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mostlysignssomeportents · 14 days ago

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General Strike 2028

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/11/rip-jane-mcalevey/#organize

Trump is a scab.

https://www.democracynow.org/2024/9/2/shawn_fain_2024_election

Trump is a scab and the Dems need unions. While working class votes were all over the place – lotsa turkeys voting for Christmas – union voters voted against Trump with near-unanimity.

Trump is a scab, the Dems need unions, and the Dems are not faithful friends to unions. Harris campaign advisor – her brother-in-law Tony West – is Uber's chief legal officer and the architect of Prop 22, California's scab law that formalized "gig work" labor violations. The fact that when the eminently guillotineable union-buster Howard Schultz tries to win a presidential nomination he does so in the Democratic party speaks volumes. If your political party has room for Michael Bloomberg, it doesn't have room for workers. Seriously, fuck that guy.

Trump is a scab, the Dems need unions, Dems are not faithful friends to unions, and unions keep the Dems honest. The #RedForEd teachers' strikes of 2018 kicked off a wave of public support for unions – and worker interest in unionization – that has only grown in the years since:

https://theweek.com/articles/764828/teacher-strikes-could-future-alt-labor

Trump is a scab, Dems need unions, Dems are not faithful to unions, unions make the Dems better, workers want unions, the public loves unions, and union membership is falling.

It's falling! This one is on the union leadership. Unions are sitting on gigantic warchests that they are resolutely not spending organizing the workers who are clamoring to join unions:

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/ten-times-this

Unions have historic high cash reserves and are doing historically low organizing. This part is the unions' fault:

https://www.radishresearch.org/_files/ugd/2357dd_135794f88aa140f2962ee5c71ac31ff0.pdf

Or rather, it's the union bosses' fault. Union leadership in America, broadly speaking, sucks. Bosses love shitty unions, and the biggest unions obliged bosses for decades, with leaders who established suicidal practices like "two-tier contracts." That's a union where all the workers have to pay dues, but only the senior workers get protection from the union those dues fund:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/20/a-common-foe/#the-multinational-playbook

If you sat down and said, "Let's design a union contract that will ensure that every worker hired from this day forward hates unions," this is the contract you'd come up with.

Those shitty union bosses? They're on the way out. In 2023, the UAW held its first honest elections for generations, and radicals, led by Shawn Fain, swept the board. How did workers win their union back? They unionized more workers! Specifically, the UAW organized the brutally exploited Harvard grad students, and the Harvard kids memorized the union by-laws, and every time the corrupt old guard tried the steal the leadership election, one or another of them popped to their feet, reciting chapter-and-verse from the union's own rules and keeping the vote going:

https://theintercept.com/2023/04/07/deconstructed-union-dhl-teamsters-uaw/

Fain led the UAW to an historic strike: the UAW took on all three of the Big Three automakers, and cleaned their clocks. UAW workers walked away with three new contracts, all set to expire in 2028. Fain then called upon every union to bargain for contracts that run out in 2028, because if every union contract expires in 2028, we've got the makings of a general strike.

That means that when the next presidential election rolls around, it's going to be in the middle of the most militant moment in a century of US labor history. That is an opportunity.

Labor movements fight fascists. They always have. Trump and the GOP are not on the side of workers, notwithstanding all that bullshit about supporting workers by fighting immigration. Sure, when the number of workers goes up, wages can go down – if you're not in a union. Conservatives have never supported unions. They hate solidarity. Conservatives want workers to believe that they can get paid more if labor is scarcer, and there's some truth to that, but solidarity endures in good times and bad, and scarcity ends any time bosses figure out how to offshore, outsource, or automate your job. Scarcity is brittle.

"Law-and-order" candidates want to throw millions of our neighbors in jail. By the way, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery, except for prisoners. American imprisons more people than any other country in the history of the world. We make Stalin's gulags and Chinese Cultural Revolution "re-education camps" look unambitious. American prisoners produce $9b worth of services and $2b worth of goods every year. The average US prison wage is $0.53/hour, but six states ban prison wages altogether and North Carolina caps them at $1/day:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch

If you think immigrants are bad for American workers' wages, wait'll you see what legions of newly imprisoned slave laborers earning $0.53/hour do to those wages. Also: Californians just voted down a ballot measure to abolish prison slavery:

https://www.kqed.org/news/12013392/californians-voted-against-outlawing-slavery-why-is-prop-6-failing

The GOP are not on workers' side, and workers will not earn more under Trump's policies. Workers will earn more if they join a union, which they will only do if union leaders focus on organizing, which will only happen if we get rid of shitty union bosses. Start with this asshole, who belongs on the scrapheap of history:

https://www.npr.org/2024/07/16/nx-s1-5041345/teamsters-president-sean-obrien-addresses-the-republican-national-convention

With the GOP running the country for the next four years, it's tempting to look for hope in social movements. Maybe Trump will be so terrible that people will band together in informal solidarity networks and #Resist. History teaches us otherwise. The people who need the most help under Trump will be too embroiled in the fight for their own survival to put together the kind of movement that can make a difference.

As Astra Taylor reminded us on the Know Your Enemy podcast, Occupy and Black Lives Matter formed under Obama, when things were eleven kinds of fucked up, but at least ICE wasn't raiding our neighbors' homes:

https://know-your-enemy-1682b684.simplecast.com/episodes/voting-what-is-it-good-for-w-astra-taylor-olufmi-taiwo-malcolm-harris-teaser

Occupy and BLM arose in a moment when people had just enough breathing room to think beyond their immediate survival. Even deeply flawed progressive administrations provide that breathing room.

By contrast, the #RedForEd teachers' strikes were a creature of the Trump years. Even if social movements struggle to find their power under authoritarian, far-right regimes, these are the conditions in which organized labor movements are renewed:

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/to-unfuck-politics-create-more-union

Trump won the election because white men, especially young white men, voted for him, but he couldn't have done it without the votes of white women, and Black and Latino men. These voters may even conceive of themselves as being in favor of women's rights and of the rights of racial minorities, but they still voted for Trump, because some facet of their identity - their maleness, their whiteness - mattered more to them than everything else.

Bosses have always excelled at this game, bringing in Irish scabs to break strikes of German workers, or Polish scabs to break Irish workers' pickets. The Pinkertons relied on Black workers who were excluded from the lily white unions.

Our identities are complex and ever-shifting, and men who worry that women's power comes at their own expense, or whites who worry that this is true of Black and Latino power aren't entirely wrong. As the saying goes, "When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression."

But there's one part of your identity that is inherently solidaristic: whether you are a worker or an owner. If you own the business, you make more money when your workers earn less. If you work at the business, every dollar you earn is a dollar your boss doesn't get. Workers' gains are bosses' losses.

That's why they want us to "vote with our wallets." It's not just that those votes are rigged for the people with the fattest wallets. By tricking you into thinking of yourself as a "consumer" who benefits from low prices, they get you to stop thinking of yourself as a worker who suffers from low wages.

This remains true even after decades of "market based pensions" that forced workers to flush their savings into the stock market casino, to be the perennial suckers at the table in a game where their bosses had an unbeatable house advantage:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/06/the-end-of-the-road-to-serfdom/

Even after generations of this, the share of the stock market owned by workers is a negligible crumb. This is how GDP can rise, the stock market can surge, and you stay poor. Workers' fortunes don't rise and fall with the stock market. They're not owners.

You're a worker even if you're well-paid. Tech workers are just figuring this out, after a generation-long con in which bosses convinced techies that they were temporarily embarrassed entrepreneurs who definitely didn't need a union:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/16/narrative-capitalism/#sell-job

Tech workers' power came from scarcity, and scarcity is brittle. Tech fired 260,000 workers in 2023, and another 100,000 in the first six months of 2024. Tech bosses have smashed their workers' power, and we know what comes next.

We know what comes next because we know how tech bosses treat workers they can replace. Amazon warehouse workers piss in bottles and get maimed on the job at a rate that outstrips any other warehouse worker in America. Jeff Bezos and Andy Jassy didn't welcome coders with pink mohawks, facial piercings and black t-shirts with incomprehensible slogans because they liked tech workers and hated warehouse workers. Amazon coders owed the privilege to pee whenever they felt like it to their bosses' fear that they couldn't be replaced. Now that coders are replaceable, their kidneys are on the firing line.

"The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed." If you want to see the future of a replaceable Amazon coder, look at the working conditions of a replaceable Amazon delivery driver, monitored by a fucking AI that punishes them if they open their mouths while driving:

https://jalopnik.com/amazon-bans-its-drivers-from-moving-their-own-lips-too-1851639312

Remember lovely Tim Cook, the guy who took over Apple from its sainted juice-cleansing cofounder Steve Jobs? Cook's accomplishment, the one that earned him the CEOship and a personal net worth in excess of $2 billion, was to figure out how to offshore Apple's production to Chinese factories where the working conditions were so terrible that they needed to install suicide nets to catch workers who couldn't face another minute on the job:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/foxconn-life-death-forbidden-city-longhua-suicide-apple-iphone-brian-merchant-one-device-extract

That's how Tim Cook treats workers he's not afraid of. Apple workers, no matter how well paid, no matter how pampered, need a union, because the instant Tim Cook can treat you like a Chinese iPhone assembly-line worker, he will.

Tim Cook had some choice words for Donald Trump this week:

Congratulations President Trump on your victory! We look forward to engaging with you and your administration to help make sure the United States continues to lead with and be fueled by ingenuity, innovation, and creativity.

It wasn't just Cook. Every tech boss lined up to kiss Trump's ass: Bezos ("Wishing @realDonaldTrump all success"); Zuck ("Looking forward to working with you"); Pichai ("We are in a golden age of American innovation"); Nadella ("Congratulations President Trump"):

https://daringfireball.net/2024/11/i_wonder

You don't just deserve a tech union, you need one, now:

https://abookapart.com/products/you-deserve-a-tech-union.html

Organizing a 2028 general strike under Trump won't be easy. Workers won't be able to secure support from the courts or the NLRB, whose brilliant Biden-era leadership team is surely doomed:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

But the NLRB only exists today because workers established unions when doing so was radioactively illegal and union organizers were beaten, jailed and murdered with impunity. The tactics those organizers used are not lost to the mists of time – they are a tradition that lives on to this day.

The standard-bearer for this older, militant, community-based union organizing was the great Jane McAlevey (rest in power). McAlevey ran organizing and strike drives as mass-movements; she wouldn't call for either without being sure of massive majorities, 70%-95%:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

McAlevey understood union organizing as a source of worker power, but also as a source of community power. When she helped organize the LA #RedForEd Teachers' strike, the teachers didn't just demand better working conditions for themselves, but also green space for their students, and protection from ICE raids for their students' parents. They did this under Trump, and built a turnout organization that flipped key seats and delivered a House majority to the Democrats in 2020.

In her work, McAlevey excoriated the kind of shittyass Dem power-brokers who just lost an election to a convicted felon and rapist, condemning their technocratic conceit that the path to electoral victory was in winning over precisely 50.1% of the vote in each tactically significant precinct. McAlevey said that's how you get the nightmarish Manchin-Synematic Universe where Dems can't deliver and workers don't vote for Dems. To transform America, we need the kinds of majorities that McAlevey and her fellow organizers won in those strike votes – majorities that produced durable, anti-fascist power that turned into electoral victories, too.

McAlevey died last summer. But she left behind a legion of people she taught and inspired, and a playbook we all can follow:

https://jacobin.com/2024/07/jane-mcalevey-strategy-organizing-obituary

We've got four years. Join a union. Take over its leadership. Create solidarity with your fellow workers and your community. Bargain for a contract. Make it expire in 2028. Get ready.

Because in 2028, we're having a general strike.

#pluralistic #labor #politics #democrats in disarray #one big union #general strike 2028 #fascism #hamilton nolan #organizing #jane mcalevey

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ladykailitha · 10 months ago

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The Harrington Pattern Part 1

Hey, guys! Sorry I'm late uploading today, but I went to bed early last night and forgot to schedule this.

Oops!

But! Welcome to what I've been calling Steve is a History Nerd agenda. We see in season two on Steve's essay for colleges that he can link his grandfather's military service with his prowess on the basketball court.

It is also surprisingly well written. *shakes fist at the Duffers stop telling us he's stupid and then showing the opposite, please! Let him be smart, too!*

Summary: The Renaissance Fair is finally back in Hawkins after three year absence (Starcourt was built on the fair site and after the fire it was bulldozed back to it's original field). Everyone is excited, even Steve to everyone's amazement. But Steve is hiding other hidden depths as he offers to help the kids make their costumes for the Fair.

Lucas is struggling with being both a nerd and a jock and fears the judgment of his friends. Steve sets out to help him overcome those doubts to be himself.

Tagging the untaggable: @mira-jadeamethyst @rozzieroos @itsall-taken @redfreckledwolf @emly03

***

Nobody expects Steve to be excited for the Renaissance fair. Dustin, Will and Lucas spend hours plotting bribes, schemes and out and out manipulations to get Steve to agree to take them. Even Robin expected him to side with her about the dust and the filth. Eddie expected him to be dismissive of the fantasy aspect of it.

Boy were they all wrong.

For it was Steve to bring up to the group after a rather successful D&D session.

In his hand was a bright pink flier and a wide grin on his face.

“Guys! The Ren Fair is back this year,” he said in lieu of a greeting. “I’ll finally be able to show off that tunic I’ve been working on.”

All heads turned to Steve in shock.

There was a cacophony of questions.

“Since when did you know how to sew?”

“What do you mean back? I didn’t even know Hawkins had one to begin with!”

“You want to go to the Ren Fair?”

“Why would you want to spend all day in the heat and dirt?”

Steve looked around at all off his friends in shock.

“Guys, I love the Ren Fair,” he muttered. “Didn’t you guys know?”

All their jaws dropped.

And Eddie? Eddie felt an icicle to the heart at the sight of Steve’s hurt expression.

“You’ll pardon the peasants, my liege,” Eddie said, bowing grandly. “I’m afraid we have all be harboring under the delusion that Ren Fairs were beneath your notice.”

Steve blinked at him a moment. “But I love that stuff. It’s the history and sword fights and jousting. It’s the like medieval Olympics. It’s the romance and chivalry of knights fighting for a fair maiden’s hand. It’s getting to dress up in fancy clothes and rip into turkey legs like a savage. What’s not to like?”

Dustin frowned. “Who here knew Steve liked history?”

Robin and Nancy raised their hands. They looked around waiting for me people to join them. But they stayed down.

Steve ducked his head and scuffed the floor with the edge of his sneaker.

“The ex-girlfriend I’ll buy,” Dustin continued. “But Robin didn’t become friends with Steve until after he graduated so how did she know?”

Robin blinked at them owlishly. “You mean you guys don’t know?”

Everyone looked around each other and then shook their heads.

“Steve was in my AP history class my junior year,” she said as if this was know fact.

“You do know that AP stands for advance placement, right?” Mike asked.

Eddie smacked the back of his head. “She was in it, dude. Don’t be an ass.”

Steve looked up at him and smiled a little.

Good, Eddie thought. Nothing like a little Mike violence to cheer up Steve.

“He wrote an essay for early placement college exams,” Nancy said. “He didn’t get a chance to turn it in because of our second go round with the Upside Down, but it was really good. It needed a little neatening up with the actual writing, but the history was solid.”

Steve blushed. “Thanks.”

Dustin looked skeptical. “What’s your favorite part of history?”

Steve opened his mouth and then closed it again. “I liked hearing about my grandpa’s time in the US army during WWII, but that was more because he made it interesting. But I really like the Industrial Revolution. Or rather the first Industrial Revolution. There have been four. The first one was from 1760-1840 and featured heavily in the textile movement.”

The room was silent.

“Why textiles, Stevie?” Eddie asked as the silence grew awkward.

Steve lit up like a child at Christmas morning and he began talking about the British textile movement.

“What the hell?” Dustin huffed, breaking into Steve monologue.

Steve ducked his head again and blushed. “Just because I’m not interested in science and fantasy doesn’t mean I’m stupid.” He straightened up. “And yeah, sometimes I get things wrong. But everyone does at some point. In fact I get a hell of a lot more flack for my intelligence than Eddie does and he repeated his senior year twice!” He took a deep breath and then ran his fingers through his hair.

“No offense,” he said waving to Eddie.

Eddie looked up at him with earnest eyes. “None taken. I concur.”

They all looked around at each other in shock. Like they hadn’t realized that they had done that.

After a few moments, Steve put his hands on his hips and pointed at all of them.

“So do you guys want to go or what?”

Eddie sat back with a smile as everyone roared their approval.

“No corsets,” was Robin’s only firm and fast rule for Steve when it came to dressing her up for the Ren Fair.

Steve looked her up and down. “Why on earth would I want you in a corset? Have you looked in the mirror?”

“Uh...” Robin said. “Is that a trick question? Of course I have. I don’t what that has to do with saying no to corsets though...”

Steve rolled his eyes. “In order to give you the curve you need to match the proper silhouette you would need to be cinched to hell. And as this is supposed to be fun.”

He grabbed her hand and started hauling her toward his car.

“Where are we going?”

“Thrifting!” he said with glee.

It took three different stores and a stop at the mall to get everything he needed.

“Give me three days,” he told her when he dropped her off at her house. “And I think you’ll like what I come up with.”

Robin eyed him warily. “If you say so.”

Steve laughed.

He crashed the next D&D session, showing up early to pick them up.

“What is everyone wearing to the Ren Fair?” he asked with a note pad on his lap and wagged the pen in his fingers.

“You want us to dress up?” Mike asked, eyes wide.

“Why not?” he asked with a shrug. “I’ve made my costume and currently reworking some thirfted threads for Robin’s outfit.”

Eddie blinked. “You made your costume?”

Steve shrugged again. “Yeah. I like sewing.”

There was suddenly an uproar and he held up a hand. “I can’t make you a full outfit before the Fair, but I can make over already made clothes to make them more historical. And maybe for next year I’ll have the time to make something special for everyone.”

Dustin eyed him suspiciously. “Like what?”

“Like tailoring pants to a tighter fit,” Steve explained “adding a sash or belt, turning old coats into vests and cloaks, things like that.”

They still weren’t sure how that would work out.

“Now I talked to Joyce and Claudia,” he continued. “And they’re both willing to help out in making sure everyone has something nice to wear. That includes Max and El.”

“Are the fair maidens joining us?” Eddie asked.

Steve nodded. “Yeah. Joyce is doing El and Will, Claudia is doing Dustin and Mike, and I’m doing Lucas and Max. Eddie said he already had a costume, so I didn’t have to worry about him.”

Eddie grinned. “You better believe it, pretty boy.”

Steve ducked his head and blushed. “So we’re all going thrifting with a $5 limit for each of you. But I wanted to brainstorm some ideas of what you wanted to go as so we don’t waste time wandering around.”

Everyone started shouting at once and it took Steve a good ten minutes before he got everyone calmed down enough to get what they wanted. Dustin wanted to go as a hobbit, but Steve had to nix that one.

“You don’t want to go running around the grounds barefoot,” he explained with a wince. “It’s not safe.”

“I’m going to have to agree with Stevie on this one,” Eddie said. “You guys have never been but there is all sorts of stuff laying around. It’s not indoors and the pathways are dirt lined. Think the state fair. It’s more like that then going to comic book convention.”

Dustin grumbled but conceded the point. Steve got them to decide on... well not quite peasant gear, but more rough around the edges than what Steve would be wearing.

Well, all but Lucas. He didn’t want to wear what they were wearing but he refused to say what he did want to wear.

So Steve dropped him off at home last.

They pulled into his driveway and Steve turned to him. “Do you not want to dress up? Because I won’t make you.”

Lucas picked at the loose string on his sweater. “It’s not that. I just remember the last time we did a group costume and they all thought I should be Winston because I was black like he was.”

Steve frowned for a moment. “The Ghostbusters, right?”

Lucas nodded. “I knew if I brought it up they’d shoot me down again.”

“So what did you want to go as?” he asked.

Lucas huffed out a sigh. “It doesn’t matter. It’s a stupid pipe dream anyway. Especially since you have to make Max’s dress and Robin’s costume, too.”

He opened the door to get out, but Steve reached over and slammed it closed.

“One, Robin’s costume is almost done,” he said counting out on his fingers. “Two, do you really think your girlfriend is going to want to wear a dress? And three, let me be the judge on what’s too much for me, okay?”

Lucas huffed a laugh at his second point. “Yeah, that was dumb of me.”

“So what is it?”

Lucas looked down again and heaved out a sigh. “An elf.”

Steve’s mind was whirling with the possibilities. “What colors?”

“What?” Lucas asked, not sure he heard Steve right.

“What colors would you want it to be?”

He pulled out the notebook and scrambled for a pen. Lucas pulled a pencil out of his bag and handed it to him.

“Uh I was thinking of a light blue and with a silver trim?” he said hesitantly.

Steve sketched something out. “Like this?”

Lucas leaned over to look at the drawing. “A little shorter so I’m not tripping over it and maybe those puffy pants?”

Steve adjusted the drawing and Lucas nodded.

“Yeah, like that.”

“All right,” Steve said. “I know exactly what to do and how to do it. It won’t be perfect because I don’t have time to do it right so I’ll be doing a lot of cheating. But yeah, it’s doable.”

Lucas gave him a hug. “Thanks, man.”

Steve called the one person he knew he could help him.

“Eddie,” he said the second the other man picked up. “I need your nerd connections to do a huge favor for Lucas.”

“Wha’cha got, big boy?” Eddie asked with a grin.

“You wouldn’t happen to know any Trekkies would you?” Steve asked chewing on his bottom lip.

“That depends, Stevie,” Eddie replied, “what’s the need?”

“Pointed ears.”

Eddie hummed. “I’m assuming you’re thinking Trekkie because of Spock and that’s a good thought. But I’m guessing since we’re going to the Ren Fair our stalwart ranger is wanting to be an elf?”

“Yeah,” Steve said. “Do you know anyone who can help?”

“Better than that,” Eddie said. “I know where to get the ears in the right... shade?”

Steve perked up. “Oh? I’m guessing Jeff?”

“Right in one, darlin’,” Eddie said with a soft smile. “I’ll give him a call and then call you back.”

“Thanks, Eds,” Steve breathed. “You’re the best.”

“Thanks, doll.”

****

I am so excited for this, guys. You have no idea. I'm little history nerd myself and this really fun to play around with.

Just a heads up. We WILL be addressing Mike's casual racism from the Ghostbusters scene because I don't like that it's never been addressed.

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13

Tag List: @spectrum-spectre @estrellami-1 @zerokrox-blog @gregre369 @artiststarme @a-little-unsteddie @chaosgremlinmunson @messrs-weasley @chaoticlovingdreamer @maya-custodios-dionach @danili666 @goodolefashionedloverboi @val-from-lawrence @i-must-potato @carlyv @wonderland-girl143-blog @justforthedead89 @vecnuthy @irregular-child @bookbinderbitch @bookworm0690 @anne-bennett-cosplayer @yikes-a-bee @awkwardgravity1 @littlewildflowerkitten @genderless-spoon @cinnamon-mushroomabomination @dragonmama76 @scheodingers-muppet @ellietheasexylibrarian @thedragonsaunt @useless-nb-bisexual

#my writing #stranger things #steddie #ladykailtiha writes #steve is a history nerd #tw: racism

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lesservillain · 11 months ago

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alpha!steve harrington x omega!reader

cw: omegaverse dynamics, knotting, bonding/marking, breeding kink, unprotected piv, semi public, mutual pining

wc:~5.7k

Music plays at a low hum from the small radio at your desk. The only station that comes in clear has been taken over by Christmas music since Thanksgiving break. Not even Wham!’’s Last Christmas was giving the same sense of relief after hearing it every day for almost a month now.

Despite the winter wonderland outside, you still seek out the coolness of your water bottle against your skin, the chill helping to ease the flush that’s been making you sweat like it was mid July in Texas. You’d even cracked the window behind your desk in hopes that the fallen snow would help with your elevated body temperature. But you knew that all of your efforts were for nothing. That no matter how cold you made it, there was really only one thing that would actually be able to ease the discomfort that you felt spreading under your skin; the burden of being an omega in this world.

Ever since you split with your ex this past spring you’ve been having to deal with your heats on your own. It's not impossible for an omega to go through heats without an alpha to ease the pain, but when you go cold turkey after years of having someone there to satisfy the overwhelming biological need to mate, it can take a huge toll on any omega.

Science has made leaps and bounds over the last 20 years to improve suppressants for both alphas and omegas. They’re not perfect by any means, but they’re better than dealing with the intense urges that you feel when that time of the month comes.

The current suppressants you're taking are…experimental. Mixed with a birth control that’s supposed to be able to stop even the swimmers of an alpha in rut from reaching an egg of an omega they’ve marked. They were suggested by your doctor as a preventative, since omegas after losing their long alpha tend to subconsciously scent to seek out a replacement.

And they worked really well the first few months, not having a heat for nearly half a year. But the added stress of moving to a new town on your own and starting a new job where you were constantly playing catch up after inheriting a mess from the school’s previous nurse, your heat came back full swing within the first month of the school year. The dizziness, increased appetite, a dull ache in your lower back, and hot flashes put you out for three days before you could get a suppressant strong enough to make you functional again.

Now you’re having your winter heat, which, so far, has been much tamer by comparison thanks to the increased dose of your medication. But the combination of your heat with the influx of students seeing you due to peak flu and strep season, your body has been practically screaming at you by the end of each day this week to go home and relax.

The sudden overzealous opening of your office door takes your attention off your sweltering body. The all too familiar voice of Mr. Harrington calls out “Helloooo, nurse!” as he occupies the space in the doorway.

Steve Harrington was one of the school’s sophomore history teachers, as well as the football and basketball coach and the leader of the Student Achievement program. All of the staff, and probably some of the students, swoon over him at any given moment, his presence never missed due to the air that surrounds him. Unfortunately you’re not immune to his charms either. In fact, the natural attraction between the two of you was palpable at times, regardless of how much you try to ignore it.

Steve could feel it, too. And maybe it was the way his alpha brain was wired, but his flirty personality is jacked up to 10 whenever you’re around. It’s not on purpose, at least not in a conscious way. His amazing hair, the way his clothes hugged his toned body, and his almost unnaturally handsome face made him the poster child for the perfect alpha partner.

Well, perfect except for the fact that he’s the clumsiest man you’ve ever met in your life, leaving your office at least once a week with a Strawberry Shortcake bandaid after giving himself a paper cut or an ice pack on his head when a ball hits him in the face.

Despite his accident-prone nature, Steve is a highly desired, single alpha in his prime. And with you being the only unclaimed adult omega in the building, it’s put a huge target on your back for your jealous coworkers who think they have a shot with him. To remedy this, you’ve maintained a firm level of professionalism and platonic friendliness at all times with him, despite his flirty personality testing your willpower.

His intoxicating scent invades your senses sending a wave of warmth to wash over you before you can even give him a quick glance. You pull at the collar of your blouse willing the air to cool down your shirt. “You feeling okay there, nurse? You look a little flushed. Or are you just that happy to see me?”

“Mr.Harrington,” you say flatly, following with teasing sarcasm as you continue looking over your paperwork, “I was starting to worry you weren’t going to see me this week. Thought you’d finally broken your streak of bad luck.” He lets out an airy chuckle that makes the sides of your lips threaten to curl.

“Oh, honey, you know I can’t stay away from you.” He means it. He would fake appendicitis if it gave him a greater chance to be doted on by you. To get closer to you. “I would have been in here sooner if I hadn’t been glued to my desk all week getting grades in before break,” he says, voicing his grievances that were the result of his own negligence.

“I see,” you hum, continuing with the sarcastic tone. “I guess I won’t have to replenish my box of bandaids just yet.”

“Weelll,” he draws out, “All that sitting time must have built up my bad luck, because, uh, I think this one may need more than just a bandaid.”

When you finally lift your eyes from your desk, they almost bulge out of their sockets at the sight of him. Where you initially thought his arms were just crossed, you see his right hand is actually covering his left bicep, blood staining down the sleeve of his light and navy blue striped dress shirt. The lack of urgency in his tone had you thinking nothing was wrong, but of course Steve Harrington would find the time to flirt with you while he’s bleeding.

Tossing your water bottle on the desk and jumping up from your seat, you practically fly across the room to assess the damage, pulling his hand away to find a tear in the sleeve and blood spread messily on his skin underneath.

“Oh my goodness, what happened?” You ask with concern, pulling him into the office by the hand and leading him to a cot, shutting the door behind you.

“Mrs.Harmon asked if I could stay and help set up stuff around the auditorium for the choir performance tonight,” he explained as you pulled at the material of his sleeve, trying and failing and get a better look at the wound, “and I accidentally knocked a shelf off the wall while trying to get the decorations out. I moved fast enough that it didn’t crush me, but it did knick me a little.”

“A little! Mr.Harrington—” you start with a stern tone, preparing your normal lecture to him about being safe.

“Steve,” he corrects with a smug grin, insisting that you call him by his first name since you’ve met.

“Mr.Harrington,” you repeat like a warning, trying to remain professional when he’s so close to you. It’s hard when he’s staring at your face with those big hazel eyes as he watches your face scrunch in frustration while you fiddle with his shirt. A shirt that’s straining to stay together around his large bicep, leaving no give for you to get a better look at his wound.

Losing your will to argue with him, your hands rest to your hips with a sigh. “Can you, just, slip your arm out of the sleeve, please?”

“Of course,” he says with faux seriousness as you can see his all too satisfied smile, rolling your eyes at him.

Turning on your heel, you walk a few feet to grab the things from the supply cabinet to treat his wound. Your back is turned to him as you fill your arms with gauze, tape, cotton balls, and anything else you may need for a cut that large.

“You know, you’re probably the clumsiest alpha I’ve ever met,” you tease as you turn to face him again, “Sometimes I think you get hurt on purpose just to see m—“

The rest of your remark dies on your tongue as your mouth goes dry. Taking liberties with your request, you watch Mr.Harrington completely remove his shirt, dropping it on the cot behind him and facing you once more. The white under tank he’s wearing leaves little to the imagination as it hugs his broad chest tightly, thinning the material and making it almost see through. His skin still has the last lingering tint of the tan he was sporting on the first day of school, and different sized freckles and moles decorate his body like constellations in the sky. You’ve never seen so much of him all at once, head feeling fuzzy as you drink him in.

“I think you might be drooling a bit there, Ms. Nurse,” he says pointing to the corner of his own mouth to further his teasing. But you can barely hear him, the words muffled as your ears start to ring and your vision tilts as if you’d been drinking. The boil you’d been dealing with all day felt like a slight shimmer as your fever suddenly spikes, your body on fire as the scent coming from his newly exposed skin has you reeling.

The supplies you’re holding dropped to the floor, freeing your hands to grasp at the counter behind you. Steve rushes to your side, wrapping an arm around you and easing you to the ground. He barely makes it without dropping to his knees himself, the smell of your pheromones hitting him like a brick.

“H-hey, what do you need,” you hear him ask, but you can hardly register the words as his scent in close proximity only spurs your heat on more. Even with your clothes covering your skin, the touch of his hand on your waist and the one he’s rested on your knee make you crave more of him in a carnal way, the urgent need to close the gap between the two of you has your body shifting until you’re on your knees and crawling towards him.

His hands hover in the air, slightly trembling as you lean into him. He falls back on his ass as you get closer until you’re practically laying on him, rubbing against him with your face like a cat. “I need you, Steve,” you purr. He takes a sharp breath in through gritted teeth as your hand drifts lower, lower, until your fingers land on the very prominent bulge straining against his deep blue slacks. “Shit,” his head snaps back at the contact, before dropping back down to look at you with hungry eyes.

“What happened to keeping it professional?” He tries to joke, unsure if this is all just a test from the universe to see how he would react to having his nightly fantasies come true. And while Steve may be resilient in many ways, he wasn’t sure if he could hold back with the way you’re looking up at him through your lashes as if he’d hung the moon and the stars. The scent of his musk permeates the room as he gives into your needs, his desires, letting the primal urges he’s been pushing down since the day he met you front in his mind.

If you were in a different state of mind you probably would have laughed at his comment. But the intense ache that bloomed between your legs as all your senses start to leave your body has you whimpering against his chest.

Strong arms scoop you up swiftly, tossing you down on the cot and pulling the privacy curtain behind him. In the split second he was away from you, you managed to grab his discarded shirt and pull it to your nose, inhaling his lingering scent. It was like a drug that you couldn’t get enough of, your thighs rubbing together and hips moving against air as your body seeks out any kind of relief for the ache.

Suddenly, the shirt is torn from your grasp roughly. You cry out, hands reaching out aimlessly before they’re being grasped tightly around the wrists and pinned to the bed. The cot dips as a weight wedges its way between your legs, pressing against your core in a way that has you instantly bucking against it with reckless abandon, your clouded mind only thinking about satisfying the throb in your core.

“God, look at the mess you’re making on my thigh already,” Steve says with a low growl, watching you use him in a pathetic attempt to relieve yourself. The grit in his voice hits every nerve in your body on its way from your ear drums to your cunt.

“You smell so fucking sweet,” he groans as he brings your wrist to his nose and inhales, “Like vanilla or honey, o-or something better,” he stammers. He leans over you, hot tongue licking a thick stripe from your collar bone to behind your ear, lightly biting the lobe and pulling, goosebumps rising on your skin. His hair is just as soft as you imagined it would be as it tickles your cheek, a sharp contrast to the way his teeth bite at your neck, his tongue soothing over the skin.

You press your cheek into him, whining his name right into his ear, practically begging him to put you out of your misery. He releases one of your hands to grab your face, lips pursing together, making you look him in the eyes. His pupils fully blown out and close enough that you can see your own fucked out reflection in them.

“Listen to me,” he says, swallowing, eyes flickering between your eyes and your lips. “I’ve been wanting to do this for five fucking months. Five long months of fucking my fist to the thought of getting you under me just like this, making you a mess and having you beg for me.” He takes a deep breath through his nose, nostrils flaring as the last bit of his resolve begins to waver. “So if we do this, you’re mine from now on, got it? No more of this back and forth, pretending you don’t want me as much as I want you bullshit. Once I start…I’m not going to be able to stop. Do you understand?”

There’s no hesitation with how quickly you try to nod your head against his grip. The heat coming off of your cheeks warms the tips of his fingers. “Nuh-uh,” he tuts, giving you a little shake, “Need to hear it. Tell me you want this.”

“Want you, Steve. Need you. Need your cock, please, please please.”

He curses under his breath before his lips crash into yours. The kiss is hot and heavy right off the bat as teeth clash and tongues dance together in desperation. Your free hand finds its way into his perfect hair, pulling slightly at the nape, eliciting a moan from him that you catch as it leaves his lips.

Steve pulls away from you with a wild look in his eyes. Both of his strong hands release their hold on you so that he could rip open the front of your blouse, sending buttons flying and hitting the floor with a clatter. His mouth is back on you, nipping and biting the skin while his hands pull your tits free from the cups of your bra.

Mouth moving at lightning speed, he hungrily takes one of your nipples in his mouth, sucking and tonguing the bud while needing at your other breast with his hand. His eyes are glassy when they look up at you, half lidded and unfocused, drool dribbles down your breast from his mouth.

Everything next happens so quickly you can barely register it. Steve pulls away from you completely, standing up fully to rip your pants down your legs. Once he throws them to the floor, he’s making quick movements to undo his own pants, his right thigh drenched from the slick that had soaked through while grinding against him.

His cock is so hard that the pressure against the crotch of his pants has the zipper undoing itself once he frees the button. Wasting no time, he shucks down his slacks and boxers in one go, his large cock and heavy balls now on full display for you, the sight making your eyes widen in surprise—and maybe fear?

Alphas are known to be bigger than even a well endowed beta, and omegas are built to handle the size of an alpha’s better than a beta can, but the size of the Steve’s cock less than a foot from your face has you mesmerized at the sheer size of it. But while your mind may be in shock, your pussy has a mind of its own, slick dripping in anticipation for the stretch you’d be receiving. Even in his large hands it looked massive, bigger than any alpha you’d been with before.

You sit up in the bed slightly, reaching out to take him in your hand, your fingers barely able to wrap around him as you stroke the angry red tip. He curses under his breath as you let your hand roll over the tip, feeling the veins against the skin of your palm with each stroke.

A little bead of precum bubbles at the tip and something in your mind snaps. Your mouth is on him in an instant, any sense you may have had left is completely gone out the window when that salty taste hits your tongue.

“Fuck, look at you,” he cooes, followed by a guttural moan at the sight of you trying to take as much of him in your mouth as you can. “Such a good girl. Trying your best to take me in that pretty little mouth of yours, huh?” His words egg you as you continue to suckle at his tip, lapping up any of his spend that leaks out as you keep pumping at his shaft.

You want to keep going, want to be good for him, but ache between your legs is becoming unbearable the longer you go on. Slick is slipping down your thighs, a puddling forming under you on the sheets as your body involuntarily preps itself to take Steve’s massive cock. You look up at him with teary eyes, lifting your ass in the air as a silent plea for him to take you like the bitch in heat that you are.

And as much as he’s loving watching you pitifully mouth his cock, seeing you present yourself for him turns off the evolved parts of his brain, leaving him to run on primal instincts only.

Grabbing you by the throat, he manhandles you onto your back and positions you so your ass on the edge of the cot. Your legs fall to the sides, opening as wide as you can get them, pussy on full display and ready to be taken.

“Hoooooo, fuck,” Steve shudders, licking his lips at the sight of your dripping cunt, hole clenching around nothing, begging for him to fill it up. He runs his fingers through your folds to collect some of your arousal, barely brushing over your throbbing clit. He brings his fingers to his mouth, shoulders slumping in satisfaction.

“Damnit, of course you taste sweet, too. Can’t wait til I can get you in my mouth,” he says with a slight slur.

You panic for a moment, unsure if you could wait any longer for him to finally be inside you. As if he can read you like a book, he lets out a soft chuckle, taking his cock in his hand and pumping it slowly. “Don’t you worry, baby girl, I’m not gonna keep you waiting any more. Next time, though…”

The sticky tip of his cock taps your clit, sending shock waves throughout your body with every touch. It’s too much and not enough all at once. His name falls from your lips, and he shushes you in return, lining himself up with your entrance.

The breach of his tip stretching you wide is like a shot of morphine in an IV drip, your body becoming numb and a live wire at the same time, replacing the pain with a fuzzy haze all over.

Steve watches the way your face contorts with pleasure as hips rock back and forth slowly. His teeth bite down on his bottom lip, trying his hardest to hold back so you can get used to his size, but the vice grip you have on his cock has him quickly losing his resolve. Body falling over you, he brackets your head between his forearms as he finally folds. His breath fanning over your face has your eyes fluttering open. Met with the most divine visual of Steve’s pinched brow, scrunched up nose, and slack jaw fill your vision entirely. Your breath is punched from your lungs as he makes that final thrust, bottoming out inside of you with a shuddered whimper.

“Oh, my god,” you breathe, wrapping your arms around his neck and pulling him in closer. He buries his head in the crook of your neck, rubbing his face against your skin, marking you with his scent. He begins to move, setting a pace that makes every thrust feel like heaven, the tightness of your walls amplifying every ridge and bump of his cock as it drags back and forth. “Fuck, Steve, you’re so big,” you whine, “Never felt so full be-fore!” The last syllable comes out as a gasp as he thrusts into you hard, spurred on by your words.

His arms wrap around you tightly, laying all of his upper body weight against you to pin you in place so he can fuck into mercilessly. The feeling is mind melting, nonsense words mixed with repeating his name over and over fall from your mouth with each punch of his cock against your cervix. Each thrust hits that spot inside of you dead on, throttling you towards the edge quicker than your mind can handle in your current fucked out state.

“Fuuuuck,” Steve’s voice is strained next to your ear, thrusts slowing as you “Don’t squeeze so tight, baby, I don’t wanna cum yet.”

His words have the opposite effect on you as your whole body trembles beneath him, cumming so hard his cock your vision goes white. Your chest presses into his as your back arches off the mattress, the skin to skin friction against your hardened nipples stimulating you more as he fucks you through your high.

He lifts his head to watch you come undone with a wide eyed, feral look. He’s panting, too, with a string of saliva from his tongue to the skin of your shoulder where he had latched on, the skin red and already speckling with broken blood vessels.

“You’re so pretty when you cum on my cock like that,” he says with heavy breaths, “Wanna see you do it again, and again, and again,” he babbles, leaning in to trail kisses along your jaw, continuing to thrust into you harder and harder, in his own world now. You can only cling to him as he ruts into you, nails scratching down his back. “Gonna fuck you over and over and over until it takes. Big, round belly on full display for everyone to see. You gonna tell everyone Mr.Harrington got you pregnant when you can’t hide it anymore? What will all the other teachers think?”

“Fuck, Steve, please.”

“What is it, baby? Tell me what you want.”

“Want it, Steve. Want your knot.”

“Oh, is that right?”

Suddenly, he pulls away and out of you completely. It’s such a shock to the system you can help but cry out at the loss of him. But the vacancy doesn’t last long, his strong arms lifting and flipping you with ease until you’re face down into the mattress, ass being propped up on shaky legs so he can bottom out in you once more.

This new angle changed everything. A wanton moan feels like it was being pushed out of you as it felt like his cock was in your lungs. One hand grabs a hold of your hip while the other pushes down on the back of your neck, effectively pinning you down so he can pick back up his brutal pace. There was no rhythm to his thrusts, driven purely on animalistic instincts as he chases his own pleasure, using you as a means to get him there.

“You want my knot, huh?” The question is rhetorical, said in the heat of the moment as he feels his peak nearing. “Want me to give you my knot and really knock you up? I’ll ruin you for any other alphas that think they have a chance. Cause you’re mine now, aren’t you, sweet girl? No other alpha’s gonnna fuck you like I can, right?”

“No-no, Steve! Don’t want anyone else! Only want your knot! Please, please!” Your eyes lull as he fucks you stupid, mouth parted open as you drool onto the sheets.

His weight shifts, trailing kisses down your back until he gets to that spot on the back of your neck. A chill runs down your spine as his teeth scrape against the skin over your scent gland. “Well, if that’s the case…Guess you wouldn’t mind if I held you to that, right?”

The primal part of your brain is screaming for him to do it; mark you and make you his, permanently. The logical side fights for dominance, reminding you that you never wanted to be owned by an alpha, which is why you and your ex broke up in the first place. But the way he was making you feel right now had you second guessing all your morals. He hums over you, lips lingering against your skin as he speaks.

Before you could answer, his hips were stilling inside you, the base of his cock swelling as he pumped you full with his spend. It would have been painful if it didn’t trigger the release of oxytocin in your body, making you cum with him. Your legs start to give out, but his hold on you tightens as his spend continues to spill into you., the His body shakes above you, chest heaving as tries to catch his breath.

The two of you take a moment to come down from your highs. The air around you feels electric as the two of you become one, his knot settling within your walls snuggly, the steady stream of Steve’s cum filling you to the brim until you couldn’t possibly take anymore. He rests his head over your scent gland, rubbing his face against it out of comfort while you still emit that sweet, sweet smell.

Everything feels right in the moment, until it’s interrupted by a knock and an intruding aroma. To you, it smells like smokey wood and cinnamon, but to Steve, it’s a threat. The smell of another alpha trying to get near his omega and claim her over him. You can feel his body tense up, breathing picking up in a panic, lips pressing against the skin as his mind races.

“Steve?” You say his name meekly. There’s a short pause between you, a split second before you feel it, his teeth clamping down on your skin. It’s like every nerve in your body lights up all at once. The sensation is powerful it makes you cum again, clamping down on Steve’s still hard cock buried inside of you. The moan he lets out against you is pornographic, teeth still clinging to your skin tightly as his saliva mixes with your body’s natural scent.

“Hey, everything okay in there?” The muffled voice calls from the other side of the door.

“Get the fuck out of here, Eddie!” Steve yells out to the janitor, another alpha that you’d seen in passing, pinching your skin as he does his best to keep his teeth on you. It’s quiet for a moment, and you think that Eddie left until you hear a loud, booming laugh, and a faint “About damn time!” as the new smell starts to dissipate.

Steven feels your body jolt slightly beneath him and refocuses his attention on you. You do it again with an audible snort. At first he thinks you might be crying, guilt creeping in as he’s realized what he’s done to you. But as you get louder, it’s clear that you are actually laughing.

“Was tho funneh?” He asks, drooling down onto your back.

“I don’t know,” you say through fits of giggles. “I think I’m losing my mind.”

“Thounds like et,” he says, laughing along with you.

“Sorry, I just…wasn’t expecting any of this.” Your body shifts under him, growing uncomfortable in the position you were in. Steve senses this, releasing your skin and licking your wounds so that, with careful maneuvering, he’s able to get both of you comfortably on your sides. He wraps his arms and legs around you, holding you close to his strong chest, eyeing his handiwork of his mark as you rest your head on his arm.

“There’s nothing for you to apologize for,” he says softly, kissing the back of your head. “If anyone should be apologizing, it should be me. I took things too far…But if I’m going to be honest with you, I don’t regret it.”

It could be the residual high from your heat, or the change in your brain chemistry from his mark, or just the fact that you’ve been pushing down how much you really wanted this with him from the moment your hands touched when you both went for the same bagel at the first staff meeting over the summer, but you couldn’t deny that you didn’t regret it either.

For so long you’ve been in denial, trying to ignore that he was the reason your suppressants stopped working because you wanted him so badly that your body was rejecting them when he was around. Denying how happy you get when he brings you coffee in the morning, or how much you look forward to when he sits with you during his lunch period to talk about whatever shenanigans his multitude of friends get into, or how the whole reason you started this heat was because he let you sit in the passenger seat of his BMW while he jumped your car after work on Tuesday, the inside smelling so overwhelmingly like him that you had to jump out and rush straight to your car before you ended up jumping him in the middle of the parking lot.

“Steve?” You request his attention just above a whisper, breaking the silence between you. He hums quizzically, resting his cheek against yours. “Did you really need to grade papers this week, or have you been avoiding me this week because you knew I was going through a heat?”

His cheek vibrates against yours as he chuckles from his throat. “You’re so smart, you know that, right?” He kisses your cheek before settling back with his head on the pillow, forehead resting against the back of your head.

As the two of you lay there you ask him a million questions, picking his brain to its fullest extent with this new closeness the two of you share. Really, you just like the sound of his voice, but he does say a few things here and there that make you belly laugh.

“Don’t do that,” he laughs along with you, “We’re never going to come undone if you keep squeezing me like that!”

“I can’t help it,” you wipe a tear from your eye, trying your hardest to suppress your giggles.

Thirty minutes pass and Steve’s knot finally goes down enough that he can pull out of you. It feels like a part of you is missing now that he’s no longer occupying you after so long. Hot, sticky cum pours from you like a storm drain onto the sheet below. With a sigh, you make a mental note to add new sheets on your list of things to replace, right under a new box of bandaids.

Oh, shit. Steve’s arm.

As he starts to gather the discarded clothes on the floor, you see that that blood has dried up and mostly rubbed off after everything. After the two of you redress, you wearing Steve’s button up after he made your blouse no longer wearable, not that you were complaining as the need to nest was starting to kick in, you cared for his wound. Just a cut left behind that would be okay with a little disinfecting and a few steristrips.

“You forgot the most important part,” he says with a shake of his head as you place the last strip on his arm. You tilt your head at him in confusion, a smile forming on his face as he looks at you with a sparkle in his eyes. “Aren’t you gonna kiss it better?”

#steve harrington #alpha!steve harrington #alpha!steve harrington x omega!reader #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington smut #steve harrington fluff #steve harrington fan fic #steve harrington stranger things #teacher!steve harrington #teacher!steve harrington x nurse!reader

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gemsofgreece · 7 months ago

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Turkey is about to convert another Greek Orthodox church to a mosque in Istanbul. They have been doing it relentlessly with many churches in the country, the most well known example being Hagia Sophia of course. This time they are about to convert the Church of Chora, a 4th century monastery which is particularly notable for having some of the best preserved religious art, icons and mosaics of the Byzantine style. It is the prime example of the Paleologan renaissance of the 13th century which was critical for the post-Byzantine and modern Orthodox style as we know it nowadays. Of course all the monument’s masterpieces are going to be covered for the church to be converted into a mosque.

It should be noted that as a city of 15 million, it already has more than 3,000 mosques, yet the need to turn historical churches to mosques seems to feel most urgent to them for some reason. Surely the reason must not be that Istanbul feels threatened by the presence of the remaining 2,000 Constantinopolitan Greeks (aka those who survived the islamisation, the pogroms, the deportations, the death marches and the genocide 🙃). So what is this urgency about?

Taking into consideration that from the next year they are also adding the irredentist fabrication of “Blue Homeland” (since when are Turks indigenous to islands for them to have a blue homeland?!?!?! 😂😂😂) to their schoolbooks, aka Turkey’s claim to half of Greece’s territorial waters in the Aegean Sea and all the islands located in these waters, and because it is obvious to me that a country of 80+ million cannot possibly feel threatened by a country of 10 million, I conclude once again that Turkey is simply threatened by the very easy modern international access to historical sources. So you have to start the brainwashing and the hate speech from an as early age as possible and you have to erase all signs of an alternative view of history from your streets to fight all the contradictory facts that can be learned from international sources within seconds from your phone.

#Greece #Greco Turkish relations #history erasure #news #Greek news

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girlactionfigure · 4 days ago

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THURSDAY HERO: Selahattin Ulkumen

For much of history, Turks and Jews have gotten along well. During the Holocaust, Turkey did more to save Jewish lives than the United States or Great Britain. One of these heroic Turks was Selahattin Ülkümen, a diplomat serving on the Greek island of Rhodes.

Previously controlled by Italy, Rhodes was occupied by the German army in 1943. Approximately 2000 Jews lived on the island, many of them from Turkey, Greece and Italy. In 1944, the Gestapo ordered all the Jews of Rhodes to report for “temporary relocation” – in fact, they were headed for Auschwitz. Upon hearing the news, Selahattin immediately rushed to the German commanding officer, and informed him that since Turkey was officially neutral, the Jews who were Turkish citizens must be released.

The Nazi officer refused, insisting that under Nazi law all Jews were Jews and had to be sent to concentration camps. Selahattin retorted that under Turkish law, all citizens were equal and Jews were not treated differently than Christians or Muslims. Selahattin threatened the German officer that if he didn’t release the Jewish Turks, and their extended families, Turkey would cause an international incident. After much tension, 50 Jewish Turks were finally released. Despite continuing harassment from the Nazi authorities, all 50 of them survived the war, due entirely to the bold efforts of Selahattin.

Selahattin paid a high price for his bravery. In retaliation for his refusal to cooperate with the Nazi authorities, the Germans bombed the Turkish consulate on Rhodes. Selahattin’s pregnant wife Mihrinissa was killed in the blast, along with two other consular employees.

After the war, Selahattin returned to Turkey. In 1989, he was honored as “Righteous Among the Nations” by Israeli Holocaust Museum Yad Vashem, and in 1990 Israel issued a postage stamp in his honor. Selahattin died in Istanbul in 2003, at age 89.

For risking his life to save endangered Jews, and paying a tremendous personal price, we honor Selahattin Ülkümen as this week’s Thursday Hero.

#Thursday Hero

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amnhnyc · 1 year ago

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Gobble, gobble? Here’s a turkey you might not be familiar with: the Australian Brush-turkey (Alectura lathami)! Found in parts of eastern Australia, this ground-dwelling omnivore feeds on insects, fallen fruits, and seeds. This species' chicks become independent almost immediately after birth. Parents leave their offspring to fend for themselves, and hatchlings are able to fly within hours of being born. Nearly hunted to extinction in the 1930s, this species’ population has since rebounded.

Photo: JJ Harrison, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

#science #amnh #nature #natural history #animals #turkey #thanksgiving #fun facts #fact of the day #did you know #ornithology #birds #australia #gobble gobble

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sonyaheaneyauthor · 19 hours ago

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Tulsi Gabbard’s history with Russia is even more concerning than you think

“What happened in Syria is what allowed the Russians to feel that they could do the very same in Ukraine,” he said.

“And what she is doing with Ukraine shows that it goes beyond her maybe misunderstanding one conflict. She is, hook, line and sinker, a Russian puppet.”

In the summer of 2015, three Syrian girls who had narrowly survived an airstrike some weeks earlier stood before Tulsi Gabbard with horrific burns all over their bodies.

Gabbard, then a US congresswoman on a visit to the Syria-Turkey border as part of her duties for the foreign affairs committee, had a question for them.

“How do you know it was Bashar al-Assad or Russia that bombed you, and not Isis?’” she asked, according to Mouaz Moustafa, a Syrian activist who was translating her conversation with the girls.

It was a revealing insight into Gabbard’s conspiratorial views of the conflict, and it shocked Moustafa to silence. He knew, as even the young children did, that Isis did not have jets to launch airstrikes. It was such an absurd question that he chose not to translate it because he didn’t want to upset the girls, the eldest of whom was 12.

“From that point on, I’m sorry to say I was inaccurate in my translations of anything she said,” Moustafa told The Independent. “It was more like: How do I get these girls away from this devil?”

Even before Gabbard left the Democratic Party, ingratiated herself with Donald Trump and secured his nomination to become director of National Intelligence, she was known as a prolific peddler of Russian propaganda.

In almost every foreign conflict in which Russia had a hand, Gabbard backed Moscow and railed against the US. Her past promotion of Kremlin propaganda has provoked significant opposition on both sides of the aisle to her nomination.

Her journey from anti-war Democrat to Moscow-friendly Maga warrior began in Syria. The devastating conflict was sparked by pro-democracy uprisings in 2011, which were brutally crushed by the Assad regime. It descended into a complex web of factions that drew extremist Islamists from around the world and global powers into the fray.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based monitoring group with a network of sources on the ground, documented the deaths of 503,064 people by March 2023. It said at least 162,390 civilians had died in that same time, with the Syrian government and its allies responsible for 139,609 of those deaths.

But Gabbard, a veteran of the Iraq War, viewed it all as a “regime-change war” fueled by the West and aimed at removing the dictator from power. She saw Assad – and Russia, when it entered the conflict – as legitimate defenders of the state against an extremist uprising.

In 2015, when Russia entered the Syrian war on the side of the dictator Assad, Gabbard expressed support for the move, even as the civilian toll from Moscow’s devastating airstrikes grew into the thousands.

“Al-Qaeda attacked us on 9/11 and must be defeated. Obama won’t bomb them in Syria. Putin did. #neverforget911,” she wrote on Twitter.

It was precisely because of her support for Assad and Russia’s war that Moustafa was keen for her to attend the congressional delegation to southern Turkey to meet the victims of the conflict.

“From experience, everyone that we bring over to the border, and they see the victims, they always come back with a realistic view of what’s happening and who is behind the mass displacement and killing and atrocities and so on, and so that was the objective,” he said. “What was shocking was her lack of empathy. She’ll sacrifice the facts, even when it came to little girls in front of her telling her they got bombed by a plane – it didn’t matter.”

Charles Lister, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute who testified twice on Syria to the House Foreign Affairs Committee when Gabbard was a member, spent years debunking her various conspiracy theories about the war.

“Her consistent denial of the Syrian regime’s crimes is so wildly fringe that her potential appointment as DNI is genuinely alarming,” he told The Independent.

Lister said her views “appear to be driven by a strange fusion of America First isolationism and a belief in the value of autocratic and secular leaders in confronting extremism.”

They included a suggestion that Syrian rebels staged a false-flag chemical weapons attack against their supporters to provoke Western intervention against Assad — something the US intelligence agencies she will soon lead had concluded was false. She declined to call Assad a war criminal when pressed, despite masses of evidence, and used a video of Syrian government bombings to criticize US involvement in the war.

“Her descriptions of the crisis in Syria read like they were composed in Assad’s personal office, or in Tehran or Moscow – not Washington,” Lister added.

Gabbard was not swayed by meeting the victims of Assad’s airstrikes in 2015. In fact, two years later, she went to Damascus to meet the Syrian president in person and came away even more convinced of her opinions.

The congresswoman said her visit to meet Assad – the first by a sitting US lawmaker since the conflict began – was aimed at bringing an end to the war.

“I felt it’s important that if we profess to truly care about the Syrian people, about their suffering, then we’ve got to be able to meet with anyone that we need to if there is a possibility that we could achieve peace,” she told CNN at the time.

Fire rises following a Syrian government airstrike in Aleppo in 2016 (AP)

Gabbard was forced to defend her embrace of Assad and other dictators during her 2020 run for the Democratic presidential nomination. During the Democratic primary debate, she clashed with Kamala Harris, who accused her of being “an apologist for an individual – Assad – who has murdered the people of his country like cockroaches.”

“She has embraced and been an apologist for him in a way that she refuses to call him a war criminal. I can only take what she says and her opinion so seriously and so I’m prepared to move on,” added Harris, who would subsequently drop out of the race and later be selected as Joe Biden’s running mate.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, Gabbard again defended Russian aggression.

“This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/Nato had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns,” she posted on Twitter in 2022.

Gabbard appeared to fall for various conspiracy theories about the conflict that were promoted by Russia, as she had done in Syria. One of those conspiracy theories was a Russian claim about the existence of dozens of US-funded biolabs in Ukraine that were supposedly producing deadly pathogens.

She later walked back on those remarks, suggesting that there might have been some “miscommunication and misunderstanding.”

Gabbard’s frequent echoing of Kremlin talking points has earned her praise in Russian state media. Indeed, an article published on 15 November in the Russian-state controlled outlet RIA Novosti went so far as to call Gabbard a “superwoman.”

The possibility that Trump would tap someone with Gabbard’s history to be America’s top intelligence official shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who followed the president-elect’s first four years in the White House.

During his 2018 summit with President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, the then-president was asked if he believed the US intelligence community’s assessment, which stated that Russia had interfered in the 2016 presidential election on his behalf.

That assessment was based on analysis of what was determined to have been state-sponsored campaigns of fake social media posts and ersatz news sites to spread false stories about his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, as well as cyberattacks targeting the Democratic National Committee and prominent operatives associated with the Clinton campaign.

But Trump, who’d just spent several hours in a closed-door meeting with Putin, stunned the assembled press and the entire world by declaring that he trusted the Russian leader’s word over that of his own advisers.

"President Putin says it’s not Russia. I don’t see any reason why it would be," he replied.

Trump would go on to repeatedly clash with his own intelligence appointees during the remainder of his term. He sacked his first DNI, former Indiana senator Dan Coats, after Coats repeatedly declined to back away from the government’s assessment of what Russia had done during the 2016 presidential race.

Larry Pfeiffer, the director of George Mason University’s Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and International Security, said Gabbard’s apparent susceptibility to foreign disinformation and her affinity for strongmen will give pause to American allies with whom the US routinely shares intelligence on common threats.

Intelligence services, he explained, are notoriously territorial and tight-lipped on sources and methods – particularly when it comes to so-called human intelligence, or Humint, which refers to information collected by and from spies and sources within hostile governments.

Pfeiffer said foreign allies are likely already concerned about how a second Trump administration will handle intelligence, given the president-elect’s record. He also predicted that Gabbard’s confirmation as DNI would cause even more problems among skittish partners.

“I think they wouldn’t feel like they’ve got an American confidant that they can deal with on a mature level,” he said. “I can guarantee you that the foreign intelligence services of Europe, including the Brits, are all having little side conversations right now about … what is this going to mean, and how are we going to operate, and what are we going to do now.”

Gabbard has taken the side of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad as well as the Russian president (AP)

The former US intelligence veteran also said Gabbard’s record of spreading foreign talking points calls into question whether she will be able to carry out the DNI’s important responsibility of briefing the president on threats to the nation.

He told The Independent: “Somebody like Tulsi Gabbard, you look at her long history of statements that seem to come out of the Kremlin’s notebook, her propensity to be influenced by their viewpoint – [it] raises questions as to whether she has the ability to present the intel community’s perspective as it is, or is she going to be one who’s going to want to discount it, influence it, color and change it, or ignore it and just present her own view?

“I think it also raises questions of judgement. You know, here’s an individual who seems very prone to misinformation, prone to conspiracy theory. That should worry anybody who’s worried about America’s national security,” he added.

Trump’s selection of the former Hawaii congresswoman could be a problem for the senators tasked with confirming her, on several different levels. For one, the position is unique among cabinet agencies in that there are strict requirements for who can serve in the director’s role.

The text of the 2004 law which established the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks on New York and Washington and the intelligence community’s failures leading up to the US invasion of Iraq, specifically states that any person who serves in the DNI job “shall have extensive national security expertise.”

The first person to serve as DNI, John Negroponte, was a widely respected foreign service veteran who had served as US ambassador to Iraq, Mexico, Honduras and the Philippines, as the country’s ambassador to the United Nations, and as a deputy national security adviser during the Reagan administration. The next three people to hold the office were flag-rank military officers with significant intelligence experience.

Pfeiffer, a US intelligence veteran of three decades’ standing who once ran the White House Situation Room and served as chief of staff to then-CIA director General Michael Hayden, told The Independent that Gabbard’s experience in the House and her military service, while admirable, do not match the standards envisioned by the authors of the 2004 law which established the office.

“That’s national security experience … but she was a freaking military cop … operating at a largely tactical level, not that strategic, long-term national security perspective that one would expect,” he said.

Gabbard may have left the Syrian conflict behind, but Moustafa still works with its victims every day. And he believes the connection between her views on Syria and Ukraine is clear.

“What happened in Syria is what allowed the Russians to feel that they could do the very same in Ukraine,” he said.

“And what she is doing with Ukraine shows that it goes beyond her maybe misunderstanding one conflict. She is, hook, line and sinker, a Russian puppet.”

#us politics #russian invasion of ukraine #tankies #donald trump #syria #russian asset #tulsi gabbard #war in europe #world war 3 #assad #war in ukraine #putin #genocide #genocide of ukrainians #current evetns

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rooksamoris · 5 months ago

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its not problem!! im happy to offer whatever help i can!! i'll probably get into the other cultures/countries later tonight or tomorrow. im a total hoeeee when it comes to culture ESP when its mena stuff, since im mena lmao, BUT ANYWHO!! im glad to help out where i can

Kalim's Birthday Fanart

As some of you may be aware already, for each twst character’s birthday i tend to make art of the birthday boy to celebrate, and my plan for this year was to use said art to promote different charities and local stores from countries in need. The next birthday on the list is Kalim’s and I wanted to make it special to promote a lot more charities than usual in a single post for the following countries: Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, Tunisia and Yemen (I wanted to include Sudan as well, but I’m not sure if it would be okay to do so given the fact that it’s in Northeast Africa, either way I’ll be making another special art piece focused on African countries for Leona’s birthday but I really want to add Sudan to Kalim and Jamil’s art as well, please do let me know if that’s alright).

My plan for these is to put Kalim in these countries’ different traditional clothing (yes, all of them if possible, I like to put the boys in at least 2 different outfits for their birthday and I don’t mind putting them in more if given enough time), and while I’ve found something in my investigation I also feel unsure of how accurate said information is, as well as the fact that I haven’t been able to find good reference for each article of clothing (most pics I’ve found are low res and I can’t see the details like that). So, after consulting with my sister about it, I decided to make this post to ask for help for this, since I’m not from any of the countries mentioned and I truly don’t want to end up doing something offensive due to lack of information when my objective is to try and bring more attention to what is happening there and hopefully spread the charity links to help the victims.

So please, if you can help me in any way to verify the information I gathered or link me more sources and references I can use (especially if you’re a part of any of these cultures) I would be incredibly grateful!

Notes and List of sites I gathered and consulted under Read More.

Notes:

My plan for Kalim’s outfits based on the information I have so far goes like this:

First outfit: white Thobe w/ embroidered neckline and cuffs + red and white Kuffiyeh/Shumagh (possibly over his shoulders instead of in his head, but I might change it) – OR – Kurdish traditional clothing (sharwall, long sleeved jacket, dress shirt and pshtwen/pshten).

Second Outfit: simple white Dishdasha + Champagne colored Bisht (given his social standing, please let me know if it’s innapropiate) + classic black and white Kuffiyeh/Shumagh.

Third Outfit: Dishdasha w/ blazer + embroidered belt + Jambiya + Shawl wrapped like a turban (colors and patterns not yet decided).

Fourth Outfit: Jalabiya + scarf + skullcap (colors and patterns not yet decided).

I don’t really know if that number of outfits is enough to represent all of the mentioned cultures or if I should add more, so please let me know! I’m also trying to find more reference pictures so that I can be as accurate as possible, so links to online shops that sell these garments also work pretty well for me (preferably, with models wearing them so I can see how the fabrics and layers interact with movement).

Sources I’ve found/consulted so far:

Arab Clothing: The Ultimate Guide | IstiZada

Video: Muslim Dresses Around The World Countries 2022 | Islamic Traditional Cloth For Men | Islamic Updates - YouTube

What is a dishdasha and how is it worn? (custom-qamis.com)

What is the Difference Between a Thobe and Dishdasha? – newarabia

Bisht | Abu Dhabi Culture

Clothing – The School of Abbasid Studies

Home - Nationalclothing.org

Clothing - Kurdish Central

Again, thank you so much for the help! If you also want to send me links of charities whose proceeds go to the mentioned countries, that would be just as appreciated!

#🩷 — chats with amora #💘 — mutuals #DONT WORRY ABOUT TAKING YOUR TIME!!!#inshallah i'll get around to syria(esp interested due to their proximity to turkey and i have so many random History facts abt that)#and iraq #i cant wait to see what you come up with!! if you need anymore pictures or ideas #im happy to share stuff from arabic search engines #there's a lot more info on it all in arabic

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ohtobeleah · 1 year ago

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Way Down We Go // Jake Seresin

Summary: Burnout isn't an academic exercise. No. It's an all-consuming, systemic condition. It's your entire body sending you one clear message. Something has to change and it has to change now.

Warnings: Angst. Mental health talks. Jake Seresin x F!reader. Friends to Lovers to ex’s to enemies to friends to lovers trope.

Word Count: 3.5k

Author Note: Based off my own recent experience with Burn Out. Writing this helped me process some of my pent up frustration with accepting the fact I experienced my first real major burn out at 24.

In 2019, the World Health Organisation officially recognised “Burnout” in its international classification of diseases. Studies show that aviators who report signs of burnout have enlarged amygdalas. The area in the brain that regulates fear and aggression.

But burnout isn't an academic exercise. No. It's an all-consuming, systemic condition. It's your entire body sending you one clear message. Something has to change and it has to change now.

Put simply, Burnout comes from a deep imbalance. Too much stress with too few rewards. You're exhausted. Depleted. You no longer have patience, pleasure of serotonin. This is the end unless–

You turn it into something else and find your path to recovery. Pick the pieces you want from your life and find a new way forward. But sometimes it isn't all that simple. Sometimes the all-consuming is just that, it's all-consuming–

And sometimes it's easier to drop the deadweight than to try and carry it on your shoulders.

“Anyone see Rouge today?” It was Hangman's tone that sent a shiver down Roosters spine as he scoffed down the turkey sandwich he had slapped together this morning in the rec room. “We’re on the schedule together after break and I haven't seen her all day?” Rooster knew exactly where you were. At home, probably in bed under a plethora of blankets just trying to catch up on some sleep.

“I uh–” Rooster was raised by an intelligent and loving woman who had always told him not to talk with his mouth full, but in times like these where every second mattered, that rule seemed more obsolete with every day that passed him by. He did however, make an effort to cover his mouth as he chewed and spoke. “Actually I think I’m with you this afternoon, Mav just hasn't had a chance to change the schedule.” It wasn't technically a lie.

“Is Rogue not in today?” Jake frowned as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Or is she just avoiding me or something?” You and Jake Seresin had a complicated history. On again and off again romantically, on again off again friends, but these days it seemed to be that the two of you were more off than on. To the point where if you could avoid it, the two of you would ignore each other's existence completely. It was easier that way.

Which meant Jake didn't know just how bad things had gotten for you. He didn't know you’d decided to take an extended leave of absence from work until you could figure out just what the hell was wrong with you. He didn't know that Rooster had been at your house last night on a welfare check mission. He felt it was his responsibility, after all you were his uncle's daughter.

“Kerners decided to take some time off work.” Rooster explained the best he could without giving too much detail about your personal problems away. “After yesterday's mishap, she got spooked and asked Simpson for a few days to collect her thoughts.”

Jake swore his heart left his body when he saw you lose control for those few seconds. All he could do was watch on in pure horror as you tried to regain control of your fighter jet after getting caught in his jet wash. You panicked, something that was completely out of the ordinary for you which led to you losing control of your F-18 for those brief moments in time.

Jake wanted to talk to you after you landed, but within seconds of touching down you were heading straight for the locker room to grab your things. Unbeknownst to him it was your final straw. He hadn’t seen you since. And now Bradshaw was telling him you weren't in at all and wouldn't be for a while? Things weren’t adding up. Not to Jake. This wasn’t like you at all.

“What aren't you telling me, Rooster?” Jake pressed as he paced up and down the rec room with his arms folded. He cared about you, he just didn’t know how to convey that care. He’d never not care about you.

“I’m not not telling you anything.” Bradley replied, he looked like a deer caught in Jake's headlights. “We should get ready for our next hop man.” Bradley tried his best to change the subject, the subject being you and your mental stability. “I’m sure if Rogue has something to say she’ll say it.” He shrugged as he stood, knowing that Jake was probably the last person you would ever want to come clean to about being so vulnerable. “We better get going.”

“You’d tell me if she wasn’t alright, wouldn’t you?” Again, the tone Jake used sent a shiver down Bradley’s spine. He knew how tramaltious your relationship was. “If Kerner wasn’t alright you’d let me know?” Jake didn’t need Bradley to reply, his silence spoke louder than any excuse he could make up on the spot. “Dammit Bradshaw—“

“She didn’t want you to know!”

“Know what!?” Jake hissed. He didn’t raise his voice in fear of bringing any sort of unwanted attention to the situation, but he was worried. Worried about what he didn’t know, worried about you. The best friend he couldn’t talk to. The love of his life he couldn’t admit to. You were the only woman in the world who knew how to take his breath away, in more ways than one. “God Rooster, just tell me what’s going on!”

“She’s afraid to burn in—“ Bradley sighed as he held the bridge of his nose and hung his head in shame. You trusted him like an older brother and yet here he was, spilling your dirty mental health laundry to the only person you begged him not to tell. Jake Seresin, the love of your life that drove you insane. Your best friend who you couldn’t confide in, the only man who made you want to shoot for the moon and capture all the stars too. “She took an extended leave, told the Admirals they either needed to sign off on the paperwork or they’d be signing her death notice.” It was hard to hear because to Jake this was coming out of nowhere. “She just needs time.” Jake didn’t know how to respond, but most importantly he didn’t know how to react.

“I don’t have time for all this melodrama, Rooster.” Jake shook his head in disbelief. “If Rogue wants to throw her career away because of a few bad days so be it but I’m not sympathetic.” It was the only response Jake knew how to give, but he was panicking on the inside. “I’ll see you for pre-flight checks.”

“I think it’s more than just a few bad days, Hangman.” Bradley wasn’t going to say when he saw you last night he hardly recognised you. “She’s hid it well.” In all the time Bradley had known you, he’d never seen you this bad before. It was serious. He’d experienced his own burn out a few years back just after the Uranium mission. Before you joined the Daggers. It had taken its toll on him a hell of a lot more than he was prepared for. “She hid it so well I didn’t even know something was up until she was on the edge already.”

In that very moment Bradley came to realised why you didn’t want Jake to know you were struggling, you didn’t want him to know that if given the chance you’d quit tomorrow because the burn out you were in was so entirely consuming that it made it hard to even get out of bed. When was the last time you ate?

“She hid it so well it’s almost hard to believe, don't you think?” Jake snapped over his shoulder as he left the rec room, completely in denial about the fact you didn’t let him in.

***~***~***~***~***~***~***~***

The entire day had passed you by before you even contemplated the idea of getting out of bed. The idea in and of itself seemed exhausting. Expending any kind energy other than the minimal amount to breath seemed like a chore.

Your stomach grumbled as you sat up and looked out the window that nestled itself beside your bed—pushed up against the wall just the way you liked it. It was dark, the day had passed and even though you couldn’t be bothered doing anything, the idea you’d wasted a full day in bed made you feel like shit. Plain and simple. You felt like crap and there was no one else to blame for that intense feeling of disappointment than yourself.

As you climbed over your mess of linen and covers, a not so subtle knock began to echo out through your apartment.

“Rooster!” You groaned, pressing your forehead into your mattress as you slumped in defeat. “Go away! I told you I’m fine!” You weren’t fine, you just didn’t want anyone worrying about you. You had this under control right? Even if you didn’t know what was happening to you.

When the knocking persisted you knew you had to let Bradley in, he’d camp out in the hall before he left without seeing you.

“My god I told you I’m fine!” You groaned as you made your way down the hall. Still in the same clothes you went to bed in yesterday afternoon. “I don’t need you doing welfare checks on me every dam—“ As you opened the door, it took you a second to register that it wasn’t Bradley standing out in the hall. “Jake?” You frowned, suddenly feeling a hell of a lot more vulnerable than you did six minutes ago. “What are you doing here?”

“Bradshaw said you’re on leave?” Was all Jake said as he stepped into your apartment, it still felt like home despite the fact he hadn’t been over in months since your last bust. “What gives Rogue?” He was still in his flight suit, usually Jake showed before leaving base. But you were the priority right now. He just needed to see you. See for himself what the hell was going on.

You watched as Jake made his way into your home, into your sacred space without so much as an afterthought that he may be intruding. He never did think his actions through if he wasn’t inside an F-18.

“Is that your way of asking me if I’m alright?” You rolled your eyes as you shut the front door, making a note to lock it behind you in case any other nosie aviators with callsigns that belonged to the flightless bird community came knocking.

“It’s my way of asking what gives—“ Jake made sure to correct you. “So what gives? It’s not like you to take a break, you’re as good as they come—don’t actually get any better if you want my personal opinion.” It wasn’t a secret that you and Jake rotated as ‘The Best’ like a rositery chicken. He was on top one week and suddenly it was you by just a few points. But the sentiment remained, you were the only one who ever came close to matching Jake Seresin. It was just in your DNA.

“Yeah I don’t remember asking for it.” You hissed, pushing past Jake as he stood in your hallway like a fungus you needed to get rid of before it had a chance to infect you. “Just because I’m the best doesn’t mean I don’t deserve a break from time to time.”

As you made your way down the hall toward your bedroom, Jake noticed the way your shoulders slumped just the slightest bit. He noticed the way you looked as if you hadn’t been out of bed all day, the way your hair looked like a bird's nest atop your head. And he wasn’t sure why you were wearing the T-shirt he thought he’d lost three weeks ago but as it turned out you had it all along.

“Y/n—“ Jake sighed as he watched you disappear into your room without so much as an explanation. “Wait.”

“I need to shower.” It was the toneless way you explained yourself that sent warning signals off in Jake's mind as he followed you.

“Hypothetically if I were to ask if you were doing okay would you tell me the truth?” You and Jake hadn’t always been so short with one another, but it was just the way it was now. It was the dynamic you were used to but loathed so much. You just wanted him to love you the way you saw in all the Disney films that were crammed down your throat as a kid.

But Jake couldn’t. It wasn’t in his DNA.

“Probably not, but like I told Bradshaw last night, I’m fine, just needed some time off work.” You shrugged as you fished through your dresser for a fresh pair of socks. Jake just stood off to the side, unsure of what to make of the mess that was your room. Usually you made it a note to keep your space clean and tidy. But when Jake looked around all he saw was complete chaos, a quick look into the inside of your mind looked like.

“Isn’t that what weekends and annual leave is for?” He mumbled just loud enough for you to hear.

“Couldn’t wait—I’m taking this unpaid and uninterrupted, so if you’ll excuse me, I need to shower.”

“Don’t lie to me.” It came out more like a plea than a demand but it still didn’t sit right with you. You knew Jake Seresin didn’t care about anyone but himself. You’d known him long enough to know that he was selfishly egomaniacal. He didn’t care, not about you anyway. “Don’t lie to me Kerner—“

Jake had stopped you from moving any further towards your ensuite, with a gentle hand wrapped around your forearm.

“I’m. Fine.” You had grit your teeth together to stop yourself from breaking. The force was enough to make your jaw ache. “Let. Me. Go.”

“Really?” Jake challenged. “Because I’m standing on a pile of washing that smells like the inside of Fanboys locker.”

“What has that got to do with anything!” As you ripped your arm out of Jake's grip he was quick to follow you into your bathroom. “I’m behind on laundry, big deal.”

“It’s a big deal for you!” You could feel yourself crumbling the more Jake pressed you for the truth. “I don’t know what’s going on but—“

“Oh what exactly do you want me to say Jake? That I get up and then all day I'm tired, and that I wanna take a nap all day?” Everything you had been trying to hold in and deny was finally bubbling to the surface. “Do you want to hear me say that I have no motivation? That I don't wanna do anything.”

“Y/n—“ Jake tried to interrupt as you threw your stuff on the bathroom floor in a heap. “It’s—“ There wasn’t a single thing Jake could say that could comfort you once the damn had been broken, you had held it all in for so long.

“That I don't want to work, I can’t Jake because if I’m not in my own mind than I could kill myself up there or even worse–I could kill one of you!”

All Jake could do was to stand there and listen as you let him know everything you had been struggling with for the past few months, slowly losing yourself day by day. You didn’t know what was wrong with you, why you felt this way, why all the enjoyment and all of the life had been sucked out of you.

“I don't want to talk to anyone, especially you!” It was then you shoved at Jake’s chest, completely fed up with your emotional turmoil. He didn’t fight back, no. Jake simply held you close to his chest as he pulled you into a warm embrace that you so desperately needed. “I don't want to hang out with anyone, I don’t wanna watch TV or read a book or even go on my phone but at the same time as all of that I'm so bored! I don't care about anything because all that I care about is just surviving.”

“You’re burnt out Rogue—“

“I’m not!!” Jake swore black and blue that was what you’d been trying to get at. “I can’t be burnt out!” He was even more confused than he was when Rooster had tiptoed around the situation earlier that same day. “My dad burnt out when he was at the height of his career and you know what he did?” Jake knew, he loved your dad like his own. Ron Slider Kerner was one of the best men Jake had ever had the pleasure of knowing. “He became a goddamn airline pilot!” There was anger in your voice, a deep sadness that Jake didn’t understand, what was so wrong with being an airline pilot?

“Y/n, Y/n—“ Jake held you as tight as he could. He hadn’t held you like this in what felt like forever. “You’re gonna be okay.” Your head dipped just perfectly under his chin as you broke, there was nothing worse than crying into the arms of the man you loved and hated all at once. “I’m here, you’re gonna be fine.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” It was the sadness in your cry for help that broke Jake's heart the most, how long had you been dealing with this by yourself? How long had you been telling the people closest to you that you were fine when you really weren’t. “Why can’t I just—“ You couldn’t breathe. “Why can’t I—“ You couldn’t finish your sentences without nearly gasping for air. “I—I can’t—“

“Okay, you’re alright, come with me. Something about Jake Seresin that surprised you the most was the way he dealt with panic attacks. For a guy as level headed as him he sure suffered in silence for the longest time. But you knew—it was one of the reasons you thought Jake couldn’t stand you half the time.

You knew his biggest weakness. Himself.

“Sit.” Jake led you over to the side of your bed as he knelt on his knees before you. “Now just breathe with me alright, I’ve got you.” It was the calming tone in his beautiful voice that had you giving yourself entirely to him. You didn’t want to be trapped inside your own head anymore. “There’s nothing wrong with you Rogue, everyone goes through burnout, it’s a part of life.” Jake wasn't diminishing your feelings, but from his own experience he knew that there was a weight on your shoulders you needed to rid yourself of. “And it’s real, and it’s valid and it doesn’t mean you aren’t incredibly good at what you do.”

“I can’t handle the pressure—“

“No, you put too much pressure on yourself, that’s what you can’t handle.”

“Oh what do you care Jake!” He’d never seen you like this, so lost and so broken. “Why are you even here right now!”

“Because I care about you! Why else would I be here, huh?” Jake cupped your cheeks gently as he wiped away the tears that streamed down your supple cheeks. “I care about you and when Bradshaw told me you took a leave of absence I knew something was up. This isn’t you.” It was the truth, it wasn’t you and that’s why it scared you so much. You didn’t feel like yourself. “Baby, this isn’t you.”

All you did was cry in Jake's slightly rough palms as he kneeled before you and tried to do what he could to just be present. He hated seeing you like this, so out of your mind and dealing with an existential crisis. But Jake knew what it was like to experience burnout.

“I can’t be burn out—“

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not real?” That was probably the stupidest thing Jake had ever heard you say. “My mum always used to say that being burnt out was just an excuse for not being good enough, it was a cop out.”

“Something tells me that’s a reason why your parents divorced huh?” You couldn’t hold back the small chuckle that escaped through the sobs. “Y/n, what you're experiencing right now is so real it’s not funny—burnout is real and I reckon once you accept that? It’s going to be easier to overcome than to fight off.”

“You seem to know an awful lot about this for a guy who’s as confident as ever.”

“Contrary to popular belief Rogue, I wasn’t born the best.” Jake winked as he leaned in to kiss your forehead. “How about you go have that shower and I’ll order some food and we can talk about it, all of it.”

“Is this your way of trying to get in my pants?”

“Mmm—it usually would be, but no, not this time.” Jake admitted as he graciously helped you stand as you sighed out a deep breath. “I’m here to help, can’t leave my wingwoman behind.”

“I love you Seresin.” You smiled softly as you pressed your lips together in a fine line. It was hard to admit, but you’d never not love Jake. “Thanks for showing up.” Jake mimicked your smile before his lips pressed into a fine line of their own. He nodded softly before you turned on your heels, heading into the bathroom before shutting the door behind you.

“I love you too.”

***~***~***~***~***~***~***~***~***~***~***~***~***~***~***~

#jake seresin x female!reader #jake seresin x reader #top gun fanfic #hangman top gun #jake seresin x y/n #jake seresin x you #jake seresin x f!reader #jake hangman seresin x reader #jake hangman imagine

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feedists4progress · 3 months ago

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The governor of Minnesota and possible future vice president’s hotdish recipe is, uh, a lot. It involves, among other things, whole milk, half-and-half, two types of meat, three cups of cheese (specifically Kraft), nearly a stick of butter, and a full package of Tater Tots. It is gluttonous, deeply midwestern, and, I am sure, delicious. Indeed, Walz won the Minnesota Congressional Delegation’s hotdish cook-off in 2013, 2014, and 2016.

Tim Walz loves food. He loves corn dogs, and the all-you-can-drink milk booth at the Minnesota state fair, and—I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this—dunking cinnamon rolls in chili. He gets excited about soda. He posts pictures of his sandwiches. He loves to eat so much that people on X are already writing short-form fan fiction about it. Throughout his political career, but especially recently, he has gone out of his way to talk about food, the fattier and folksier the better. Last week, in a discussion with CNN’s Jake Tapper that was ostensibly about Joe Biden’s mental fitness, Walz recounted receiving a call from the president while eating the Minnesota delicacy Juicy Lucy, a hamburger stuffed with cheese. The next day, he posted on X about a different award-winning hotdish recipe of his, this one involving two separate kinds of canned soup.

We are witnessing what might be the most food-centric presidential campaign in American history. Kamala Harris is, by all accounts, an exceptional and enthusiastic home cook, and has made cooking part of her political brand—surely an intentional calculation, given the negative connotations that might arise when the potential first woman president openly embraces domesticity. In 2019, she offered an off-the-cuff lesson in turkey brining while getting mic’d up to go on television: “Just lather that baby up,” she said, eyes bright. The next year, she started an amateur cooking show; on it, she cracks an egg with one hand and bonds with Mindy Kaling over the fact that their parents both stored spices in old Taster’s Choice jars. She laughs a lot in the kitchen.

Unlike her running mate, Harris seems unlikely to throw four kinds of dairy in the oven for dinner—she’s a Californian, and she cooks like one: swordfish with toasted cardamom for her pescatarian stepdaughter, herb-flecked Mediterranean meatballs on an Instagram Live with the celebrity chef Tom Colicchio. But she’s not immune to the humble charms of ice cream, gumbo, Popeye’s chicken, red-velvet cupcakes, or bacon, which she describes as a “spice” in her household. She comes off as sincere in her love of food but discerning in her tastes. When a 10-year-old recently asked her at an event what her favorite taco filling was, she answered with the kind of absorbed expression that she might otherwise display when explaining foreign policy on the debate stage: carnitas with cilantro and lime, no raw onions.

Invoking food on the campaign trail is a cliché for a reason: Eating is an easy and extremely literal way to prove that you are a human being. But the Democratic Party has not always been great at it. In 2003, John Kerry visited the Philadelphia cheesesteak institution Pat’s and asked for a sandwich not with the traditional Whiz, American, or Provolone, but with Swiss. If voters needed proof that he was something other than the eggheady elitist they thought he was, this wasn’t it: In Philly, Swiss is “an alternative lifestyle,” The Philadelphia Inquirer’s food critic, Craig LaBan, said at the time. One does not get the sense that Walz or Harris would stride into Pat’s and ask for Swiss—not because they’re self-consciously avoiding a gaffe, but because they have deep respect for America’s foodways and are interested in enjoying food however it is meant to be enjoyed.

Their approach makes a marked departure both from the Obama era—what with its well-meaning but not entirely fun focus on childhood obesity, and its notorious seven almonds—and from the current leaders of the Republican Party. Donald Trump doesn’t really talk about liking eating; he does, famously, consume a lot of fast food, but that is reportedly because he’s afraid of being poisoned, not because fast food tastes amazing. His most well-known food tweet—“Happy #CincoDeMayo! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics!”—reads like an obligatory plug rather than an earnest celebration of the way the taco bowl itself looks, smells, and tastes: all business, no pleasure. Meanwhile, Trump’s running mate, J. D. Vance, says he loves Diet Mountain Dew, but he seems mostly to be mad about it. To the degree that he has gotten specific about why he likes the beverage, the praise is purely functional: “high caffeine, low calorie.” The primary message here is that food is the site not of delight and togetherness but of anxiety and alienation, or utilitarianism at best. It’s all a little, well, weird.

Food is one of the most universally beloved things on planet Earth. Aligning a presidential campaign with it is smart for all the obvious reasons, but for the Harris-Walz ticket, it’s also a signal. The rhetorical challenge of progressivism is that it is by nature abstract: It imagines a world that does not yet exist, rather than advocating to return to some previous version of the one we know. I find it telling that Walz keeps using the word joy when he talks about the campaign and about his running mate. It’s an uncomplicated message, one that’s even more concrete than Barack Obama’s hope: Hope is the future, but joy is the present. It’s cold milk on a hot day; a perfectly cracked egg; a steaming casserole dish full of God knows what, enjoyed at a crowded table. In foregrounding food, Harris and Walz are making theirs the candidacy of terrestrial pleasure and straightforward abundance. It’s simple, really. —Ellen Cushing

#ffw #feedists4democracy #feedists4walz #2024 election #harris walz #to the window to the walz

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