quanmedicalcom · 25 days ago
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Our team will support you in building a healthier you. No matter what your health needs are, our team will support you in attaining your functional goals. We work together to connect you with the services you need. When you choose us, you join a community with many years in the personal injury business.
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newyorkmedicalservices · 11 months ago
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New York Medical Center - Long Island No Fault Doctor on Google: https://t.co/G5s66u4maJ
— NYMS (@NYMS1) January 17, 2023lo
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l-in-the-light · 2 months ago
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Trafalgar Law and closeness part 5: What is he actually so afraid of and his reasons
This will be a slightly different post from the others, much more speculation, but I will include all hints and foreshadowing I gathered (which means this is a long post yet again). I might be wrong ofc, but I'm like 80-90% sure I read the signs right. Just in case my theory will turn out correct, I reccommend that you think twice before reading any further, especially if you would prefer for Oda's manga to reveal it properly and not get spoilered about the twist thanks to some tumblr post, which is totally understandable. Those who are fearless like a true D and still want to read this theory, a fair warning: this will be sad af. More so than previous posts.
Let's start with a short summary of our previous observations: Law always acts cold, he will draw clear borders and keep people at a distance, because he can't deal with losing people again. That's his major fear. His secondary fear is his fear of touch, the result of his trauma. With both of these we saw him making really decent progress on, thanks to Luffy especially.
I traced Law's progress all the way from Sabaody up to Wano. We saw him completely refusing any bonds in Sabaody, but then he takes the first step towards Luffy. Instead of trying to get closer he proposes for them to be in alliance, hiding behind the impersonal relation (Luffy's not getting any of that btw. And in case you think Luffy did it on accident it's not entirely true: he knows the actual difference between friendship and alliance, he did a normal alliance with Bege in Whole Cake Island no problem, proving to us he's not that stupid). Then we see Law slowly opening up, holding back less of his natural reactions (like getting openly angry), all while fighting his trauma related to touch and helplessness. Let's dive into his psyche.
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Law is a doctor, that identity is very important for him not just because of his parents.
When he's a doctor and operates on people, he knows he has to touch them to save their lives. That's probably also the reason why he calls all his attacks and devil fruit abilities per "operations". This way he can create an artificial boundary in his mind, when he's in his "doctor mode" the touch is impersonal and professional so he is able to actually operate on people. And seems this depersonalization/desensitization technique works! The only time we see him comfortable being in contact with people is when he cuts them down into pieces like for an operation. And of course he had to be alright with touch when he operated on Luffy and Jimbei as well.
Here we have to note one more thing about his devil fruit's use. In Sabaody and Punk Hazard he cuts people into pieces and rearranges them, creating "monstrous creatures". This seems to reflect what he thinks of those people, people who usually treat him like a monster because of his devil fruit abilities (that must be a pretty traumatic experience, because doctors also called him monster before just because he was sick). So he pays them back for it, rearranges their bodies, because for him they were the monsters. This way he takes back his own liberty, he shows them that if he's the monster then they are as well. That being said, he does take advantage of his "Surgeon of Death" title, because inciting fear in enemies is helpful when you're a pirate. But after meeting Strawhats who so easily disregard the bad rep Law has and spending enough time with them together, Law stops creating monsters with misaligned human limbs. Last time we saw them was in Punk Hazard. He doesn't need that anymore, because he feels accepted for who he is, regardless of what some random marines talk about him.
His devil fruit is interesting because it creates a space in which he can easily switch items and people's positions without having to touch them. And he can activate most attacks by simply moving his finger a little or making a simple gesture, so that even in case his trauma kicks in and he freezes, then as long as he can move at least one finger, he can shamble himself away to safety. Seems like devil fruit powers rely heavily on the mind of the user, their traumas and wishes deeply influence how the power actually works. I wonder how would it work if Law didn't have his fear of touching.
Summing it up, in Wano Law didn't get touch-triggered even once, so seems things were working out well for him in this regard. He's managing it better, but I doubt that trauma is going anywhere and he will still need time to get more comfortable around people (he might never be truly done with it). But that's okay, that didn't stop him from creating a new friendship. So what's still holding him back? Is it just a regular progress-regress cycle of healing for him?
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Is he just not ready yet? After all some decisions take time for him. We see it when he receives his devil fruit. We see it in Dressrosa when it takes him many chapters to admit his own desire to take down Doflamingo by himself. It takes him time to accept things he isn't mentally ready for. We saw that indeed everytime he needs to take an extra moment or two to brace himself to touch someone as well. So is that just it? He needs more time? I don't think so, actually.
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Remember this beautiful moment? In my native language this translation of Ace's line is more poetic: I will accept the opened arms reaching towards me as well as the death by the blade.
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What was it about accepting opened arms reaching for you? This is Trafalgar Law's first hug on screen. You can't make this shit up. This Ace-Law parallel is there in the story on purpose. And it breaks me every single time.
So I guess Law got over that obstacle as well. He's ready to move on and start new things. And then he creates a beautiful friendship with Kinemon only to retreat to step one at the end of Wano, not even wanting to admit they became friends, even though everyone knows they did (the same with Strawhats). We saw this beautiful progress, his regress for a moment in Dressrosa, him opening up and closing back again. But he improved a lot since Sabaody, he's not the same person anymore. Law in Zou won't retreat anymore before even making a first step.
I think what's holding him back now is his biggest fear. And he has a pretty good freaking reason for it.
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Hint number 1: Ope-ope no mi might not be enough.
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Hint number 2: lead bullets greatly affected his body.
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Hint number 3: "You met Corazon and he managed to prolong your life just a little longer".
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Hint number 4: "I don't have much longer to live!", why is Doflamingo reminded of that line in particular now if it's just a thing from the past?
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Hint number 5: death is constantly on Law's mind.
I think we need to connect all those dots together. Yes, I know, this theory isn't new. But it makes more and more sense. Ope-ope no mi didn't heal Law from amber lead completely. He only managed to prolong his own life thanks to it. That's why his execution should be done with lead bullets, it's not because it's symbolic, it's because that's literally what will kill Law in the end. Doffy was going to make the process just a tad bit faster is all. Law isn't afraid of death, but he is afraid to die without achieving anything or "dying for nothing", like he says in his flashback. He managed to survive till age 26, but his time is running out again.
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Law's supposed "awakening" means he can use rooms remotely, without the need to be inside them. Interesting thing about those attacks is that they all use anaesthesia. But shouldn't you want your enemies to feel the pain when you attack? Let's look more closely to what Law says here. "This influences your body in other ways". Interesting. Perhaps because that's the ability he uses on himself when treating his amber lead syndrome? That would explain the need for anaesthesia, otherwise the sickness would limit his mobility.
In other words: Law can remove/hide the symptoms, but he can't cure the source of the amber lead poisoning apparently. It shouldn't be so strange, he was clearly born with it, it was passed down from his parents, which means it's in his DNA. Using ope-ope no mi inside his own body is pretty clever and let me quote Doffy on that: "it's all about how you use your abilities". Doflamingo did the same with his strings to restore his organs, I think he got inspired by Law. And yes, all the hints come mostly from Doflamingo, so he knows Law is dying.
Let's look at events of Dressrosa again to see if my idea fits. In Dressrosa we learn for the first time that Law's ope-ope no mi requires a lot of stamina. Perhaps because he needs to constantly apply it to monitor his own body and that's why he can't spare as much for fighting enemies as he would want to. Then he gets shot with lead bullets and nearly loses his life as the result. Weird that few bullets could do it to him while he could take much more beating in general. Unless it's because his body is still weak to the lead and it makes the poisoning spread faster, which would make perfect sense. Then Law is put in seastone cuffs and carried by Luffy through half of Dressrosa all the way to the palace. There is no moment in which Law, no matter how tired he is by being manhandled, claims he could just run on his own. He doesn't even sit on the horse or the bull, is just lying down. There is no proper explanation as to why he was lying there lifeless like that, nothing was preventing him from just sitting down instead. Later he claims it was because he was saving up his energy.
But now let's look at this situation logically. He was lying down and compliant to insane degree, because he felt *sick*. Which should remind us of how he was sick before Corazon got him ope-ope no mi. At times he couldn't even move anymore. Putting Law in seastone cuffs means his ope ope no mi is not monitoring his body anymore so it saps out all of his strength. Remember this, this is how bad Law's health is already in Dressrosa.
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Even with Doflamingo directly threatening them he can't lift himself up properly. This is emergency, this is not the time to be lying around, and yet he can't do anything and this might a sign of how bad his condition actually is. He's shivering here because he feels helpless and defenseless. His trauma isn't exactly helping either.
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At the end of Dressrosa he is weezing, suffocating, but still uses room and shambles to bring Luffy to safety. We can see him there in the background afterwards, looks to me like his heart almost giving up on him. Few moments later he's lying down, most likely passed out. This all is very hard to notice. That room he used to bring Luffy to the ground was also huge, perhaps as huge as the one he used in the palace before to fool Doffy. And he says it cut down on his lifespan. Well, good to know he cut down his lifespan not once, but twice already, and just in Dressrosa alone. Oda didn't nerf Law in Dressrosa, that's not the reason of why he seems weaker than before.
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If Law is dying and overdid himself in Dressrosa on top of that, then no wonder he would say this. He might have left his crew in Zou knowing very well that it might be the last time he sees them. Now it makes much more sense. But Dressrosa did tip the scales into making him believe he might literally not make it out and no strategy could help him to survive against the illness.
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Now let's jump to Wano. Remember this puzzling moment? He didn't fight anyone, only did some warps, and yet he is already worrying about his stamina? Yes, I take it as a sign that his condition worsened siginificantly. It was ofc also used for the plot to move forward in direction Oda wanted it to as well, but he wouldn't do it *just* for that reason.
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Now let's jump to fight against Big Mom. Law doesn't look alright here.
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And he can't even get up after the fight for a while, he's panting all the time. Kid, who was also exhausted after the fight, is already back on his legs and moving around. Law meanwhile still can't. Not even when water is rushing their way and he needs to move.
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That's some enourmous room he created there. It looks like 10 times size (if not more) of Onigashima. It looks bigger than the whole Flower Capital! So, how much lifespan did he cut down this time?
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Now we're finally getting to Winner Island. Blackbeard used his yomi yomi no mi attack that renders the devil user who's hit with it unable to use his powers. We saw that happen with Ace, remember? (yes, this is yet another parallel to Ace. Both of them lost to Blackbeard). And this is how Law looks now without his devil fruit to support him. You have two shots from Winner, one from Dressrosa after he gets shot with lead bullets (lower left) for comparison, anime, and, finally, comparison to sick Law from the flashback. The only difference here are the missing white patches on his skin. Symptomps look exactly the same: heavy breathing, unable to move, shivering, and his forehead is shaded in same way which implies high fever. This is where we are right now: Law's now in as bad of a state (or very close to it) as the end of the flashback. I guess white patches take some time to appear, it's not instant after his devil fruit is unable to be used to repress it anymore.
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We didn't yet reach this state, but it's approaching very, very fast.
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Very subtle anime hints. The whole sequence with the poneglyph in Onigashima gave us a flashback to Corazon and shows him dying while covered by white snow. Whole flashback has slightly white hinge to it and Law enters the scene from the completely white background.
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Just reverse the colors from that oddly coloured bit from fight against Big Mom. Oooff.
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Absolutely despicable foreshadowing from One Piece Red. Hearts appear in the credits together with the ONLY line in the song that talks about death. I saw anime doing obscure hints like that countless times before, be it in openings or endings. Apparently some anime producers are aware of what's coming. The first time I noticed this scene with Law hiding his eyes and the lyrics I grew very anxious. I spent most of my life watching animes, I know what game they're playing here. Back then, I just didn't yet know what it foreshadows exactly.
Law accepted his fate and just like the lyrics suggest: "even if I disappear, my song will still ring out". Meaning even after he's gone, people dear to him will carry on and that soothes him. He smiles here, he likes this freaking song exactly because of this line. Those are his real thoughts, that's how he feels inside when he isn't pretending not to care.
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This is also why he says things like this. He truly thinks it doesn't matter what happens to him, not just because he's suicidal or he wants to sound cool. No, he says it because he's going to die anyway, so indeed, it does not matter to him.
It's reversed from what we thought this was all about. It's not that he wants to kill Doflamingo so much he doesn't care for his life or chooses to die. It's gonna happen anyway. In fact, if he could, he would prefer not to die:
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He wants to live.
There are many asian series dealing with terminal illnesses and protagonists coming to terms with it or embracing some difficult to make choices, like in Searching for Full Moon or Your Lie in April. But please let me tell you a short summary of Shiroi Kage/White Shadow, it's a Japanese live action series from 2001 (god, they don't make such good jdramas anymore, spoilers ahead) about a surgeon who is dying, but decides to keep doing his job till the day he actually dies. He shows a lot of compassion to his patients, because he can easily relate to their situations, especially those about to die soon. His compassionate heart saves a lot of people and helps them accept their own approaching death, even though the doctor is still struggling against it himself. He acts rough and cold towards anyone else than patients, people try to form meaningful connections with him, but he refuses any attempts. Finally he accepts someone in his life that he thinks will carry on happily even without him, because they embrace everything the life offers, no matter if it's love, death or rejection. That person becomes their most important person and shows them that it's okay to fear death. In the end the surgeon chooses how to die himself, without waiting for the illness to take him. White Shadow as a title is symbolic because white in Japanese culture is the color assocciated with death. Does that remind us of a certain disease that shows as white patches on the skin?
The actual reason why Law keeps everyone at distance is probably the same that the main protagonist in Shiroi Kage had. It's for the sake of others, not his own. He doesn't want them to get attached, to feel devastated when he dies, and if they never grow close then they might feel a bit sad but easily move on. This is how he wants to die: so people won't miss him and won't despair the same way he despaired when his parents, sister and Cora-san died. That's his kind heart right there. Kinda the same way Your Lie in April uses the concept. Luffy is still grieving Ace, he doesn't need another heartbreak of someone important like a friend dying, so Law would rather lie that this was never friendship just so Luffy can carry on.
Law doesn't have much time left. And he wants to take down as many bad guys as possible, he might have even set some plans in motion that will succeed even after he dies, Drake and/or other people will carry them out to the end even after Law will be gone.
Remember the cold goodbye in Wano? He stayed at the port after battle, he avoided Luffy and Strawhats (besides Franky) and even tried to make them leave on different day than him. He acted extra cold thinking it will prevent attachments, especially if he thinks he's seeing them for the very last time, with his health in such a bad shape.
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This scene should remind you of Punk Hazard, it's a callback to it. Law already then decided that this will be how he will say his goodbye.
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Q.E.D., the reason behind his uneccessary coldness is solved, every loose ties got explained, there are no inconscistencies left. That's why I think I read all the signs right, even though it's just a theory based on hints and speculation. But it all fits.
Law thinks Luffy isn't attached to him much yet and that he will move on happily without lingering too much on his death. Oh boy, he's so wrong about that. That's because he didn't see Luffy's reaction in Dressrosa after he passed out.
Luffy cares for him deeply. We saw how unusually happy he was when they reunited on Punk Hazard by chance. How much he bragged about Law being a good guy. How insightful and considerate he tried to be towards him! Sure, he pushed Law's boundaries a bit, because he thought otherwise Law would never be ready to start new friendships (and was he wrong? probably not). Luffy said goodbye to him in Wano with a smile, probably thinking Law just really wants to go for his own adventure, or maybe he needs some time to get ready to admit stuff. And Luffy accepts it and waits for him.
Once Law will realize his mistake he will regret ever starting that alliance in the first place. Because he fucked up, he will leave someone behind very devastated if he dies.
If this post made any of you sad, then I'm sorry. Please remember it's mostly just a theory. Tomorrow I will make a post that will instead make you shed happy tears instead, hopefully.
We all know Luffy or Chopper will somehow cause the miracle and Law will get cured, right? Even if Law's flower is the Queen of The Night that dies before dawn (that's another foreshadowing at work here btw). We need to believe and prepare a whole truck of tissues. Fate always found a way to spare him, we need to believe in it again.
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centuryberry · 4 months ago
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Replanted AU
Summary: To Yishan, Sangshen is everything. So, when the doctor said that the winter weather of LoES would weaken his beloved and make her pregnancy harder than it should be, he packed his bags, left behind his title as Clan Heir, and moved somewhere warmer. It ends up being FFM.
Or: Yishan moves out of his parents' house and gets a job. Sangshen lives and reunites with her long-lost brother. Yue ends up with five parents and one annoying guy who loves her Mama very much.
Some things about this AU:
Just to preface: Yishan has little to no character development. He remains his wife-obsessed asshole self throughout the entire AU. He has no paternal bone in his body and never develops one.
Moving to the exact island where Sangshen's little brother lived was by complete accident. Yishan just wanted to take her there since he heard it was paradise.
The entire reunion was tearjerking. Macaque has a family who never stopped loving him and Sangshen got her brother back.
Wukong and Macaque were there at Yue's birth and were one of the first people to hold her (Yishan wasn't interested.) They adored her immediately and Macaque cried when he's told she was named after him.
Yishan got to have an official wedding with Sangshen and make her his legal wife like he's always wanted. She made a beautiful bride.
As a citizen of FFM and not Clan Heir, Yishan needed to pull his own weight to provide for his family. Thankfully, because he was Clan Heir, he had skills that put him under Liu's command.
Surprisingly enough, Liu manages to get through Yishan's difficult personality and becomes his first and only friend. (No, in-laws and their not-yet-lover/king don't count.) They have this bromance thing going on, though Sangshen still lingers in 90% of Yishan's thoughts. But Liu has the honor of having a consistent 5%.
Yishan eventually chills enough to form healthy(?) relationships outside of his wife. He also provides for his daughter. Just not emotionally, which is fine since Yue is loved enough already by literally everyone else.
Yishan and Beng butt heads a lot. Actually, Yishan gets under almost everyone's skin because his personality is terrible to everyone except Sangshen. FFM eventually just accepts Yishan having a rancid personality. That's Yishan.
To the shock of everyone, Yishan was the one to get Shadowpeach together. And then, everyone ended up not being as surprised when it turned out that his agenda was to have Wukong and Macaque distract each other to cut down on time his wife's attention is away from him. Yishan is well known for getting the impossible done for the sake of his wife's time and love.
Trade agreements, alliances, battles - all end up successful when placed in Yishan's hands as long as it has something to do with his wife. He makes it happen.
Yishan can also be charismatic and friendly to outsiders and/or enemies in order to manipulate them. Does it often while he's on the job. FFM as a whole was thrown in a loop the first time it happened. They were all like: who??? r u????? Where's our rancid wife-obsessed monkey????
Yishan hates Azure. Yishan knows himself. He embraces it. But another person like him? In HIS slice of heaven? Threatening HIS wife’s little brother’s love life? Hahaha, no. Sangshen already planned out the wedding gifts and is making the wedding veil. No way.
Yishan has HUGE beef with Peng, which started after they accused Macaque of begetting a child with Yishan (The Brotherhood hadn’t met Sangshen yet and believes she’s fake lol). How DARE they accuse him of sleeping with anyone other than his wife?!?
Shanzha is still sent over as a bride at some point. Heaven express-shipped Yishan's little sister. She isn't received with suspicion. Instead, it's with pity since they knew how much LoES messed Yishan up by then. Sangshen is happy to see her again. Yishan wants the gift receipt to return her but reconsiders when he realizes that she can be another babysitter (more undisturbed time with wife).
The one and only time Yishan does the impossible for anyone other than his wife is for Liu. He somehow manages to pull RinRin from Diyu by employing the help of the Red-Buttocked Baboon (and the Long-Armed Gibbon is there too). Whoops, accidentally acquired a girlfriend for his sister. Well, at least she's distracted now too. And Yue gets another babysitter.
Honestly, Yishan makes a happy ending happen with his own hands soley so everyone would leave him and his wife alone to spend together. That's it. That's the plot.
Extra Fun Fact: Yishan spends every Spring Season wooing Sangshen as if they were unmated monkeys. Say what you want about him, but this man loves his wife.
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mariacallous · 14 days ago
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A long trip on an American highway in the summer of 2024 leaves the impression that two kinds of billboards now have near-monopoly rule over our roads. On one side, the billboards, gravely black-and-white and soberly reassuring, advertise cancer centers. (“We treat every type of cancer, including the most important one: yours”; “Beat 3 Brain Tumors. At 57, I gave birth, again.”) On the other side, brightly colored and deliberately clownish billboards advertise malpractice and personal-injury lawyers, with phone numbers emblazoned in giant type and the lawyers wearing superhero costumes or intimidating glares, staring down at the highway as they promise to do to juries.
A new Tocqueville considering the landscape would be certain that all Americans do is get sick and sue each other. We ask doctors to cure us of incurable illnesses, and we ask lawyers to take on the doctors who haven’t. We are frightened and we are angry; we look to expert intervention for the fears, and to comic but effective-seeming figures for retaliation against the experts who disappoint us.
Much of this is distinctly American—the idea that cancer-treatment centers would be in competitive relationships with one another, and so need to advertise, would be as unimaginable in any other industrialized country as the idea that the best way to adjudicate responsibility for a car accident is through aggressive lawsuits. Both reflect national beliefs: in competition, however unreal, and in the assignment of blame, however misplaced. We want to think that, if we haven’t fully enjoyed our birthright of plenty and prosperity, a nameable villain is at fault.
To grasp what is at stake in this strangest of political seasons, it helps to define the space in which the contest is taking place. We may be standing on the edge of an abyss, and yet nothing is wrong, in the expected way of countries on the brink of apocalypse. The country is not convulsed with riots, hyperinflation, or mass immiseration. What we have is a sort of phony war—a drôle de guerre, a sitzkrieg—with the vehemence of conflict mainly confined to what we might call the cultural space.
These days, everybody talks about spaces: the “gastronomic space,” the “podcast space,” even, on N.F.L. podcasts, the “analytic space.” Derived from some combination of sociology and interior design, the word has elbowed aside terms like “field” or “conversation,” perhaps because it’s even more expansive. The “space” of a national election is, for that reason, never self-evident; we’ve always searched for clues.
And so William Dean Howells began his 1860 campaign biography of Abraham Lincoln by mocking the search for a Revolutionary pedigree for Presidential candidates and situating Lincoln in the antislavery West, in contrast to the resigned and too-knowing East. North vs. South may have defined the frame of the approaching war, but Howells was prescient in identifying East vs. West as another critical electoral space. This opposition would prove crucial—first, to the war, with the triumph of the Westerner Ulysses S. Grant over the well-bred Eastern generals, and then to the rejuvenation of the Democratic Party, drawing on free-silver populism and an appeal to the values of the resource-extracting, expansionist West above those of the industrialized, centralized East.
A century later, the press thought that the big issues in the race between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy were Quemoy and Matsu (two tiny Taiwan Strait islands, claimed by both China and Taiwan), the downed U-2, the missile gap, and other much debated Cold War obsessions. But Norman Mailer, in what may be the best thing he ever wrote, saw the space as marked by the rise of movie-star politics—the image-based contests that, from J.F.K. to Ronald Reagan, would dominate American life. In “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” published in Esquire, Mailer revealed that a campaign that looked at first glance like the usual black-and-white wire-service photography of the first half of the twentieth century was really the beginning of our Day-Glo-colored Pop-art turn.
And our own electoral space? We hear about the overlooked vs. the élite, the rural vs. the urban, the coastal vs. the flyover, the aged vs. the young—about the dispossessed vs. the beneficiaries of global neoliberalism. Upon closer examination, however, these binaries blur. Support for populist nativism doesn’t track neatly with economic disadvantage. Some of Donald Trump’s keenest supporters have boats as well as cars and are typically the wealthier citizens of poorer rural areas. His stock among billionaires remains high, and his surprising support among Gen Z males is something his campaign exploits with visits to podcasts that no non-Zoomer has ever heard of.
But polarized nations don’t actually polarize around fixed poles. Civil confrontations invariably cross classes and castes, bringing together people from radically different social cohorts while separating seemingly natural allies. The English Revolution of the seventeenth century, like the French one of the eighteenth, did not array worn-out aristocrats against an ascendant bourgeoisie or fierce-eyed sansculottes. There were, one might say, good people on both sides. Or, rather, there were individual aristocrats, merchants, and laborers choosing different sides in these prerevolutionary moments. No civil war takes place between classes; coalitions of many kinds square off against one another.
In part, that’s because there’s no straightforward way of defining our “interests.” It’s in the interest of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to have big tax cuts; in the longer term, it’s also in their interest to have honest rule-of-law government that isn’t in thrall to guilds or patrons—to be able to float new ideas without paying baksheesh to politicians or having to worry about falling out of sixth-floor windows. “Interests” fail as an explanatory principle.
Does talk of values and ideas get us closer? A central story of American public life during the past three or four decades is (as this writer has noted) that liberals have wanted political victories while reliably securing only cultural victories, even as conservatives, wanting cultural victories, get only political ones. Right-wing Presidents and legislatures are elected, even as one barrier after another has fallen on the traditionalist front of manners and mores. Consider the widespread acceptance of same-sex marriage. A social transformation once so seemingly untenable that even Barack Obama said he was against it, in his first campaign for President, became an uncontroversial rite within scarcely more than a decade.
Right-wing political power has, over the past half century, turned out to have almost no ability to stave off progressive social change: Nixon took the White House in a landslide while Norman Lear took the airwaves in a ratings sweep. And so a kind of permanent paralysis has set in. The right has kept electing politicians who’ve said, “Enough! No more ‘Anything goes’!”—and anything has kept going. No matter how many right-wing politicians came to power, no matter how many right-wing judges were appointed, conservatives decided that the entire culture was rigged against them.
On the left, the failure of cultural power to produce political change tends to lead to a doubling down on the cultural side, so that wholesome college campuses can seem the last redoubt of Red Guard attitudes, though not, to be sure, of Red Guard authority. On the right, the failure of political power to produce cultural change tends to lead to a doubling down on the political side in a way that turns politics into cultural theatre. Having lost the actual stages, conservatives yearn to enact a show in which their adversaries are rendered humiliated and powerless, just as they have felt humiliated and powerless. When an intolerable contradiction is allowed to exist for long enough, it produces a Trump.
As much as television was the essential medium of a dozen bygone Presidential campaigns (not to mention the medium that made Trump a star), the podcast has become the essential medium of this one. For people under forty, the form—typically long-winded and shapeless—is as tangibly present as Walter Cronkite’s tightly scripted half-hour news show was fifty years ago, though the D.I.Y. nature of most podcasts, and the premium on host-read advertisements, makes for abrupt tonal changes as startling as those of the highway billboards.
On the enormously popular, liberal-minded “Pod Save America,” for instance, the hosts make no secret of their belief that the election is a test, as severe as any since the Civil War, of whether a government so conceived can long endure. Then they switch cheerfully to reading ads for Tommy John underwear (“with the supportive pouch”), for herbal hangover remedies, and for an app that promises to cancel all your excess streaming subscriptions, a peculiarly niche obsession (“I accidentally paid for Showtime twice!” “That’s bad!”). George Conway, the former Republican (and White House husband) turned leading anti-Trumper, states bleakly on his podcast for the Bulwark, the news-and-opinion site, that Trump’s whole purpose is to avoid imprisonment, a motivation that would disgrace the leader of any Third World country. Then he immediately leaps into offering—like an old-fashioned a.m.-radio host pushing Chock Full o’Nuts—testimonials for HexClad cookware, with charming self-deprecation about his own kitchen skills. How serious can the crisis be if cookware and boxers cohabit so cozily with the apocalypse?
And then there’s the galvanic space of social media. In the nineteen-seventies and eighties, we were told, by everyone from Jean Baudrillard to Daniel Boorstin, that television had reduced us to numbed observers of events no longer within our control. We had become spectators instead of citizens. In contrast, the arena of social media is that of action and engagement—and not merely engagement but enragement, with algorithms acting out addictively on tiny tablets. The aura of the Internet age is energized, passionate, and, above all, angry. The algorithms dictate regular mortar rounds of text messages that seem to come not from an eager politician but from an infuriated lover, in the manner of Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction”: “Are you ignoring us?” “We’ve reached out to you PERSONALLY!” “This is the sixth time we’ve asked you!” At one level, we know they’re entirely impersonal, while, at another, we know that politicians wouldn’t do this unless it worked, and it works because, at still another level, we are incapable of knowing what we know; it doesn’t feel entirely impersonal. You can doomscroll your way to your doom. The democratic theorists of old longed for an activated citizenry; somehow they failed to recognize how easily citizens could be activated to oppose deliberative democracy.
If the cultural advantages of liberalism have given it a more pointed politics in places where politics lacks worldly consequences, its real-world politics can seem curiously blunted. Kamala Harris, like Joe Biden before her, is an utterly normal workaday politician of the kind we used to find in any functioning democracy—bending right, bending left, placating here and postponing confrontation there, glaring here and, yes, laughing there. Demographics aside, there is nothing exceptional about Harris, which is her virtue. Yet we live in exceptional times, and liberal proceduralists and institutionalists are so committed to procedures and institutions—to laws and their reasonable interpretation, to norms and their continuation—that they can be slow to grasp that the world around them has changed.
One can only imagine the fulminations that would have ensued in 2020 had the anti-democratic injustice of the Electoral College—which effectively amplifies the political power of rural areas at the expense of the country’s richest and most productive areas—tilted in the other direction. Indeed, before the 2000 election, when it appeared as if it might, Karl Rove and the George W. Bush campaign had a plan in place to challenge the results with a “grassroots” movement designed to short-circuit the Electoral College and make the popular-vote winner prevail. No Democrat even suggests such a thing now.
It’s almost as painful to see the impunity with which Supreme Court Justices have torched their institution’s legitimacy. One Justice has the upside-down flag of the insurrectionists flying on his property; another, married to a professional election denialist, enjoys undeclared largesse from a plutocrat. There is, apparently, little to be done, nor even any familiar language of protest to draw on. Prepared by experience to believe in institutions, mainstream liberals believe in their belief even as the institutions are degraded in front of their eyes.
In one respect, the space of politics in 2024 is transoceanic. The forms of Trumpism are mirrored in other countries. In the U.K., a similar wave engendered the catastrophe of Brexit; in France, it has brought an equally extreme right-wing party to the brink, though not to the seat, of power; in Italy, it elevated Matteo Salvini to national prominence and made Giorgia Meloni Prime Minister. In Sweden, an extreme-right group is claiming voters in numbers no one would ever have thought possible, while Canadian conservatives have taken a sharp turn toward the far right.
What all these currents have in common is an obsessive fear of immigration. Fear of the other still seems to be the primary mover of collective emotion. Even when it is utterly self-destructive—as in Britain, where the xenophobia of Brexit cut the U.K. off from traditional allies while increasing immigration from the Global South—the apprehension that “we” are being flooded by frightening foreigners works its malign magic.
It’s an old but persistent delusion that far-right nationalism is not rooted in the emotional needs of far-right nationalists but arises, instead, from the injustices of neoliberalism. And so many on the left insist that all those Trump voters are really Bernie Sanders voters who just haven’t had their consciousness raised yet. In fact, a similar constellation of populist figures has emerged, sharing platforms, plans, and ideologies, in countries where neoliberalism made little impact, and where a strong system of social welfare remains in place. If a broadened welfare state—national health insurance, stronger unions, higher minimum wages, and the rest—would cure the plague in the U.S., one would expect that countries with resilient welfare states would be immune from it. They are not.
Though Trump can be situated in a transoceanic space of populism, he isn’t a mere symptom of global trends: he is a singularly dangerous character, and the product of a specific cultural milieu. To be sure, much of New York has always been hostile to him, and eager to disown him; in a 1984 profile of him in GQ, Graydon Carter made the point that Trump was the only New Yorker who ever referred to Sixth Avenue as the “Avenue of the Americas.” Yet we’re part of Trump’s identity, as was made clear by his recent rally on Long Island—pointless as a matter of swing-state campaigning, but central to his self-definition. His belligerence could come directly from the two New York tabloid heroes of his formative years in the city: John Gotti, the gangster who led the Gambino crime family, and George Steinbrenner, the owner of the Yankees. When Trump came of age, Gotti was all over the front page of the tabloids, as “the Teflon Don,” and Steinbrenner was all over the back sports pages, as “the Boss.”
Steinbrenner was legendary for his middle-of-the-night phone calls, for his temper and combativeness. Like Trump, who theatricalized the activity, he had a reputation for ruthlessly firing people. (Gotti had his own way of doing that.) Steinbrenner was famous for having no loyalty to anyone. He mocked the very players he had acquired and created an atmosphere of absolute chaos. It used to be said that Steinbrenner reduced the once proud Yankees baseball culture to that of professional wrestling, and that arena is another Trumpian space. Pro wrestling is all about having contests that aren’t really contested—that are known to be “rigged,” to use a Trumpian word—and yet evoke genuine emotion in their audience.
At the same time, Trump has mastered the gangster’s technique of accusing others of crimes he has committed. The agents listening to the Gotti wiretap were mystified when he claimed innocence of the just-committed murder of Big Paul Castellano, conjecturing, in apparent seclusion with his soldiers, about who else might have done it: “Whoever killed this cocksucker, probably the cops killed this Paul.” Denying having someone whacked even in the presence of those who were with you when you whacked him was a capo’s signature move.
Marrying the American paranoid style to the more recent cult of the image, Trump can draw on the manner of the tabloid star and show that his is a game, a show, not to be taken quite seriously while still being serious in actually inciting violent insurrections and planning to expel millions of helpless immigrants. Self-defined as a showman, he can say anything and simultaneously drain it of content, just as Gotti, knowing that he had killed Castellano, thought it credible to deny it—not within his conscience, which did not exist, but within an imaginary courtroom. Trump evidently learned that, in the realm of national politics, you could push the boundaries of publicity and tabloid invective far further than they had ever been pushed.
Trump’s ability to be both joking and severe at the same time is what gives him his power and his immunity. This power extends even to something as unprecedented as the assault on the U.S. Capitol. Trump demanded violence (“If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore”) but stuck in three words, “peacefully and patriotically,” that, however hollow, were meant to immunize him, Gotti-style. They were, so to speak, meant for the cops on the wiretap. Trump’s resilience is not, as we would like to tell our children about resilience, a function of his character. It’s a function of his not having one.
Just as Trump’s support cuts across the usual divisions, so, too, does a divide among his opponents—between the maximizers, who think that Trump is a unique threat to liberal democracy, and the minimizers, who think that he is merely the kind of clown a democracy is bound to throw up from time to time. The minimizers (who can be found among both Marxist Jacobin contributors and Never Trump National Review conservatives) will say that Trump has crossed the wires of culture and politics in a way that opportunistically responds to the previous paralysis, but that this merely places him in an American tradition. Democracy depends on the idea that the socially unacceptable might become acceptable. Andrew Jackson campaigned on similar themes with a similar manner—and was every bit as ignorant and every bit as unaware as Trump. (And his campaigns of slaughter against Indigenous people really were genocidal.) Trump’s politics may be ugly, foolish, and vain, but ours is often an ugly, undereducated, and vain country. Democracy is meant to be a mirror; it shows what it shows.
Indeed, America’s recent history has shown that politics is a trailing indicator of cultural change, and that one generation’s most vulgar entertainment becomes the next generation’s accepted style of political argument. David S. Reynolds, in his biography of Lincoln, reflects on how the new urban love of weird spectacle in the mid-nineteenth century was something Lincoln welcomed. P. T. Barnum’s genius lay in taking circus grotesques and making them exemplary Americans: the tiny General Tom Thumb was a hero, not a freak. Lincoln saw that it cost him nothing to be an American spectacle in a climate of sensation; he even hosted a reception at the White House for Tom Thumb and his wife—as much a violation of the decorum of the Founding Fathers as Trump’s investment in Hulk Hogan at the Republican Convention. Lincoln understood the Barnum side of American life, just as Trump understands its W.W.E. side.
And so, the minimizers say, taking Trump seriously as a threat to democracy in America is like taking Roman Reigns seriously as a threat to fair play in sports. Trump is an entertainer. The only thing he really wants are ratings. When opposing abortion was necessary to his electoral coalition, he opposed it—but then, when that was creating ratings trouble in other households, he sent signals that he wasn’t exactly opposed to it. When Project 2025, which he vaguely set in motion and claims never to have read, threatened his ratings, he repudiated it. The one continuity is his thirst for popularity, which is, in a sense, our own. He rows furiously away from any threatening waterfall back to the center of the river—including on Obamacare. And, the minimizers say, in the end, he did leave the White House peacefully, if gracelessly.
In any case, the panic is hardly unique to Trump. Reagan, too, was vilified and feared in his day, seen as the reductio ad absurdum of the culture of the image, an automaton projecting his controllers’ authoritarian impulses. Nixon was the subject of a savage satire by Philip Roth that ended with him running against the Devil for the Presidency of Hell. The minimizers tell us that liberals overreact in real time, write revisionist history when it’s over, and never see the difference between their stories.
The maximizers regard the minimizers’ case as wishful thinking buoyed up by surreptitious resentments, a refusal to concede anything to those we hate even if it means accepting someone we despise. Maximizers who call Trump a fascist are dismissed by the minimizers as either engaging in name-calling or forcing a facile parallel. Yet the parallel isn’t meant to be historically absolute; it is meant to be, as it were, oncologically acute. A freckle is not the same as a melanoma; nor is a Stage I melanoma the same as the Stage IV kind. But a skilled reader of lesions can sense which is which and predict the potential course if untreated. Trumpism is a cancerous phenomenon. Treated with surgery once, it now threatens to come back in a more aggressive form, subject neither to the radiation of “guardrails” nor to the chemo of “constraints.” It may well rage out of control and kill its host.
And so the maximalist case is made up not of alarmist fantasies, then, but of dulled diagnostic fact, duly registered. Think hard about the probable consequences of a second Trump Administration—about the things he has promised to do and can do, the things that the hard-core group of rancidly discontented figures (as usual with authoritarians, more committed than he is to an ideology) who surround him wants him to do and can do. Having lost the popular vote, as he surely will, he will not speak up to reconcile “all Americans.” He will insist that he won the popular vote, and by a landslide. He will pardon and then celebrate the January 6th insurrectionists, and thereby guarantee the existence of a paramilitary organization that’s capable of committing violence on his behalf without fear of consequences. He will, with an obedient Attorney General, begin prosecuting his political opponents; he was largely unsuccessful in his previous attempt only because the heads of two U.S. Attorneys’ offices, who are no longer there, refused to coöperate. When he begins to pressure CNN and ABC, and they, with all the vulnerabilities of large corporations, bend to his will, telling themselves that his is now the will of the people, what will we do to fend off the slow degradation of open debate?
Trump will certainly abandon Ukraine to Vladimir Putin and realign this country with dictatorships and against NATO and the democratic alliance of Europe. Above all, the spirit of vengeful reprisal is the totality of his beliefs—very much like the fascists of the twentieth century in being a man and a movement without any positive doctrine except revenge against his imagined enemies. And against this: What? Who? The spirit of resistance may prove too frail, and too exhausted, to rise again to the contest. Who can have confidence that a democracy could endure such a figure in absolute control and survive? An oncologist who, in the face of this much evidence, shrugged and proposed watchful waiting as the best therapy would not be an optimist. He would be guilty of gross malpractice. One of those personal-injury lawyers on the billboards would sue him, and win.
What any plausible explanation must confront is the fact that Trump is a distinctively vile human being and a spectacularly malignant political actor. In fables and fiction, in every Disney cartoon and Batman movie, we have no trouble recognizing and understanding the villains. They are embittered, canny, ludicrous in some ways and shrewd in others, their lives governed by envy and resentment, often rooted in the acts of people who’ve slighted them. (“They’ll never laugh at me again!”) They nonetheless have considerable charm and the ability to attract a cult following. This is Ursula, Hades, Scar—to go no further than the Disney canon. Extend it, if that seems too childlike, to the realms of Edmund in “King Lear” and Richard III: smart people, all, almost lovable in their self-recognition of their deviousness, but not people we ever want to see in power, for in power their imaginations become unimaginably deadly. Villains in fables are rarely grounded in any cause larger than their own grievances—they hate Snow White for being beautiful, resent Hercules for being strong and virtuous. Bane is blowing up Gotham because he feels misused, not because he truly has a better city in mind.
Trump is a villain. He would be a cartoon villain, if only this were a cartoon. Every time you try to give him a break—to grasp his charisma, historicize his ascent, sympathize with his admirers—the sinister truth asserts itself and can’t be squashed down. He will tell another lie so preposterous, or malign another shared decency so absolutely, or threaten violence so plausibly, or just engage in behavior so unhinged and hate-filled that you’ll recoil and rebound to your original terror at his return to power. One outrage succeeds another until we become exhausted and have to work hard even to remember the outrages of a few weeks past: the helicopter ride that never happened (but whose storytelling purpose was to demean Kamala Harris as a woman), or the cemetery visit that ended in a grotesque thumbs-up by a graveside (and whose symbolic purpose was to cynically enlist grieving parents on behalf of his contempt). No matter how deranged his behavior is, though, it does not seem to alter his good fortune.
Villainy inheres in individuals. There is certainly a far-right political space alive in the developed world, but none of its inhabitants—not Marine Le Pen or Giorgia Meloni or even Viktor Orbán—are remotely as reckless or as crazy as Trump. Our self-soothing habit of imagining that what has not yet happened cannot happen is the space in which Trump lives, just as comically deranged as he seems and still more dangerous than we know.
Nothing is ever entirely new, and the space between actual events and their disassociated representation is part of modernity. We live in that disassociated space. Generations of cultural critics have warned that we are lost in a labyrinth and cannot tell real things from illusion. Yet the familiar passage from peril to parody now happens almost simultaneously. Events remain piercingly actual and threatening in their effects on real people, while also being duplicated in a fictive system that shows and spoofs them at the same time. One side of the highway is all cancer; the other side all crazy. Their confoundment is our confusion.
It is telling that the most successful entertainments of our age are the dark comic-book movies—the Batman films and the X-Men and the Avengers and the rest of those cinematic universes. This cultural leviathan was launched by the discovery that these ridiculous comic-book figures, generations old, could now land only if treated seriously, with sombre backstories and true stakes. Our heroes tend to dullness; our villains, garishly painted monsters from the id, are the ones who fuel the franchise.
During the debate last month in Philadelphia, as Trump’s madness rose to a peak of raging lunacy—“They’re eating the dogs”; “He hates her!”—ABC, in its commercial breaks, cut to ads for “Joker: Folie à Deux,” the new Joaquin Phoenix movie, in which the crazed villain swirls and grins. It is a Gotham gone mad, and a Gotham, against all the settled rules of fable-making, without a Batman to come to the rescue. Shuttling between the comic-book villain and the grimacing, red-faced, and unhinged man who may be reëlected President in a few weeks, one struggled to distinguish our culture’s most extravagant imagination of derangement from the real thing. The space is that strange, and the stakes that high. ♦
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beyondthesefourwalls · 2 years ago
Text
Remember You Even When I Don't (6)
Summary: A training accident, the doctor had told him. A nasty one that led him here, laying in a hospital bed with a splitting headache and an inability to remember the woman sitting beside him. What he did know, though, was that you were the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and you felt important to him. That, as it turns out, would become an understatement.
Words: 5.0K
Pairing: Bradley Bradshaw/Reader (no use of y/n, so can be read as unnamed oc)
Warnings: angst, hospitals, memory loss, language, suggestive themes, smut
Notes: Please note the updated warnings. These next few chapters are a new stage of Bradley and Pumpkin growing back together, and while I'm very excited about it, I know it may not be for everyone. For everyone who sticks around, please continue to comment and reblog, and my inbox is always open! I love to talk about these two :)
This was inspired by a one shot by the lovely @roosterforme and would not exist without her assistance. If you haven't read any of her stuff, please check out her masterlist - you won't be disappointed! All of the thanks to her and @mak-32 for being the best cheerleaders and friends I could ask for!
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By the time the two of you untangle yourselves from the porch and make your way back inside, the moon was high in the sky, the sun long disappeared. Your stomach is rumbling, and Bradley realizes how late it is. 
“I can make something for dinner.”
Despite the emotional rollercoaster you’d been on this evening, you chuckle, and something eases inside of him. 
“Your cooking hasn’t improved in the last four years,” you tease softly. 
He rolls his eyes, chuckling at you. “I bet I can still make a mean grilled cheese. Take a seat.” 
Your grin is wide as you settle onto one of the bar stools at the island, watching him work. It’s the biggest smile he’s seen from you in the last two weeks, and his heart races knowing that he’s the cause of it. 
The crusts are only a little bit burnt, but you insist that you like them that way. You talk while you eat, and it’s like the tension that had been hovering over you has diminished. When the plates are loaded into the dishwasher and the kitchen lights are flipped off, you let out a shuddering breath and hold out your hand. 
“You can sleep in our bed,” you whisper, and Bradley’s heart clenches in something that feels like relief. You give a little shrug, self conscious of your own words, like he would ever possibly reject you, “Just sleep. If you want.” 
He takes your hand and lets you guide him. Your hand feels at home in his, the warmth of your rings is smooth against his calloused skin. 
Your shared bedroom was the one room he hadn’t explored yet. The furniture is wood toned and there are flashes of green and gold and orange. He can tell which side of the bed is his right away by the books on the nightstand, and there’s still a sweatshirt of his strewn over the chair in the corner by the closet door. There’s a jewelry box on the dresser and he thinks there may be a section in there for his uniform pins, too. 
He can feel you in here so strongly. More than that, though, he can feel himself, and the two of you together. He can sense, more so than in the rest of the house, that this space is purely for the two of you. 
You go into the en suite bathroom to change, leaving him in the bedroom to do the same, and he knows which drawers are his and which ones aren’t. He sinks down on his side of the bed, picking up the picture frame that’s there by an F18 manual and a Captain America comic book. A grin tugs at the corner of his mouth as he looks at it. You’re both bundled up in head to toe green and white Eagles gear and wrapped around one another. There’s snow falling and there’s crowds of people and the field in the background and the two of you look so happy, and Bradley knew the happiness had nothing to do with the game. 
“We lost that one.” 
He looks up and his breath catches. You’re walking toward him in a shirt that has to be a few sizes too big for you, Top Gun emblazoned across the chest. Your hair is piled on your head and you’re still rubbing some of your moisturizer into your face. 
He didn’t think he’d ever get used to how beautiful you were. 
“Did we?” he manages, and his heart thuds in his chest when you round the bed to pull down the comforter on your side, throwing all of the throw pillows onto the floor. 
“We did. It was actually a terrible game.”
Bradley looks back down at the photo, tracing the smile on your face before he sets it back down, and something tells him the score wasn’t what really mattered to him that day. He stands, mimicking your motion of turning down the bed. “We looked like we were having a good time.”
You pause for a moment, giving him a gentle smile and a nod. “We were. It was an amazing weekend.”
There was a distance enough for another body between you when you switch the light off and slip under the covers. The room is quiet and he can hear both of your breathing. Your eyes are trained on one another from across the expanse of the king size bed, and Bradley feels his fingers twitch. 
This didn’t feel right, laying like this. 
He scoots forward, closer to the center of the bed, and you do the same. Before he realizes what he was doing, he has an arm wrapped around you, pulling you closer to him. Your breath catches in your throat and he pauses. 
“What are you doing?” You whispered, and Bradley wondered if you could hear him swallow his nerves. 
“I think - we don’t sleep on opposite sides. Right? I usually…hold you?” He’s unsure now, panicking a little bit, but you slowly rest a hand on his chest over his racing heart. If you felt how hard it was beating, you didn’t comment on it. 
“You do,” you confirmed, your gaze open and full of trust and compassion. “But I want you to do what feels comfortable to you.”
He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. A tickle is there in his mind again, and he reaches for it. 
The arm that had pulled you to him brings you a little bit closer, and he lets his hand rest on your hip. 
“This?” you murmur, and Bradley nods as he brushes a shy kiss into your hair. 
“Yeah,” he whispers with a gentle squeeze of your hip, “this is a lot better.”
————-
Sleeping in the same bed with you is the best sleep he thinks he’s ever gotten. He feels rested in a way he can’t remember feeling before, and he knows deep in his bones that this has always been what it feels like with you. 
He comes to wakefulness slowly, and vanilla and lavender immediately fill his senses. Your hair is in his face and he marvels at how soft it is against his skin. Your back is flush against his chest, one arm wrapped tight around you while the other is trapped under your pillow. He’s so comfortable, so content having you in his arms like this, that he can’t help but press closer. It feels so right, so familiar, that he forgets that he doesn’t remember always having this for a moment. 
He nuzzles into your neck, finding your skin and pressing a gentle kiss there. 
You smell so good, and you’re soft, too. 
His hand spreads out where it was resting on your stomach. His fingertips circle over the material of the oversized shirt you’re wearing that he suspects might be his.  
You shiver, and Bradley can feel his body react to the movement. 
You’re invading every single one of his senses right now. 
You hum, reaching back to thread your fingers through his sleep mussed hair. His nose trails up your neck, inhaling the scent of you as his lips place fluttering kisses against your skin. His palm presses into your cotton covered stomach, almost as if to try and pull you impossibly closer. You let out a soft, sleepy sound that shoots straight through him. He thrusts his hips into yours from his spot behind you, grinding slowly. Your fingers tighten in his hair and he can’t help but scrape his teeth against your jugular, soothing it over with his tongue. 
“Bradley,” you moan. His name breaks through the fog that had settled over his mind and the two of you freeze. His breathing is heavy, and so is yours, and he doesn’t want to move from this spot. But you shift in his arms just far enough away to turn so that you’re laying facing him. Your eyes are wide and your face is flushed. For a moment, Bradley swears he can see you sprawled in this bed, your hair a halo on the pillow with your head thrown back as he moves on top of you. He blinks and the image is gone, but you’re still right here, staring at him with such longing and pure want. He knows he shares the same look. 
Your shared breathing is the only sound that fills the room for a long moment, and he swears that the more he looks at you, the hotter and harder he feels. No one has ever had this effect on him. The tension was thick over the two of you. 
“Good morning, Pumpkin,” he finally rasps. He doesn’t think you mean to let out the whimper that you do, but the sound makes him dizzy. He swallows, trying to reign himself in. 
Sleep, you had said the night before, just sleep. 
“Morning,” you respond, your voice breathy.  Bradley has to squeeze his eyes shut and take a calming breath. When he opens them, your gaze has shifted to something of curiosity, but the previous heat still simmers there, too. 
“How’d you sleep?” 
“Great,” you mutter, but your eyes have moved further down his face, “You?” 
“So good,” he breathes, watching you as you watch him. Your hand twitches on the sheets from where they rested in the small space between your two bodies. You raise it slowly, letting your fingertips graze the stubble that had appeared on his chin the last few days. You looked like you were almost in a trance, and he wondered if you could feel how hard his heart was beating. Your thumb ghosts near his bottom lip. He sucks in a breath of air, shifting just the slightest bit closer to you. Your eyes flicker back up to his.
You look as wrecked as he feels. He had to get out of this bed. But he also wants to prolong this torture for as long as he could. You were addicting, in every single way. 
“I’m uh, I’m sorry for the wake up call,” he stutters out. 
You hum in response, your fingertips still exploring his face. They trace over the scars, and he didn’t think the thing he hated so much could possibly be an erogenous zone until this moment, because a flash of fire goes through him again. “I thought I was dreaming,” you admit softly. 
Bradley gulps, but he doesn’t resist the urge he feels to settle his hand on your hip. Your eyes flutter shut and he squeezes softly. His thumb mimics yours, rubbing slowly back and forth. He wishes there wasn’t cotton separating him from feeling your skin. 
“Is that something you dream about?” he dares himself to ask. 
Your lips part and your breathing shifts. You turn your face into the pillow slightly, almost like you’re fighting against yourself. When your eyes open again, it’s like you’re staring directly into his soul. 
“Yes.” 
He wasn’t prepared for you to answer him, and he really needs to get out of this bed. He was finally getting somewhere with you after two weeks of awkward tension, and he really didn’t want to ruin it by moving too fast, despite every instinct in him saying this was completely natural between the two of you. 
He squeezes your hip again, lingering for a moment, before forcing himself to roll away from you. “I’m going to go take a shower.” 
His voice is hoarse, rougher than it had been. When he takes a peek at you over his shoulder from his spot sitting on the edge of the bed, there’s the smallest of smirks pulling at your lips. You know the effect you have on him. He likes that. 
“Use the en suite,” you suggest, snuggling back into the blankets that surround you. “The water pressure is better.” 
He finds it hard to look away from how your hair is spread out all over the pillow and how he can see the outline of your body through the white sheets. He forces himself to stand, but before he can take a step, your hand shoots out to grab his. 
“It’s okay,” you murmured, and he didn’t realize he needed reassurance of what had just transpired until he had it. He squeezes your hand in thanks and you let it drop, rolling onto your back as he walks into the bathroom. He debated for a second if he should close the door, settling on leaving it cracked just the smallest amount. He wanted you to know that if you needed in here before he was done, he was okay with that. 
Stripping down and stepping into the steam, he groans in relief. The water pressure was better here. 
The shower was spacious, despite there being a larger tub in the room as well. In what was meant to be a fleeting thought, he wondered which one you preferred, and suddenly he could see it so clearly, you laying in a bath full of bubbles, your hair on top of your head and candles lit throughout the room, beckoning him toward you with a coy smile on your face. 
He squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head, trying to shake the visual away. He braces himself against the wall of the shower, letting the hot water rain over him, and he could just as clearly see your back pressed against the same tiles. He swears he can feel your weight in his arms as he holds you up. 
“Fuck,” he mutters, his hands curling into fists. He probably shouldn’t be thinking about you like this, right? He should give it more time. But then his mind conjures up the taste of your skin from just a few minutes ago, and the way your body felt pressed against his. 
He catches sight of your shampoo and conditioner bottles on the corner shelf and remembers how amazing your hair smelt when his face was buried in your neck. He reached for the bottle of conditioner, popping the cap and bringing it to his nose. He inhales deeply and has to bite his lip to stop himself from groaning. 
He shakes his head again, but it was a futile attempt; all he can think about was you. He can still hear the soft little mewl you let out when you felt him against you as you woke up, and the whimper when he said good morning. 
It takes him a moment to realize it might not just be echoing through his head.
It’s quiet, so quiet that he steps out from under the water to make sure it was even there. He stands completely still, holding his breath, and oh, fuck. 
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he groans, because he can hear you. Just barely, but when he strains his ears hard enough, the softest of moans floats through the hardly there crack he left in the door. A quiet hum follows it, and he knows, as surely as he knows that he’s falling for you quicker than he can comprehend, again, that you’re laying in the bed the two of you share, bringing yourself pleasure. 
He doesn’t stop himself this time from bringing a hand down to wrap around himself. He hisses at the contact. He’s so hard that it hurts; he knows he’s not going to last long. He’s slow with it at first, so focused on his ability to hear you. His grip is firm as he touches himself with complete strokes, squeezing when he gets to the base. As you speed up, so does he. 
He closes his eyes, tilting his head back as one hand remains braced against the tiles. He tightens his grip and through his shuddery breaths, he can almost feel what your touch would be like instead. Your hands are soft, not sporting the same calluses that he does. After a sparing moment of consideration, he reaches for your conditioner again, squirting a small amount into his hand before he grips himself again. The smell of lavender and vanilla surround him like a blanket and he groans. Yes.  
He’s hit with a muffled moan of his name, your voice catching and a breathy gasp leaving you, and he somehow knows that’s the way you sound when you climax. 
The shift in him is instant. He doesn’t hold back, jerking himself in earnest. He’s desperate for it now, picturing you spread out in that big bed, your chest heaving, and it’s the knowledge that just as he's thinking of you, he has no doubt that you’re thinking of him, too, that finally pushes him over the edge. 
Because you’re his wife, and he’s your husband. 
He’s still recovering from the power of it, fighting to catch his breath, when a soft knock echoes at the door. His eyes shoot in that direction, but the shower curtain blocks him from seeing anything. 
“Bradley,” you call, and the sound of his name from your mouth, so different from how he just heard it, almost makes him groan out loud again, “Do you mind if I come in and brush my teeth really quick?”
“Please,” he grits out, immediately flushing at the needy tone of his voice. He wants to be able to tell you to join him in the shower - to pull you in here with him and recreate the image of holding you against the tiles that he thought he saw in his head. He wants to say so much more. But instead, all he said was, “Be my guest.”
_______
There’s a noticeable shift following your night on the porch and your morning in bed. There’s less hesitation from both of you. Bradley didn’t know if things would ever be whatever used to be the same, but they’re better, so, so much better, and he thinks that together, maybe you can find a new normal. 
He had been worried initially that there would be that same awkward tension that had filled the house after he woke you up the way he did on the first night he slept with his arms wrapped around you. Instead, though, there’s a different kind of tension. Something anticipatory and exciting. He doesn’t shy away from initiating contact with you anymore, and neither do you. 
He starts seeing flashes, after that night. They aren’t always full fledged memories, but it’s enough. His dreams are more detailed than that first week provided him. He doesn’t shy away from asking you about them anymore, and from underneath the blankets of your shared bed, you fill in the blanks for him.
You honeymooned in Mexico. The two of you only lived in your small DC apartment together for a few months before you moved to California, where you bought and renovated this home together. He’s developed a love for seafood, and you’re allergic to bees. 
He loves waking up like that with you, even if it’s only been happening for less than a handful of days. 
He knows, in the deepest parts of him, that he loves you. His mind may not remember, but his body does. His heart does. He knows it instinctively and that night and next morning gives him the courage to lean into it, to explore it, even if he’s not ready to really say it out loud again. 
He wants to do something special for you. His heart is racing in his chest as he makes his way up the stairs. You’re in your home office, catching up on a few emails from the last few weeks you’ve been on leave. You’re curled up in your desk chair in an oversized sweater, your hair bunched on the top of your head and your glasses perched on your nose; even now, you completely blow him away. 
He clears his throat and knocks his knuckles against the door frame. A smile instantly appears on your face when you turn to him. 
“Am I interrupting anything?” He asks. He’s so nervous his palms are sweating. 
“Never. What’s up?” 
He notices how your eyes shift down to his right arm, where his hand is noticeably behind his back hiding something from you. Inhaling a deep breath, he unveils a small bouquet of wildflowers, holding them out to you. 
You gasp, a look of surprise overtaking you, and your eyes lift back to meet his as you gently take the arrangement from him. 
“I was wondering if you had any plans tonight?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart. I feel like I’m maybe about to.”
The blush is instantaneous; you’re the only one who has ever been able to get reactions Iike this from him - no wonder he married you. You had no problem in keeping him on his toes and oh, he loved that. 
He clears his throat again, determined not to let you completely overpower him like this, if only for his own ego. He stands up a little straighter, sending you a smirk and a wink even as he could still feel the heat on his face. 
“Be ready to go by 7,” he tells you, turning to walk out of the room before tossing over his shoulder, “dress nice.”
————-
His brain short circuits when you come down the stairs right at 7:00 that night.
You’re in a dark green dress that seems to flow down your body to your calves. The sleeves are billowy but clinch tight at your wrists. Your hair is down and your makeup is done and he wants to kiss that soft shade of pink right off your lips.
“Wow,” he whispers, “you look…”
For a second, he sees you opening the door for him instead of walking down the staircase. He’s seen this before, he thinks. 
When he fails to finish, you laugh nervously. “Nice, I hope?”
But Bradley shakes his head.  “Beautiful,” he says instead, “you look beautiful.”
He made reservations at a nice restaurant not too far from your house, and he’s glad he hasn’t been cleared to drive just yet, because there’s no way he would have been able to concentrate on the road with you in his passenger seat looking like that. 
His hand is firm on the small of your back as he leads you inside. Even in your pretty nude shoes, he’s still a head taller than you, and he can’t help but puff his chest knowing that everyone who saw you walk in together knows that you’re here with him. 
He gives the hostess his name, rubbing small circles on your back as you wait. You shiver at his touch and move just the slightest bit closer to him. He can feel the side of your body against his side. 
His bubble bursts, however, when the red headed hostess gives him an remorseful, panicked look. 
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Bradshaw. I was the one you spoke with this morning but I accidentally put your reservation for this time next week. I’m so, so sorry.” 
Looking behind her into the restaurant itself, he knows it would be futile to ask if there were any reservations available for tonight. He bites the inside of his cheek, trying to curb his frustration at the situation. She couldn’t be older than 22 or 23, and she looks genuinely apologetic at the situation. With a deep sigh, he musters a reassuring smile, telling the young girl that it was okay. 
To his surprise, you don’t seem upset at all. In fact, you look practically giddy at the disruption of his plans. 
“We can go somewhere else,” you swear, nearly bouncing in your heels, tugging him out of the crowded restaurant. 
“You look incredibly happy for someone who might not be getting dinner tonight.”
You throw your head back as you lead him toward your car, your laughter spreading through the full parking lot. “Like you’d ever let me starve.”
His lips quirk, knowing that no, he would certainly not. 
When you get to the car, instead of unlocking it, you whip around to face him. You had turned so fast that he doesn’t have time to keep himself from running into you. He grabs onto your waist to keep from knocking you over, but leaves them there when you settle your hands on his chest. 
“Forget trying to impress me with fancy dinners. What’s something fun you used to do on weekends when you were a kid? I want you to take me there.” 
He sucks in a breath and his hands tighten on your waist. 
Suddenly, he’s in another parking lot. It’s colder outside, but under the jacket you’re wearing, he spots the same green dress. Your hair is a little bit shorter, maybe a little bit darker, but your eyes sparkle in the shine of the street lights just as they are now. You’re leaning against the side of his Bronco, speaking the exact same words after another messed up reservation. 
When he snaps out of it, one of your hands has moved to cup his cheek, your thumb running over his skin. 
This wasn’t the first time this has happened on a first date with you, and suddenly your giddiness makes sense. The two of you are getting almost an exact do-over, even if he didn’t realize it at first.  
He leans in and kisses you. You let out a surprised sound, but don’t hesitate in returning it, your nails scratching through the scruff on his face before coming back down to settle on his chest. When he pulls away, both of you are grinning. 
“How do you feel about arcade games and pizza?” 
Two hours later, you had demolished an arcade bar pizza and mozzarella sticks, and he was sipping on a cheap beer while you had a vodka and ginger ale, and he truly can’t remember ever being so happy. He had beat you at ski ball and Pac Man, but you were giving him an absolute run for his money at air hockey. Seeing you so dialed in directly across from him was distracting, and when he tried to use that as his excuse when you inevitably beat him, your giggle mixed in with the loud games and music surrounding them.
He holds your hand tightly as you weave your way through the crowded arcade, trying to find the giant jenga you promised you’d beat him at. He’s starting to buzz a little bit underneath his skin, jittery in a way that he thinks may be a normal side effect of being in your presence. When you finally break your way through the crowd to the outdoor area of the bar, he pulls you away from where all the other people are, finding a corner outside of the reach of the lights they have woven through the palm trees and around the building. He pushes you gently into the brick, mindful of your head and your dress and the heels you’re still wearing. 
“I think I remember how this ended the first time,” he says, resting one hand on your hip while the other braces against the building beside your head, effectively caging you in. 
“Oh yeah?” you breathe out, threading your fingers through your hair. 
He hums in response, leaning in to whisper in your ear, all the people and sound fading away from around the two of you, “I told you I loved you.” 
Your fingers tighten in his hair for a moment, and he lets you tug him away from your neck to meet your eyes again. 
“I told you you were crazy then, saying that on our first date,” you provided, and Bradley nods, agreeing with you. You gulp slightly, but your eyes are still shining, hopeful and happy. 
“And now?” you whisper, bringing both arms to wrap around his neck, “how are you feeling now?” 
He takes a step closer until his body is flush against yours. He takes a deep breath, breathing in the scent of you, and places a lingering kiss on your forehead. “I’m feeling like I’m remembering why I said it the first time, and why I said it every time after that, too.” 
You push yourself up, capturing his lips with yours, and like he thought over three years ago, he thinks he could kiss you for the rest of his life and die happy. 
It’s after midnight when the two of you get home. He intertwined his fingers with yours as soon as you both got out of the car. He doesn’t let go when you step into the house from the garage, or as you kick off the nude heels you had worn all night. Florry perks her head up from where she’s laying on top of one of the pillows on the couch, but settles back down when she notices it’s just the two of you. You don’t bother turning any of the lights on, making your way to and up the stairs. He tugs you to a halt when you reach the open door to your bedroom. You raise an eyebrow, silently questioning him. 
“I know I’ve been sleeping in there with you the last few days,” he murmurs, “but I can’t walk you to your front door like on a proper date. The bedroom door seems like the next best thing.”
The small smile you had on your face the whole way home quirks up even higher as you take a step over the threshold and into the room, keeping his hand in yours as you go. “I asked you inside that night, too. Come to bed, sweetheart.” 
He holds you tight that night, his legs intertwined with yours and his arm draped over your waist as you lay facing him. You don’t do more than exchange a few long, lingering kisses, because despite how much he wants to take it further, he knows the two of you aren’t there yet. 
He’s going to earn it, to be certain that you love this version of him as much as you loved the version he doesn’t quite remember yet. He’s looking forward to proving it to the both of you that you can. 
-------
Part Seven :: Series Masterlist :: Main Masterlist
Notes: I hope you liked this one! Nervous is an understatement. Would love to hear any thoughts you may have :)
Tag List: @roosterforme - @mak-32 - @hoyaharper - @wildxwidow - @gretagerwigsmuse - @bradshawburner - @iamaslytherin0 - @lilyevanswhore - @too-fangirl-to-fuction - @fav-fanficssss - @benhardysdrumstick - @fandomxpreferences - @acatwriteshere - @1234-angelika - @double-j - @cocoskween - @sunflowersteves - @teacupsandtopgun - @littlezee80 - @sometimesanalice - @je-suis-prest-rachel - @khaylin27 - @infamous-reindeer - @hotch-meeeeeuppppp - @sarahjoestewy-blog - @sunnysidesidra - @notroosterbradshaw - @yanna-banana - @inthestars-underthesun @avengersfan25 - @wkndwlff - @zbeez-outlet - @lt-spork - @indynerdgirl - @loveforaugust - @mssleepy876b
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sporesgalaxy · 11 months ago
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Pierre fun facts that may or may not ever come up
•••
Both paternal & maternal grandfathers were navy shipwrights, long since retired
born & raised on an island VERY popular for Marines to retire to
It's the One Piece equivalent of suburbs. I made up One Piece suburbs. Unthinkable financial security compared to many places in the world, but still several social wrungs beneath, say, low nobility.
Pierre studied general biology but has a special love for Cladistics and Vector Borne Diseases
Pierre was accepted as an unpaid intern for Dr. Vegapunk. Pierre didn't want the job but, too cowardly to admit to anyone they wanted nothing to do with the World Government & therefore without an excuse to decline, Pierre accepted it anyways.
Pierre is secretly relieved that didn't work out.
Pierre still ate the Bug Bug Fruit by accident & complete dumb luck as a teenager or younger adult, and then hid the powers in hopes of living a "normal" life.
Pierre lies and tells the marines he accidentally ate the Bug Bug fruit after ending up on the Grand Line
Pierre has no fighting experience and no will to fight, but is really great at running away and hiding thanks to the centipede powers 👍
Aside from being huge & venomous, having an exoskeleton, and having hooks on every limb, centipede-mode Pierre can also squeeze through comically small openings and squeeze into comically small spaces to hide
Pierre has terrible vision as a human and even worse vision as a centipede
During Pierre's time with the Marines:
Pierre FAILED to learn any Haki 🎉
Pierre FAILED to get much better at combat 🎉
Pierre stayed combat stupid on purpose (sort of) because he does not like the government 🎉
Pierre did use his zoan powers to try to be a better amateur field doctor, though
Pierre discovered a talent for transforming isolated body parts with zoan powers at will
Pierre volunteered to be a guinea pig for various zoan studies so the Marines would be less mad at him for being a useless devil fruit user
Pierre is feeling normal after that
Pierre was on one of those Navy ships headed for Buggy that Crocodile blew up. Pierre almost died 👍 also he didn't want to be there to begin with but they made him go because someone heard Pierre wanted to kill Buggy himself
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incorrect-murderdrones · 4 months ago
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ANDDD WE HAVE A QUOTE MASTERPOST! ALL QUOTES BELONG TOO: @the-island-of-quotes HAVE FUN AND FOLLOW THAT PERSON :D -Mod Kai
N: This is what Victor would look like if he was doctor Seuss.
Uzi: There's a socket in my pocket, maybe this will help me fix my sprocket.
Uzi: It's not a 5, or a 6, or a 10, I have seem to have lost all of those again.
Uzi: And when it comes to wrenches, it seems all of them have disappeared off my fucking work benches.
Uzi: So even though there is a socket in my pocket I can't even use it to fix my fucking sprocket
*Next day*
Uzi: Another tool another day, I dropped some more shit in this fucking engine bay.
Uzi: But it's okay because I bought this car to get from point A to point B.
Uzi: And after one week of ownership I'm kinda hoping this thing gets crushed by a fucking tree.
Uzi: I've wanted to sell this car since week one, but nobody wants to buy it when it has every problem under the sun.
Uzi: This car will just remain broken and collect some dust, and eventually this piece of shit will start collecting rust.
Uzi: But at this point I don't really care! I have the time, nor money or energy to try and repair.
Uzi: I'm just gonna say fuck this, and sell this shit on craigslist to some guy named Chris.
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V: I now proudly present, the life and times of earnest Hemingway in aproxamently 3 and a half minutes. GO! Born in Chicago in 1899, son of a physician and a musician, reasonably uneventful childhood, decided to study Journalism. Enlisted with the Red Cross during World War I, got BLOWN up in Milan and spent 6 months in hospital with severe shrapnel wounds in both legs. Fell in love with a nurse, they decided to get married. He came home to prepare, she stayed there and ditched him for an Italian soldier, which initiated a life long pattern of him rejecting women before they had a chance to reject him. Got a job as a foreign correspondent, fell in love with his roommates' sister, married her and moved to Paris. They hung out with Gertrude Stein. They kicked it with Pablo Picasso. He started writing in earnest, no pun intended. Moved to Toronto, had a kid, moved back to Paris, published a couple of books. Cheated on his wife, got divorced, married the other woman. Converted to Catholicism... Cut his head open after pulling on a cord thinking he was flushing a toilet and instead ripped a skylight from the roof and smashed it onto HIS FACE! Moved to Kansas City, had another kid, his dad committed suicide, he shot a lot of bears for some reason. Had a car accident, had another kid, went to Africa to kill some wild animals and got dysentery karma! Published another book, moved to Cuba, SHOT HIMSELF IN THE LEG WHILST AIMING AT A SHARK! Cheated on his wife, got divorced, married the other woman. Published "For Whom the Bell Tolls," sold half a million copies in a couple of months and got nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Cheated on his wife, got divorced, married the other woman. Became the self appointed leader of a band of village Militia outside of Paris and was subsequently brought up on charges for contravening the Geneva Convention, and GOT AWAY WITH IT LIKE A FUCKING CHAMPION! Got pneumonia, moved back to Cuba and spent most of his spare time on his boat TRACKING NAZI U-BOATS WITH A MACHINE GUN AND A PILE OF HAND GRENADES I AM NOT MAKING THIS SHIT UP! Had a few more car accidents, three more concussions, got CLAWED WHILE PLAYING WITH A LION... Got depressed, drank. Got fat, published a couple more books, went back to Africa to shoot some more wild animals, and barely survived two separate plane crashes in the space of 24 hours, winding up with a fractured skull, internal bleeding, cracked spine, ruptured liver, first degree burns, and a paralyzed sphincter muscle karma! Won a Nobel Prize, had a file opened on him by J. Edgar Hoover, left a bunch of shit in a safe in Cuba and moved to Idaho, paranoid that the feds were following him WHICH THEY WERE BECAUSE HE SPENT MOST OF THE 1940S WORKING FOR THE KGB, AGAIN NOT MAKING THIS SHIT UP! Suffered from hepatitis, nephritis, hypertension, hemochromatosis, anemia and impotence, karma. Got committed, received way too much electroconvulsive therapy and came out all fucked up, started hinting at suicide so immediately got recommitted, received another couple of months worth of electroconvulsive therapy, got released, put both barrels of his favorite 12-gauge shotgun into his mouth and BLEW HIS FUCKING HEAD OFF! WHAT A GUY!
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N: Welcome to applebees! What'll it be? Apples or bees? Congrats, you get bees!!!
______________________________________________________________
Doll: Now that I've added the milk to the cereal tell me, is that milk now a beverage, a broth, or a sauce? Answer carefully Khan, you're wife's life depends on it!
______________________________________________________________
Uzi: If the conspiracies about life being a simulation are true whoever is controlling my Sim I JUST WANNA TALK!!
______________________________________________________________
N: Do you think god stays in heaven because he too fears what he's created? That's a quote from Spy Kids 2 have you ever seen it it's like peak cinema.
______________________________________________________________
Uzi: Who needs sleep when you run on equal parts NyQuil and Methamphetamine?
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V: Just remember Uzi people die when they are killed!
______________________________________________________________
V: Ha! You're pointless!
Doll: Thirty nine buried.
*Gunshot*
Doll: Zero found
______________________________________________________________
N: Which one of you was gonna tell me tea tastes different if you put in hot water?
Uzi: Y- you we're putting it in cold water???????
V: N. Answer the question N!
N: Yeah??? I thought for like five years people just put it in hot water to speed up the tea-ification process, didn't realize there was an actual reason.
J: You don't have the patience to microwave water for three minutes??
Doll: Why are you. Putting it in the microwave to boil it?
J: Do you think I have the patience to boil water on the stove?
Doll: It takes less than a minute!
J: Doll is your stove powered by the fucking sun!?
Doll: How long does it take to boil a cup of water on your stove?
J: LIKE SEVEN MINUTES!
Doll: Just stick the mug on top of the stove on medium heat and it boils in two minutes, less if you use a saucepan.
Lizzy: Crying your putting the whole mug on the stove??? On medium heat??? Your stove is enchanted!
Uzi: Every drone in this exoplanet is a fucking idiot.
Cyn: DO NONE OF YOU OWN A FUCKING KETTLE!?!?! REMEMBER TO FOLLOW: @the-island-of-quotes AS THEY OWN THESE QUOTES :D
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arkiwii · 1 year ago
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ME WHEN I'M FINALLY DONE WITH MY ARKNIGHTS OC
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my god it took too long for literally just a fullbody. usually i do them so fast but i guess here i was lazy. anyway information and stuff and story and whatever below!!
Real name Fortuna, code name Kochosen, is a Liberi (azure-winged magpie) born in Laterano. She had been growing up and thriving to become a doctor. However, after contracting Oripathy in an accident, she has been forced to leave Laterano. Surviving in the wastelands on her own, she discovered her Originium Arts, to manipulate water, which greatly helped her in her journey. She finally joined Yan, where she was able to find some help for her cause, then later, joined Higashi, after helping a whole village from a Catastrophe.
She later accepted to help Rhodes Island as a Medic operator, precisely an Incantation Medic.
Fortuna is what can be said a bad omen... And also a good omen. Back in Laterano, due to her clumsiness, she quickly won the reputation of bringing bad luck around. Her Infection is what truly made her the nemesis of the Leterans, and due to the rules in the city, has been seen as an occasion to get rid of a bad luck bringer. This convinced her that she was indeed one who only cause suffering around, bringing her morale and self confidence to the lowest as she barely managed to survive in the wilderness.
However, when she arrived in Higashi, after catching the first signs of an incoming Catastrophe and having alerted the nearby village, she has been seen as a savior and a good omen. Her help and contribution to the village as a doctor also contribued to this good reputation, and the villagers quickly started to appreciate her presence. After this event, and seeing that her powers and own hands were able to save lives and not hurt them, she questioned herself.
But she doesn't remain less clumsy. It seems all the worst happen to her, like a bad luck magnet. But it seems like it happens to her and only her, and nobody around, quite the opposite even - people around her seem to live rather fortunate events. Maybe by attracting the bad luck to her, the other persons around are left with only good luck...
It's because of her clumsiness that her body is rather... In a bad state. Under the layers of clothes she wears is a wounded, bandaged body, covered in minor scars, bruises, and of Originum crystals. She seems to be used to this however, her only complains are about how her sleep is uncomfortable.
Despite her serious and calm personality, she's not one to be on the smarter side. She still struggles a lot with Yanese for example, and the culture of Higashi. After all, as a Lateran, she finds the food of Higashi "dull", and would much prefer their sweetest snacks instead.
As well, it seems that her Oripathy has caused kleptomania, as she was often caught taking on objects of her interest for no other reason that she felt the urge to take them.
___________
i love birds, i love magpies, i love arknights, boom
here she is
The main ideas for her design and story is... Well, about how Magpies are absolutely dual?? in occidental cultures, they are seen as bringer of death, bad luck, nasty, quite like crows. but in oriental cultures, it's the total opposite, they're seen as a symbol of luck, of love, of balance and such! that's why i wanted to make her being so contradictory. she seems serious but is dumb. she came laterano where she was seen as bad luck, she moved to higashi where she is seen as good luck. her outfit is quite literally a mix of lateran and higashi culture
as for water arts, it's a reference to how luck and fate are like a river, but also to how water arts are both very dangerous and benefic, and also it's a reference to the magpie bridge in chinese culture
anyway, she tries her best, and that she's clumsy and a bit strange doesn't change that she has a very kind heart
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quanmedicalcom · 1 month ago
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Benefits of Physical Therapy for Pain Management in Hempstead
Dealing with chronic pain or recovering from an injury can be a challenging journey. Whether it's due to a sports injury, accident, or long-term health condition, pain can severely impact your quality of life. Fortunately, physical therapy in Hempstead offers a non-invasive and effective approach to managing pain and promoting recovery.
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arlana-likes-to-write · 2 years ago
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The 30th by Billie Eilish
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Summary: (Alternative Unvierse) It’s been 5 months since you and Bucky official divorced. You still don’t understand what happened between you and him but a phone call from Memorial Hospital stops you in your tracks and shatters your world. 
Warning: car accident, injury based on that, mention of stalking
Word Count: 2.8K 
“Is this Mrs. Barnes?” A female voice asked. The last name that you haven’t used for a little over a year surprised you. You and Bucky have been separated for a year but divorced for 5 months. ‘Mrs. Barnes’ was a name you haven’t heard in a very long time. 
“Speaking, may I ask who's calling?” You asked. You were putting dishes away from dinner and your kids were asleep. 
“Of course ma’am, I am the head nurse on call at Memorial Hospital.” You sat down on the island. Your mind began to spiral on each possible situation. Was it your parents? Natasha? Steve? “Your husband was in a car accident.” The nurse said. Bucky must have kept you as his emergency contact. 
“How is he?” You asked. 
“He’s in serious condition but the doctors are doing everything they can.” Your heart stopped. The man you devoted so many years of your life to and the father of your children. You cleared your throat. 
“Can I come and see him?” You asked. 
“Yes, you can. I’ll let security know.” 
*
You were thankful your neighbor, Wanda, and her husband, Vision, were able to watch the girls. Their twins were the same age as your eldest, Rebecca, and Wanda loved Taylor. The girls asked a thousand and one questions but you assured them that everything was okay even though you weren’t sure if that was the truth. You kept your emotions at bay as you drove to the hospital. You had to be strong for your girls, for Bucky, and yourself. You and Bucky met through a mutual friend, Natasha. You went to college with her and she and Bucky knew each other when they were kids. Natasha invited Steve and Bucky to go out with you during your freshman year. A drunken one-night stand turned into a coffee date the next morning then 4 years of dating. He proposed the day after you graduated college. Life was good. You gave birth to two beautiful girls and were doing well in your respective careers; you as a lawyer and Bucky was working as a contractor at Steve’s construction company. Then something changed. He became distant. He was there for the girls but he began sleeping in the guest room. He worked late and was away for many weekends. Finally, you confronted him and he asked for some time apart. He moved out and then asked for a divorce. You were completely blindsided by it and it hurt because you were still in love with the man. 
*
A nurse brought you into his room. The sight took your breath away as you stared at Bucky. He was barely recognizable with machines attached to him, gauze keeping him together, and a tube down his throat. You were pretty sure a doctor came in to tell you the extent of Bucky’s injuries but their words weren’t registering with you. “Y/n,” you heard Natasha’s voice. You looked toward your friend. The doctors were gone and it was just you, Bucky, and her. She was wearing what she typically wore to work with her badge on her hip. 
“Nat, what-? How-?” Your brain was short-circuiting. 
“Let’s go talk somewhere else,” she led you out of Bucky’s room. You noticed an officer standing by Bucky’s door. Your friend led you to a conference room and you saw her partner, Maria. Steve called her Natasha’s work wife. You’ve met her a few times. 
“Natasha, what is going on?” You asked, sitting down. A cup of coffee was already in front of you. Natasha sat down next to Maria. 
“We don’t think Bucky’s crash was an accident,” Natasha said. You were stunned into silence. 
“We found another set of tire tracks at the scene and in our initial investigation we found another paint color on the back of Bucky’s car,” Maria added. You leaned back in your chair and covered your face with your hands. The room was quiet, too quiet. 
“Are you telling me someone tried to kill Bucky?” You finally asked, looking at Natasha. She nodded. 
“It appears so,” she said. “Bucky had no alcohol or drugs in his system.” That was no surprise, Bucky was straight as an arrow when it came to not drinking and driving. 
“Who the hell would try to kill him? Everyone loved him,” he was a little grumpy and as Sam said he had a ‘resting bitch face’ but he was a teddy bear. 
“Have you noticed anything strange?” Maria asked. You glared at her. 
“The man divorced me after being together for almost 10 years for no reason. Does that classify as strange?” You deadpanned, taking a sip of your coffee. You sighed. “Sorry. Before we got separated he was distant towards me but not the girls.” 
“Was there trouble at work that Steve didn’t know about?” Natasha asked. 
“I don’t know,” you told them. 
“Could someone from the law firm be angry enough with you to go after him?” It was possible. You’ve worked some major cases over your career and your relationship with Bucky was public knowledge. You’ve tried to keep your kids out of the spotlight. You’ve gotten your fair share of death threats from family members and criminals. 
“Maybe. I can have my assistant send you a list of people we’ve gotten threats from.” 
“Thank you. For now, I’m going to assign an officer to you and your kids. Are the girls at Wanda’s?” You nodded. “Okay, I’ll have Coulson go over there.”
“Thank you, Nat.” 
“Don’t thank me for just doing my job,” You said your goodbyes and headed back to Bucky’s room. You sent a text to Wanda explaining the situation and asked your assistant to send the information to Natasha and her team. You sighed, placed your phone in your pocket, and stood next to Bucky. You cupped his face gently in your hands and kissed his cheek. 
“Don’t leave me, sergeant,” you whispered. “That’s an order.” 
*
6 months later       
Bucky’s condition improved but he was still in a coma. The doctors were hopeful that he would wake up on his own as he had high brain activity. You brought the girls to see their father and explained the situation to them in a way they’d understand. You told Bucky’s family as well. It was nice talking to his mother and sister again. You split your time at your office, the hospital, and at home. You were exhausted. 
You were at the hospital working on a case when a knock on his door made you jump. You closed your laptop and looked at the door. It was Natasha, with a messenger bag over her shoulder. You saw the redhead almost every day. She was making sure you were taking care of yourself. “Hey Tash,” you said. “Are you here for work or pleasure?” 
“Work, unfortunately.” You gave her your full attention. You didn’t ask about the ongoing investigation. You didn’t have the brain capacity to focus on it and you trusted Natasha to get the job down. She sat down in the empty chair next to you. “Does the name Brock Rumlow sound familiar to you?” She asked. You nodded. 
“He was close friends with Alexander Pierce.” You put Pierce behind bars for conspiracy to commit murder when there was an attempt on Natasha’s boss’ life. You wanted to put Rumlow away too but there wasn’t enough evidence. 
“Did you also know he and Bucky knew each other?” She asked. You didn’t hide the shock on your face. “They knew each other back when Bucky served.” He didn’t talk about his time over there. But you knew it still affected him as nightmares kept him up. “Once Bucky was discharged due to him losing his arm, the two stopped talking.”
“What does this have to do with the car accident?” You asked. Natasha pulled out a folder from her bag and set a picture down in front of you. It was of Bucky and Rumlow, dated right before Bucky asked for a divorce. 
“Oh Buck,” you whispered. “What did you get yourself into?”
“They were meeting for a while.” She took the picture back into the file. “When you put Pierce away Rumlow lost it and went off the grid, the only time we resurfaced was to make contact with Bucky,” Natasha explained. 
“What did he want?” You weren’t sure if Natasha was going to tell you. 
“He wanted Bucky to help him break Pierce out of jail,” your stomach dropped. “He had some dirt on Bucky back when they served together and he threatened to release it. He also was following you and the girls,” she took out a few pictures of you and the girls at the park, grocery store, and the library. You rubbed your head. 
“How-how do you know all of this?” You asked. She pulled out an evidence bag. Inside were Bucky’s dog tags and his cell phone. 
“Bucky recorded every interaction. It took a while for the forensic team to pull the file off his phone.” She smiled at you. “He refused to help Rumlow and Rumlow caused the crash. The paint on Bucky’s car matched the car Rumlow has.” 
“What?” You said, speechless. “Why are you sitting here and not arresting the jackass?” She punched you in the arm. “Ouch!”
“Maria and Phil are handling the arrest. I thought you wanted to know the whole story before the press took hold of it.” The press was watching this case like a hawk. 
“Thank you. I won’t be able to play you back for everything you did.” She was working overtime on this case. 
“You and Bucky are family. Now you can focus on healing,” she stood up to leave. You walked over to the door and hugged her. “One more thing.” She said, facing you. “Bucky tried to call you the night of the crash. But he couldn’t get through to you. He recorded a voice memo.” 
“Did you listen to it?” You asked, already knowing the answer. She nodded. 
“Maria and I were the only ones that listened to it. I sent it to your email.” You nodded. “Listen to it when you are ready.” She gave you one last hug before leaving you. The machines that were attached to Bucky seemed louder than normal. Maybe they were trying to be heard over your pounding heart. You took your cell phone and headphones from your bag and walked over to the window. You plugged your headphones in and found the email Natasha sent you. She said to listen to it when you were ready. You weren’t sure if you ever would be ready. You put your headphones in and hit play as you stared at Bucky’s still form. 
It was silent besides the grunt or moan of pain. “Sugar, doll,” you felt your eyes burn with unshed tears. It’s been so long since he’s called you those pet names. “Fuck baby I messed up.” You couldn’t help but laugh. “I just wanted to keep you and the girls safe, you know?” He groaned. “I did some bad stuff overseas. Stuff I wasn’t ready to tell you. I thought I could handle Rumlow myself. So I distanced myself from.” He went quiet. “I thought if we weren’t seen together he couldn’t use you. I’m a fucking idiot.” 
“Yes you are Bucky Barnes,” you whispered, wiping the tears away that fell. 
“I miss you so much, baby girl. I don’t want to die without telling you how sorry I am,” you stood up and looked at Bucky. You ran over to him. 
“You aren’t going to die Barnes.” You said, cupping his face in your hands. Your tears fell onto his skin. 
“I love you. You and the girls are my worlds,” his voice continued. “Tell them that, will you?”
“Tell them yourself Bucky,” you whispered. “Tell them when you wake up.” It was becoming harder to make out his face because of how hard you were crying. “Please baby, you have to wake up.” 
“You made me a better man, doll.” His voice was becoming strained and hoarse. “Meeting you was when my life started. I love you.” The voice memo ended. You rested your head on his chest, mindful of his injuries, and cried. You haven’t cried through this whole ordeal. You let yourself cry and cry and cry. 
*
3 months later 
Bucky woke up a month after Rumlow’s arrest and when he was released from the hospital he moved back in with you and the girls. They were ecstatic to have their father back with them as he healed and recovered. But you and Bucky were walking on eggshells around each other, uncertain of how to act with one another. Sometimes he would act as he did before the accident, before the divorce and the separation. Then other times he would pull away. He doesn’t remember much from that night, especially the phone call he made. 
You had enough. For 2 months, you were at your breaking point. You sent the girls with your parents, you cooked his favorite food and dessert. The smell brought him out of the room. His hair was wet from a shower. “Do you need help?” He asked. You shook your head. 
“Can you set the table?” He nodded, grabbing two sets of plates and silverware. You were sipping on wine already. Once the food was done, you ate in silence. You watched him eat, slowly sipping on your wine. 
“You're starring,” he said. 
“I am,” he whipped his face with a napkin. 
“Can I ask what all this is for?” 
“After dinner.” He washed the dishes. It was the rule when you were together whoever cooked didn’t have to do the dishes. You pulled out the cheesecake and cut two slices. You handed him a plate. 
“It’s after dinner,” you nodded, taking a bite of your cheesecake. 
“Why didn’t you tell me?” You asked. He finished the cake and placed the dirty dish in the sink for later. 
“You are going to have to be more specific,” he said, walking over to the couch. 
“Rumlow. The fact that you knew him while I was working on the Pierce case,” he didn’t say anything as he sat down. You walked over to him and he was opening and closing his metal hand. “Or that he asked you to commit a crime and used me and the girls as leverage.” He still didn’t say anything. He wasn’t even looking at you. “We were a team, Bucky. Why didn’t you tell me?” He sighed. 
“Because I didn’t want you or the girls to find out that I’m a monster.” 
“What?” You questioned, sitting down next to you. 
“I was tasked with black op missions overseas. They nicknamed me the Winter Soldier. I did so many horrible things for this country,” he explained. “Rumlow was on a few of those missions. I wasn’t ready to tell you.” You looked forward, staring into the fireplace. 
“I know the man I married and fell in love with,” you said finally. “That man is not a monster.” 
“Doll-” he said.
“No,” you cut him off and knelt in front of him. “You are not a monster. I’m upset that you didn’t tell me but I understand.” He smiled. “You tried to call me the night of the accident but it wouldn’t go through so you left me a voice memo. Do you remember what you said?” He shook his head. 
“I vaguely remember it.” 
“You told me you loved me,” your voice cracked. “That you missed me and that you were sorry.” You smiled. “You told me that the girls and I are your worlds and that I made you a better man.” He nodded. 
“It’s the truth.” He whispered. 
“I was so scared Buck,” you admitted. “What if the accident happened on a different day? On a bridge where there wasn’t a railing in the way. Or a neighborhood street where the little kids play?” You felt the tears running down your cheeks. “What if you weren’t alone and the girls were in the car? What if you were remote and no one knew where you were? If you changed anything, would you have not survived?” 
“I’m alive,” Bucky said. 
“You're alive.” You repeated. “You’re alive.” He pulled you onto his lap and hugged you. He hugged you tight as you cried against him. You felt his tears on your skin. You ended the hug and put your forehead against his, staring into his blue eyes. A color you didn’t think you would see again. “You’re alive.”
“I’m alive.” He said against your lips. You connected them. The kiss was slow and salty from your tears but it was perfect. You were so scared that you’d never hear his voice again, kiss his lips, or feel his hands on you. He pulled away. “Thank you.” You smiled. 
“You said it on the phone, you're an idiot,” he laughed. 
“But I’m your idiot.” You nodded. 
“Yeah, you are.”
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warabidakihime · 2 years ago
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Lost in Paradise: Chapter 1
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★ characters: uzui tengen x reader X sanemi shinazugawa | modern au ★ plot summary: what happens when two people are left alone in a deserted island with no way of communicating with the outside world? they fall in love, of course. ★ fic playlist: TBA ★ content warnings : smut, profanity, implied adultery/cheating, slightly graphic.
a/n: aaaand here's the first chapter! thank you so much for waiting and thank you for all the likes, reblogs and comments! they made me really happy. means a lot, so thank you thank you. <3 i am genuinely surprised that the prologue is doing well considering this is a pretty cliche plot lol but i will do my best!
as always, comments and feed backs are highly appreciated! &lt;3
-
Murmurs may be heard from a distance, but Sanemi couldn't comprehend what they were saying, let alone who was speaking. He generally has excellent hearing, but they all sound like they're chewing their words.
He could also feel great pain all throughout his body, as if he were being hurled around or slammed against a wall, but he couldn't quite express his discomfort; it's like there was tape plastered on his lips, preventing him from being able to speak.
This has been going on for, who knows, how long? It's as if he's imprisoned in a horrible sleep paralysis, and no matter how hard he tries to get free, he still can't break free.
"What did they say? "
"Nothing," Obanai shook his head, scorn on his face as he scrolled through his phone, "if they can't locate any more survivors in the next five days, they'll declare everyone else dead or MIA."
"No way..."
Mitsuri clenched her hands around her lips, tears streaming down her cheeks.
It's been a week since your plane crashed, and thankfully, Sanemi survived. He fell immediately into the water, but because he was wearing a life vest, he managed to live. He did, however, have a severe spinal injury as a result of how hard he fell. He was unconscious by the time the rescuers found him three days after the incident.
Even though your two best friends wanted to rejoice over your fiance's survival, they couldn't since you were still missing.
According to the news, the plane you were on had mechanical flaws that were not detected by the crew, so the pilot was unable to execute an emergency landing until you were well into your journey. He lost control of the plane, which ultimately exploded and plummeted in the middle of the ocean.
It's been a week since the catastrophe, and the rescuers have been working constantly, but they have yet to discover you and a few other passengers. In truth, there were far more victims than survivors.
Although the doctor indicated that he is presently in stable condition, he is not fully out of the woods because he will require additional tests once he finally wakes up. Given the severity of his fall, there is a good chance that he is fully paralyzed from the waist down to his feet. There's also the possibility  that he'll remain in a vegetative state, considering Sanemi suffered from severe brain damage as well.
Obanai isn't the kind of person who likes to openly display his emotions, but every time he looks at his best friend, tears well up in his eyes, and his chest tightens with tremendous grief and worry for his dear friend.
He finds it extra difficult to look at Sanemi since he isn't used to seeing him in this way. His friend has always been boisterous and outgoing, but now that he's in the hospital, he's nearly lifeless and barely recognizable due to several facial injuries, a fractured neck, and a shattered jaw.
And the thought of telling him that you did not survive the plane accident would always send him into a tailspin.
With a heavy and unsteady exhale, he shifted his gaze away from Sanemi and back to his lover, pulling her into a tight hug. And as they collided, Mitsuri could hear Obanai's shaky breathing, meaning he was going through another panic attack.
"They still have five days to find Y/N. Let's not assume they won't find her; instead, let's trust they will. And by the time she returns, Sanemi will have regained consciousness, and we will be by their side as they recuperate." Obanai told Mitsuri as he comforted her.
Every word he spoke was laced with a prayer, hoping that it would strengthen their wish and that you would be able to hear them and finally come back home safely.
-
“Y/N!!!”
You screamed as you bolted awake from your deep slumber
"Oh, you're finally awake." 
You jerked your head towards the unknown voice, but before you could see who it was, you felt a tremendous amount of sharpshooting pain all throughout your body. Thankfully, Tengen was fast to respond to you despite his own injuries.
"Be careful; your wounds haven't completely healed, and you have a fractured leg and hips."
Since you were so preoccupied with grasping practically everything, his words did nothing except fly over your head.
The last thing you recalled was sleeping on Sanemi's shoulder when you heard the pilot's announcement, followed by a thunderous explosion from the plane's tail, and now you're in the middle of nowhere with a stranger.
Tengen knelt at your level but kept his distance so as not to scare or overwhelm you because you're already taking in so much in such a short space of time.
"Given that we're stranded on an island with very few resources, I could only give you treatments that were plausible, but I think it's safe to say you're out of the woods. At least for now. You were lucky your injuries were only minor to moderate," the man in front of you explained softly as he fixed the makeshift splint he made for your right leg and hips.
"A-ahh—" you winced as you felt pain in your hips. Tengen peered at you with worried eyes.
"I'm sorry, but please bear with me for a while; I'm just adjusting the splint; nevertheless, please let me know if the discomfort is too intense."
"Where are we? A-and who are you?"
"I was one of the passengers on the plane. We were flying over the ocean when the aircraft malfunctioned and crashed. I somehow ended up being drifted by the current to this island. Unfortunately, I don't know where exactly we are, but two days after the incident, I saw you drifting near the shore. It's been five days since then," Tengen explained.
"Five days plus the other two days make it a week since the plane crash."
Panic began to loom over you as you remembered one crucial thing, and then you began to glance around for your fiance, only to be confronted with nothing but the ocean and a desolate island, and your heart sank.
"What about Sanemi? I-I mean, when you saw me drifting in the sea, were you able to find another passenger? His name is Sanemi; he's my fiancé; he has white hair and very prominent features, and as far as I can remember, we were really close when the plane exploded. P-Please tell me you were able to rescue him as well."
You were sobbing and yelling at the innocent man at this point, hoping and praying that Sanemi was also safe and sound.
"At the very least, tell me he's alive! He has to be!"
Tengen's pained expression deepened, as did his sadness for you, as he watched you spiral as you looked for your partner, as if he'd appear if you squinted harder.
To be honest, you were really fortunate to survive with only minor to moderate injuries. A catastrophe of such magnitude is almost certain to kill everyone involved in an instant or, at the very least, cause long-term complications.
"I checked the perimeter of the island to see if there were any more stray passengers, but sadly, you were the first and last one I spotted. I’m sorry"
“No… That can’t be.”
Despite being a doctor–a healthcare provider, Tengen's ability to comfort others was not his greatest strength; in fact, he had very weak communication skills. He normally relies on the nurses at the hospital where he works for assistance if one of his patients needs a shoulder to lean on.
Tengen sat there frozen, feeling dumb, as you sank further into your emotions, big tears streaming down your cheeks as you grieved for your lover.
"This is hardly good news, but hear me out: as long as we're both safe, we can still get out of this, and who knows, maybe your fiance is also safe; for sure, they're still performing rescue operations, and maybe your fiance was located and saved. Let's try our best to survive till help arrives, okay?"
While you processed his words, silence prevailed in the area. It's possible that Sanemi received help sooner and is already back home, most likely healing from his own injuries and trauma.
Maybe he's alive and well and is waiting for you to come home.
Or he's already sixty feet deep in the ocean, lifeless. 
"Ah, no–" You shook your intrusive thoughts away as fast as they came. You looked like a cartoon character as you did that.
Tengen was taken aback by the abrupt and out-of-character gesture (considering your current predicament). As he watched you and waited for you to process your emotions, a small voice resonated from his head.
Cute
And as quickly as the thought occurred to him, he slapped it away. You're bawling your eyes out, longing for your partner, and he's checking you out?
So not the time, and not to mention, you're both taken.
Just like you, he's already in a "committed" relationship with someone.
He was on his way to Rome to attend school for six months, as his father had commanded since they were aiming to grow their business. Being a doctor had never been his dream and was only forced onto him by his father since his family came from a clan of doctors, so naturally, he "should" follow suit. 
He was dreading the day he will leave for school, but one thing that enticed him was the fact that he will go alone and Makio will stay in Japan; then came the plane crash and your current situation.
Not that he loves his own wife in the same way you do your fiance, for he and Makio married for convenience and their parents' desires. It may sound so wrong and so morbid, but he feels slightly relieved that he was finally granted the space he has been yearning for.
It's as if he wished for the plane crash to happen just to get away from the people who continue to tether him to the ground with their selfish reasons.
You have finally managed to calm down. Albeit still feeling like shit, a small part of you feels a bit more optimistic.
"Sorry for lashing out on you like that."
Tengen smiled and said, "It's okay. Your feelings are valid."
After your (rightful) emotional outburst, you finally have it in you to properly face the kind stranger who helped you.
"My name's y/n, l/n y/n, and you are?"
"Uzui Tengen. I'm a doctor, by the way, so you're at least assured you're in good hands." Tengen said with a chuckle, "Thank you. I really appreciate your help."
"You're welcome. Now, let's get you situated. While you were still unconscious, I was trying to catch fish so that we could eat together. I've managed to catch a few; let me just start a fire so we can finally cook them. You’re still fairly injured, so just take it easy for now."
“Okay…”
Tengen was ready to go to work on the campfire when he turned around and extended his hand in your direction.
"What?" you said as you gazed up at him, perplexed.
"Nice to meet you, y/n," the man in front of you said as he initiated a handshake with you.
"Nice to meet you as well," you said sheepishly.
As you watched Tengen prepare the campfire and, basically, your turf that will be your home for god knows how long, your mind continued to wander.
Tears well up in your eyes as you think of Sanemi, even more so when your gaze lands on your engagement ring.
"Nemi..." you whimpered as you continued to stare at the vast ocean.
More tears came down your face as horror, worry, and loneliness continued to hit you relentlessly as you yearned heavily for the love of your life.
If you are truly safe and sound at home, please come rescue me as soon as possible, Sanemi.
-
Taglist: @sulli1361 @honey--blade@smileykiddie08 @i-simp-for-giyuu @babygirl-panda19 @hypnocountrymusicfunnyfan @exodarkwolf16 @qdreamueen @vesta-ro
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cupidford · 2 years ago
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I've not done a big rec list in months and have so many stories to share with you! Here are some...I went with a mix of 20, with more to come! Also I've got love letters for these queued for the next few months, so look out for 'em! xx
❤️‍🔥TOP FIC - One of the best fics I've read in a few years!❤️‍🔥
Indefinite Lines by ArwaMachine
Sherlock and John find themselves faced with a series of seemingly disparate cases, one involving murdered children and one involving ghosties that little Rosie tries to help solve. Except the cases are growing increasingly connected, increasingly personal. ~298.5k
🔥TOP HOT FIC🔥
Vicarious by CouldBeDangerous (VestedVestra)
John starts smoking with a woman at work. Sherlock couldn't be happier. The smoking kink spirals... ~44k
💗💗💗💗💗💗
The Man With the Cartier Frames by JRow
Sherlock's case will surely be solved quickly...in between trips to Putney to help with Rosie, collecting her from school, and preparing for her sleepover at 221B. ~32.5k
The Long and the Short of It by Accident, Hobbitsfeet
What if John and Rosie move back into Baker Street, and Rosie decides she is going to parent-trap them? Or so she thinks... ~44.5k
❣️❣️❣️❣️❣️❣️
Spare Parts by Raina_at
Futuristic sci-fi au, 24th century. On the Planet Titan, Sherlock comes back from the dead after two years. While figuring out why the biggest manufacturer or synthetic limbs in the System is going after veterans, Sherlock and John also need to find out whether there's a way to fix what's broken between them. ~63.5k
A Doctor in the House by KittenKin
S3 fix it. Sherlock returns, with John immediately taking care of him as his doctor. John uses index cards as a guide to speaking with him, and Sherlock in turn has questions. ~32.5k
Again by DiscordantWords
Christmas. It never seemed like the right time. And then time ran out. Until John makes a wish and gets a second chance. ~10k
💘💘💘💘💘💘
Cupid's Venom by SilentAuror
Stamford tells Sherlock that he wished he could have taken credit for being Cupid. Unfamiliar with the reference, Sherlock plunges into studies of toxins and Greek mythology... ~29.5k
Live from the Morgue by disfictional
Post trf. Molly interviews Sherlock on her podcast, Live from the Morgue. John listens. ~10k
A Rock, An Island by stopthat
TRF fix it/redo. John is not so blind. He sees a lot more than he’s given credit for. ~5k
💝💝💝💝💝💝
A not-so-meticulously prepared art by aquileaofthelonelymountain
Greg agrees to pick up Sherlock from a pub, and he's going to regret it soon - for Sherlock is drunk, talkative, and desperately in love with his flatmate. ~6k
Waiting in the Wings by standbygo
John finally gets the courage to ask Sherlock for a romantic relationship. But when they run into an old friend of Sherlock's, John wonders if it would be best to step aside. ~7k
All I Want for Christmas (is Proof) by Raina_at
Sherlock and John go undercover at a Christmas party in a gay club. In costume. Things... escalate. ~6.5k
💕💕💕💕💕💕
Hypotheticals by ArwaMachine
John finally manages to confess his love to Sherlock. Sherlock, of course, has questions. Lots of questions. Switchlock, Established Relationship. ~7k
A Second to Midnight by AlgySwinburne
John invites Sherlock out on January 29. It is, at face value, a date. If Sherlock weren’t a part of the equation, it would most certainly be a date. But because he is, it must be something else entirely. ~4.5k
January 6 by Gxlyleo
John keeps reliving the same day and has no clue why. He makes a list. ~14k
❤️ HONORABLE MENTIONS ❤️
Rhinestone Cowboy by consult_this_prick
After the death of his father, John drops out of college and returns home to take care of the family farm. He still hasn't processed the death of his father and new problems arise when his ex-best friend, Sherlock, comes home for the summer to work on his research. ~37k
Come Back to Me by BenAddictViolaBatch
A fusion of Sherlock and the classic 1980 film, "Somewhere in Time." In 1945, John receives a brief and mysterious visit from an elderly scientist, Sherlock. John researches Holmes and learns that he died on the same night of the visit. He realises that they are destined for each other. ~21.5k
A Strange Encounter by holmesian_love
John heads to the bank to speak his mind and instead finds himself distracted by a stranger who turns his plans around. ~7.5k
Accidental Magic by Calais_Reno
After his return Sherlock takes the case of a woman seeking stolen books hidden in her late husband’s library.Working together after so much time apart, John and Sherlock begin to discover more than stolen books. ~40k
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bitchinbarzal · 1 year ago
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https://www.tumblr.com/bitchinbarzal/733254324232372224/i-imagine-that-the-barzals-love-their-sons-and?source=share
If it's not too much trouble can we get a little blurb on this lu? Mama Barz would be freaking out and then they get there and the two of them are just sitting, laughing even and that's really the first time they know Noa is perfect for Bailey
If she could’ve, Bailey’s mom would’ve kept him at home but he wanted to go to the NHL so she had to let her babyboy go.
So when the Canucks called that Bailey had an accident and was in hospital everyone dropped what they were doing and ran to his side.
His brother was in LA and his sisters in New York with his parents.
By the time they all made it to Vancouver they totally prepared for Doctor Barzal to come in screaming, barking orders but instead they found Noa Boeser doing just that.
Noa was the most recent addition to the Barzal family.
Bailey had become infatuated with her when he moved to Vancouver and was sad to see how his in laws were so much closer with his parents than she was.
Sasha was the father of the first Barzal grandchild, he was of course loved and close to the family.
Oakley had known Wyatt’s family since he was born.
Lennon often came to visit the Barzals in Long Island.
Noa, she just didn’t fit.
As Bailey’s mom stood in the doorway of the hospital room watching Noa fuss around him she smiled and held her husbands hand.
Mat leaned down and whispered in her ear “I think that’s his girl”
“She’s the one Mat…”
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inevitably-johnlocked · 10 months ago
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Hey Steph
Happy Holidays!!!
I love swimming and as a child i would always go to indoor pools with friends in the Christmas holliday. So I was wondering, do you have any swimming fics? With a holiday/vacantion or maybe even a christmas theme?
Love and Cuddles
Nonnie
Hi Nonny!!
AHHH I'm SO SORRY for putting this off so long, Lovely, but I had a NEW LIST I COULD USE THIS ASK AS AN EXCUSE TO POST LOL.
I don't know specifically with a Christmas theme, but I do have amazing fics featuring swimming! I hope you enjoy what I have for you, and if anyone has fics that they want to add that has Swimming in it, please add them below!
JOHNLOCK AND SWIMMING Pt. 2
See also: Johnlock and Swimming 2019
BOOKMARKS
The Palmyra Atoll by elwinglyre (E, 16,609 w., 3 Ch. || TSo3 Divergence / Episode Fix-It, Stockholm Syndrome, Kidnapped John Watson, John Whump, Evil Mary, Angst, Cuddling & Snuggling, Toplock, Limited 3rd John POV) – As John's preparing for the wedding, Sherlock is preparing to have his heart broken, and Mary is prepared to do the unthinkable. Intervention required. Enter Sherlock. Set before Sign of Three with a far different outcome. John is drugged, kidnapped, and left on an island, but not just any old island.
Chaperones by MissDavis (T, 34,114 w., 7 Ch. || 11 Years Post-S4, Fake Relationship, Parentlock, Disney World, Bed / Room Sharing, Friends to Lovers, Fluff, First Kiss, Obsessive Sherlock, Insecure John) – Right. Of course. Everyone assumed they were a couple and no one would question it. John put his elbows up on the table so he could rest his head in his hands. "You want to pretend to be a couple so we can chaperone a trip to Disney World with Rosie's class and you won't have to share a room with a stranger?" "Exactly." Sherlock beamed at him. "Don't worry about the cost. The Birmingham case last month paid more than enough to cover expenses for all three of us."
Thermocline by J_Baillier (M, 83,557 w., 14 Ch. || Scuba Diving AU || Adventure, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Marine Archaeology, Asexual Sherlock, Horny John, Relationship Drama, Technical/Scuba/Wreck Diving, Slow Burn, Underwater /  Medical Peril, Doctor John, Hurt Sherlock, Anxious Sherlock, John POV, Protective John, Body Appreciation) – John "Five Oceans" Watson — technical dive instructor, dive accident analyst and weapon of mass seduction — meets recluse professor of maritime archaeology Holmes. As they head out to a remote archipelago off the coast of Guatemala to study and film its shipwrecks for a documentary, will sparks fly or fizzle out?
Proving A Point by elldotsee & J_Baillier (E, 186,270 w., 28 Ch. || Me Before You Fusion || Medical Realism, Insecure John, Depression, Romance, Angst, POV John, Sherlock Whump, Serious Illness, Doctor John, Injury Recovery, Assisted Suicide, Sherlock’s Violin, Awkward Sexual Situations, Alcoholism, Drugs, Idiots in Love, Slow Burn, Body Image, Friends to Lovers, Hurt / Comfort, Pain, Big Brother Mycroft, Intimacy, Anxiety, PTSD, Family Issues, Psychological Trauma, John Whump, Case Fics, Loneliness, Pain) – Invalided home from Afghanistan, running out of funds and convinced that his surgical career is over, John Watson accepts a mysterious job offer to provide care and companionship for a disabled person. Little does he know how much hangs in the balance of his performance as he settles into his new life at Musgrave Court.
MARKED FOR LATER
Gone and Changed by cwb (E, 4,617 w., 1 Ch. || Farm/Ranch American AU || Teenlock, Friends to Lovers, Angst, High School, Summer Vacation, Swimming, Hot Weather, Oral Sex, Car Sex, Blow Jobs, First Kiss/Time, Falling in Love, Mutual Pining) – John and Sherlock are best friends, until John goes and changes. Part 1 of the Just Like That series
Forces of Nature by Ewebie (E, 18,369 w., 1 Ch. || Unilock || Rugby Captain John, Hammock Sex, Bad Jokes) – Sherlock watched as the man pushed himself out of the water and onto the floating dock constantly anchored in the middle of the lake. Oh. He was… He was quite tanned. Broad shoulders sloped into a narrow, muscular waist and tapered hips that disappeared into the navy swim trunks. Somehow the breadth of the shoulders made the thighs and legs that appeared out of the bottom of the trunks look delicate. Tanned in their own right and powerful, but oddly proportionate to the shorter stature the man seemed to possess. Sherlock watched the water run off of him, down his back, tracing a path along his spine and through the pleasing fossae lumbales laterales and lumbar lordosis into the waistband of the trunks. Sherlock swallowed. Shit.
Wrestled By The Sea by eragon19 (E, 35,323 w., 9 Ch. || Merfolk AU || Merman Sherlock, Different First Meeting, Magical Realism, Seaside Cottage, Falling in Love, Mystery) – When John Watson takes up Mike's offer to recover at his seaside home he expects quiet relaxation, healing and being dead bored. What other options did a man on a tiny army pension have? What he doesn't expect is to meet an odd man who only swims at night, and has the most unusual swimming stroke John has ever seen....
Hearts Don't Break Around Here by thatawkwardfriend (M, 54,796 w, 12 Ch. || Teenager AU || Homophobia, Past Abuse, Artistic John, John saves Sherlock, BAMF John, Horse Riding, Swimming, Minor Violence, First Kiss / Time, Making Out, Fireworks, Carnival, Fluff and Humour, Angst with Happy Ending, Death / Funeral, Hurt / Comfort, Morning After, Domestic Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Mutual Pining) – When John gets in a fight at school, his parents send him to Sussex for the summer in hopes that living with the Holmes’ will shape him up. It is there that he meets Sherlock Holmes: a class A asshole too smart for his own good. John expects a long, dull, lonely summer. What he does not expect is to form an unlikely friendship with the strange boy across the hall. What he expects even less is to fall in love with him.
Worst Kept Secrets by Sherlock1110 and sherlockian4evr (M, 66,611 w., 9 Ch. || WiP || Engagement, Coming Out, Angst and Feels, Homophobia, Idiots in Love, Big Brother Mycroft, Fluff, Scars, Weddings, Honeymoon, Playing Pirates, Parasailing, Archaeology, Paintball, Swimming, Golf) – For the prompt: What if the thing Mycroft did to upset Mummy... was to come out? What if, as a teenager, Mycroft decided to tell his family that he is gay, and his parents disowned him for it? It's okay now, he runs the British Government, he IS the British Government, but there's still that tiny part of him that wants his parent's acceptance, especially now he's found the man he wants to spend the rest of his life with. Part 4 of the Sherlock and Mycroft Fluff series
Slipstream by khorazir (M, 290,208 w., 25 Ch. || Tour de France / Sports Cycling AU || Room Sharing, Cycling Injuries, Discussions of Drugs/Doping, Awkward Romance, Hurt/Comfort, Bickering, Case Fic, Strangers to Friends to Lovers, Internalized Homophobia, Mutual Pining, Bed Sharing, Jealousy, Bi John / Demi Sherlock) –It’s going to be the last Tour de France for professional cyclist John Watson. Despite the hardships of cycling more than 3000 kilometres in three weeks, in blistering heat and torrential rain, over dangerous cobblestones in northern France and the mountains of the Alps and the Pyrenees, battling thirst, hunger, injury and exhaustion, not to mention bitchy rivals, doping allegations, and the ever scoop-hungry press, he is going to enjoy the ride, damn it. That’s what John keeps telling himself – until he meets his new teammate, Sherlock Holmes, who adds a whole new list of problems as well as an extra dose of excitement to John’s life.
WORKS IN PROGRESS
Dissonance by CarmillaCarmine (E, 76,624+ w., 14/? Ch. || WIP || Punk Band AU || Pining, Bi/Gay Panic, Best Friends to Lovers, First Kiss, Swimming, Music, Doctor Watson, Drug References, First Time, Blow/Hand Jobs) – Straight from military service, living a life devoid of purpose, John meets a man who reawakens his passion for music.
Just Like That Series by cwb (E, 201,462+ w. across 4 works || Series WiP || American Teenager / Farmer AU || Best Friends, Friends to Lovers, Angst, High School, Summer Vacation, Swimming, Friends to Lovers, Car Sex, Mutual Pining, Falling in Love, Kissing) – John and Sherlock are best friends, until John goes and changes.
Noctiluca scintillans by alexaprilgarden (E, 240,796+ w., 28/30 Ch. || WiP || 1990’a Teenlock AU || Summer Holidays, France, Drug Use, Swimming, Skinny Dipping, Angst, Masturbation, Slow Burn, Coming of Age, Alcohol Abuse, Period-Typical Homophobia, Switchlock, Heartbreak, Happy Ending) – August 1994: These are John Watson's last summer holidays. It's his first trip abroad in ages, and the first one without his parents -- three weeks on a camping site at the French Atlantic Coast, together with Harry and her girlfriend. It's swimming and hanging around at the beach, red wine in the evening and sleeping in. Until a dark-haired boy at John's age puts up his tent a few feet away from him and changes everything.
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moxie-girl · 1 year ago
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I wanted to just put together a post with all of my ideas so far for the straw hat Uta au… (under the cut cause it's long)
the gist of the au is that the main strawhats are all replaced by other characters from their backstories/islands/etc? it's a little confusing to explain but here's what I got so far: (list is in recruitment order, not by role)
Luffy -> Uta (Captain) Uta in this AU ate the gum-gum fruit instead of Luffy (who then ate the sing-sing fruit.) her dream is to be the pirate king, but she doesn't have quite the same deal with Shanks as Luffy does, mostly because I think it'd be funny if the crew was ambushed by Pirate Emperor Shanks and Uta was just like "oh!! that's my dad!!! :D" Uta also grew up on dawn island in this au, because after she ate her devil fruit, Shanks thought it was too dangerous to keep her on the ship (since the WG was kinda after her.) she's a little less than a year older than Ace+Sabo b/c I messed w/ the ages a bit and I wanted her to be the older sister (like half of the crew in the beginning are all older sisters lol but that wasn't even on purpose…) Uta's fighting style is pretty similar to Luffy's, but she has a bit of a head-start on Haki since she spent so much time with Shanks.
Zoro -> Kuina (Swordsman) Zoro's not actually dead in this au, just fyi, because I didn't want to kill off any of the canon strawhats, but his accident did put him in a coma for a while, and he kinda lost most of his ambition and is still struggling with his lost dream… Kuina picked up 3-sword style to "take him with her" and prove to him that it's not an unachievable dream. she's got a bit of a complex still from some of the stuff her father said, and insists on being a "swordsman", not a "swordswoman," which is why when Uta approaches her and says she wants to be the pirate king, that is part of what convinces her to join. Kuina also uses Wado Ichimonji more than Zoro does - I noticed in canon he typically uses his two other swords and only uses Wado when he needs to use three-sword-style, so Kuina is kinda the opposite - she uses one-sword style more as well.
Nami -> Nojiko (Cook) I wanted to not keep all the switched characters' roles exactly the same as their canon counterparts, so I decided to play more with cocoyasi island's tangerine groves and make Nojiko a cook who specializes in tangerine dishes. I imagine she learned to cook to try to make the simple foods she had growing up more appetizing, and continued after Belle-mere died because she had to keep Nami fed. She still worked as a thief for Arlong, same as canon Nami, but instead of his navigator, her role was basically his servant in that she cooked for him and the other Arlong pirates. she fights with Belle-mere's rifle, mostly a mid-range fighter, but she can also use it as a blunt weapon Benn Beckman-style, and does this more after Uta mentions that her dad's first mate fights like that.
Usopp -> Kaya (Doctor) this one's kinda a no-brainer role-wise, and also I really can't believe the canon strawhats didn't get a doctor until like 90 episodes in like?? how are they not dead tbh. Usopp in this au grew to hate Yasopp for leaving instead of admiring him, but Kaya as a kid would also listen to Usopp's mom's stories about Yasopp and was excited by the idea of being a pirate. Kaya also wants to be a doctor because Usopp's mom died from a disease that was potentially treatable, but the doctors on syrup had no idea how to. this Kaya also chafes a lot more under Kuro's strict rules, and he was particularly upset because she kept "squandering" her family fortune on things like medical textbooks and expensive tutors. Kaya fights mostly with scalpels, because I'm an absolute sucker for characters that use scalpels like knives, and at some point on their journey (maybe Drum?) she learns to coat the blades in poisons/paralytics.
Sanji -> Reiju (Navigator) Reiju in this au is the sibling who the enhancements didn't work on, which Judge hates even more because Reiju looks so much like Sora. Sanji is technically Stealth Black, but he actually secretly does have emotions, the physical enhancements just worked on him. He still wants to be a cook, and one of the reasons Reiju wants to map the world is so she can find the All Blue for him. Reiju has a pretty similar backstory to canon Sanji, as in dungeon -> escape to a passenger ship -> shipwrecked with attacking pirate, etc, but the (currently unnamed) pirate she was shipwrecked with wanted to map the way to raftel, and instead of being stuck on a rock, they're stuck in a wrecked lifeboat, where they could theoretically get to an island if they had any navigational gear, but they didn't. Reiju is a bit paranoid about getting lost, the same way Sanji is about wasting food, and she aslo fights with kicks, because how could she draw detailed maps if she damaged her hands? (the only difference is that she wears sharp stiletto heels and tends to stab people with them.)
Chopper -> Vivi (Strategist/Diplomat) (+ Karoo) When this au's strawhats go to drum, they technically already have a doctor, but since Kaya can't treat the bug bite they still need help. Kaya learns a lot from Kureha, but since they don't need a doctor, Chopper stays on drum (for the time being.) Instead, at the end of the alabasta saga, Vivi entrusts her kingdom to her father and Kozha, and decides she'd rather be free and joins the strawhats. her job is kinda vague, but it's basically to try to deal with any situation the strawhats get into diplomatically, though they end up resorting to violence most of the time anyway. she's also the crew's planner, since Uta has a little more respect than Luffy for a well-thought-out plan (but not much!) Karoo also joins the crew, and is their "cute animal mascot" in place of Chopper. I imagine the fact of Vivi having the "will of D" is better-known or leaked somehow in this au, because there has to be someone on the crew who's a "D." Vivi fights using her peacock slashers, obviously, though they get a couple major upgrades at some point.
Robin -> Bon Clay/Bentham (Intel Officer/Entertainer) Robin still betrays Crocodile and helps the strawhats, but she runs off and joins the revolutionaries for a time instead. Instead, Bentham also betrays Crocodile, since he's grown to like Uta and the others, and joins the crew. he has two roles: his devil fruit allows him to gather intel when the crew needs it and confuse enemies, and he enjoys dancing and storytelling and does this in free time on the ship. the crew doesn't have an official musician, since Uta still loves music and grew up with this au's Luffy, who has the sing-sing fruit, so Uta and Bentham both play that role in a way. since both he and Vivi were in baroque works for a while, they often make references to that time like: "hey remember that time we did [super fucked up mission story none of the crew are willing to ask if is actually true]." Bentham's dream is not only to find the okama kingdom, but also to spread the okama ideal around the world so that more people understand it, which stems from his backstory - his parents disowned him because they weren't accepting of his identity :(. he fights with the okama kenpo style, and often trains with Reiju since their fighting styles are very compatible.
Franky -> Paulie (Shipwright) Paulie also wants to build a ship that sails the world, though he's less open about this ambition for fear of ridicule. after enies lobby - where Franky and Iceburg are captured to find the pluton blueprints - Franky decides to stay (for now) to help rebuild the galley-la company and fix up the sea trains with Iceburg. the ship the strawhats get built isn't the Sunny (if/when this au's Luffy sets sail, he'll eventually end up on the Sunny.) since I'm discarding most of the movie canon, their new ship is the Tot Musica: the figurehead bears a resemblance to the demon, and it's a bit more steampunk in design, since Paulie draws more inspiration from the sea trains and his style isn't the same as Franky's more high-tech designs. the Tot Musica's special features draw from stored solar power to work steam engines (like those in the sea trains) and to make an allusion to the sun since the ship isn't named after it. Paulie has a hard time at first on a ship with so many girls since he's so easily embarrassed lol… also he fights using a variety of ropes of different widths/strengths and with different weights/other objects tied onto them.
Brook -> Perona (Archeologist) the crew still help Brook out, but he decides he wants to sail a bit on his own to see how the world has changed. instead, they pick up Perona on thriller bark and she decides to join! I'm playing around a bit with how Perona's devil fruit works, and saying it also allows her to speak with ghosts to some extent. Perona gained an intrest in history because of this, and at one point in her childhood asked a ghost she knew to teach her lots of languages - this ghost was an oharan who died before the island was destroyed, so they taught her how to read poneglyphs without thinking it was a big deal. this ghost taught her enough that she is considered an honorary oharan archeologist, and she meets up with Robin at some point in the story and they get along pretty well. Perona's personality is still pretty close to canon, like her obsession with cute things (she loooves Karoo) but her dream is to find out more about the void century, since not even any ghosts she talks to can tell her about it. she fights using her devil fruit pretty much the same way, but she also has a tendency to see ghosts following people around and comment on it to unsettle them, like "oh your grandma is so disappointed in you :("
additionally, while most other canon characters stay the same, there are two other characters I'm adding, who also serve the purpose of rounding the supernovas up to an unlucky 13…
Lami Lami and Law both live in this au, and they're unhealthily codependent and attached at the hip. Lami is the Heart Pirates' first mate, though she's basically the co-captain. she and Law were both rescued by Corazon, since while both he and Doflamingo saw Doffy in Law, Cora saw himself in Lami. she's more of a medicinal/chemical based doctor as opposed to Law, a surgeon, and she fights using chemical concoctions and bombs - think a little like Honey Lemon from BH6? Lami originally doesn't have a devil fruit, but during dressrosa, since I haven't worked out how but I know Ace lives, the coliseum prize is Cora's devil fruit, which she obtains and eats.
Vicky "Punk Vicky" Victoria (the girl from Kidd's backstory who died & he named his ship after) is the captain of the Kidd Pirates, who are called the Punk Pirates in this au. Killer is still her first mate, and Kidd is the shipwright/mechanic/main fighter(?). Kidd still has the biggest bounty, due to property damage - something she's very frustrated about. I don't have much to work with for her, considering there's only one canon doodle of her, but to fit in with the punk-rock designs of the rest of the crew, I imagine she wears heavy/dark makeup, dyes her hair different bright colors (the mental image I have is her having a different hair color every time the strawhats meet her) and wears clothes with lots of spikes and patches. Vicky's main weapon would be a spiked baseball bat, and she's also skilled in hand-to-hand combat.
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