheezie mulls it over for a second, then relents with a slight grin. “Alright, fine. You can come. But you’re going to help us carry our shopping bags.”

“Deal.”

As Rafe parks the truck and you both climb out, you feel a wave of excitement wash over you. Wheezie heads towards the mall entrance with boundless energy, and you follow, glancing back at Rafe with a grateful smile.

“Thanks again, Rafe,” you say as you head inside. “We’ll be sure to make it worth your while.”

“No problem, and it already is worth it,” he says, leaning in slightly. As he does, he lowers his voice just enough so only you can hear. “I’m actually doing this to secretly spend some time with you.”

Your cheeks flush, and you look down, trying to hide your shy smile. “Oh, I see…well, I’m glad you’re here then.”

Rafe’s grin widens. “Glad to hear it.”

With that, you and Wheezie head into the mall, Rafe following close behind. You follow all of Wheezie’s whims, of entering any store she wants and giving her opinions on whatever she wants.

“How do I look?” Wheezie asked, her excitement bubbling over.

She was wearing a dress that fell gracefully around her, the vibrant colors and soft fabric making her look effortlessly stylish. She struck a few poses, clearly happy with the dress.

You took in the sight, your smile widening. “Wheezie, you look amazing. That dress is perfect for you!”

Wheezie beamed, looking at herself in the mirror with satisfaction. “Really? I wasn’t sure if it was too much, but I love it.”

Just then, Rafe wandered over from where he’d been browsing nearby. “You should get it.” Wheezie rolls her eyes at his hastiness in making a decision. “This isn’t how you shop, you’re too hasty, see this is exactly why I didn’t want you tagging with us.”

You giggle then comment, “I love it too, I think cool toned colors look great on you.” Wheezie then points at you, “see? This is how you shop, you analyze everything then make a decision.”

Rafe smirked and shrugged. “Fair enough. I guess I’ll leave the final decision to you two experts.”

Wheezie gave a satisfied nod and headed back to the fitting room to change out of the dress. Rafe turned to you with a curious look. “Didn’t you find anything you like yet?”

You glanced at him with surprise, then crossed your arms over your chest. You mulled over your answer for a moment. You couldn’t exactly tell him you were being cautious with your spending due to your family’s financial situation. With your dad’s bankruptcy looming over you, every penny counted. Sure, his savings can only hold you off for a few months, but you still need to be careful about how you spend it. In case this mission didn’t work out, not with Rafe or anyone or your family’s bankruptcy was found out—you’d need to flee to The Cut. You would need to have some money saved up to buy a small house that fits your family.

“Not yet,” you replied, trying to sound nonchalant. “I haven’t found anything that really grabs my attention.”

Rafe raised an eyebrow, not entirely convinced. “Aren’t you shopping for Midsummer? Seems like a perfect time to find something new.”

You shrugged slightly, attempting to keep your tone casual. “I actually already have a dress at home. I got it a few weeks ago, and it’s all altered and ready to go. So no need to buy anything else right now.”

Rafe’s expression softened, and he nodded. “Got it. Just wanted to make sure you weren’t missing out on anything.”

You appreciated his concern, even though you couldn’t share the full extent of your situation with him. “Thanks for checking. I guess I’m just being a bit picky today.”

Wheezie emerged from the fitting room, now dressed in her regular clothes. She looked at both of you with a satisfied smile. “All set. Ready to hit the next store?”

As you all moved towards the next store, you couldn’t shake the feeling of Rafe’s gaze lingering on you, and you wondered if he sensed there was more to your story than you were letting on.

When almost two hours passed, Wheezie bought a lot of things, making Rafe’s hands all busy with holding her shopping bags. She’s satisfied with her purchases, but not with any of yours—considering you didn’t buy a single thing, only a pink off shoulder blouse that Rafe paid for.

“I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t buy anything, this was a shopping spree!” she whines, walking inside the nail salon inside the mall. You giggle and argue, “no it wasn’t, it’s a girls day. It’s not about the activity as much as it’s about the company.”

She stares at you, and tries her best to fight her widening smile that’s showing on her face. “Well, you’re so goddamn picky.”

“That, I am.” you add, then you both head to the counter and tell the girl at the counter your designs.

When you’re done showing your designs, the girl takes you to the manicure and pedicure station, from the corner of your eye you see Rafe sitting by the waiting chairs.

The nail salon wasn’t crowded, it only had you and Wheezie and two other girls.

Wheezie settled into her chair, still shaking her head in disbelief. “Seriously, just one blouse? You’re way too picky.”

You chuckled as you sat down next to her, giving a small shrug, “I know what I want, that’s all. And hey, I did get something.”

She rolled her eyes playfully. “Yeah, because Rafe practically forced you to buy it.”

You glanced over at Rafe, who was now seated in the waiting area, surrounded by shopping bags. He caught your eye and gave a small charming smile. Your cheeks warmed slightly, remembering how he’d insisted on paying for the blouse despite your protests.

He’s generous, perhaps it might’ve been all show for you—but you want to believe otherwise, and that he’s your perfect match.

“Yeah, well, it’s a nice blouse,” you said, trying to steer the conversation back.

Wheezie grinned, finally letting the subject drop as she relaxed into her seat. “Fine, fine. But next time I’m the one that’s choosing for you.”

You laughed softly. “Deal.”

As the nail technicians began their work, Wheezie kept the conversation going, talking about school, friends, and the latest gossip. You chimed in here and there, but your thoughts kept drifting back to Rafe. You could feel his presence, even from across the room, and it was both comforting and nerve-wracking.

You couldn’t help but steal another glance in Rafe’s direction. He was scrolling through his phone, looking perfectly content to wait for you both. It was a small thing, but the fact that he was willing to hang around all day just to spend time with his sister—and with you by extension—made your heart flutter.

Wheezie noticed your distraction and leaned over slightly. “He’s been staring at you, you know,” she whispered, a teasing glint in her eye.

You shot her a look. “Stop it, he’s just here for you.”

She shook her head, a knowing smile on her lips. “You keep telling yourself that.”

You tried to focus on your manicure, but Wheezie’s words echoed in your mind. Part of you wondered if she was right—if maybe, just maybe, there was more to Rafe’s presence today than just being a good big brother.

As the nail technicians finished up, Wheezie admired her newly polished nails with a satisfied grin. “Perfect! I love them.”

You glanced at your own nails, the design simple but elegant. “They did a great job,” you agreed.

Wheezie nodded, then turned her attention back to you. “Alright, what’s next on the agenda? Lunch? More shopping?”

Before you could answer, Rafe stood up, making his way over to the two of you. “How’d it go?” he asked, his eyes lingering on you for just a moment longer than necessary.

“Great!” Wheezie chirped. “Look at these!” She showed off her nails, and Rafe gave an approving nod.

“Nice,” he said, then turned to you. “And you?”

You showed him your nails, he took your fingertips into his hands to observe your nails better and you try not to think too much about his intense gaze. “I’m happy with them.” you answer.

“Good,” he said, his voice softening slightly. “Glad to see you enjoyed yourself.” he lets go of your hand and you stretch your fingers and ball them into a fist as you feel your face heating.

“I vote for lunch, by the way.” Rafe tells Wheezie.

“Cute that you think you have a say in this. (Y/N)?” she asks. You eye her sadly. “I’m pretty hungry myself, so my vote’s on lunch too.”

Wheezie giggles, “I’m starving too, but I just felt like being mean to Rafe considering he’s imposing on our girls day.”

“Hey, don’t I at least make a useful bag carrier?” he argues.

When you arrived at the restaurant, the atmosphere was lively, with a soft buzz of conversation and the clinking of glasses. The waiter was polished and charming, with a warm smile that he directed at you just a little longer than necessary.

As you settle into the table, the waiter beams with an easy smile, his eyes subtly drifting to you as he places the menus on the table. “I recommend the special today,” he says, his voice smooth and confident. “But for someone with a keen sense of style, you might enjoy something a bit more refined.”

You smile back, appreciating his attentiveness but not fully engaging. “What would you suggest?”

He leans in slightly, as if sharing a secret. “For someone like you? The seared scallops with a citrus glaze. It’s light, elegant, and has just the right amount of zest.”

Rafe’s gaze sharpens slightly, though he stays quiet, watching the exchange with a faintly furrowed brow.

Before you can respond, Wheezie chimes in, completely unaware of the tension. “That does sound good! But what about the pasta? Is it actually as heavenly as they claim?”

The waiter straightens up, turning to Wheezie with a friendly nod. “The pasta is excellent, especially the carbonara. But if you’re in the mood for something with a bit of flair, I’d still recommend the scallops. Perfect for a special occasion.”

He glances back at you as he says the last part, his eyes lingering just a fraction too long. Rafe shifts in his seat, and you can practically feel the silent claim he’s staking.

“Well, I think I’ll try the carbonara,” Wheezie decides, her voice cheerful. “But I don’t know what my brother would do without you helping us out, right?” She gives a playful look to Rafe, who manages a tight smile.

“I’ll have the steak,” Rafe says, his tone clipped. Then he looks at you, his gaze softening slightly. “And for you?”

“I think I’ll go with the scallops,” you reply, handing the menu back to the waiter.

“Excellent choice,” the waiter says, his smile widening. “I’ll get that started for you.”

As he walks away, Rafe comments with a clipped tone, “seems like he’s taken a liking to you.”

Wheezie, oblivious to the undercurrent in his tone, pipes up, “I think he was just being nice! I mean, you’re really good at picking things that stand out. Maybe that’s what he meant.”

You chuckle, but Rafe’s expression stays serious. “Maybe. Or maybe he just doesn’t know when to back off.”

The rest of the meal continues with the waiter’s attentiveness, each time subtly directed more at you. He refills your drink before it’s empty, brings extra napkins without being asked, and even stops by to make sure your meal is perfect.

“You’ve really got this place figured out,” Wheezie teases, noticing the extra attention. “I bet he’s just hoping for a good tip.”

You laugh, trying to keep things light, “or maybe he’s just really good at his job.”

After the meal, when you’ve finished and the waiter brings the check, he gives you a smile. “I hope you enjoyed everything. If you ever need any more recommendations, I’m always here.”

“Thanks,” you say, keeping your tone polite but neutral.

As Rafe paid the bill, he was noticeably quicker to usher everyone out. He opened the door for you, his hand lingering on your back a moment longer than usual, as if silently reminding you of his presence.

The sky is lilac by the time you all exit the mall and head towards Rafe’s car. He’s silent, but Wheezie’s chatter fills the air enough that you almost don’t notice it.

Wheezie's voice bubbles with excitement. “Today was so much fun! We should do this more often. But seriously, you didn’t buy enough stuff. Next time, I’m forcing you to splurge.”

You chuckle, glancing at her as she hops into the back seat. “We’ll see about that. Maybe next time I’ll be the one carrying all the bags.”

Wheezie grins, buckling her seatbelt. “You better be! Oh, and did you see the way that waiter was all over you? Like, he was so obvious.”

Your cheeks warm slightly at her teasing, and you avoid Rafe’s eyes as you settle into the passenger seat. “He was just being nice. I’m sure he’s like that with everyone.”

“Yeah, right,” Wheezie scoffs, leaning forward between the seats. “I bet he’s never looked at anyone like that before. If Rafe hadn’t been there, he probably would’ve asked for your number.”

Rafe glances at Wheezie through the rearview mirror, his jaw tight. “Good thing I was there then, huh?”

Wheezie raises an eyebrow, picking up on the tension but choosing to keep things light. “Yeah, yeah. Whatever. But seriously, (Y/N), you could’ve at least flirted back a little. You know, just for fun.”

You laugh softly, trying to defuse the situation. “Trust me, Wheezie, I’m not that good at flirting. Plus, I was more focused on our girls’ day.”

“Yeah, right,” Wheezie scoffs. “Says Miss Popular, who had like…a ton of boyfriends in high school!”

“Oh stop it, High school was literally a lifetime ago and I’m so over it.” you protest, leaning close to playfully slap Wheezie’s arm to stop her from further teasing you.

As the car continues down the quiet street, you enjoy the relaxed conversation and the soothing background of Wheezie’s light-hearted commentary. The evening air is cool, and the glow of streetlights casts a warm hue inside the car.

When you pull up to Tannyhill, you help Wheezie take her bags inside to her room. Then she hugs you good bye and says in your ear, “I had such a great time today, next time it will be just us.”

You hum in agreement while rubbing circles in her back, “next time you’re invited to my house for a movie night.”

She breaks the hug with a gasp, “am I?!”

“Of course you are!” you answer, and she giggles in happiness.

You hug each other good-bye one last time and you run down the stairs to walk back to your home.

You’re not surprised to see Rafe waiting for you downstairs, but your heart leaps ten times by the time you approach him. You descend the stairs of the door threshold, he’s leaning casually against his truck. His eyes meet yours as you reach the bottom, and he pushes off the vehicle with a warm smile.

“Hey,” he greets, his voice gentle.

“Hey,” you reply, feeling a rush of excitement. “Thanks again for today. It really meant a lot.”

Rafe steps closer, his gaze softening as he looks at you. “I’m glad you enjoyed it. I did too.”

The air between you is charged with a quiet intensity. Rafe takes a deep breath, as if gathering his thoughts. “I’ve been thinking a lot about today and how much I enjoyed spending time with you.”

You meet his eyes, your heart pounding. “Me too. It was a lot of fun.”

Rafe’s smile grows, but there’s a hint of nervousness in his eyes. “I know we’ve only just started spending time together, but I really like where this is going. I’d like us to be more than just friends.”

You feel a flutter of anticipation. “What do you have in mind?”

Rafe’s eyes are earnest as he takes a step closer. “I want us to be together. To make it official. I think we have something special, and I’d like to see where it can go.”

It’s as if the whole world stopped rotating when your brain processes his words. It’s what you’ve been striving for. Your heart pounds even faster than you’ve ever felt in your life before, you blink in surprise as you watch him.

“I…I want that too, I’d like it a lot.”

Rafe’s expression brightens, and he reaches out to take your hand. “Great. I’ve been looking forward to this.”

The cool evening air feels more inviting than ever, and with Rafe by your side, the future suddenly seems full of endless potential. Though even with all of that, for some reason, it feels slightly strange that he asked you to be his girlfriend when you two didn’t even have your first date yet.

You’re scared of what your mother will say about this, about him asking you this question. So, you decide that the best answer for now is not to tell her that you are now Rafe’s girlfriend when he didn’t even take you out on a first date yet.

[my-plastic-life]

Behind the Scenes: Making Melody

Ah, Melody. The daughter of Ariel and Eric. Ariel, the only princess to have a child (Descendants doesn't count). Since the sequel to The Little Mermaid launched in 2000, I've wanted a Melody doll. To this day I can't believe the Disney Store hasn't made one.

Technically, one was released back in the day. I remember going to Toys R Us to get it, and upon seeing it, put it back on the shelf. Why? Because it looked nothing like my favorite princess's daughter.

A bit scary, right? Her eyes, for one, are brown and they should be blue or at least greenish-blue. And her face overall just gives me an uneasy vibe. I can't explain it, but she just doesn't look right. Even back then I couldn't fork over the money for her. Now, try to find her on eBay, and I swear she's ranged in price from $400-$800. Definitely out of my price range for a sub-par doll. Yes, I'd like to have the clothes, but no way am I forking over that kind of cash for clothes that I'm sure I can have someone make. And while I've come a long way with customizing and could easy change her eye color, it doesn't change the fact that she looks... off.

And thus began my journey of creating my own Melody doll. Again, Disney Store should really make one. A lot of us fans and collectors want one, and we know they have the ability to make smaller dolls because we've gotten Alice, Wendy, and Tinker Bell. Come on Disney Store...

But when a company fails to provide a doll you desire, you do the logical thing - you make your own!

The first step was determining the best candidate to transform into Melody. Obviously I wanted her to have one of the aforementioned Disney Store bodies designed for smaller characters. It would match the Ariel dolls I have, and I'd been eyeing an outfit made for that exact body (Melody's primary outfit, her bloomers).

So the body was simple. Next was the face. Obviously either of the three heads that came with the body would have sufficed. Skin tones were a good match to the Ariel dolls I have, so another easy step. The face, though... Melody is often portrayed as having a very large, toothy grin. I've seen people create Melody dolls using Ariel's face, and while that does make total sense, I felt her smile was a bit too "small" for this girl.

If I wanted to keep the original head with the body, Tinkerbell was out because of her pointed ears. That's one thing I can't fix LOL. Sculpting and drawing are definitely out of my area of expertise.

That left Alice and Wendy:

Great candidates, but their smiles definitely aren't right. Melody rarely had a closed mouth smile, if ever, and while I've seen some people customize these dolls into Melody and other characters and add painted teeth, the original issue still exists - the smile isn't big enough.

And yes, Tinkerbell, of course, has the open mouth smile - but the ears!!! Why?!

Another issue with using a Disney Store doll is the head itself. Disney Store doll heads are significantly harder than Mattel and Azone dolls, meaning it takes extra strength/work to reroot them. I could try dyeing the doll hair or using fabric markers on it, but A) that could possibly stain the doll, and B) I've tried fabric markers before and it makes the hair feel like straw.

I was convinced I'd inevitably have to use Wendy or Alice and have someone else reroot her for me, but then I thought of something else. Mattel has reacquired the rights to make Disney Princess dolls. That, of course, includes Ariel. I've made hybrid dolls before (my Inuyasha dolls combine two or three different dolls into one amazing creation), and I remember seeing the princess dolls when Mattel brought them back - particularly Ariel, who had a large toothy smile.

Plus, because she's Mattel, I know how the mechanics work with swapping heads and that the head is a lot softer and easier to work with in terms of rerooting. So I ordered her, but I wasn't yet sure if she'd work. Would her skin tone match either of the Disney Store bodies? What about the head size - would it be too big or small compared to the Disney Store Ariel? And of course, Mattel = pixelated faces... though I'd be repainting the lips anyway for sure because Melody's lips are a more natural pink shade rather than the bright red Ariel has.

Well, luck was on my side - the Ariel head not only matched the skin tone of the smaller bodies (which were also very close to the Disney Store Ariel), it was actually smaller than the original Wendy and Alice heads! I don't know what's up with that, but what a happy accident!

However, there was still another step. I've put Disney Store heads on Barbie bodies before, but not vice versa. And these are smaller bodies. How would it work? The verdict was a bobble head, but some rubber bands around the neck peg took care of that. I think it completely works!

The next step was the rerooting process. I don't know why it's so satisfying to pull all those little plugs out of a doll head, and then poke new hair right into it. :D Of course, before the poking, I had to use acetone to remove the factory paint on the scalp, then paint back over it with black and seal it. This time I was determined not to use too much hair, as in making it too long. When I rerooted my Azone Kagome, I didn't trim the hair until it was completely rooted, and not only did it make a huge mess, it was very wasteful because of how much I had to trim off to get it to the right length. Melody's hair isn't that long (it seems to hit just past her butt I think), so I felt fine cutting each piece I plugged in half. In the end, that proved to be a good decision because I only had to trim a very small amount to even it out and get the look I wanted. Yay!

Once that was done, I gave her a boil wash, allowed the hair to dry overnight, and then added the special glue inside from The Doll Planet Hair (I also got the hair from them). After that dried overnight, it was time to start on the face. I decided to start at the top and work my way down to lower my chances of messing up something that was finished. So I did the eyebrows first. Melody has significantly thicker eyebrows than Ariel, and of course they're black rather than red. Surprisingly enough, I was able to get them thicker and still even... this coming from the person who spent two hours on eyebrows on a different doll. >.<

Next was the eyes. At first I wasn't sure if I should leave them or not, but in the end I decided they needed to be changed. They were way too blue, and they're really supposed to match Ariel's and Eric's. She is their child, after all. Plus, thanks to Mattel, they were also pixelated. BOOOOO!

Many of the scenes in the movie show Melody as having green eyes, so I started there. But then I thought, I better make sure they match Ariel. So I got an Ariel doll out and used her as a guide. Let me tell you, matching that color was insanely difficult. Too green, too bright, too blue, too dark, etc... Then I kept going back and forth because, again, she seems to have green eyes. But then again, they should match Ariel's eyes. Remember, being a perfectionist can be super exhausting.

I finally had what I thought was a good color, so I used that to help shape the eyes. I kept the original white part of the eye and just painted over what was already there, trying to match the Disney Store style (large portion in the darker color, small ring in the lighter color, and then the pupil). But then, after holding it next to Ariel, I was still dissatisfied with the color (way too bright). I kept looking at Ariel, and then I even saw some other custom dolls with blue eyes and some shots of Melody do depict the eyes as being more blue than green (Ariel, too):

So, after literally a week of just trying to get the best color, I finally got it!!! Victory dance!

Last was the lips. Should be simple, right? I like the color of my Barbie self's lips. They're a natural shade of pink, and I have the combo of paints I used to pull that off saved, so I could just replicate that, right? WRONG! I didn't factor in the original factory paint, which serves as a base coat and affects what goes on top of it, plus this doll has a warmer skin tone than Mini Me, so the color turned out to be super bright and very unnatural-looking. So I did a ton of mixing and modifying the paint recipe until finally I was satisfied with the shade. I had to go over the teeth a couple of times too because A) pixels and B) I went over the white a bit with the lipstick.

Once her face was done, I could start styling her hair. Melody just has a simple ponytail with large bangs like her mom. The hardest part was definitely those bangs. They're not straight or flat bangs, but they have kind of a "poof" to them.

The part was a little off - it should have been more to the side and less to the center. However, I was following the original factory root line, so I didn't really pay attention to where it was. That was my fault lol. I took a few strands of hair and held them out of the way as I tied the rest into a ponytail. To give the bangs their ideal effect, I tied that hair back separately with a hair tie I'd bought that resembles Melody's green one. Then I started pulling them out little by little, hoping to achieve the desired look. This was the first result:

Not bad, but I thought I could make it a little better. I noticed some small bald spots around that area in the scalp (oops), so I added some more hair to those areas to make the bangs a little fuller. I re-tied the bang strands (didn't boil wash the second set of hair because I didn't want to risk messing up the paint and I wanted them to stand up somewhat anyway), manipulated the positioning a bit, and came up with this:

I think that's a little better and gives the desired effect. I may still try to manipulate it some more, but I did put some of my special doll hair spray on it to hold it in place. The ponytail bottom just needed a small curl, and while I tried my curling iron on it, I found it to be better to just curl it by hand and spray it.

The final part was the outfit. I got the outfit from malanedoll on Etsy (she makes gorgeous Disney outfits!) The outfit also came with Melody's symbolic seashell locket.

I know what you're thinking - where the heck is her tail? Well, I can't sew that well (I can make little pillows, relatively decent curtains, and maybe some garden flags, but outfits? Nope lol), and I haven't been able to find a tail that would work with this body in the right color. By next year I might have her tail, but for now, she'll stay in her signature bloomer outfit. That is what she's wearing most of the time, and she did ultimately decide to stay a human in the end. :D

And with that, Melody was complete! Probably not 100% perfect, like most of my creations, but satisfying enough for me! Of course, if Disney Store makes an official Melody doll, I'll buy her - and totally do a comparison LOL. And I do intend to eventually get her that iconic red tail!

Thanks for reading my journey on creating Ariel's daughter! To this day, she's still the only Disney princess to ever become a parent lol.

[bumble66]

The similarities between closeted right-wingers and Chris Evans

Alternative title: "Dear Mr. future president Evans,"

Recently, I saw how Chris Evans met Joe Biden. For people who don't know. Chris Evans has a political online platform called ASP. This was not the first time he met a famous politican but meeting the president of the United States is something else. It should be clear by now why he does that... Anyway, it reminded me of the gossip I found recently:

As I mentioned in my last big blog post, about Chris' potential boyfriends, I am not really a fan of marvel and didn't know much about him during his time as Captain America. I only got interested after he started the cringeworthy PR relationship in November 2022. In 2018, I was made aware of how many closeted celebrities exist and Mr. Evans being so clumsy with his Portugal bride gave me the perfect opportunity to uncover this Hollywood facade.

As you can see, I have also been asked by a lot of people why I think Chris could be closeted (either gay, bi or a straight guy who doesn't want to commit and just sleeps around). I will answer these questions in relation to today's topics: I. The Portugal PR relationship is mostly done for his future political career (or that was the plan before the backlash) II. The behavior of closeted right-wingers resembles Chris Evans' III. Portugal Bride was not the first PR relationship rumor but why does a rich, attractive and alleged womanizer like Chris need PR relationships all the time? As I always say. Everything on my tumblr is alleged. I merely summarize what people speculate online and give my own opinion on that.

Tim Scott, a failed GOP 2024 candidate and alleged closeted gay man, announced on X that he got engaged to a woman:

As you can see from the screenshot, no one's buying it. It is rumored Tim Scott is doing this because he will be chosen as Trump's vice president. People online claim that Tim Scott being gay has been talked about way before the first "Why doesn't have Tim Scott have a girlfriend" articles:

I heard about Tim Scott being gay and being pressured to have a PR girlfriend around the same time Chris pretended to have gotten married in September and that made me think... I can't find the comment anymore but I remember someone of Chris' fans on the LSA forum suggesting that Chris' "A starting point" political platform isn't just for shits and giggles. Apparently, he wants to go into politics after his acting career. No idea how successful he will be now with that after his latest movie flops and the Portugal relationship having led to lost followers on his social media accounts because it made him appear as a "dollar store Leonardo DiCaprio" but in general..., this idea isn't too far off. Remember the Terminator aka Arnold Schwarzenegger? An action hero became the Governor of California and with Chris Evan's fake Captain America image, pretending online and in interviews to be like Steve Rogers, he could sway a lot of people too!

Remember. The alleged marriage wasn't the first PR relationship of Chris Evans. At least according to his fandom, when they explained how he and Portugal Bride met, he was involved in several other PR relationships before:

According to this person, the relationships with Christina Ricci and Minka Kelly from long ago, were planned by a PR team too and it adds up with a blog post I found years ago about how Minka is allegedly a beard for my back then favorite actor Jake Gyllenhaal. Bearding appears to be a career of its own in Hollywood: https://gaywriter.wordpress.com/2012/06/19/blind-item-jake-gyllenhaal-is-looking-for-a-new-female-beard-to-present-illusion-of-heterosexuality-to-fans/

So his PR team not only allegedly had several options next to the Portugal Bride (like Monica Barbaro) but they were apparently also responsible for his faked relationship with Lily James? It is rumored that Lily wanted more from this PR arrangement from back in 2020. Possibly real love? The social media site Icons+ reports that "Lily James left Chris Evans to be a millionaire's "other woman"". She basically publicly "cheated" on Chris and many gossip sites reported on it. Did Lily do that as revenge because Chris solely wanted PR and rejected her? Kinda like "if you don't give me real love, I ain't giving you positive PR either". It makes me wonder though. Why would a heterosexual man privately reject a pretty woman like Lily James after wanting to be seen with her in paparazzi photographs after all? Odd.

Yes, Chris' alleged personal Paparazzo with the name Jesal basically admitted that he was called to do the pictures with Lily back in 2020 (Nowadays, he seems to be busy with the Portugal PR relationship as you can see from the screenshot, where he was called for a christmas party Portugal Bride and Chris attended). This reminds me of of another failed 2024 GOP candidate who is rumored to be closeted. There is a medium article regarding Ron DeSantis called "Is the GOP gossiping that Ron DeSantis is gay?", how most if not all of the GOP party know about his alleged homosexualty:

As you can see, not just his own party but the general public thinks so too. In fact, they speak about Ron DeSantis' being closeted the same way some people speak about Chris being allegedly closeted:

The replies to this dailymail article about Chris' and Portugal Bride's relationship-reveal, demonstrate that people think that both Chris and Ron overplay the alpha male macho tough guy image, solely to cover their true sexual orientation.

But PR relationships can also have another function. As I pointed out on my blog before: There are many heterosexual men I know who just wanted to sleep around but because of societal pressure, they pretend to be monogamous. The latest political example of that seems to be Gavin Newsom who has been in the news for being an alleged serial cheater. He was already caught cheating back in 2007. On X I found this summary of his latest shenanigans: (TRIGGER WARNING: mention of SA)

Why do I mention Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom in relation to Chris Evans? Because they all have one thing in common. A fake stable married man image. Look at the header picture of DeSantis and Newsom on X. Newsom holding his son in his harm. A few weeks ago, DeSantis had a header picture of holding his children's hands and the latest picture, you can see right now, also shows his wife and kids again to portray the family man image while allegedly being someone completely different (a closet case = Ron, a cheater= Gavin). Sorry not sorry but when I saw those header images combined with the rumors I knew about those two guys, I immediately though that Chris is not so different. He also calls the paparazzi, so he can be portrayed for the public as a guy who has a stable relationship and doesn't randomly sleep around in all kids of places.

As someone pointed out on the Lipstick Alley thread called "Chris Evans Relationship Theories 5", he used to go to parties similar to the ones seen in the movie "Eyes Wide Shut" but these rumors were allegedly scrapped by his team when he became Captain America. Why did they worry so much about this specific gossip? Was it true after all? Apparently this goes back as far as 2006:

I have no problems with that because I am pro sexual liberation. I actually point this out so we can normalize this and let people be who they really are, so that they don't have to do these fake relationships anymore.

I mean, remember the screenshot from my "Chris Evans possible boyfriends" post? The user ShellyT20... how she described that a lot of PR relationships in Hollywood exist because the male actors either sleep with each other, have p-word scandals and/or are serial cheaters "but post fake romance stuff on IG and other public platforms. It gives a fake sense of normalcy and stability and shuts fans up for the most part as well as acting as a distraction." When I read this I got reminded of the public "beyond the blinds podcast" episode you can listen to on spotify. The one about the Hemsworth brothers. There it was alleged that Chris Hemsworth is constantly cheating. I wasn't surprised. He isn't my type but I can't deny that he is what most consider super attractive + tall + rich = in no way is this guy monogamous as a famous hollywood actor (LMAO the audactiy to even thinkt hat)... Sadly, when I confront some people with that... for instance Evans fans on LSA or X, most roll their eyes and don't believe that.... They were like: "How can a guy like C. Hemsworth, who posts social media posts about loving being a father and being married for over a decade possibly be such a bad guy"... ... ... ... ... Well and this the reason why Hollywood still fools you with PR relationships because most of you are gullible. You want to see men married with children and as long as the women are age appropriate, you eat it up. And all this goes even beyond these Hollywood celebrities and politicians the general public is aware of. Apparently, even e-celebs are in PR relationships/fake image relationships these days. The youtuber TheQuartering, who said he was partying with right-wing e-celebs said this about them last year: (TRIGGER WARNING: transphobic slur)

Just like how Chris Evan's fans are disappointed that he wasn't the internet boyfriend after all (his fake image for the 2010s) and started to date random young women like Leonardo DiCaprio and Bradley Cooper, TheQuartering was disappointed too with his right-wing colleagues, who pretended to be committed husbands with children while actually being a closeted pride parade. The right-wing commentarors TheQuartering talks about are: Elijah Schaffer, Jack Posobiec and Mike Cernovich. When I found that out I was shocked. I was like "So even these e-celebs are basically "their own Hollywood club" and need PR relationships to function publicly". It really shows how deep gender roles are still ingrained in our society. That even internet-famous people have to have a family man image and portray themselves in a certain way to become "e-celeb-A-list". And if they don't, they will be denied that status.

I know it hurts that your favorite A-list stars are also wife cheaters and that their activism is most likely fake only so that they can continue participating in Hollywood orgies (Which apparently already happen on the e-celeb level). But at one point it had to come out and isn't it better to accept reality than to participate in and support these fake scenarios only to feel better about the world? Cause it is not just TheQuartering who exposed the fake image of the right-wing online community. Blaire White, a right-winger herself, pointed out the same. As people say, where there is smoke, there is fire:

In this video at 55:35 regarding Blaze Media, Blaire White spills tea about closeted e-celebs. It also includes orgies and drugs... like with our favorite super hero (allegedly).

(Blaire is not the only one who knows about the orgy parties)

Lastly, one of the most famous right-wing e-celebs is Steven Crowder. On his channel he had a video where he once admitted that he had a bisexual phase... a phase..

And according to his own logic that means:

He also went so far and basically created beard twins. I remember clearly the video where he announced the pregnancy of his wife. He held up a picture into the camera from an ultrasound. It was like "See, I am hetero after all. Are you happy now?". That's at least my opinion on how the video looked like and it adds up with what peole usually say about him:

Honestly, if someone had told me that this text is about Chris Evans, I'd have believed it and so now we have come full circle. While I only know about Chris Evan's since the pandemic (As I said, I don't watch super hero movies), I am still disappointed. In some interviews, he appeared so adorable, awkward and different from other men in Hollywood (like when he was interviewed about his "Lightyear movie announcement" tweet on Jimmy Kimmel). But in the end he is no better than the closeted republicans. Portraying a conservative image of marriage while behind closed doors it is worse than a sitcom trying to convince you that canned laughter makes everything funnier.

(picture: Is this the awkwardness people talk about? Adorable...)

Yes, there have always been rumors that his real personality is being "weird and awkward" and that he is not just acting in movies but also in most interviews. It goes so far that someone claimed he had been rejected on a date and that's why some people assume it is actually him who initiated the Portugal PR relationship and basically paid for it because he can't get someone himself through normal means. Are some people punished with their good looks?

IMO just like with the married right-wing e-celebs who do orgies all the time, it is also a bad idea of Chris wanting to become a father (at least according to his "sexiest man alive" PR narrative from 2022 which seems to be in the trash can now too).

But let's assume his PR team has that still on their minds: Not only would it be solely for his image (which would make this situation PR either way, even if the marriage were real) but according to all his alleged wild ways, he is also unfit to parent, it would be a disaster actually. Controversial commentator Pearl Davis described it very well. How some people just shouldn't be parents:

I agree with Vale. She would just be in it for the image of being a married woman and in our case... a married, monogamous, non-cheating family man. A user on LSA said that when you switch out "fake nails" with "fake teeth" in Pearl Davis' message, you will have the pefect description of Chris Evans:

(Chris Evans being interviewed at the Lightyear premiere resembling Barry Manilow with too much botox) Sorry but after seeing this picture, I have to agree with her. I love his clothing style but a bi-peacock who is more interested in vanity and fake status will never be a good role model for children. As the saying goes: "You can't have it both ways"

I know this is all a tough pill to swallow but c'mon people. This is the year 2024 and at one point this fakeness just needs to stop. Celebrities, politicians and even social meda e-celebs... you are being fooled. And according to Hollywood insider and daughter of famous TV personality John Walsh, a lot of times, one partner of the arrangement is suffering. Is this really what you support? I don't and that's why I uncover all these PR relationships of the entertainment world because as a true progressive, I don't think that people should be judged based on outdated gender expectations like marriage and monogamy.

The closet kills... your real personality. I mean honestly, what do you gain from being remembered after your death as someone you never were? As Joan Rivers jokes at 0:43 in a short clip from 1966. This so called bearding has been going on forever. I don't think we need a 100th anniversary of this shameful practice. So please help me to expose this so that in the future, celebrities can become famous for truly being themselves.

[sillystardew]

Bachelor/ettes helping in the mines

Some of these are loosely based on the mod ‘NPC Adventures’ on nexusmods! Check it out, it’s super fun to play with, especially if you normally have trouble in the mines on your own

Most of these take place pre-relationship, but can be interpreted romantically :)

Gender neutral reader 🦇

Bachelors

Sam

-He’s not the worst person to bring with you, but I wouldn’t bring him too far down in the mines, he can’t handle the monsters 😭 -Abby has tried (and failed) to convince him to go before, so you’re going to have to be really convincing -Screaming at literally. Everything. “WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT NOISE??” “That was your own footstep, Sam.” -He uses a generic sword from the adventurers guild (or one of your spares) :)

Alex

-He pretends He’s big and tough the whole time, but if a monster gets closer than 2 ft he’s screaming as high-pitched as humanly possible -He’s strong enough to use the mallets, but he uses the swords too -He’s overall a pretty good mining partner! As long as you don’t have sensitive hearing (rip)

Shane

-Actually surprisingly helpful when it comes to monsters. He’s got some good muscle on him! -He can beat the slimes and bugs no problem, but the shadow people freak him out. Stay on lvl 50 and above and you’re golden, he’s your guy -he doesn’t like the monsters getting too close to him, so he uses a sword

Elliott

-He’ll only go down the first 5-10 levels. Anything past that gets him way too close to the danger, and he just.. doesn’t have the right skill set to defend himself -He really doesn’t want to have to hold a weapon, but for protection he’ll bring a flimsy sword -He’s definitely scared, but damn, this is an AMAZING opportunity to get inspiration for a story, and he just can’t pass that up

Harvey

-Look, he’s very flattered you would invite him -but he is NOT GOING DOWN THERE. -ARE YOU INSANE. -He’s very happy to help you prepare and help you assess yourself afterwards though! -Before marriage he 100% is just like “PLEASE PLEASE TAKE THESE LIFE ELIXIRS YOU DON’T HAVE TO PAY JUST TAKE THEM” every time you even suggest you might check out the mines -after you’re married? Why do you think he charges you 2000g every time you pass out…. All those life elixirs, punk…….

Sebastian

-He’s not very strong, but he makes up for it with how fast he moves. Idk how he got across the level you’re on but you turn around and he’s gone -he uses one of the smaller daggers, he doesn’t really have the coordination or strength to swing a sword around -if he gets scratched even a little bit he’s like “fuck this shit” and dips

Bachelorettes

Abigail

-by far the best person to bring with you, she has tons of experience (and could probably snap your spine in two. Do you know how much strength it actually takes to use a sword like she does??) -She gets a little creeped out by the bugs, but other than that she’s pretty fearless regarding monsters.

Haley

-yeah, no. She isn’t going down there. -the only way you have a chance of convincing her is telling her about the great pictures she can get -If the picture opportunities somehow persuade her, you better believe you’re going to act as her personal bodyguard the whole time.

Penny

-ohhh she is NOT made for adventure -She’s glad to just stay at home and patch you up when you’re all done, thank you very much -She loves the stories you tell about the mines, she’s amazed at how much you get accomplished every day. You’re a huge inspiration for her!

Emily

-She’s happy to go down with you, as long as you don’t hurt any monsters while you’re down there together! She knows protecting yourself is important, but she wants the least amount of casualties possible -She is not bringing a weapon but a lot of the monsters just… leave her alone??

Leah

-actually one of the more likely candidates to go with you. She’s strong and can hold her own, plus she has an eye for beautiful and valuable gems -Definitely one of the more helpful mining partners! -like Elliott, she’s using a lot of her experience down here as inspiration for her art -she’ll just use a basic sword :)

Maru

-She’s definitely hesitant about going, but there are a lot of valuable materials down there.. -scratch that. Her dad is gonna kill her faster than those monsters ever could -She will not hesitate to make you a checklist of the materials she needs for her latest project -If she ever somehow went without her dad knowing, she’d take a sword!

[catofadifferentcolor]

Terrible Fic Idea #85: The Old Guard, but make it Assassin's Creed

My brother has always been a big fan of Assassin's Creed, but I never gave the games a shot until recently, when it seemed a natural progression from all the Crusades research I've been doing for The Old Guard fic I want to write but probably never will. Once I realized Isu bullshit could be a perfect explanation for TOG immortality, this (incredibly self-indulgent) crossover was born.

Or: What if Merrick Pharmaceuticals was a competitor of Abstergo Industries?

Just imagine it:

Pharmaceutical research is an expensive, cut-throat business. Viagra is a $2 billion dollar a year industry. Humira, the blockbuster drug of 2018, sold nearly $20 billion in the US alone. So I imagine if you're a pharmaceutical CEO of limited morals and great ambition, it might seem like a better idea to steal ideas from your competitor who seems to hit it out of the ballpark every time instead of pouring billions of dollars into what may turn out to be an unfruitful venture.

Enter Hugh Merrick, father of Steve Merrick and founder of Merrick Pharmaceuticals. Needing a blockbuster and desperate to get one over on Abstergo, he hires a hacker to slip into Abstergo's servers and find him the ripest, juiciest plum they can sometime in the early 2000s, before the (modern) events of the games or the 2019 TOG movie.

The hacker comes back with the schematics for the Animus.

The idea of genetic memories seems absurd, but Hugh figures that if Abstergo has been using the Animus since the 1980s to get ahead, there's no reason he can't do it too - all he needs is a single Piece of Eden and all his problems are solved.

Hugh builds the Animus and has the hacker go back into Abstergo's systems looking for a candidate to put into it. But finding someone with Assassin blood seems dangerous - they're likely to be an assassin too and could be dangerous if they try to escape, plus the Templars killed off nearly all of them. Templar descendants are out because most are Templars themselves and if Hugh's plan is to succeed he heeds to stay off their radar for as long as possible.

The hacker returns with Abstergo's list of people who may be useful if all other avenues fail. It contains a list of people who were peripherally involved during the invents that interest them - mainly high-ranking courtiers close to Popes Alexander VI and Julius II - and their descendants. They might know things about events of Ezio's time.

Enter Joe and Nicky.

For the past few hundred years, their primary cover identities involve being the children or grandchildren of their previous cover story, all the way back to their first deaths. There are fewer questions and you get to "inherit" all your old stuff.

This method has worked quite well for them - until Merrick learns that their "ancestors" were part of the court of Pope Julius II from 1497 (when he was still Bishop of Ostia) until his death in 1513. Nicky was his private secretary, Joe was a court painter, and contemporary sources suggest they were highly placed enough to know whatever Pope Julius II knew about Ezio's apple. Such as where Ezio might have hidden it.

It's not an unreasonable plan, except for the pesky fact of Joe and Nicky's immortality. After all, the animus is designed to draw on genetic memory, not the subject's own memories. And even if it can be used to view memories laid down in their own genes 500 years ago - which is doubtful, - there's a high likelihood of it killing them - and if Hugh were to learn of their immortality, things would only get worse for them. But they have little choice once they're captured and brought to Hugh's secret research bunker somewhere north of Inverness.

What follows is a largely self-indulgent stroll through the more interesting episodes of Joe and Nicky's life together.

Nicky's first go in the animus is a jumbled, confused mess as Hugh's tech minion learns the ropes as she goes. Nicky ends up hopscotching through his early memories - for instance, a memory where he's learning how to use a sword as a young squire jumps to him using the same move during the Siege of Jerusalem. That strand of memory continues on for a bit until another interaction gets him sent into the memory of another battle/training session/conversation with the person in question and so on.

Joe's first time in the animus goes a little better, as Hugh realizes that his minion needs to learn how to program the animus before they put their most valuable subject into it, and so let's her learn with Joe. Hugh's minion (who is really beginning to regret taking this job) succeeds, pulling Joe into the genetic memory of one of his ancestors: al-Kahina, an Amazigh religious and military leader who led indigenous resistance to the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb. There should be suggestions of a Sword of Eden somewhere in events, but since they don't share Precursor knowledge, Hugh's not interested in letting the memory play out.

Nicky's second session gets them to the time period they want, but his memories have next to nothing to do with the PoE. The same holds true for Joe, when his second session puts him through his POV of that time period. And though Hugh has his minion take them up and down every memory of that time period searching for the smallest hint of anything that might point them in the right direction, there's nothing to find.

Or, rather: Nicky and Joe did meet Ezio once or twice, in waiting rooms or reception areas or the like, but they spent that time talking about art, or the weather, or philosophy - nothing about politics, or Ezio's travels, or PoEs at all.

Otherwise, most of Nicky and Joe's memories of early 16th century Rome involve Joe's rivalry with Michelangelo, who among other things persisted in flirting with Nicky even after he made it clear he wasn't interested. (Joe was, among other things, responsible for getting Michelangelo the commission for David in Florence to get him out of Rome and away from Nicky.)

There's some Vatican politics as well - Nicky's part in organizing the Swiss Guard, Joe's in organizing the Vatican Museums, and the removal of the Borgias from power - and some global politics - the 1503 dispensation for Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, etc. But most of their memories are largely Joe and Nicky being Joe and Nicky in the High Renaissance (and rather hating their jobs, as neither of them particularly like working for Julius II but were blackmailed into it to avoid being labeled as Ottoman spies.)

This goes on for several days until Hugh orders his minion to start looking for the memories of other "ancestors" - essentially, to refine the animus and her technique while he gets his hacker to find better candidates for the animus. And if this accidentally destroys Joe and Nicky's minds in the process? So be it. The plan was always to kill them at the end of their usefulness anyway.

Hugh's minion spends a day doing as asked - there's a few tantalizing glimpses of Joe and Nicky at the court of Kublai Khan in the 1270s - before she has an opportunity to act on the guilty conscious that's come to plague her.

The minion helps them escape - destroying the animus, wiping the records, and blowing the place sky high to cover the bloody swath they have to cut to get out of the secret research bunker. Amongst the casualties is Hugh Merrick, propelling his son Steve into position as youngest CEO in Pharma.

Joe and Nicky rejoin Andy and Booker - who'd been doing their best to cut their own bloody swath through anyone tangentially related to the mercenaries who kidnapped their brothers - and decide to turn their attention to tracking down PoE and destroying animus technology wherever it can be found, believing there are no peaceful uses for either. As a glad you escaped present, Booker tanks Merrick Pharmaceutical's stocks so badly the company never recovers, eventually going bankrupt.

As for the minion? Maybe she's a young Rebecca Crane prior to her recruitment by the Assassins and it’s her experiences with Hugh's animus that get her recruited by the Assassin Order. Maybe she's just a random OC who sets herself up with a new identity halfway around the world and watches gleefully as Merrick Pharmaceuticals and Abstergo Industries both eventually crash and burn.

Bonuses include: 1) Joe and Nicky being the most passive aggressive kidnapees in the history of kidnappings - on the face of things, going along with exactly what Hugh asks of them, but doing their best to focus on innocuous memories and figuring out how to purposefully make memories "skip" between similar episodes without Hugh ever noticing the glitch. Also, playing up the Bleeding Effect so that by day three they're only speaking in Medieval Italian; 2) Hugh being a better class of villain than his son. Immoral? Unethical? Yes, but in a sophisticated businessman way, not a jacket and hoodie, stab a man with a letter opener type way. For some reason I'm imagining him as Jean-Luc Picard, if Picard ever had a Mirror Universe alternate; and 3) Interludes of Andy and Booker searching for Joe and Nicky after they've been kidnapped. This should be part action-thriller along the lines of Taken, part buddy comedy, and involve an arc wherein Andy learns of Booker's deep unhappiness with his immortality and helps him come to terms with the feelings that would have otherwise eventually led to the events of the 2019 movie.

And that is surprisingly more than I thought I would have had. As always, feel free to adopt this bun, just link back if you decide to do anything with it.

More TOG Fic Ideas | More Terrible Fic Ideas

[themanlykittenkayden]

I keep thinking about how weird of choice Charlie Slimecicle was for the beginning of the maze event.

Tubbo and Roier make sense. They’re deeply invested in the eggs, and from my understanding they’re both invested in the mysteries of the island and Cucurucho too. They’re perfect candidates to receive a mysterious possible clue.

But Slimecicle’s last stream was about the Juanaflippa he found. His character is laser focused on his family and the ways he failed them. He even said in the roulette room he has no stake in the disappearance of the eggs. You could argue it was specifically because he didn’t have an egg, but that’s in a very different way to Tubbo and Roier. They both have living eggs related to them that they regularly take care of- Roier with Richas and Tubbo with Chayanne and Tallulah. They went into that maze just as invested in trying to find their children as any of the other parents.

So why was Charlie chosen to receive a book? He wasn’t a convenient choice because he typically only “wakes up” for big server events. So, even more than the other two, he was chosen for this mission. Why?

[qqueenofhades]

I truly hate to ask, but could you please break down exactly what's being proposed with Moore v Harper? From what I understand it's more possible meddling in voting rights but can't quite get the details anywhere.

Welp. Okay. Basically, Moore v. Harper, which SCOTUS is going to hear oral arguments for today, is a Frankenstein's monster of a case and the culmination of decades of Republican work to suppress and overturn elections by quote-unquote legal means (rather than you know, armed coups). In a nutshell, it proposes to totally undo the last 235 years of federalist democracy, under the guise of sticking to an "originalist!" interpretation of the Constitution. Fun, right? Fascists! They're just so fun!

The points at stake are these:

The Constitution technically grants individual state legislatures the ultimate authority over how that state selects its Electoral College delegates. As such, every state soon adopted laws stating that those electors shall be chosen by the popular vote. BUT, since the wording remains that the legislatures have the final say... you now see where the problems are incoming.

As such, if the fascists get their way, SCOTUS will just... throw out two centuries of precedent and allow state legislatures to select their presidential electors any old which way. This, and I cannot stress this enough, WILL NOT BE BY POPULAR VOTE, especially in Republican-controlled states. People can have their little elections and vote for their little candidates, but if the state legislature is not legally bound to respect their choice, they can appoint whichever electors they want. In the GOP dream scenario, a Democrat would win the state, the Republican-controlled legislature would ignore that, certify Republican electors (remember, the Constitution says they have the final say!!) and send them to the EC to vote for the Republican. This result would then, despite being a brazen subversion of democracy in plain sight, be legally binding.

In other words, a Democrat would never win a presidential election again, and the state legislatures would also probably not feel too fussed about respecting other results they disagreed with, i.e. for state-level results.

This is, yes, basically a nightmare. So! How worried should we be?

Kagan, Sotomayor, and KBJ, the court liberals, will vote against it.

Thomas and Alito will straight up vote for the worst possible version of this they can come up with and only then bother making up some nonsense legal theory to justify it, probably Blah Blah States' Rights.

Gorsuch will probably also vote for it, because his big thing is Textual Originalism!!!

So that's 3 for and 3 against. The wild cards here are Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Barrett.

Roberts will probably try to persuade the wingnuts to accept some watered-down, plausibly deniable version of this, not because he is a moderate (he's not) or because he doesn't want this (he does). However, he's been having a lot of fits over public perception of the court and he doesn't want to build popular support for reforming it, so as he did with Roe, he might try to come up with some milquetoast middle ground. However, since he did fail with Roe and then went ahead and voted with the rest of the conservatives anyway, he can NOT be trusted.

Kavanaugh is bought and paid for and will probably do whatever his puppetmasters tell him to do. Barrett is a theocrat and will probably vote for it.

I feel as if the most likely outcome is that we get some monstrosity stitched-together patchwork nightmare that gives more cover for GOP legislatures to "legally" meddle with election results, rather than straight-up ending democracy, but since they have done that before, we honestly don't know.

As I have said before, SCOTUS does not NEED to hear any case that comes before it. They have total discretion to refuse. So the fact that they agreed to hear this one means they do intend to do something bad. The only question is HOW bad.

FASCISM! SO FUN.

[shockwaifuafterdark]

Saw your godrick headcanons and uhh there were DEFINITELY feelings

If you're doing requests, we need a seluvass one where one of his potions doesn't work on the reader, but they pretend that it does, and we do things willingly for the shits and giggles of seeing him 10 mi deep in his own massive ego. Jk jk...unless? Sft/nsft, I just thought this one might be up your alley. Jerkwad guys in big hats, yada yada.

WAIT WHEN DID I POST MY GODRICK HEADCANONS?? I do have them but I honestly can't remember posting them to Tumblr yet? Unless you are talking about screenshots of discord convos I had with my friends about wanting to clip his stupid toenails and also setting him up with an evil jester wife?

Okay, I'd like to preface this by saying that I am a huge fan of creepy asshole characters. I am attracted to both Varré and Godrick. That being said, Seluvis is just not really my thing. Maybe a little too pompous for my tastes?? Or maybe it's the whole being turned into a basement puppet not being my kink? Probably the latter because I once wrote a short smut piece featuring Master Neloth and he is at a similar level of Supreme Prick.

However! I decided to write this anyway as a little challenge. I hope you enjoy! I probably will not write any more smut for him in the future though, sorry.

Also I apologize that it took me so long to get to this, I had major writer’s block.

Warnings: elements of hypno kink, drugging, and dollification, this is consensual but creepy and somewhat sketchy because Seluvis, Seluvis is his own warning, reader insert/tarnished is also somewhat creepy in this, explicit smut 18+ only

Also on AO3

Deep blue with gilded flecks, swirling and twinkling like a tiny captive galaxy…

The contents of the small glass vial mimicked the garb of the man who held it out to you. And much like the man, you knew definitively that there was not a drop of anything wholesome held within.

He may call you a witless dullard, but surely he had to know that you were no idiot, at least not one of that massive caliber. 

You shot him an incredulous look.

“You want me to drink this?” 

Seluvis huffed haughtily as if you had just asked if the Erdtree shown golden. 

“Yes. That is what I requested. You know I am not the type to ask such things in jest.”

You had heard him, and you were well aware he wasn’t exactly the joking sort. However, you were just as aware of what his potions did, you even had helped administer them for Marika's sake. Moreover you were very much aware of his… affinities for these puppets. He had to know that you knew the implications behind his order, and yet he ordered it still. It was brazen, wild, and he sprung it on you as casually as a request to sweep the leaves off the second floor landing.

“And.. why?” You queried. You know there would be no answer that could possibly justify such an outlandish thing, but you could not help but be intrigued.

“Were you not listening? Did I not tell you that I was working on a tincture to captivate even the likes of Lady Ranni? Hmph…Judging from your vacuous expression, you really are going to need me to spell this out for you, aren’t you? Fine. As you know, the special brew I am currently concocting is highly experimental. The theory behind it, flawless as it is, has yet to be tested, perfected. Something of this magnitude, if it were to fail, would spell disaster for us both, you understand. And while I am able to bend mere mortals with ease, I hardly have a demigod at my disposal on which to perform a trial run.”

“So you chose me.”

“Precisely. You are tarnished, lowly and wretched by nature, and yet you also possess three great runes. While you are far from a demigod, you have proven yourself to be much more than run-of-the-mill has-beens that populate these lands. There are simply no other viable candidates.”

“Just to clarify, you are asking me to forsake all the progress I have made and just… willingly become your puppet.”

"Do you think so lowly of me that I’d betray my best asset for the sake of my pride?” he scoffed, “This formulation is only temporary. A simple trial to ensure I am making steps in the correct direction. You shouldn't feel or remember a thing, I assure you."

You were quite frankly shocked that he was asking in the first place. If he really wanted you as his test subject so badly, he could have simply spiked your tea. You almost felt special, in a way. It was almost as if he cared, giving you the choice (or at least the illusion thereof). 

“Why go so far to say you could consider this an honor. It is not often that a simple provincial like yourself gets a chance to make history,” he added, seeming far too convinced of his own words. 

It would be downright foolish to drink it, but hadn’t you become somewhat of a fool for this man already? Learned to enjoy his acidic words, and found an odd sort of comfort in his unsavory tendencies? In a previous life, you had been a perfumer. You were no stranger to the use of odd concoctions to bend and manipulate the senses. As foul a man as he was, he was someone you understood, a kindred spirit in a way, finding meaning through the services he could render and the imposition of control. You knew logically that you should find this morally reprehensible, but you supposed that you were simply as rotten a soul as he. He found solace in his puppets, and you found solace in him.

Oh, and you had witnessed the way he looked at those puppets. How he cooed at them and snuck a gentle caress when no one was looking. As odd as it was, you were somewhat jealous of them. You wouldn't feel or remember a thing. You would awake as if nothing had happened, he promised you. But you knew what would happen in the interim. He would not be able to resist the urge to play with a new toy, even if only temporarily, and the knowledge that he would have done that to you, that which you secretly craved from him, even if unremembered, was enticing, arousing. Up to this point you had been relatively sure that he had little idea of your strange attraction to him, but perhaps he was more socially astute than you gave him credit for. Or perhaps he assumed you would be into him out of pure arrogance. Or perhaps he really did think you were, in fact, that much of an idiot.

Whatever his intuition, you were, despite your better judgment, about to prove him correct.

You hardly even registered yourself allowing the awful little thing to be pressed into your palm, too caught up in the brief brush of his glove against the side of your hand and how loud your pulse was. Could he hear it? Gods, you hoped not. Heaven knows he didn’t need that sort of ego boost. Quickly, before you let your rational mind stop you, you grasped the bottle, uncorked it, and tipped it back in a single swig.

The effects were immediate. Your vision tunneled, your heart thundered, the dizzy blackness bleeding rapidly to dye the fabric of your reality to the uncolor of oblivion, taking everything you were with it. It felt like falling, but softly, floatility, as if the air itself had thickened to cushion your descent. Somewhere far away you could hear Seluvis say something pertaining to your eagerness, about time, about savoring… You could not tell whether it was praise or derision, nor did you care. All that mattered is that his voice was oh so lovely to listen to and that the taste on your tongue indescribably sweet.

…

You came to under the turquoise glow of glintstones and the smell of damp earth, old stone, and sorcery. You were still groggy, sight blurred and distorted, slightly disoriented, but the place had a vague familiarity. 

“Ah, finally opened your eyes, have you?”

That was Seluvis’ voice, no mistaking that. You had been in his “tutelage” long enough to recognize the odd combination of soothing tones and portentous condescension even if you were fully asleep. Sure enough, as you willed your eyes to focus the vague dark shape in front of you sharpened into the form of the Perceptor, wearing his usual garb, minus his hat for whatever reason.

“Good. I nearly thought you defective.”

You wanted to point out that he seemed to think that even when you were at full capacity, but your tongue still felt slightly numb and heavy in your mouth and you didn’t trust any of your words to come out as anything but a slurred mess. You wiggled it around a bit, feeling your tastebuds tingle as it awoke from whatever stupor you’d been under. Some sort of flavor lingered, and you wondered if your confusion upon waking was the result of drunkenness, but no, this was sweeter and more comfortable than any spirit could have been. Moreover, why would you be with Seluvis if you had just imbibed. He would surely only dampen any festivities or merriment. The current location was hardly anything like a feasting hall either.

“You simply refused to walk on command. Perhaps I should have expected as much. You always were a willful thing. I had to carry you all the way down here like a damned sack of tubers. You best prove worth the effort.”

Down. Ah. That would make sense. You were underground, which would certainly explain the darkness and dankness. Underground. But not in a cave. No, the walls were deliberate, the angles geometric. Though faint, you caught a whiff of incense. Also, behind the preceptor was a neatly made bed. Underground. Seluvis. Bed. Stone walls. Glintstones. Ah! Yes, you had been here once before. This was the hidden basement where Seluvis stored his puppets. So now you knew the where and the how of your current location, but that only left the more elusive why?

That was answered in mere moments when he kneeled down to your level. His breath was heavy against his mask, and though you could not see them, you felt his eyes on you.

“What a pretty puppet you make…”

Puppet. Oh. That’s right. The potion. It must be finally wearing off. That means… ah. It was as he said, you retained no memory of the events. You didn’t even feel any tactile evidence: your body wholly undisturbed. You were disappointed. But the tenderness in his voice in this moment was still more than worth it, especially as he continued.

“Even a mind as brilliant as mine failed to fully capture how exquisite you’d be under my control. No mere imagining could ever compare.”

Stars above, did you want to melt into that voice. You were just about to lean forward, to nestle into his shoulder to show your appreciation when he stood up suddenly and brushed himself off, seemingly having fallen right back into his regular smug, off putting demeanor.

“Even if you took so long that I even had to begin to disrobe unassisted.”  

Wait, did he say disrobe? But… 

“Rise puppet,” he commanded you. Instinctively, you obeyed. Your mind began to race. 

“Good. Excellent even.” He breathed out, voice full of awe once again. 

Mother of Marika, you hadn’t missed a thing had you. The potion must have briefly knocked you out but he had yet to… and now he was… You felt lightheaded, partially because you had just stood up after being down on the ground for however long, but mostly from the massive hit of adrenaline the realization gave you.

You wanted to grin, but had to stop yourself. You were supposed to be his puppet were you not? Though, you supposed the fact that you almost grinned was evidence enough that you technically weren't. He circled around you, inspecting you like a scavenger ensuring the corpse he was about to feast on would not suddenly awake and bite him. No, you were far too in control of yourself to be a puppet, but if you pretended… if you let him believe you were… The idea felt thrilling, almost as forbidden as the art of puppetry itself. He grabbed your hand, manipulated your fingers and wrist, which you kept limp in his grasp. He hummed approvingly before letting go and stepping back with his hands together, standing poised and proud.

“Now dear, come, remove your master’s mask so he can… inspect you more closely.”

You felt dizzy at his request. Despite being in his proximity for some time, you still had yet to see his face. You could neither hesitate, nor could you be too eager. In this moment, you were his puppet. You were only allowed to see this side of him, to touch him, because he believed it to be so. Thus, it was with calculated precision that you stepped towards him and reached to remove that which hid him from you. Your fingers ran along the sides of his mask reverently, seeking some manner of clasp or strap to undo. Seluvis huffed.

“Just as brainless as always,” he chided. “No matter.” His gloves guided your hand to the top of his mask,  and under the fabric of his hood to a small fastening. Snapping it open, you felt the mask loosen, so lifted it away from his face. It seemed strangely intimate, seeing him for the first time. He was surprisingly handsome: a strong nose and jawline, well groomed facial hair, a harsh and furrowed brow, and eyes the color of ice under starlight. Though he bore deep creases from his age, it somehow only served to make him appear more dignified. It was quite unfair that he looked as much the part of the distinguished sorcerer he claimed to be. He grinned smugly as you did your best to keep your expression neutral, mindless. You wished you could take time to map out his features by touch, but for now you waited, outwardly patient, as he leaned in closer to scrutinize you, taking your chin between his fingers and turning your head however he pleased. It was as demeaning as it was exciting, being handled like this, like an object, but his pleased hum made it worth it. “Good,” he murmured, “very good. What a lovely specimen you are.”

You prayed to no one in particular that he didn’t notice how your face heated up. 

“Mmmm," he continued, "you make such a pretty puppet.” his grip loosened and he instead brushed your cheek fondly. You wished you could lean into his touch without blowing your cover. You wished you could kiss his finger as it swiped over your lip. “I should have known as much. You were always my puppet, were you not? Following me so obediently, even drinking this little potion for me. Perhaps I should have deceived you after all, waited until I could give you the full formulation? Have you forever at my beck and call? My own slayer of demigods, reduced to nothing but a vessel of my will… and my desires…” He buried his face into the crook of his neck, and you could swear he was sniffing you. "All the things I'd do to you…"

By Marika, this should sicken you, but as he groaned openly against you, it was not disgust that stirred in your guts. Fuck. Here, thinking he was alone with an empty doll wearing your skin, he was so openly needy and expressive. He grabbed at your sides and kissed the exposed flesh of your neck without grace. It’s literally everything you’d been hoping for. He was treating you like an object, yes, but a precious one.

His eyes were practically gleaming as he pulled away from you and out of your line of sight. You waited with bated breath for his next command. To your frustration, none came, and you just had to stand there, neck set at an awkward angle as you listened to the shuffling of fabric and mumbled words behind you. He was speaking too lowly for you to catch any more than snippets but what you did overhear…

"...make this quick…” “If only…” “...properly study you…” “...construct a replica…” “...at my beck and call…”

…was mildly horrifying. It also served to stoke your building anticipation so you certainly weren’t complaining.

When his touch returned, it was bare fingertips against the back of your neck. You had to bite your lip to stifle a gasp. He had cold hands, strangely delicate hands. His warm breath following behind was a lovely contrast. He mumbled something as he reached around to your front, undoing the first few buttons of your tunic and grabbing at your chest, gentle at first, then roughly, bony fingers digging into your flesh and kneading with little regard for your own comfort, greedily seeking sensation. Heedless of his selfishness, your body lit up beneath his groping and your nipples hardened under his palms. He made a delighted, self-satisfied sound as he felt it. Knowing that he could not see them from this angle, you rolled your eyes. 

"Your body is so receptive to my touch," he gloated, as if this was all a result of some sort of perceived bedroom prowess and not a bodily reaction that could be achieved just as easily by a particularly cold breeze. Not that you had much room to talk, considering how into this you were, especially as he began to pinch and lightly tug on the erect buds. He buried his face in your hair, and you could definitely hear the distinctive sound of him inhaling. "I can smell your pheromones. You are ripe and ready to be picked, your ravenous little flower starved for its gardener's seed…" You had to bite your tongue to stop from laughing, and even then it was a close thing. Fortunately he was too wrapped up in his strange and wildly inaccurate plant euphemisms to notice the twitches of your chest that you couldn't suppress. Radagon's ass, this man worked at a college. Perhaps that whole coupe was warranted after all. He quickly redeemed himself by pulling you back against him, grinding your ass against his crotch as he dipped the hand not holding you to him down your opened tunic. Seluvis let out a loud and wanton moan as he humped you desperately at this odd, uncomfortable angle. It was shameless, pathetic, and turning you on something fierce in spite of his lack of tact and botanical knowledge. 

“Oh my sweet darling, do you feel what you do to your master? How immeasurably aroused you make him?” Honestly, you didn’t really. There were still too many layers between you to feel any specific evidence. Oh, but you heard it; his voice was practically dripping with it. “I mustn't be too hasty though,” he added, halting his movements and unhanding you. “I must make full use of you while I have you. While you’re mine.” He gave your ass a parting squeeze before retreating once again. More mumbling and the shifting of fabric, then he called for you.

“Come to me. Your master is ready for you to properly service him.” 

Upon his command, you turned around and walked over to a small table that he stood beside. He had removed a few layers of outerwear and set them upon it, evidently unconvinced of your competency in removing them after your fumble with his mask. You were too excited to be offended by this, instead focusing on how much of a difference those layers made. While there was still no skin visible aside from his hands, head, and neck, the absence of the outer robes made his silhouette remarkably less imposing, far more human.

“Now, on your knees,” he instructed and you doubt you could have dropped any quicker if your brain was empty of all thoughts but his instructions. He tilted your head up to look at him and smiled, even going so far as to bite his lip. “Perfect,” he said “You are a rare sort, exquisite in craftsmanship, competent, powerful…”

You’d never heard him talk like that, not to you, not to anyone. You had to admit it felt good. 

“Well, no time to waste,” he said with a sigh, removing his hand. “You exist to serve me, and serve me you will. Your master yearns for your touch, be a dear and undo my trousers for me.”

You reach up to the lacing in front of you. The material of his pants were thick, but not thick enough to hide his excitement. You went slowly, keeping the tremble in your hands to an absolute minimum, focusing on the current task and not what it would lead to.

“Now, take out my member.” Of course he would call it that. You don’t know why you would have expected otherwise. You simply counted your blessings that he didn’t ask you to “polish his sorcerous staff” or something. You slid his smallclothes to the side as best you could and freed him to the open air and your eager scrutiny. It was short but actually quite nice to look at: uncut, with the flushed head just ever so slightly peeking out from his foreskin, which itself was a delicate peachy pink. It was oddly cute, as strange as it felt to apply the adjective to any part of Seluvis.

"Don't be shy, give it a kiss," he urged you and you obeyed. He was warm velvet beneath your lips. He let out one of his long, heady moans that you were already becoming addicted to. “Yes, yesss… now, lick. Top to bottom, nice and slow…” His instructions were easy enough to follow and soon enough you were making do with little more than “Just like that, oh such a lovely thing you are, keep going!” His fingers tangled in your hair as his head fell back in bliss. However, after a few minutes, his patience for the lackadaisical pace wore thin.

“Faster,” he bade you, “use your hands, too. I know they are good for it.” And so you sped up, your hand sliding wetly over his shaft as you licked diligently at everything you could reach. He was already bucking against you by the time he asked you to take him into your mouth. 

“Open wide.” You did and promptly slid in. It was quite the boon that he was not more well endowed, all things considered. You weren’t entirely sure if puppets had gag reflexes, but he fit in your mouth easily enough. “Yes,” he hissed, “Now suck.” You did, and from the sounds he was making, it was evident that he appreciated your prompt adherence to guidelines greatly.

He began to fuck your mouth, slowly at first, but definitely picking up speed, holding your face like a vice as he used you. It was getting frenzied, devolving into reckless thrusting and grunting interspersed with breathless praises, and the occasional invocation of your name. Your eyes watered as your nose was shoved again and again into his trimmed and shampooed pubic hair. Lavender and lilies, sweat and musk. You could tell he was reaching his limit and you were determined to see this out to the end. Unfortunately, something, be it divine intervention or simply his focus slipping too far, decided otherwise. A particularly forceful thrust hit your tongue in such a way that you couldn’t help but choke. Reflexively you pulled back, a coughing, spluttering mess.

Glancing up at him revealed that he wasn’t faring much better. It was as if all the color had drained from him. You’d seen less fear in the eyes of a man looking down the maw of a dragon.

“You're… awake…” he eventually managed, and… abject terror was actually a pretty good look on him. Huh.

You coughed a couple more times before clearing your throat and wiping away some of the saliva on your chin with the back of your hand and offering him a sheepish little smile. 

“It appears I am.” Your attempt at levity did nothing to ease the tension in the air. “If it helps, I have been for a while.”

He turned this information over in his head a few times before masking his still present fear with a scowl.

"And you didn’t think to inform me immediately?! Do you understand how much you could have damaged my progress by withholding this? Hmph! Some assistant you are!"

"Mmm, is that so? Odd, just a handful of minutes ago you were singing my praises.” 

"You! You heard that...” he spluttered. It was by far the least dignified sound he had made thus far, and that was saying something. 

"Yes. In fact, I heard pretty much everything. That potion of yours… well. There’s no nice way to put this. It didn’t work.."

He was blushing now. His face and ears similar in hue to nearly ripe rowa fruit in the springtime. And despite everything, his erection had not waned.

"But you… obeyed."

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Hmm… maybe you were right earlier. Maybe I wanted to be your puppet for a bit. Or maybe I wanted to spy on you and learn your secrets.”

He began to stutter indignantly but you quickly turned his bluster into a drawn out groan by leaning back in and licking a broad stripe up his cock, fluttering your tongue with teasing intent that you guessed no mere puppet taking orders could replicate. 

"Or, maybe, I wanted to see you like this, a slave to your own desires… maybe I wanted to see you lose control for once… my master." His hips twitched forward, dick throbbing against your hand as it dribbled a long string of pre which you lapped up before pulling back. "Hmm I bet you command your puppets to punish you as much as service you, don't you."

"Why you little-!! Hnnnng!!" 

You gripped him tight enough to hurt and by the way he spasmed at the pain, eyes rolling back and mouth agape, it was obvious that he nearly came from that squeeze alone. You eased up on him, simply holding his cock in an unmoving hand, letting him come back down from the edge.

"You said it yourself, master, back when you first offered me a puppet of my own. I'm just like you. And you're just like me. We puppeteers are addicted to control, whether or not we are the ones at the reins." Keeping the hand around his cock steady and still, you began to absentmindedly tug at his sack with the other. "You're also right about another thing. I want you." More pre leaked from his cockhead. "I bet I'm the first person to tell you that."

His lack of response all but confirmed your suspicion. 

"You like that, don't you? Being wanted for once." Finally, you resumed stroking his shaft, looking up at him with the closest thing to doe eyes you could manage while grinning as maliciously as you were. He refused to meet your gaze, so you decided a little cheating on your part was warranted. "Mmmm Master Seluvis…" you moaned. He was looking now, and you highly doubted he could look away. Perfect. "Your Apprentice wants you. Wants your cum. Won't you be a Good, Kind, Master and do this one thing for me?" You stuck out your tongue and laved at the underside of his glans, keeping your mouth open in invitation. 

It worked. 

"Fine!" He barked, voice cracking. "T-take it then you voracious, whorish… whore..." Ah. You'd pushed him to the point where even synonyms escaped him. Shame he wasn't going to last long; you'd love to see how incoherent he'd get if you fucked him. He held your shoulders in a death grip as you readily took him into your mouth and moaned around him. “AH~! I'm—" he yelped before your name fell from his lips and you felt his hard flesh pulse inside your mouth, spewing salty bitterness against the back of your tongue. He was literally sobbing as you swallowed, milking him for all he'd give you and the sounds made you press your legs together to find some relief for your own ache. You kept suckling him as he cried from the overstimulation, only easing off his softening cock once his legs shook so violently that you feared they'd give out.

You smirked up at him, all blotchy and sweaty and heaving. It was doubtful things would ever be the same between you after this, so why not throw caution to the wind. You stood up and smashed your lips into a forceful kiss. He could only whimper against you. 

You had a great deal to think about.

But first, and most importantly, you needed to sit on his face. 

[nothingunrealistic]

review roundup: billions 7x12 “admirals fund”

here we are at the end of all things billions! at least until the spinoffs start! what did reviewers think?

New York Times: ‘Billions’ Series Finale Recap: The Last Battle

Am I at a loss for words over the series finale of “Billions”? That depends. Do hooting and hollering count as “words”?

REAL.

There’s no other way to put this: In its final hour, “Billions” delivered, and delivered, and delivered. It saw what it needed to do — spend 45 minutes beating the living snot out of Mike Prince, and the remaining 15 minutes depicting beloved characters being really nice to each other for a change — and by God did it.

i think it could have delivered a little better on both fronts, but good efforts were made.

It’s clear from the confidence on the faces of Taylor, Bobby, Chuck and Wendy in the first shot that things are nowhere near as dire as they seemed at the end of the previous episode. Kate’s arrival on the scene moments later only confirms what I’d come to suspect last week: The forces of good had an inside woman, who for two months has been undermining an oblivious Prince. But wait, there’s more! Philip, too, is a double agent, and has been from virtually the moment Prince ruined Philip’s mentor. His big show of distancing himself from Wendy’s scheme was just that, a show. And while Kate really did ferret out the anti-Prince conspiracy on her own, she ratted it out to Mike as a way of furthering it, not destroying it. Every move Kate and Philip have made since — most importantly allocating sole control of investing power to Philip, then outsourcing all investing decisions to Winston’s algorithm — has been made with the destruction of Prince in mind.

and we love that for everyone involved! …except winston. who was, inexplicably, not involved despite being essential to the success of team kill prince.

Prince’s subsequent meltdown, climaxing in tossing a printer through Wendy’s glass wall — a scene teased in the season premiere — is an absolute joy to behold.

yes!!! it was a printer!!!

Even Scooter’s bacon gets saved. Following Prince’s defeat, the man Wags calls the best second-in-command he’s ever seen quits the ex-candidate’s employ to go it on his own, leaving Mike completely alone. He now finds himself with $100 million — the exact same amount left to Prince — thanks to his nephew Philip. The two men patch things up before Scooter leaves to pursue his dream: to become an orchestral conductor at last. All our heroes get that kind of emotional send off. In pair after pair, they make their peace and call it a job well done: Axe and Taylor, Axe and Wendy, Wendy and Taylor, Scooter and Wags, Wags and Axe — and of course Chuck and Axe, who shake hands and agree that while they may once again cross swords in the future, they’ll do their best to keep it clean in the interim.

hmmm seems to me like there’s a pretty important pairing of two characters mentioned in these paragraphs that Didn’t get a much-deserved sendoff!

Chuck and Wendy are happy. Axe and Wags are happy and possibly moving to Miami for a spinoff.

😏😏😏😏😏

You could complain that this is all too pat, too easy. You could say it’s not reflective of how things work in the real world. You could make an argument that Prince should have won, or that Axe and Chuck should have gone out in a metaphorical murder-suicide situation, like Will Graham and Dr. Lecter at the end of “Hannibal.” You could say all of that, and I’d simply ignore it. Long one of the most sheerly entertaining shows on television, “Billions” closed out its run by doing the most entertaining things it could. If we in the real world have so far failed to defeat our Prince-style villains, so what? The central conceit of “Billions” is that Chuck Rhoades and Bobby Axelrod are, each in their own way, the cleverest people in the game. The game is over, so let them sink that battleship, let them connect four, let them pass go and collect $200. The message of “Billions” is that you need great people to defeat Great Men.

fair enough. i can respect that brian & david decided to end things by making the fans happy rather than making them mad, whether for Realism or for schadenfreude. i’m just annoyed that their mental picture of True Billions Obsessives Who Deserve Fanservice is so narrowly drawn.

The awful compliance officer Ari Spyros gets a big reward from Axe, despite never having done a single decent thing in the course of the series. (Or in the course of his life — am I the only one who remembers he weaseled his way out of sexual assault charges in college?)

you’re not the only one! really makes you wonder how the writers chose Which characters, exactly, deserved to be in the finale and become fabulously wealthy about it.

In this cameo-heavy season, were there any characters from the past you wanted to see again but didn’t? I missed Lara Axelrod (Malin Akerman), who was initially a quarter of the show’s core foursome; Dr. Gus (Marc Kudisch), the bombastic performance coach I once thought was as valuable an addition to the cast as Taylor, introduced at the same time; Oliver Dake (Christopher Denham), the officious government watchdog who seemed every bit as canny as his quarry right until the moment he was beaten; and Catherine Brant (Julianna Margulies), the Chuck Rhoades love interest lost to pandemic logistics.

this list manages to miss out my entire list, which boils down to “every previous character primarily or solely relevant to taylor.” oscar! sara! douglas! lauren! winston once he was fired and in a context that let him interact with taylor again! (also, lol and lmao at sean having once thought dr. gus was as valuable an addition as taylor.) OH ALSO: i would have loved to see the return of savion, the kid who lived in axe’s former house and whom axe promised to be there for if he ever needed help.

I adored the way Axe revealed that his destruction of Mike’s fortune was a fait accompli: “Not doing, Mike. Done.” It reminds me of “Watchmen,” and (spoiler alert) Ozymandias’s jaw-dropping statement at the climax of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s seminal superhero comic: “I did it 35 minutes ago.”

yeah, that was fun.

Watching Philip emerge from the rubble of Prince Cap intact while his superiors fled in disgrace, I suddenly realized what the purpose of this character is in the context of the larger Mike Prince story line: He’s the guy who wins. In the end, he’s simply smarter and cannier than his uncle Scooter and would-be mentor Mike. I suddenly find myself hoping he sticks around for one of the rumored “Billions” spinoffs.

philip is a winner because he wins! he motherfucking wins!! (of course, if the writers knew what was up, he could have been “the guy who’s a Peer / Partner / Equal to taylor in a way no one else really has been,” and maybe even “the guy who goes with taylor as they walk away from the rest of their life.” i would love to see him in a spinoff too, especially if taylor is there.)

Vulture: Billions Series-Finale Recap: Take the Money and Run

five stars!

Ladies and gentlemen, presenting the warmest and fuzziest episode of Billions ever!

hey, could you say that first part again?

Ladies and gentlemen,

yeah. that’s what i thought.

Sure, co-creators Brian Koppelman and David Levien, who wrote the series finale, gave us the expected tension-filled hour featuring a super-elaborate scheme, a Steve Miller Band soundtrack, and no shortage of double-, triple-, and quadruple-crossings.

i don’t think it went beyond double-crossings. triple- and quadruple-crossings would only really come into play if we got something like the fake reddit spoiler ending wherein, quote: “Chuck arrests Axe and from prison Axe uses a burner phone to have Wags leak the contents of the flash drive to that reporter guy. Chuck gets arrested and disbarred and ends up in the same cell as Axe.” but the warmth and fuzziness didn’t really allow for any of that.

While Wendy and Taylor demonstrated evolution by forging new career paths — with even Wags hinting he won’t stick around Axe Global for long — Chuck and Axe are literally back to doing the same things they were up to when Billions began: Axe, for all his talk of freedom at the start of the season, is now … the head of his namesake hedge fund.

i do enjoy the irony that the three people who were desperate to bring axe back at the start of the season are all leaving, or looking for ways out, now that he’s back on his throne. not so great when he’s sticking around long-term, is he?

After seven seasons of selfish, mercenary plays, this was the one time when (nearly) everyone worked together for the greater good, proving the season’s overarching theme: Nurture your friendships because you never know when you’ll need those friends to help vanquish your enemies.

which is almost exactly what axe told prince at their first standoff in 7x10! and prince should have listened, because his failure to focus on his supposed friends and allies brought him down!

Taylor hacks into Michael Prince Capital’s risk-management algorithm (thanks, Winston!) and reprograms it to “zig when it’s supposed to zag.” Philip then merely follows his boss’s orders by deploying all capital and insisting that the algorithm do its work.

here’s how taylipton can still win

As part of the tension build-up, we get more warm and fuzzy farewells between Wendy and Taylor, and even Chuck and Dave Mahar, the latter of whom is also part of the Mike Prince takedown: The New York State attorney general played a key role in ensuring the SEC didn’t let Prince or Scooter put a stop (or reversal) on any of the trades made by MPC that day.

dave & chuck’s last interaction > wendy & taylor’s last interaction.

Philip may have turned on Prince, but Scooter will always be his family: He protected his uncle’s account while draining Prince’s coffers, leaving Scooter with about $100 million and a fitting term of endearment: “Maestro.”

:')

It is a rare feat where one of the most abhorrent characters in recent television history can make me cry. So I have to give the highest accolades to Koppelman and Levien for writing such an impeccable scene — and to Jeffrey DeMunn, who managed to get my tears flowing without losing one hint of Senior’s repugnant essence (comparing Chuck to Phil Spector? Typical Senior).

skill issue.

Axe gives both Wendy and Taylor the hard sell, but neither will be swayed. The one consolation is that this version of Axe lets Wendy and Taylor go with grace. He even offers Taylor the old Axe Global office for a philanthropy organization. When they arrive at the empty location, there’s one last gift waiting for them: a placard reading “The Taylor Mason Foundation” with a familiar TM logo. Stop making me cry, Billions!

yeah, that got me. especially when i figured out it had to have been axe who had that sign put there.

It took seven seasons, but Billions eventually got the memo: Work doesn’t have to be the center of your life.

that’s not the impression i got from this episode, lmao. basically everyone is either returning to their old job or moving on to a new job. the closest we get to anyone going “fuck this, i’m quitting and going to hang out on the beach” is wags’s plan to Maybe go down to miami for unspecified purposes.

So much for my theory that Dr. Mayer was secretly working with either Axe or Prince. But I agree she’d make a great Wendy replacement at Axe Global.

i would be shocked if she even accepted the offer to work there. after all that about wendy keeping her patients imprisoned on a hamster wheel, why would dr. mayer take up that baton? and how many of the axe globetrotters who’d had her as a therapist and been dumped by her in favor of wendy would want to let her back in?

Fan Fun with Damian Lewis (Damianista): Billions on Showtime, Season 7 Episode 12: Admiral’s Fund (Series Finale)

We now go back to eight weeks ago: Kate invites Wags to a meeting after their elevator talk in Episode 6 The Man in the Olive Drab Tshirt. Wags arrives at his favorite burger place Joe Junior with a big appetite but loses it as soon as he sees Wendy there also waiting for Kate! And Taylor joining them in a few minutes means they have been busted. However, thanks to Wendy’s super human persuasive powers, Kate decides to put her country before her personal interests and joins them.

wendy’s superhuman persuasive powers that we had to imagine for ourselves since the writers didn’t show us one word of sacker Actually Being Convinced to join team kill prince! for some reason!

And, lo and behold, Philip is in! Wendy just makes sure that the two of them have a meeting in Wendy’s office in which Philip openly says he would not participate in whatever Wendy, Taylor and Wags are plotting against Prince and so Prince keeps him close.

correction: philip says he won’t participate in “Whatever [Wendy], and Taylor, and I don’t know who else are thinking about doing” — no mention of wags, likely because there’s no plausible way for philip to have theoretically sussed out wags’s involvement on his own, and mentioning him would give away too much. (i still wish we’d revisited the waiver that philip allegedly signed, whether or not it was real.)

Remember Season 4 Episode 12 Extreme Sandbox where Axe sends Rebecca on a retreat with Wendy and destroys her business while she is off the grid? And now the rebels are doing the exact same thing with Prince.

well that’s also tied to prince and scooter going off the grid earlier this season at the killer mike listening party. which is how wags and then philip acquired the signoff power that’s central to destroying prince's billions while he’s off the grid again. bit more relevant.

As MPC is taking major hits, Philip says that their “the infant car seat of algos” will protect them.

while you were studying the blade i studied ISOFIX so i could make you the very best infant car seat in the world <3

And the two of them, finding their way back to who they were when they first met, make Bryan’s dream come true and have his law license reinstated. I remember that Orrin Bach is Bryan’s professor from law school and, who knows, his law firm may have a spot for him!

not sure if it’s “his” law firm now that bach is officially axe’s general counsel, but hey, maybe!

When Prince gets into the office yelling at Peach to find Wendy fucking Rhoades for him, he realizes that she is actually here. And he grabs a printer and throws it through Wendy’s glass walls!

yes! it was a printer!

Remember that Prince had Winston change the algorithm parameters in Episode 11: Axe Global to reduce profit temporarily as an objective to protect the downside.

sacker had winston do that, actually, though on prince’s orders. seems like a relevant distinction knowing that sacker was on team kill prince at the time.

Prince finds his way to see the one man whom he still trusts. I admit I was wrong about Scooter. I think I have read too much into the “Murder on the Orient Express” reference that Wendy made to Wags in Episode 4 Hurricane Rosie.

YA THINK?

That is why I firmly believed that Scooter would join the rebels, but he did not. He was loyal to the end but now he wants to go find his own way. And when Prince insists that their mission was righteous and they just hit a snag, Scooter has a few words to say: “I can’t say I committed blindly to it but I was blinded along the way by my sense of fealty. Loyalty to you.” So he knew there was nothing righteous about the mission. He was just loyal.

billions characters (and writers. and actors.) love to emphasize Loyalty as one of the highest possible virtues, and billions fans love to go right along with that in their assessment of who is or isn’t Worthy. this is a great illustration of why i disagree. what’s admirable or virtuous about loyalty to a bad actor or a bad cause?

And here is the dozen I believe that have actively participated in taking down Prince! [PHOTO GRID: Taylor, Chuck, Wendy, Axe; Wags, Dunlop, Philip, Sacker; Dave, Mafee, Ira, Senior]

once again you are reading too much into the Murder on the Orient Express reference and it’s making you forget, or leave out, people who actively participated in taking down prince! allerd! hall! derek! bach didn’t do much but he was at the team kill prince extended edition meeting at chuck’s house in 7x11! winston didn’t deliberately participate but his work was crucial to taking down prince!

So the plan is to siphon the employee money into the Admirals Fund and buy the natural gas stocks when the price hits the  bottom. I believe this is the algo that Taylor works on when Axe enters their office and tells “the kid” to work with him going forward. 

no, that was winston’s risk management algorithm that was reworked to put prince’s money at risk. moving employee money to the admirals fund was mafee’s job. see, right after the news about collusion in natural gas starts hitting:

TAYLOR: The account’s available to you. You poised and ready for when it’s time? MAFEE: Hell yes, I’m ready.

and this is shortly after spyros confronts philip over a long-dormant account that mysteriously contains cash.

With the Admirals Fund play, Taylor has probably exceeded their $1B target so they are determined to leave the world of finance to go into philanthropy. So putting aside his dream of “you and me, together again, kid” and, as a last act of charity, offers his protege the Axe Global HQ in the city. When Taylor arrives there they find “Taylor Mason Foundation” written over itAxe and Wendy has been the most intriguing relationship in Billions. I know that a lot of fans wanted them to get together as a couple, and they were close in Season 5. But I have always admired their deep friendship and written a 10-part series on their relationship – go figure!

i copied and pasted this paragraph exactly as it appears in damianista’s review. she started talking about axe & wendy quite literally in the middle of discussing taylor’s ending. great work. now everyone brace yourselves for a terrible sentence written about this show that isn’t about rian, amazingly.

I believe that a man and a woman can have a relationship based on care and trust without any sexy time.

straight people are really something.

Dr. Mayer. I was wrong about her. I thought she was sharing information with Scooter. And I also thought Rian would use the fingerprints she collected from Prince somehow. Billions has made me such a cynical person! 😀

once again: skill issue. there were no fingerprints!!!

While I am happy to report that the final season has granted almost all of my expectations, wishes, and fantasies, the scene that makes me the happiest is to see Wendy and Chuck say these words: WENDY: I hoped you’d be here. CHUCK: I’m always here. As they have a family dinner at the Hibachi complete with Bryan’s show their smiles are genuine. These two belong together.

can anyone out there conceive of the most important relationships in wendy’s life not being with chuck and axe? or any other shitty men? hello? it’s so dark in here

Entertainment Weekly: Billions recap

yet again no entertainment weekly recap. anticlimactic!

Fan Fun with Damian Lewis (Gingersnap): The Unbeatable, Unstoppable, Unparalleled MVPs from Billions Season 7 Episode 12 Series Finale, “Admirals Fund”

Gingersnap Honoring Our Fathers Award – I don’t know whether to bequeath this to Charles Koppelman in memoriam, Brian Koppelman the writer/showrunner, Jeffrey DeMunn and Paul Giamatti the actors, Charles Sr. the character, or all of the above. It is not lost on me that the scene between Chuck Rhoades (Giamatti) and his father Charles Sr. (DeMunn) could be a nod/final send off – a hug to and from the beyond, so to speak – from Brian Koppelman to his father Charles Koppelman whom he lost in November, 2022.

please don’t besmirch brian’s dead father’s memory by comparing him to chuck senior. (according to brian, people often assume chuck senior was based on his father. he was not. but brian did put one (1) thing his father had said about him into chuck senior’s dialogue.)

Breaking the Fourth Wall Kudos – Wags when he seemingly sent a good-bye message to us, the viewers, but said it to Prince: “Hey man, endings are tough. Someone always ends up unsatisfied.” This one, however, wasn’t tough; this viewer is satisfied.” I’d almost bet a billion dollars the writers and showrunners were telling us fans and Billions‘ Obsessives good-bye through Wags.

they absolutely were.

Terrific Tune – Take the Money and Run by Steve Miller Band.

cosigned!

The Heinz Ketchup Walk of Shame Honor – Prince for throwing a printer through the glass walls of Wendy’s office after learning she and The Avengers have wiped out the company portfolio, locked him out of his company account and sealed the fate of his presidential run.

yes! it was a printer! (the ketchup thing is explained by the rest of the paragraph, but i don’t care enough to copy and paste it.)

The Sopranos Finale Kindred Award – This award goes to the Billions writers and showrunners for the final scene where Wendy, Chuck and their children enjoy a meal together, along with hibachi chef Bryan Connerty. Fade to black. This gave me all the feels of the The Sopranos final scene of the series where Tony, Carmela and their children enjoy onion rings together at the New Jersey diner. Albeit, no mafia hits.

just like the sopranos finale without the deliberately escalating tension or the abrupt cut to black or the implied mafia hit! so, people in a restaurant! groundbreaking!

Damianista […] Dangerous Dozen – The Revolutionaries [PHOTO GRID: Taylor, Chuck, Wendy, Axe; Wags, Dunlop, Philip, Sacker; Dave, Mafee, Ira, Senior] These men and women have actively participated in the successful revolution against Mike Prince, beating him at his own game, collectively impoverishing him and finishing his presidential campaign. I do not think anyone in their right mind wants to mess with any of them.

hey, could you say that first part again?

These men and women

and remind me who that first picture is of?

[PHOTO GRID: Taylor,

🤔🤔🤔

The Ship – Chuck and Wendy No other words needed. These two belong together.

[EXTREMELY LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER]

Lady Trader The Great Nephew Award – I think Scooter will certainly make sure that Philip gets an extra piece of pie at the next holiday get together! Philip making sure Scooter’s account was out of the fray and kept whole shows that sometimes blood is truly thicker than water.

the BEST nephew!!!

TheTailThatWagsTheDog Most Poignant Wendy-Chuck Connection? – The very first “Previously on Billions” intro was spoken by Maggie Siff in season 1, episode 2 (they obviously wouldn’t need it for the pilot). For the final episode, it was spoken by Paul Giamatti. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that was done purposefully.

incorrect! the first “previously on billions” was spoken by lara! i double-checked just to be sure!

Time Travel Award – To Spyros, who apparently went from Manhattan to Camp David to confront the Marines and try and warn Prince and then got back to Manhattan all in the course of an afternoon. It’s 240 miles one way – even if he had Prince’s helo he couldn’t have done that in time.

the antics of the episode spanned several hours. spyros left mpc in the morning, while prince & co were still At camp david and oblivious to team kill prince’s scheming. chuck’s press conference probably happened around 1:00, since the stock prices of the companies under investigation rebounded shortly after that time, and that was after prince & co had to travel all the way back from camp david. spyros then returns right around the time axe tells everyone about the admirals fund and philip turns the tv to cnbc’s closing bell, which airs from 3:00 to 4:00 on weekdays. a cursory google for “how fast does a helicopter go” gives a range of answers that, for civilian helicopters, roughly center on 150 mph. if spyros had managed to secure a helicopter, he could have traveled the 240 miles there and back (so, 480 miles total) in 3.2 hours. up it to 3.5 hours to account for driving at both ends of the journey and getting beaten up by marines, and that’s still doable in my opinion.

Best Film Homage – I know our fearless leader Bahar likens the plot of this season to Murder on the Orient Express since Wendy references that film early in the season, but I wonder if it might also relate to other, “gather the troops to thwart a common foe” film like The Sting or Oceans 11. I could definitely see Koppelman being a fan of, and inspired by, The Sting. I half expected to see Chuck and Bobby do a little nose swipe at the end.

[brian koppelman tiktok voice] no, not Ocean’s Eleven, dude. Levien and I made the movie Ocean’s Thirteen with Steven Soderbergh.

Best Sci-Fi Reference – Taylor with the mind-meld comment to Bobby. You would figure they would be a trekkie. I assume Taylor is Spock in this case and Bobby is James Tiberius Kirk.

you don’t understand spock or kirk or vulcan mind melds and should never speak about any of them ever again.

Fan Fun with Damian Lewis (Lady Trader): “From the Trader’s Desk” All’s Well that Ends Well Billions S7E12 “Admirals Fund”

I was so happy that the show got back to it’s roots and the demise of Prince was financial and trading in nature. The series went in a political direction this season with Prince running for President, and it really wasn’t my cup of tea.

heaven forbid the show about power politics in new york get political! (frankly i wish it had gone harder on that. show us one specific policy prince wants to implement! one plank of his political platform! any part of his recurring televised speeches that isn’t just Both Parties Are Bad For Unspecified Reasons! show us a prospective prince voter and tell us why they’re voting for him!)

Kate joining the conspiracy was key. Once she was on board, she was able to let Wendy, Taylor and Wags know about the video taping Prince was doing in the office.

another thing that was implied that i wish we’d actually seen!

Mafee is ready to buy the names at the bottom, because he knows that Chuck will hold a press conference to tell the world that there is no collusion, and the stories were just rumors. Those nat gas names will take off and Axe Global will make billions. As an aside, if I had been in on the plan, I would have shorted the names before the open, cover them before Chuck’s press conference, then buy them up at the lows of the day. That way you would be making money both on the downturn and the upswing.

i would think shorting the names beforehand would open you up to allegations of insider trading, but i’m not sure how much that matters when the outcome here is already “sure there were a bunch of crimes involved in taking prince down but what’s he gonna do, sue everyone? with what money and what lawyers?”

Because Kate had Winston recalibrate the risk management of his algorithm to focus away from profit, the algorithm most likely stopped the accounts from closing the position earlier. In my strategies, I have hard stopped built into the trades. For example, if I have a position that takes a loss of 8%, it closes the position, no questions asked. It protects me from scenarios like what was going on at MPC. However, I also have a way of manually closing positions if I see a news/event that would cause a sharp decline in my position. Something Bill and Victor would have definitely done once they saw the stories around the sector. As active managers they see things that quantitative algorithms don’t see.

the algorithm did that because taylor actively reworked it to make damaging decisions, not just because Algorithms Are Insufficient.

I really loved the callbacks to earlier seasons/episodes. Whether it was Axe jumping on the desk, his wearing a Metallica t-shirt, the Talyor Mason logo, or just the whole “caper” feel to the episode, I enjoyed the nostalgia!

talyor mason. sigh.

This season Taylor has talked several times about just wanting to keep making money and keep building their reputation. That Taylor would have jumped at the chance to do amazing and vicious things with Axe at Axe Global. But Taylor must certainly remember the last time they worked with/for Axe, and not with the fondest of memories. There was a reason Taylor stole Axe’s clients (and $3.5B of possible client funds) in Season 3. They both know that things start off well between them, then take a turn for the worst (which is usually Axe’s fault). They both have changed, but not enough to make it work. Taylor has always wanted to make money and do good. Axe just wants to make money. They both realize it, and I don’t think it was a surprise to Axe that Taylor wants to do their own thing. Why else would the Taylor Mason Foundation sign already be up at the old Axe Global offices? Axe knows people, and he didn’t have to mind-meld with Taylor, who I’ve compared to Mr. Spock many times, to know that was the path Taylor would take.

again: you don’t understand spock or kirk or vulcan mind melds and should never speak about any of them ever again.

Axe will always be my spirit animal,

don’t say that again either.

but the character of Taylor will always be the one I want to have on my team. I will really miss them.

i’ll hand it to you. once.

[ginzburgjake]

Ghost AU (4/?)

Martin liked his job. He did.

Tim was a nice coworker, and Sasha a good boss. Elias was intimidating and often frustratingly unhelpful, but he rarely wandered down into the Archives. The pay was alright, the hours standard, the tasks mostly mundane with lots of perfectly boring filing involved. So yeah, Martin was pretty content in his current position and very unwilling to change it once again so soon. Looking back, most of his adult life’s decisions always had been heavily influenced by someone, something else outside of Martin’s control. For once, he could push back. The ghost could eat dirt.

Martin started his vengeance plan by locking all of his supplies in the top drawer of his desk (which was an option he failed to consider before the Hand Incident, to his eternal embarrassment). Out of pettiness, he filled his pen cup instead with exclusively non-working pens, empty markers and broken pencils, scattering a couple of jammed staplers and blunted scissors around for good measure. Maybe Martin couldn’t stop the ethereal thief, but he sure as hell could make it regret staying on this side of the veil.

He also began eating his lunch in the Archives, hoping to catch the stationery in the process of floating away. So far, Martin had been unsuccessful — either the ghost was too much of a coward to face the consequences of its actions, was simply ashamed, or had become better at going unnoticed. Which option he preferred, Martin couldn’t say.

The day after the Hand Incident, Tim brought in and installed a semi-professional camera, which he’d initially bought for his nature trips. The camera was positioned on one of the shelves, and its angle allowed decent coverage of the whole bullpen office — although Martin now had to be more conscious about his nail-biting and skin-picking. If the evidence ever made its way to the officials, he wouldn’t want them to examine a shot of himself with an arm elbow-deep up his nose.

Sasha hacked the database and dutifully printed anything she could find on the previous archival employees, whose photos and personal information she arranged on a big clipboard. She reasoned that if the ghost had manifested in Gertrude’s time, the old woman would’ve left notes on it somewhere in the mess that was the Archives. Gertrude’s assistants (all of whom went MIA) at least had the decency to check out the last day before their disappearance. It didn’t mean that they couldn’t have eventually ended up dead and tied to the Institute’s basement, but it significantly lowered their chances.

“Gertrude and her successor, Jonathan Sims, were both at their workplace before seemingly vanishing into thin air,” said Sasha on her fourth cup of coffee. “Which means they are our most likely candidates, and that’s not taking into account all the blood found in Gertrude’s office. If ghosts do indeed linger in places of violent crimes, then Gertrude is a good bet. Maybe she’s also the reason Sims disappeared.”

“Fantastic,” said Tim, twirling (and periodically dropping) a pencil in his hand. “Not only does this thing steal our stuff, but now we’re at the risk of being AWOL-ed.”

“At least we have each other,” Martin added. “Both Gertrude and Sims were alone, right? It’s easier for something to catch you if no-one comes to check on you, I think.”

“Yeah,” Sasha sighed. “I really don’t like this, but if there’s even a slight possibility of getting kidnapped by a malevolent spirit… I should probably tell Elias.”

Telling Elias, as Martin came to understand, was not as hard as getting him to actually believe them. The day after Sasha sent Elias a detailed explanation (with a brief recount of Martin’s statement and her own ideas on the topic), the whole archival team received a reply:

“I am terribly sorry for Martin’s, undoubtably very distressing, experience. In the best interests, I can advise a good counsellor and perhaps taking some time off work to promote stress management. Please see the files attached. Unfortunately, I am unable to offer any additional funding or satisfy transferring requests at this time. I trust your sensibility, Ms James, and hope that your noble intentions will not interfere with the voice of reason.

Best wishes,

Elias Bouchard.

P.S. Please inform Mr Stoker that crop tops are not workplace appropriate. Thank you.”

Tim looked down at his yellow crop top saying ‘Don’t study me. You won’t graduate’. “Shit. Must’ve seen me entering the building.”

“He’s convinced I just had a nervous breakdown and want out,” Martin lamented.

“We need more evidence.” Sasha frowned. She glanced at the clipboard, where two photos were positioned at the centre: one of an old woman, with her grey hair up in a bun and a cold, stoic expression on her face; one of a bespectacled man, seemingly in his thirties, with short black hair and tired eyes. “Let’s hope we can catch the ghost moving on camera.”

Martin looked at the photos as well. Both of them held short descriptions scribbled on post-it notes. Gertrude Robinson, former archivist; reported missing May 15th 2015. Jonathan Sims, former archivist; reported missing January 9th 2016.

Tim said earlier that he’d met Sims once or twice in Research. They’d never properly talked, and the whole time there Sims had been withdrawn and brusque, uncomfortable with other people. He and Gertrude were apparently somewhat similar in that regard: both independent and uncaring, almost existing in a vacuum. Strangely, though, as Martin looked at Jonathan’s last taken photo (cropped from his work ID, with his Facebook having been inactive for three years), he didn’t see the face of an uncaring man.

Maybe it was just Martin’s imagination playing tricks (because, well, Jonathan was attractive, and Martin was very, very gay), but he thought Sasha’s predecessor, with his lip corners pulled down and an unfocused gaze, simply seemed rather sad. And lonely.

< part 3

[clunelover]

I was going to do this as a reply but it was getting too long, so @alfa-lima-limon and anyone else who is interested - how we got the idea to check out OT is actually along the lines of what you just said - he would have big meltdowns over seemingly small things (or sometimes just nothing, as far as I could see). If I go through my MyChart messages between me and his pediatrician, I think as far back as 2 years old I was asking her about what I considered unusually explosive tantrums…but we were told “well it’s age appropriate still, just keep an eye on it” and then “everyone is stressed due to the pandemic and it’s especially hard on some kids” etc etc until he for sure became too old to be tantrumming like this. e

I really didn’t know what to make of it, I thought he was just “difficult” (I know not a good label but I didn’t think he fit the profile of any specific condition) but my best mom friend has a kid who’s a year or so older and autistic, and she was the one who first said “it sounds like sensory issues actually” and then I asked social worker BFF and she said she agreed - it’s still sort of amazing to me, I could not put these pieces together on my own, but now I can see he had:

- extreme meltdowns especially at times of transition, like trying to leave in the morning, which is often a hard time for these kids

- when in the midst of a meltdown about leaving in the morning, he would try to strip off all his clothes. If he was prevented from doing it he would at the very least take his shoes and socks off in the car. At the time I thought this was him “being obstinate” and just seizing at any possible thing to delay, but now I know he was overwhelmed and seeking a particular sensation to make him feel better (air on skin, or escaping clothes that feel confining or scratchy and thus upsetting). He still doesn’t like to have shoes and socks on.

- really rigid about getting his way or having people play exactly how he wants. Again, another thing I thought was him just being…kind of a jerk (🫣) but is more to do with changes feeling upsetting, so anything he can do to control what is happening will make him feel better. It doesn’t mean that’s okay for him to do of course but now we know that if he’s not overloaded with sensory stimuli he’s more likely to be able to go with the flow, and sometimes he just needs a little extra time to calm down and accept what is happening.

So, I was kind of skeptical (and still in dark moments sometimes think “isn’t all this just CODDLING him?”) but we got him evaluated by a local place that does OT among other therapies and services (like speech, psychology, etc) and they said he did seem like a good candidate for OT.

As part of the occupational therapist’s initial assessment, she checked for “retained primitive reflexes” …like, the Moro reflex is the only one I’d ever heard of prior to all this, but there are others! And you’re supposed to not have them by a certain age but if they don’t go away, it can lead to issues with integrating sensory information. C has retained a couple (I forget which) that, when retained, can cause issues with tracking movement with your eyes (which then leads to getting overstimulated easier than people who don’t have it). Isn’t that CRAZY?! This is something that is still a little in the “sounds fake but okay” realm for me, but at the same time does make sense to me. It’s weird.

So a lot of our OT activities involve things where you need hand eye coordination and balance.

This whole thing about “being afraid to fail” is something he’s only recently started bringing up, but the occupational therapist told me he probably did already have that fear, but he’s only now become able to express it. And it goes right back to wanting things to be a certain way, unexpected outcomes feeling bad, etc.

So yeah, it’s been a journey for sure! A lot of the work is of course us learning how best to react and help him get what he needs.

He had the recent evaluation for autism and didn’t meet criteria for a diagnosis, but has symptoms for sure. Jeremy has bonded with his mom over this, because according to her this is exactly what he was like as a kid (eventually diagnosed with ADHD as a teen). So we just kind of keep an eye on it and get him evaluated again if his symptoms get markedly more severe.

Okay that was a large dump of info, but anyway, happy to answer any questions about it any time!

[jobey-wan-kenobi]

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My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

To continue the Larry=Dennis parallels, of course at some point there were calls for them to just replace the latest bozo pol with Dennis.

Now, this isn't quite as much of a joke as it is in real life, because, you know. The engines can talk and stuff. Isabella once ran for office, Trevor has served as an alderman, etc.

Sudrians have also, of course, been seriously talking about drafting railway vehicles into their government for years. For one thing, they have great name recognition. For another thing, Skarloey, Rheneas, Duke, Edward, and Toby have all been discussed, at various points, as perfectly reasonable candidates for mayors, MPs, etc.

Now, usually this gets no further than (at most) the Thin or Fat Controller feeling the need to make a statement reminding everyone that their respective railways could not possibly spare the potential candidates in question.

Dennis, though. After a memetic press conference photobombed and then taken over by the laziest diesel ever built, the island starts clowning about just replacing Exiting Disgraced Politician with Dennis.

And FC3 is all like, "Yes, we fully support Dennis if he chooses to pursue a career in government service. 🙃 Please. Do it. He'd be great."

27 notes - Posted July 10, 2022

#4

"This engine is a Metropolitan-Vickers diesel-electric type two!"

'... lol I'm being so Normal™ right now.'

40 notes - Posted August 10, 2022

#3

The Engines as Mentors

Okay but I'm eternally salty that TVS in particular—though it was RIGHT to expand the NWR fleet—failed to use the dynamic of the OG characters from the books all functioning as Mentors and Elder Statesmen to the newer and more obscure and younger engines.

It would have been THE way to effectively integrate the newbies (looking especially hard at you, HIT era). Like, some of the best use of the new characters already are when they fall into a mentee dynamic with one of the established characters. But the TVS writers really only ever let this happen with, like, Thomas? To a degree? And Edward? A bit? And then the best and most beloved BWBA episodes (BWBA!) are when Gordon and, again, Edward get more of this sort of material. And then again, in fuckin' AEG, the most popular thing so far seems to be Gordon's whole Grumpy Dad shtick.

But I think canon and fan writers should have done this with all the classic characters. After decades as The Famous Eight—erm, Ten—(but not Eleven—to me Oliver is in that category of newbie that needs looking after. which is what the rest of the Little Western spends most of his one book doing!) they are all  kinda old af and well-qualified and honestly just should be mentoring the diesels and younger steam engines and whatever wide-eyed newcomers are brought to the Island Where Fever Dreams Come True and Culture Shock Is Probably One Hell of a Bitch.

LIKE. Percy. Yes, absolutely Percy! He's inconsistent about standing up for himself or making good decisions in his own working life but honestly his instincts when it comes to others have always been completely on-point. And he never has any hesitation about acting on his instincts so there is a recipe here for big-brother success. He must be so wonderful with uncertain new engines. I think he would have been much better for taking Molly under his wing than Thomas, and he must be a god among many of the newer tank engines. Like the dynamic I tried to paint in my headcanon post about Harvey—Percy gives whiplash as your mentor because he will always support you 100% but sometimes he will suddenly make the most baffling decisions and if you are not, yourself, a natural chaos gremlin, you are just along for the ride and possibly dying of secondhand embarrassment. But again, you also get over it because no one will ever show up for you more consistently than Percy the Caterpillar Engine.

The BWBA era thing where Gordon winds up mentoring Rebecca is... like, fine, I guess. I don't have any complaints about it, but—as I tried to show in my ficlet with him and Derek—I think Gordon's most typical mentorships have two unmistakable characteristics:

it is insanely arbitrary as to whether or not he decides to take you on. if you wind up in his circle of trust you probably weren't trying or even remotely expecting. it is also hard for anyone else to understand why Gordon looked at a new engine and said to himself "Yes. That one." Because the way Gordon makes emotional decisions is utterly impenetrable—this is RWS canon. Why did Gordon one day go from being Pure Unadulterated Jackass Whose Only Thought So Far In His Life Has Been "Me! Me! Meeeee!" to the engine who (evidently? without?? snark???) suggested the Fat Controller let Henry out of the tunnel to take a turn on his train? Honestly we don't know but it remains Gordon's signature style. Why did Gordon do an about-face after James took the express and graciously decide James was his new buddy? Well, to save face of course, but Gordon is also not above a good grudge so it feels like a coin toss. Why did Gordon decide to be super gracious when he rescued Percy and Thomas from their RWS scrapes? No one knows but somehow these moments are so quintessentially him (even though showing up moaning and scolding would have also been quintessentially him). And—most relevantly of all—there is what I regard as his archetypal moment with BoCo. 'My dear engine! You SAVED MY LIFE.' 'I mean, you're welcome for getting rid of them but they were never actually going to kill you.' 'YES THEY WERE. THEY HAD MURDER IN THEIR HEARTS. YOU ARE A GOD AMONG DIESELS, STANDING STRONG AGAINST THE FORCES OF DARKNESS.' '... Sure.' Gordon logic is not the same as earth logic and his reasons for rejecting or accepting others seldom make much sense.

If he does take you on, you may not even notice. Gordon is very stuffy and kind of... emotionally remote. His mentorship style consists of long rambling bouts of relating/boasting about his own experiences and/or advising you, without you able to get much of a word in edgewise—but then, he does this with everyone who is ever stuck with him—and doing extraordinarily nice things for you such as pulling strings to get you the best assignments or upgrades but he'll do it all behind your back, so it might take a while before you realize. (But you'd better, because even though he deliberately decides to do these things in secret, he will also privately feel hurt and hard-done-by if you don't figure it out and thank him. Or at least exclaim happily in his presence and sing the praises of your unknown fairy godfather.)

So yes, mentor!Gordon is a lot like friend!Gordon and worker!Gordon. He is pretty damn high-maintenance but he is also genuinely quite worth it. What his relationships lack in... comprehensibility they make up for in loyalty and generosity. ALTHOUGH. It's worth laughing because I think most of the engines he takes on are decent, polite engines who perhaps have some self-confidence issues. Basically it's like any engine he meets afterwards who is in the Edward mould he is actually magnificent to, which is hysterical considering that one of the keynotes in early canon was Gordon bullying the shit out of Edward. (I still think that wasn't malicious though, and more Gordon did not yet have the remotest understanding of Himself, Theory of Mind, or How to Be a Friend.)

If you have self-confidence issues but you do not win Gordon's capricious favor, never fear! You have James. Who is even more capricious, but that's not to say he's never been the most faaaaaabulous mentor in the world, c'est ne pas? Look. I want to see James as the catalyst for shy newcomers having a glow up. In appearance and attitude. I don't think he does he often but it has definitely happened around twice. I somehow have never actually watched "Rosie is Red" or "The Fastest Red Engine on Sodor" while paying attention but I've been assuming that's exactly how Rosie's Confident Girl Arc went down. Maybe he could be a similar idol for Neville or Flora. Another thing that has happened twice is James just flat-out corrupting a couple of the Good, Buttoned-Down Boys and Girls. I still want to see James take, like, Porter or Arthur and teach 'em anger. Introduce them to the world of (tiny) rebellions. By the time James is done with them, they are starting to Display Behaviors, and Act In Certain Ways.

Henry, I firmly believe (sticking out my tongue at most of the TVS and magazine writing for him), is actually regarded very intimidating. Like Gordon and James are intimidating too, but they are also known jackasses and the universe is known to have slapped them around reliably when they get too far up their own tenders. Also Gordon usually puts on an air of affability—in RWS it's Henry who is the Grumpy One (and meanwhile James, though he has a foul temper, is just too ADHD to be properly intimidating). I suspect Henry's actually always had the reputation for being extremely snobbish. Which is silly because he's only mildly to moderately snobbish, but there you are. He also doesn't put himself out there socially, but of course if you put yourself out there to him he's perfectly friendly. Anyway newcomers and young engines wouldn't know this right away. I think Henry's specialty is mentees in the mold of Bear and my OC Laura and even Rebecca—extroverted, expressive engines who show him respect. In those cases you see his best side, all kindliness and unstinting support. And Henry's support is really valuable, for the usual reasons that all the OGs have a lot of pull on the railway but also because Henry is surprisingly sage and sensible. He doesn't have the reputation for it the way Edward does, due to some of his notoriously poor decision-making in his earlier years and the way he can still sometimes be a bit literal or naive. But even if he's had to learn most things the hard way, he hasn't lied to himself about it and therefore he's developed a very clear-eyed view on things. Refreshingly simple and sound. We see this already in the RWS Super Rescue—he's got Bear and Spamcan pretty well-pegged long before the story ends. He also values engine solidarity in a really consistent, utterly unpretentious way that shows you he doesn't even think about it, it's just become a part of who he is. I love it. And, of course, he's bold as brass. He once hissed steam at his boss and essentially told him to fuck off for no better reason than it was raining and he just wasn't feelin' it. He had the most horrid wreck in the series and after being rebuilt he just got right back on that horse, pulling Flying Kippers again for the next century without the slightest sign of trauma. So if you need him for something, he won't hesitate to move earth and heaven for a friend. He may be a bit of a hypochondriac and likes to predict doom and gloom but he is fundamentally pretty fearless when it comes time for action. (Cut him a break with the elephant thing—he's allowed to have tunnel-related trauma, okay?)

Of course there was one extroverted engine inclined to hero-worship that Henry rejected in canon as a mentee, and that was Philip. Which brings us to Edward, and I fully agree with the fandom consensus that he is the mentor ever, capable of and inclined to look out for, like, everyone. All I'm saying is that I think the others can also step up in this way... Anyway, Edward's specialty of course is engines who are in the mould of Thomas, engines who are excited and eager to work but who talk a lot and might have a streak of mischief and who are definitely considered Too Much by everyone else. Edward likes energetic gremlins. They've always kept him young at heart. And, more importantly, they trust him so completely. Probably because they can tell he's one of the few who genuinely doesn't mind them at what everyone else considers their Most Annoying. He never tells them to hold still or quiet down or make themselves smaller in any way, so they are incredibly receptive to whatever he does tell them.

But what if you're Too Much and you are not eager? If you are not susceptible to admiring Edward's stellar work ethic? I think this is where Thomas shines. Like I think HIT abbreviated and simplified the conflicts with Dennis and Billy too much but it was such a gold mine. Because Thomas, see. You get these little sneaky rotters who don't want to listen to anyone—and at first Thomas seems like the most out-of-touch engine on the rails. Coz Thomas is a tryhard. He also has that whole "corporate positivity" thing going on. Like, the way I resolve the way TVS massacring my boy is by supposing that, after all, Thomas might have really tried to adopt that persona, especially in the '80s when he was inducted into the National Collection and the, well, television series got underway and Thomas becomes damn near the most famous locomotive in the world, certainly he knows he is an icon for children, and he might have figured that, well, this means I have to be a Good Role Model and Teach Children Valuable Lessons. And so he really did try to do this whole pep-talk, moralizing, sugary sweet encouragement thing (and he has a Word of the Day calendar, lol).

And the Dennises and Billies of the world look at that and—understandably, I think—retch a little. But then they double down. And the thing is, when they push Thomas too far, Thomas forgets to be sweetness and light, and just becomes himself. First of all, a foul-mouthed little drill-sergeant wannabe ("Cinders and ashes!!!!" "Who's been late every afternoon this week?!" "You're too fat—you need exercise!" "IF YOU DIE? IF YOU DIE, MOTHERFUCKER? SO WHAT?! I WOULDN'T GIVE A SHIT COZ I'D BE TOO BUSY FINALLY RUNNING MY GODDAMN TRAIN TO TIME." - all direct quotes from Thomas the Tank Engine, ladies and gents) Secondly, an extremely experienced engine who really has done a bit of everything by this point (he even hitched a ride on the Wild Nor'wester that one time, lol) and who is pretty skeptical so he's hard to fool (Percy was the last engine to really ever get one over on him, during the Ghost Train incident, and that's ancient history by this point). If you try to get away with doing a shitty job he's bound to notice and he will be quite acid-tongued if you've pierced his PR Persona. Third, although he can be kinda self-involved and the last to "get" what's going on with newcomers, he is surrounded by his old friends, who are all pretty good about either clocking an engine's whole Deal, getting all the tea like the gossips they are, or both. So while he was still in his amiable-idiot stage of your acquaintance, you, poor rebellious fool, thought you had the run of things but all the while he was getting up to speed on your whole deal. Which means you won't be prepared, should you really commit to ongoing antisocial behavior, for Thomas the Beacon of Children Everywhere to abruptly cast up your entire life story to you and to read it for filth, telling you the merciless truth about yourself in a way that the other engines pieced together but with which they probably never hit you deadass between the eyes.

Of course, this doesn't mean the would-be punks and malcontents who get onto Sodor are instantly cured, lol (though it has gone down that way a few times—my alternate version of Billy's intro story would feature an end where he's just gobsmacked into submission). Sometimes it just means you are going to decide Thomas is your Hated Enemy for Life, but you know what? You will have to step up your game in order to compete with him or even to gain enough clout to try and sabotage him so you're still playing into his hand (if we accept TVS's idea that 'Devious Diesel' did become a part of the Sodor family, I think this is how he was successfully integrated. At some point Thomas unexpectedly read him the riot act and Diesel was like 'who the FUCK are you?? like i know i already had beef with all the main line engines but where the hell did YOU come from???' but then after decades of competition they are essentially frenemies). But mostly the thing is, you are shell-shocked for just long enough, and you'd probably shift to being a bigger asshole than before... but, during that period where you're still burned, you are also looking at all of Sodor and every engine on it with fresh eyes (because if Thomas the Merchandise Engine could ream you out like that, perhaps you underestimated everything about this place). And you are noticing something else. Once Thomas has scalded you with his bitchery, he's also your friend. It's almost his version of sharing his lunch with you on the playground. (Something something salt and vinegar.) For all he rode Henry so hard from some of the earliest days of canon, I bet you he also beat down any 'outsiders' who took shots at him. For all he and Percy squabble, they are the closest of friends (and they weren't! for decades! but the more they squabbled, the closer they got). Getting into a knock-down fistfight is alarmingly close to Thomas's love language, and by the time he's savaged you verbally he is also invested in you. Once he's told you what he really thinks of you, he's also going to start showing up for you genuinely.

And that's when the little shits see the final side of Thomas. The genuine good humor. Obviously it doesn't win over everyone but there is a real groundedness and humility that I am sure Thomas can show (I tried to show this in the fic I made with @shinygoku based off their artwork of Thomas and Daisy) that is hard to resist. He's also fucked up along the way in every way imaginable so even when he side-eyes you, he's not looking down at you. I can just see him showing screw-ups a lot of grace so long as they let down their guard even somewhat because he's been there. Hoo boy, has he been there. That's why kids actually love him (it's not your vocabulary lessons and beaming smile, Thom, though the effort is appreciated), and it's why young engines can wind up loving him too. He doesn't hold what you've done in the past against you; he genuinely believes in second chances (and third, and...). Plus he knows every engine needs some excitement and responsibility in their lives. He has never forgotten the insanity-inducing frustration of being tethered to Vicarstown station.

Basically, once you cut past Thomas's earnest (and bullshit) attempt to be Perfect Kids' Role Model, he's actually always been great at keeping it real. And that's where a genuine respect can often grow.

43 notes - Posted December 14, 2022

#2

us, for ages now: lol ishmael was so gay and autistic, he woulda done numbers on tumblr

ishmael in the year of our lord 2022: doing numbers on tumblr

182 notes - Posted December 7, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

the absolute contrast between most of the dracula daily content and mina's entries...

renfield and seward: stuck with each other (we're sposed to feel sorry for seward i think? but renfield is just vibing in a damn lunatic asylum and seward is a self-important jackass, so, you know. fuck him. i hope renfield feeds his corpse to some flies.)

captain of the demeter: his men are disappearing and he's facing imminent mutiny

jonathan harker: literally battling the forces of hell for his life and soul

mina: ahhhhh holidaying at the yorkish seaside is so pleasant! 😊 the scenery fulfills the soul! 😊 i tried to get one of the old locals to tell me a spooky story but he preferred to go home for tea haha, so quaint

also mina: i met my darling lucy at the station 😊😊😊 and let me just tell you, diary, that girl of mine looking fine af

594 notes - Posted July 24, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[dallasareaopinion]

Two old guys, yet one Party is luckier than the other

First of all I must be missing something. I know most people are accepting that Biden and Trump will be the respective nominees of their Party. And I know it has been discussed here and there that both are old and what might happen if one of them were to pass away. Yet I haven’t seen this dominate any political landscape and the major issues it might cause one party if their presumptive nominee passes away.

I cannot believe that there isn’t a significant hum in the background noise about this happening. Everyone complains about the other candidate being too old. Their cognitive capabilities aside either one of them could pass away at any given moment. And yes I realize that people in worse health than either one has lived well into their eighties. Yet the possibility that one if not both could actually pass away between now and November is real.

Which brings me to this thought. Everyone in the Republican Party that is high on Trump wants Ms. Haley to concede and drop out of the race. Much to their chagrin that is the last thing they want. Here is the strangest rub. The reality is that some that support Trump probably won’t go out and vote for Ms. Haley. That is actually not that much of a problem. Most moderate Trump supporters will vote for her because they don’t want Biden. She will only lose that most radicalized of the Trump supporters. She will more than make up those votes with non Trump Republicans and independents. The Republicans need her to stay in the race as a back up plan. At this point and this is just opinion, but I don’t think Ron DeSantis can come back and garner enough support to become the nominee. If he tries and forces a floor fight at the convention, he splits the party and guarantees the Democrats win even if the candidate is Kamala Harris.

Which leads me to the Democrats problem. Kamala Harris will lose to either Trump or Haley. Independents are not getting excited about Harris so would stay home even if Trump is the candidate. She does not have enough time to make a name for herself. Yes die hard Democrats will support her, but that will not be enough to overcome her lack of headlines now. The closer we get to November, the worse and worse things get for the Democrats if Biden were to pass away. Even though Kamala Harris is Vice President, too many people do not know enough about her to go out and vote for her.

And if the Democrats try to nominate someone else they split the Party and lay one big egg in November.

The Republicans by Haley staying in the race have a built in back up plan as long as Ron doesn’t poop the party at the Convention. And will be in a much better place to win than the Democrats. Haley will have huge name recognition for having stood up to Donald to the very end. This will be attractive to independents which hands her the race.

Again many people live well into their eighties so this scenario may never play out, but if I was a Republican donor or operative who wasn’t cultistly tied to Trump, I would quietly encourage her to stay in the race.

Yet for people like me, who see both parties as having failed this country, and not that I want anyone to pass away, it would be quite fun to see two explosive floor fights at both conventions with both parties so damaged that an independent could win enough to create the most interesting election in the history of the country. What happens if no one gets to 270 electoral votes and we have tied House, okay one vote majority, and Senate which might happen. And yes the House could go really crazy with all the factions that might be created, the hard right, the freedom caucus, moderate Republicans and Democrats, the far left and leave us with one wild ride of uncertainty that would make last year’s 15 votes for Speaker seem mundane.

Historically this seems absolutely absurd that something like this would happen. Currently I am more than surprised that this isn’t on more radars publicly. Next week is March and by the end of the month all the presumptions will be in concrete. And then the headlines say….now I lay me down to sleep I pray the Lord my soul to keep, if I should die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Life can be quite interesting some days. Cheers

[whereareroo]

IOWA RECAP



WF THOUGHTS (1/18/24).

Several people have asked for my take on the recently concluded Republican Iowa Caucus. Trump won. Of course, there’s more to the story. Let me give you a few things to think about.

Before I begin, let’s review some basic information. After any caucus or primary, there are two good sources of information. One, of course, is the actual vote tally. The other source is the data from the “voter surveys” that are conducted as the voters enter or leave the polling place. These surveys are conducted by professional survey organizations. They ask the voters dozens of questions about their decision making process and their overall thoughts about issues related to the election. The idea is to probe beneath the vote tally to get a deeper understanding of what voters are thinking about and how they selected a particular candidate. If your goal is to really understand what’s happening during the primary process, the voter surveys are just as important than the vote tally.

I have dozens of thoughts about how to analyze the results in Iowa. Because I care about your sanity, I’ll only share a few.

A. WHO ARE THE PEOPLE WHO ARE TOTALLY COMMITTED TO TRUMP?

Half of America is constantly stumped by the above question. Who could possibly support Trump? The voter surveys in Iowa shed light on this issue.

A full 33% of the Republican voters said that they’re seeking a complete overhaul of the American government. They want to overthrow the existing system. They want to burn the government down. These people view government as a destructive force in America. They believe that the government has never helped them in any way. Indeed, they believe that the government is a barrier to their success. They like Trump because they believe that Trump will rip the government apart. If that requires an authoritarian approach, that’s OK with these voters.

In Iowa, 68% of the Republican voters identified as “Evangelical Christian.” Slightly more than half of those folks, 55% of them, voted for Trump. That’s a huge segment (37%) of the Republican voters.

Who are these Evangelical Christians? I respectfully submit that the label is extremely misleading. These folks don’t support Trump because of his religious beliefs. We all know that he doesn’t have any religious beliefs. These folks don’t support Trump because of his strong moral character. We all know that Trump’s morality is highly questionable. What ties these Evangelicals, who are almost exclusively White, to Trump? They’re looking for a Messiah. The Messiah concept is familiar to them. They want a Messiah who will save them from big government. They want a Messiah who will save them from the steadily increasing power of diverse minority groups. They want a Savior who will rule with an iron fist and preserve the power of White Christians. If the Messiah is an authoritarian, that’s OK with these “Evangelicals.” They’re comfortable with a supreme ruler who is all powerful.

Trump has successfully marketed himself to the insurrectionists and the White Evangelicals. For different reasons, both groups see Trump as their hero. It’s a powerful coalition. Combined, these voters represent at least 35% of Republican voters. They’re Trump’s most loyal supporters. Even though Trump gets support from other Republicans too, the power of the core 35% probably makes Trump unbeatable in the quest for the Republican nomination. In Iowa, he won by a mile.

B. HOW POWERFUL IS TRUMP?

Let’s take a look at the campaign spending in Iowa. If you follow the money, you’ll be astonished at the power of Trump.

DeSantis and Haley fought hard to win in Iowa. They failed. Combined, the two received 44,500 votes. Combined, the two spent $70,000,000 in Iowa. That means that for every vote against Trump they spent $1,573. That’s a staggering amount. They lost anyway.

Trump won with 56,000 votes. He only spent $11,000,000. That’s only $196 per vote. That shows the power of Trump. His core voters are so loyal that he wins without working hard and without spending much money.

C. DESPITE THE ABOVE, TRUMP HAS SOME PROBLEMS

The data from Iowa highlights some problems that Trump will face in the general election:

1. Turnout was low. In 2016, the last Iowa Caucus, the Republican voters were excited and engaged. That year, 30% of them voted at the Caucus. This time, only 15% voted. Weather was a factor, but the weather doesn’t fully explain why 85% of Iowa Republicans stayed home. Is this a sign that many Republican voters will stay home for the general election? Have some Republican voters grown tired of Trump or abandoned him? If the number of Republican voters drops by only 10% in the general election, Trump is in big trouble. He should be worried about the fact that 85% of Republicans stayed home in Iowa.

2. Only Republicans voted in Iowa, and Trump only received 51% of the vote. Given Trump’s prior history in Iowa, that’s a very low number. In the 2016 election, Trump won big in Iowa and he received almost 100% of the Republican vote. He won big again in 2020, also winning almost 100% of the Republican vote. The drop to 51% is significant. On the campaign trail in Iowa, Trump predicted that he might get 60% or 65% of the Caucus vote. Iowa is Trump Country. It’s a sign of Trump’s weakness that 50% of the Republicans in Iowa voted for someone else.

3. The next data point is amazing. A full 48% of Haley voters said that they’d vote for Biden if Trump is the Republican candidate! That’s a real problem for Trump. Trump should also be worried that 12% of Haley voters said they wouldn’t vote at all if Trump is the candidate. If he wants to win the general election, Trump can’t afford to lose any votes. He needs every voter who voted for him in 2020.

4. If Trump is convicted in any of his four criminal cases, 30% of Republicans admit that they’ll abandon him. That is why Trump is trying to delay all of the trials. Even if the delay tactic works, this statistic shows that Trump’s support has some soft spots.

I realize that it’s very early in the primary process, and that the political game is unpredictable. Right now, however, it looks like a rematch between Trump and Biden. Nonetheless, this race will be different. The political sands have shifted since 2020. Some Republicans have lost their enthusiasm for Trump, and some Democrats have lost their enthusiasm for Biden. The shifts could create an entirely different ballgame. Just like last time, it will be a nail-biter. The good news is that the primary process is finally underway and we’re hurtling towards Election Day.