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troped-fanfic-challenge · 4 years

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Round One

It’s time to read & vote!

The 13 fics that we received for this round can be found below, or on AO3 here! Each fic follows the theme [New Adult], includes the tropes [Roommates] and [Based on a Children’s Book Series], and has a central character focus on [Octavia Blake]! When you vote, please be sure to take into consideration the USE of all these elements, because, as with all other TROPED events, the purpose is to select the authors who best utilize the requirements!

The structure for voting is simple! Please rank the thirteen (13) fics, first (1) being your top choice, and thirteen (13) being your last choice! The first poll, you will be asked to rank all 13 fics, the way you did in the Qualifying Round. This will help us to break any ties, and we will use this ranking to reorder the authors for the Bunker Brackets for Round 2. The second poll will have five head-to-head pairings and 3 BYEs this round. Please select which author of the two fics you think deserves to move on to Round 2!

You can vote here:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/57WNY9B

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the daughter of war (Rated T) [Octavia & Niylah]

Summary: Octavia's been at Camp Half-Blood for half her life, and she has no interest in leaving. It takes a war, a near-fatal injury and the kindness of an unwanted roommate to show her that she has the strength to forge her own path.

You Choose Your Race (And Then You Run) (Rated T) [Octavia & Carole]

Summary: Octavia has always lived in her older brother’s shadow. Everyone knew her just as Bellamy’s little sister -- if they knew her at all. Homeschooled for most of her life, she had few friends of her own and was so excited to finally step out into the world and follow in her brother’s footsteps to be a political science major at Boston University.

Until she flunked out of college. She realized she isn’t her brother, can’t be her brother, and wants to run as far as she can in the other direction. She leaves the university with no direction and winds up in Willow Creek, Virginia, rooming with Carole Hanson who is taking a gap year to work at Pine Hollow and save up for vet school.

We Are The Wild Youth (Rated T) [Octavia & Josephine]

Summary: Between what has to be the worst roommate ever, and trying to find her place on the school equestrian program, Octavia is struggling to find her place in her second year of college. When she finds out she is finally going to get to compete in her first ever horse show, will anything actually go right?

courage, dear heart (Rated T) [Gen Fic]

Summary: Now, this is a story you may know...

There were four children who went through a magical wardrobe, and became kings and queens of a magical land.

To the glistening eastern sea, I give you Queen Raven the Resourceful. To the great western woods, King Wells the Wise. To the radiant southern sun, Queen Clarke the Commanding. And to the clear northern skies, I give you King Bellamy the Benevolent. Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia

....but this is not the story to be told. This story is of a fifth child, who was hidden and forgotten.

To the holder of the compass, Octavia the Osleya, I give you the Champion of Narnia.

choices made in sp[r]ite (Rated T) [Octavia/Murphy]

Summary: Octavia scowled, lying back down on the bed, wishing for nothing more than to wake up from whatever nightmare she was currently residing in. Sure, she had been a little bit unhinged since graduating from Haven City Prep School, but that didn’t mean Bellamy had to leave her in a cell just because she got in another fight!

or... and they were cellmates (oh my god, they were cellmates)

Once a king or queen of Narnia... (Rated T) [Octavia & Bellamy]

Summary: They grow up together. Twice. That would mess with anyone's head.

laying down my past i scream (this is not the end of me) (Rated T) [Octavia & Murphy]

Summary: The last person Octavia wanted to be stuck in a cell with was Murphy.

Not after he betrayed her, turned to the enemy's side.

Tried to kill her.

But maybe she didn't yet know the full story.

- or the Eragon/100 crossover where Octavia has a dragon and so does Murphy and they're stuck in a cell together

and now we're grown-up orphans (that never knew their names) (Rated T) [Octavia & Clarke]

Summary: In a world where every person is allowed to have only one child, Octavia Blake has lived her whole life in hiding. But when she's nineteen, she gets the salvation she'd given up on: a new identity.

Specifically, the identity of the recently deceased Josephine Griffin.

Even In Death May You Be Triumphant (Rated T) [Octavia & Indra]

Summary: Octavia was woken by the soft rustling of dirt being moved above her. The sound was methodical, growing louder and closer, before the thud of the shovel hitting her coffin lid signaled the start of her new life. Indra had come for her.

Octavia and Indra Vampire AU based on the Cirque du Freak series (Mainly the Vampire Blood Trilogy)

It's about growing up (Rated G) [Octavia & Bellamy]

Summary: Bellamy and Octavia have spent every moment of her life together, but a trip back in time in a treehouse they had played in as a kid helps to finally break open the tense air between them, and lets them find new footing.

cause the big dog's moving in (Rated T) [Octavia x Murphy]

Summary: Murphy's new roommate came with a dog, which was really the best kind of bonus.

"He's a red lab," Octavia had told him when he'd asked. "And he's big."

Murphy had seen labs before and while, yeah, they were decently large, they weren't that big, but, really, he was just excited to have a dog by association.

Maybe he should have asked for at least pictures or something, though, because he definitely hadn't anticipated just how big Octavia's big red dog really was.

Do act mysterious. (Rated T) [Octavia x Levitt]

Summary: Octavia has learned a lot over her years in college.

She's learned that she has a knack for solving mysteries, that she wants to make a steady income in sleuthing once she graduates with her criminal justice degree, and most recently, that she has a thing for her roommate, Levitt.

So when Levitt's entire life implodes against his will, Octavia finds herself diving head first into solving the mystery of who the culprit is, determined to restore Levitt's name and bring the guilty party to justice.

(She just wishes it didn't involve interacting with all of her college exes in the process.)

The Unshakable Queen, Her Broken Mind, And a Heart Long Since Castaway (Rated T) [Gen Fic]

Summary: Octavia kom Wonkru has had a rough week. Well more like a rough past six years, but who's counting? Prettyu soon though she finds the solace she's been looking for and she gets dragged into a fairytale, literally!

A land of stories and the 100 crossover that no one wanted but you got anyways!

#TROPED: t100 #TROPED Madness #troped madness 2.0 #troped madness: round 1 #round 1: new adult #character: octavia #troped: voting

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hitsuackerman · 4 years

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Unpredictable (Overhaul x Reader) pt. 1

a/n: I have been struggling with writer’s block because all I’ve been wanting to do was write about garbage man Overhaul. I have no idea how or when my simping for this man began T.T that being said, the words came flowing out when I started this XD

warnings: cursing, subtle flirting, nothing much happens since its only part 1

links: part 2

Masterlist to my other fics: here :)

It was a rather fine Monday afternoon. Lazily drinking your coffee, you waved to the people who knew who you were. You weren’t part of the top ten heroes, no. Not even in the top 100 poll. Instead, with a quirk like yours, you chose to enter the police force. With a bit of training here and there, you mastered everything there was to and still managed to develop your quirk every two missions or so.

Now, you were sitting by the window. Waiting for your partner to arrive. He had called you in for a rather hasty meet up somewhere far from the precinct. With no details given, anything was possible when it came to Tsukauchi and his brain.

A blur of tan and green caught your eye. Turning to face the no longer vacant chair, you observed as he took off his matching hat and fixed his tie. His rectangular eyes greet you with sincerity but hints of anxiety at the same time. Something was about to happen, it was plain obvious.

“Well, good afternoon to you, Nao.” You gave him a cheers of your coffee before taking another sip. The bitterness of your beverage is ever so relaxing. “What can I do for my partner, hm?”

“You read me too well, (Y/N).” He chuckled. Taking a folder from his messenger bag, he placed it on the table and gave you permission to open it. The way he saw your eyebrows furrow only strengthened his hypothesis. “I can explain.”

“You bet your ass you need to explain.” You leaned on your chair. Heart racing a little faster now. Your eyes darting from the detective before you and the streets outside the window. Index finger tapping on your bicep as your arms instinctively crossed on your chest.

“I know this is familiar territory to you and I am sure that you are very much uncomfortable right now,” He began. The little shift in your seat caused guilt to eat him a bit. Seeing your eyes moving from one item to another made him question if this were the right choice. “But with considerable thought, you’re the only one who has a chance in turning this situation for the better.”

“Nao, I get where you’re going but there’s no way in hell I’m going to do that.”

“This mission is only up for 9 months. If you step down then someone else will take your place. With you being tied to the yakuza, the probability of having the time frame cut short is high.”

Ahh. The background-trump card. Of course the chief of police wanted to pull that off.

Before having entered the police force, you had been somewhat a part of the Abegawa Tenchu Kai group. Though the group had been put to an end, they had successfully managed to hide your father in a hidden pathway that none of the police had managed to find.

From there, he had slowly rebuilt it. Still enforcing the way of the yakuza, your father slowly came to realize just how little there was left of the yakuza. Secretly, he began to create ties with the police to ensure a bit of political immunity for his group. By the time you were born, things took a turn and the small organized crimes came to a halt.

When you gave him the news that you were joining the police force, he had let out a hearty laugh that echoed through the halls. Telling you it was ironic and certainly unexpected, he told you of the difficulties you would face but encouraged you the same.

“I know I’m tied up with them but having to fight another one would be difficult. You’re all too aware that the yakuza are a strongly knit group after they were disbanded one by one. Though I’m aware that the group mentioned is trying to take the lead, I would rather not be intertwined in a mess like this.” Your answer was stern but the look your partner gave you made things inconvenient. “Do not give me that look, Tsukauchi.”

“You won’t be alone in this. The plan is for you to talk to the Shie Hassaikai and use them as support for this one.”

“Lmao, what?” You held up your palm and shook your head with amusement. There was no way in hell you were about to create a bond with them. “D’you just hear yourself, Nao? Those people are whack and some are a lost cause already.”

“Overhaul is the current boss. Perhaps you can set a meeting with him and talk.” The way Overhaul came out of his mouth made him want to puke. It was a vile word, even for him. Yet, desperate times call for desperate measures. If low key teaming up with the Shie Hassaikai would put an end to the growing crimes the other group was causing, then so be it. “Just tell him that you won’t dig into his business.”

“You’re putting me in the hands of someone who could obliterate me in a matter of seconds.” You commented. Dragging the folder off the table, you tucked it into your bag and gulped the remaining amount of coffee. It’s taste now bland to you. “Wish me luck. I’m gonna be needing a lot of it.”

“I owe you a lot, (Y/N).” Tsukauchi thanked you while taking his coat and putting it on. Leading the way towards the exit, he opened the door for you and motioned for you to exit first. “Also, be aware that only a select group of people know about this arrangement.”

Rolling your eyes, you scoffed and waved goodbye.

Walking down the streets, your thoughts began to eat you up. If there was one thing your old man taught you, it was that the Shie Hassaikai had something going on beneath them. Of course, your father never gave any information as to what they did. All you could do was to respect his decision. He was still a yakuza after all. And despite what the people might think, the way of the yakuza wasn’t all that bad. At least when it came to morals of brotherhood, of course.

The screeching of tires caught your attention. A white carrier van came speeding through the road and took a rather sharp turn. It was probably 4 blocks from where you stood. You were off duty but still, trouble waits for no one. Cautiously, you jogged towards the location.

Not soon after, a small scale explosion made you wince. By now, you were running and saw the distressed people exiting the corner as a pillar of smoke started to climb towards the skies. Moving at fast speeds, you ended up bumping with a stranger with a black and gray mask on. His layered blue unbuttoned polo exposing his matching shirt. “Sorry, mister!” You apologized before turning around the corner. The look on his face was a little confused. You couldn’t blame him. Confusion was always part of the recipe of disaster.

You stopped running when you were met with dismembered and morphed bodies of the supposed to be criminals. Standing in front of you were 3 people. One with a large build, one who was slim but wore a hood, and the other with auburn hair. His dark green bomber jacket stood out due to the purple fur around the hood.

He seemed to be busy monologuing knowing he hasn’t killed you yet.

“And who might you be?” The voice seemed to be coming from above.

Not wanting to lose your sights on him, you watched as he turned around and faced you. His magenta bird mask on full display. His eyes still marked with the rage he had just let out a few moments ago. His golden eyes dug deep to your soul. It was scary to say the least.

Your heartbeat raced and your thoughts tried to come up with a logical explanation as to why you did not run away. When Overhaul took a step forward, you held your breath and opened your mouth.

“I’ve been meaning to talk with you, Overhaul.” Your eyes followed as his surgical covered hands began to adjust his mask. The twitch in his eye bringing you one step closer to death. “I’m from the Abegawa Tenchu Kai.”

It was amazing to you. How you casually stated you were part of another group. Feeling the air shift around you, the person who had asked as to who you were was now standing beside you. The beak of his mask a mere inches from your face. You wanted to glare at him, but the real threat here was the one right in front of you.

“It’s not safe to talk here. The police are coming and it’s pretty obvious you don’t want any more dirt on your hands, yes?” You began to walk backwards and motioned for them to follow you. They could follow you or they could just brush it aside and move along with whatever business they had in mind.

When the same person who had been beside you just now talked to Overhaul, it was now clear who he was. Chronostasis. One of his indisposable pawns. You’ve heard of the stories surrounding these two.

“You have approximately 5 minutes to decide before they arrive.” You informed them. “I’ll wait in the corner in case you want to hear what I have to say.”

When a minute had passed, you were now face to face with the leader of the Shie Hassaikai and his companion. He probably let the rest go on ahead. Good. At least he was curious as to what in the world a random person would want them for.

“Speak before he changes his mind.” Chrono threatened you.

Unwavered by that, you began to walk. Thankfully, the sidewalk didn’t have that many people.

“I need your help. The Fukuo Kai group have been getting restless.” If they were still updated with the inside news, you hoped you wouldn’t have to explain the details. It was too tiring and time was of the essence.

“Who exactly are you, woman?” This time you heard his voice. It was oddly intoxicating. He was careful but made sure not to show it.

“I’m sure you can do a background check on me. I have no way in stopping you, I’m all too aware.” Rummaging through your bag, you took out a pen and paper. Jotting your number down, you handed it to Chrono. If the stories were right, he would freak out if you were to touch him. “If you want to talk about this more in your office, feel free to hit me up. But, no to kidnapping. It’s tiresome.”

Overhaul just stared at you. Calculating what to do next. Or how this would benefit him. Yes, he would surely ask some of his men to follow you around but with you being tied with the Abegawa Tenchu Kai, it was almost certain that you had henchmen following you around. Looking over at his masked companion, Chrono immediately understood that a background check would be done the moment they would step into the grounds.

“2 days. If no call, I’ll move on to the next people on my list.” You gave them a quick bow. There was no need to but he was who he was. The rumors being spread about him and his plans were most probably true. He at least deserved a half ass bow from you.

Knowing it was more than enough contact, you turned to the next corner and made your way back home. All too aware that the possibility of being followed was all too high. There were two ways you could go, you could go to your apartment or go home. None of that surely mattered with who he was and what he was capable of. Letting out a sigh, you went with the former.

By the time you arrived in your unit, you flopped on your sofa and threw your bag to the coffee table. Sinking further and further down, you flailed for a few seconds before composing yourself. Leaning towards your bag, you took out your phone and began to dial up a number.

“What can I do for you, (N/N)-chan?” The voice over the phone said.

“Is dad busy?”

“The boss is currently out of office. He’ll be back in a few hours. He shifted in his seat and felt a tad antsy. “Is something wrong?”

“Nah. Just miss the old man.” Giving him a chuckle, you sat straight up and pulled your bag closer towards you. Shuffling through the mess as you took the folder out. Placing it on your table, your eyes began to wander and skim through the pages. “Anyway, I gotta go. Tell him to call me back.”

When he gave his reply, the call ended and you immediately began to read the information more closely.

Hours had now passed and you ended up crashing on the couch. By the time you woke up, the room was now dark save for the city lights illuminating the walls softly. Stretching your limbs, you stood up and turned the lights on. It was painfully blinding but you adjusted quick enough.

Checking your phone for any messages, you tossed it back on the couch and grunted. Zero. Nada. Zilch.

With nothing else to do, you decided to get started with dinner.

Pasta and wine. That’s what you craved for. Not sure why but all the contents were now laid out before you. Preparation time would take around 30. Nothing too long or too fast, just right. Starting the labor, you began to heat up water in a pot and began to prepare the sauce.

Moving in a trance, the sound of your phone ringing caused you to jump. Wiping your hands clean with a tissue, you jogged towards the living room and stared at the unknown number.

‘Shit.’ You mentally prepared yourself. “(L/N) speaking.”

“I have been thinking about your offer.” He said over the phone. His voice a little muffled due to his bird mask, at least you presumed. “However, I would prefer if we talk about this in person. I would hate it if your phone was bugged and such.”

“What time are you free?”

“2 in the afternoon. I am aware that you know where we are located.” He replied. A tiny voice seemed to be yapping about in the background. The small voice seemed to stop and Overhaul continued. “If you’re late, then you’ll have to go through your list of people.”

Before you could respond, he ended the call. For someone who was rumored to be antisocial, he sure had a knack of being sarcasm. Who were you kidding, that wasn’t sarcasm.

Walking back to your kitchen, your mind was out of it as you continued making dinner. Your foot began tapping your tiled floor. What would happen tomorrow? Sure, you knew where they were situated but to be inside their headquarters? A chill ran down your spine.

In the task force, you were one of the people who were experts on reading people. Yet, the Shie Hassaikai leader was one person you would rather not read into. Sociopaths were usually textbook people but for someone who was whispered to be an antisocial sociopath? Your mind couldn’t comprehend what goes through his head.

Safe to say that you did not enjoy your dinner.

Time was now moving fast. In the blink of an eye, you found yourself at the gates of their headquarters. Last night, you fell into such a deep sleep that you barely had enough time to dream. With only another cup of coffee to keep you going, you knocked on the wooden gates and waited for entry.

The gates opened slightly. You were met with a random thug who didn’t wear a mask. He was wearing plain simple clothes but the look on his face told you he was definitely not happy to see you.

“I have some business with Overhaul.” You said plainly.

“Oh so you’re that woman.” Opening the gates a little wider, he watched as you entered. “Follow me, missy.”

The headquarter’s building was designed similar to your home. Traditional Japanese interior when you made your way through the front door. The tatami mats lined on the floor while the shoji screens littered every few steps.

The walking stopped and you were now face to face with Chrono. His mask present and his hood kept his hair hidden. The man who led you quickly bowed and left without looking back.

“Not the traditional meeting room?” You tried to joke. Met with only silence, you told him you were ready and he began to walk down the dimly lit path. Tailing behind him, you took note of the turns you had to take. For a while, it began to confuse you and realized that the sole purpose was for that.

It went on for quite some time before the halls were now lit properly and a double door was now facing you.

“Do I knock? Or do I just barge in?” You turned to be face to face with Chrono. A smirk landed on your face when he let out an unamused sigh. Before you knew it, he leaned and opened the doors for you.

Making your way inside, the decor of the room was nothing much. Two sofas parallel to each other with a table situated in the middle. A banner of their insignia hung proudly on the wall. Sitting on one of the couches was the reason why you were even down here.

Without his obnoxious bomber jacket, you had to admit that Overhaul looked pretty damn fine. Clean and proper. Taking a seat on the empty sofa, you leaned on to the back and shrugged your shoulders.

“Well, what do you wanna talk about?” You decided to start the conversation. In a way, it calmed your senses since the silence was deafening.

“What do I get in return?” His elbows rested on his knees. Tilting his head a little bit, he squinted his eyes ever so slightly. The horrible lighting of the room somehow made the golden trimming of his mask shine.

“You get to take their rank. You’re aware that the Fukoa Kai are pretty up there and surely you would love to have additional men behind your back.”

“And why would a police officer like you want to ask help from people like us? That’s a bit ironic now isn’t it?” Not a single movement save for his occasional blinking. “I’ve heard stuff about your lot. And it would definitely make things a whole lot easier. Besides, the chief of police saw it amusing by using me as a bridge. You’ve done your background check I presume?”

“(L/N). Daughter of the man who reestablished the Abegawa Tenchu Kai group from the dirt. Top ranking police officer despite having been born with the yakuza way.” He began to relay out. “Political immunity granted due to the old man pulling a few strings and helping the force every now and then. Such a shame his goal was patterned like that .”

Years of hearing that, you were now immune to those choice of words.

“If it calms your clammy hands,” You retorted. His eyebrows jumped a bit at how you raised your voice. “Only a few select people know about this. We plan to keep this on the low hence me meeting you. You won’t be meeting any of them, save for maybe one. But other than that, this would surely benefit you more than it would for us.”

“Tell me, (L/N).” He was now leaning on the back of the sofa. His head craned back to rest as well. You couldn’t help but wonder how heavy that mask was. Or what he was hiding underneath it. “Do you play shogi?”

Not expecting the question, you couldn’t help but giggle ever so slightly. Making sure that your hand partly covered the smile you were holding in. Tucking in a loose strand of hair, you lifted your chin and responded.

“I do but I’m not the best at it.”

“If I am satisfied with how you play, then we will commence whatever plan you have in your head.” He motioned for Chrono to get the board. “But, should I win, you have to add a few more privileges for my participation.”

“I’ll have to…” You had to cut yourself. Coming to a conclusion that your chief would surely decline it, you would just have to face the consequences of it later. “Sure.”

Watching as his companion laid out the board, you took the opportunity to observe what you could with the man sitting in front of you. His shoulders were broad and his face smooth. His eyebrows were quite unique as well. His lower lashes were eye catching, no doubt. Though his eyes were the money shot though. The dim lighting did no justice to the golden hues he were gifted with.

When his eyes met yours, he raised an eyebrow. You raised one as well. Furrowing his brows, you merely blinked lazily. Squinting your eyes, they slowly traveled down to his shoulders. Realizing that you were clearly checking him out, you jolted your sight once more and met his. The staring game was always fun for you knowing you don’t chicken out. When Overhaul finally broke connection, he gave you the liberty of ushering the first move.

The only sound that now echoed the room was the sound of your pieces being put into place. It was a rather intense game. For a while, he had managed to snag some of your powerful pieces but you managed to turn the table around by taking his as well. Chrono stared intently at the game. Seeing how his boss was now playing with his hundred percent was something he had not seen in a while. Looking at you, you were unfazed by the pressure of playing with the boss.

Little did they know that behind your poker face, you were panicking. The moves left were slowly depleting and you could only go on for a few more minutes. It was too obvious he was enjoying this. Deciding to play on defense, you picked up a tile and placed it where you intended it to be.

This exchange of moves went for a few more minutes before you finally saw the opportunity to grab his king. By now both of you had practically an equal amount of each other's soldiers. Though it would require you to sacrifice three pawns, the feeling for victory would probably be within reach in 5 moves.

5 moves later, you finally leaned back on the sofa. That had been one of the longest games of shogi you had ever played. Mentally, you were drained and hungry. The effects of the coffee had worn down 16 moves ago and you wanted to stuff down a hearty burger before you head to the precinct.

“When will the operation start?” Overhaul asked as he still stared at the board. Processing how he had just lost. Yet, he had to admit that your final moves were brilliant.

“I’ll give you a call.” You tossed the piece and he caught it with ease. His eyesight never tore from yours as he placed it back on the board. “But, I am in a rather good mood. The only add on I can give to you is that no snooping around will happen. Whatever it is you have planned in this maze of an office you have, I’ll have nothing to do with it. I’m here for one purpose and one purpose only.”

“Then so be it.” He accepted the offer. “If there’s nothing else-”

“How heavy is your mask?” You blurted out.

Both men in the room were rather speechless at the sudden question. Even you were surprised. That had simply been a thought but your mouth seemed to move faster than your brain could comprehend. Perhaps it was the hunger taking over.

“You don’t have to answer that.” You looked away and stared at their banner. Shame and embarrassment creeping into you. “But, yeah. There’s all there is to it.”

Once again, you were back to the winding halls. You didn’t bother memorizing the area knowing full well you were bound to go back. When the traditional walls were within sight once again, all you could think of was the exit and the nearest hamburg shop.

“What’s your quirk?” Chrono suddenly asked.

“Thought you’d already know by now.” You replied.

“It was marked as classified information no matter how deep we dived into the systems. Did you pay for the secrecy?”

“Nope. Well, maybe.” You were now facing the entrance. Chrono was still waiting for an answer. “I’ll tell you when the time comes. But, it has something to do with health. So if it makes your boss any less worried about the germs I carry, I’m clean.”

Waving a farewell, you walked and exited yourself away from the building.

Taking your phone out, you searched for the nearest hamburg store and began to walk your way. It was only a few blocks away so it wouldn’t hurt to exercise your legs. Glancing at the time, you were shocked that 2 hours had passed in that meeting. It felt too fast but perhaps it was the shogi that took up most of the time.

Realizing that you had to send updates to your partner, you searched for his contact and hit dial. He answered after the second ring.

“Yes, (Y/N)?” The typing of his keyboard was evident and you recalled just how many other cases he had under his care.

“It’s a done deal. But, I had to cave in with his one demand.” Letting him digest what you had just shared, you heard the creak of his office chair. A sigh followed after. “We are not to meddle with his affairs. One purpose and that’s it.”

“Well, at least it’s not much. And another team is currently doing that as well. Still, as expected from my partner.” He praised you. “How’d you do it?”

“I beat him at a game of shogi.” You couldn’t help but smirk at the memory of him realizing he was in too deep to pull himself out of the corner. “Anyway, I’ll be eating lunch. Want me to bring you something?”

“Daifuku will do.”

“Got it.”

Ending the call, you scrolled down through your contacts once more. Hitting up the dial button, you finally arrived at the food chain. The ringing still killing your ears. When the waitress handed you the menu, you were put into voicemail.

“Gei. Pick me up when you get this.” Placing your phone on the table, you called the waitress and told her your order. It would take 15 minutes for your food to arrive and that meant you had 15 minutes to dig around what you could about Overhaul.

Scrolling through news articles, there wasn’t a lot of coverage about him. As expected from a young yakuza member. How old was he anyway? Remembering how you asked him about his mask, you face palmed and scolded yourself.

The screen changed and Gei was calling you. A smile found its way to your lips. “Whattup girrrl?!” Your friend greeted you. His voice pitchy as always and you were positive he was moving his head with every word.

“Just finished a meeting with someone and was wondering if you wanted to crash by my place tonight?”

“Say no more boo. Imma bring some chips, a tub of ice cream, and the glorious wine!” His happiness was contagious. With such a tension filled job, it was a miracle Gei and you became friends. “What’s the occasion baby girl?”

“Uh, just the usual.”

“Ooh~ Is this a red wine situation or a moscato problem?”

What kind of problem was it anyway? If you replied red, it would mean work trouble. If you went with moscato, it would be a mix of work and relationships.

“I guess both?”

“Well! Lemme take my purse and rush to the convenience store! You better spill the beans (N/N).”

“I will~” You said farewell and he made sure to send kisses over the phone. Ever so flamboyant, your friend was. Yet, despite his personality, you knew that Gei would always be there for you no matter what. Of course, with him being your loud best friend, it was a given that you would do anything for him as well.

Your food was now served and you downed it in just 10 minutes. A new record, if you said so yourself. Wrapping things up, you took the daifuku and went your way towards the precinct. Wishing you had taken your car, you called for a taxi and took a quick nap.

#overhaul x reader #chisaki kai x reader #overhaul #bnha overhaul #bnha chisaki kai #mha overhaul #mha chisaki kai #shie hassaikai #overhaul is garbage but i cant help but adore this man #this is the reason why my one shots are delayed #aaaaahhhhhhhhh

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scullydubois · 4 years

Text

Only the Light (ch. 3)

Description: Missy moves in with Scully post-One Breath/Scully’s abduction. In this chapter, Scully goes through her morning routine and gets a surprise...

part 1 here. part 2 here. tagging @today-in-fic.

“Only the Light” won the poll, so it’s now the official title! Yay! Thank you for voting and thanks for all the feedback--I love your comments. This part is the longest yet (and the best imo)--enjoy!!

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She floats outstretched through the sky as if it were the community pool she and Missy used to frequent as children. She tilts her face toward the sun, feels the warmth of it washing over her. Her eyes reflect the brilliant blue sky, mini-oceans in themselves. Her back is to the city, and she’s so high up she can’t hear one bit of the noise on the ground. She hopes this is what heaven is like. If this is heaven, she has nothing to fear.

And then she’s falling, a casualty of gravity. Hell has found her. It always does. This is an unfortunate truth she must live with. The sky races past her and there’s a pit in her stomach so deep she thinks she must be breaking the laws of physics, her body stretching like a rubber band about to snap. Surely she is not a human being anymore. Surely she won’t be by the end of this.

The ground hurdles toward her. She can’t see it, but she knows. She wonders what shape they will find her in, or if she will even be found. She hopes for her family’s sake that she’s in so many pieces they can’t put her back together. It’s easier, she thinks, when the body doesn’t look human. Burying a radiant-looking thirty year old is sad. Burying a mangled mess of a corpse is a relief.

As if on cue, her alarm chirps. She awakes in one piece and punches the alarm, reality whisking away the horror of her dreams. Sweat saturates her silk pajamas, leaving a morning dew of sorts on her sheets. The blankets were thrown off at some point during the night. She does not remember doing this, so she can only assume it was the work of the demonic force in her brain.

Waking up in a puddle of her own sweat has become commonplace since she was returned. The first time the heat was so stifling she thought she must have had a fever that broke, but the mercury thermometer in her bathroom said otherwise. Her body seems to have a mind of itself these days.

For the time being, her mind is still functioning, so she pulls herself out of bed to get ready for work. This routine part of her day is a privilege she relishes. Very rarely does she get to function on autopilot.

It goes like this: first, she slips off her pajamas and changes her underwear. It is at this point without fail that she realizes she hasn’t bought a new pantyset in years, and wouldn’t it be nice if she did? This mental note slips away by the time she buttons her suit jacket and tucks her undershirt into her slacks.

Next, she switches on the bathroom light and performs the typical tasks of self-care--brushing her teeth, washing her face, and whatnot-- that some might find tedious or annoying. For Scully, they are soothing. She spends too much time thinking about aliens and not enough thinking about herself. She’s not sure she believes in either, but god, it would be nice to try.

Veering close to the latest possible time at which she could still expect to beat DC traffic to the office, she brushes her hair (no time for a hundred strokes), dabs some concealer under her eyes, and swipes on her favorite lipstick. No need to go all out; she knows where she stands.

Finally, she opens her closet and stares at the rack of heels. They’re uncomfortable and damn inconvenient for an FBI agent, but Mulder’s tall and she is not. She had a fraction of her current pairs before she met Mulder. No coincidence.

She chooses the tallest pair she owns because she needs the confidence boost. They’re headed to a nursing home in Massachusetts today, so hopefully there will be no running in the woods involved.

She click-click-clicks down the hallway. The scent of strong coffee permeates the air. She turns the corner, and there’s her sister with a pot of coffee and two plates of scrambled eggs. It is seven o’clock in the morning, and they were up at 3am last night. The last thing Scully expects is for her sister to be cognizant, let alone to have cooked.

“Good morning sunshine.” Missy slides a plate over to Scully’s usual spot at the table and pours the piping hot coffee into a ‘Kiss Me, I’m A Doctor’ mug.

Scully pinches herself. No, she’s not dreaming. This is too happy to be one of her dreams anyways.

“This is a surprise,” she says as she takes a seat at the table.

“Well, I fell asleep on the couch and woke up at 5:30. I figured it’s been awhile since someone’s cooked you breakfast.”

Scully takes a sip of the coffee.

“I don’t even cook myself breakfast.”

“Exactly.”

Melissa tops off Scully’s mug.

“Is it strong enough? I couldn’t drink mine without adding about a half a cup of milk, so I figured I must be doing something right.”

Scully is so grateful to be waited on that it could be a milkshake and she wouldn’t complain. It is strong enough though, stronger than the milk and sugar mixture someone calls coffee at the FBI.

“It’s perfect,” she says, meaning it.

“Good. I saw the end of that movie, by the way. You were right, it’s a real snoozefest.”

Scully laughs. “I actually like that movie. That’s why it helps me fall asleep.”

Missy scoffs. “They spend the entire movie pining over each other just for one chaste kiss at the end! Where’s the fun in that?”

“Probably shortly after that chaste kiss.”

Missy smirks, pleased that she’s gotten her sister to make a sex joke at seven o’clock in the morning. She softens her voice--

“I did want to talk to you, though.”

Scully finishes chewing the forkful of scrambled eggs in her mouth.

“I have to leave soon or I’ll be late.”

“Late for what? One of Mulder’s slideshows?”

Scully sits back. Maybe Missy has a point.

“I’m sure you’re tired of my questioning,” Missy says, “so I won’t ask you another thing. Say what you need to say.”

Say what you need to say. So simple, yet so powerful. It occurs to Scully that no one ever gives her this type of shameless permission. They shouldn’t have to, but she’s never been one to talk out of turn. What a relief to have the freedom to speak plainly.

She exhales. She has spent the past weeks playing back the few memories she has of her disappearance--she won’t call it the other word--and trying to decipher what happened to her. She is no closer to figuring it out than she was when Mulder gave her necklace back, but it might help to share what she does remember.

She launches into it, her memories flowing out in one long stream.

“You know, when I was in the hospital, I kept having this vision that I was in a lifeboat. There was a rope tying it to the dock and on the dock were all the people I loved, the people that were around me. You and mom and Mulder and the nurses.”

Melissa listens sympathetically, shocked and relieved that her sister is opening up.

“But I couldn’t move, I couldn’t do anything but sit there in that boat and hope that somehow, the tether wouldn’t snap.”

This is the most vulnerable Missy can remember seeing her sister since the passing of their father. There are a respected few who have witnessed Dana Scully reveal the inner workings of her mind. It’s a rare honor to witness Dana Scully reveal the inner workings of her heart.

Scully continues.

“And then it did snap, and I had...I can only describe it as a near-death experience. Dad was there...He was in his uniform with all his medals and he told me that he loved me and—that we would be together again, but not yet.”

Missy nods along.

“So I guess...that kept me from going. That’s how I knew I had to stay.”

“Wow,” Missy breathes.

“From then on, I could hear everything you guys were saying. I heard you and mom telling me that I was below the criteria of my living will and I was trying to give you a sign…”

Her voice breaks.

“I was so scared you would pull the plug on me.”

“Oh my god, Dana.” Missy engulfs her in a hug. “I am so sorry.”

Scully breathes into her sister’s neck. Her hair smells like the strawberry shampoo they used when they were children. She wonders if Missy still uses it, decides that now is not the time to bring that up. Instead, she lets go of the hug first.

“I started thinking, if I am below the criteria of my living will, maybe that’s the right thing to do. Maybe if I ever truly wake up, I’ll be so damaged I won’t be able to work for the FBI or have anything resembling a happy life.”

She sighs. “And you and mom said your goodbyes, and I was thankful, actually, that I got to hear them because so many people don’t and you just...never know with my profession.”

She bites her lip to keep from crying.

“And then sometime later I heard Mulder come in, and his wasn’t a goodbye. He touched my hand—I could feel it but I couldn’t respond—and he told me he was there. And I could feel his sadness, but I could also feel his hope. And that was all I needed, was hope.”

“He gave you the strength to wake up,” Missy says, partly as a question.

“Or the courage to.”

Melissa considers this. She remembers how solemn she felt going to Fox’s apartment that night, delivering the news that her sister was weakening. This must be how nurses feel when they tell loved ones to say their goodbyes, she thought at the time. When he said he wasn’t able to go see Dana in the hospital, she was furious. How can you be so naive? she thought. Are you so afraid of pain you refuse to feel your own feelings? She realizes now this sounds like something she might say to her sister.

Melissa decides not to mention her involvement in any of this. After all, she hadn’t succeeded in convincing Fox to go to the hospital. That was his own choice. Instead, she says--

“He was really looking out for you, you know. He was a soldier for your cause.”

The edges of Scully’s lips turn up the slightest bit.

“I don’t doubt it. Mulder is nothing if not a good soldier.”

Melissa thinks back on meeting Fox. She said that Dana had talked to her, that her soul was there. He didn’t believe her.

“Fox was exactly what you said he would be,” she tells her sister, “and somehow I was still surprised by the sheer force of his determination.”

Scully chuckles.

“Well, I don’t exaggerate these things. If anything, I downplay them.”

“No kidding.”

Melissa wets her lips, letting silence rest comfortably at the table with them.

“You’re really lucky you know, to have him as a partner.”

Scully nods.

“I know.”

And she does.

#the x-files #the x files #txf #fan fic #fan fiction #missy & scully fic #only the light fic #mine

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axwalker · 5 years

Text

The Trade: 2

Synopsis: This is an AU where the monarchy in Cordonia doesn’t longer exist and it has been replaced by a republic. It’s set in the final stages of the presidential race with Senator Liam Rhys competing against Fidelya Governor Godfrey Karlington. To assure his son’s victory, Constantine makes an arrangement behind his back for him to marry the rich ambassador’s daughter: Alexis O’Brien. Due to her father’s threats, she has no other option that seduce Liam and make him fall in love with her. But what does she really feel?

Masterlist: HERE

Warnings: I love drama and chaos so this will probably get very dark. None for this chapter though.

Please note that this is my first series and English is not my mother tongue. I appreciate all comments and feedback.

@pug-bitch

Pairing: DrakexMC, LiamxMC

Drake stepped out of the shower and turned on the TV. A towel around his waist, he sat on the edge of the bed and switched the channel.

“Good night everyone, I’m Anna de Luca and today in Politics weekly, we’re going to talk about the lasts updates of the presidential race with political expert Donnie Brine. Hi Donnie, we’re happy to have you on the show tonight. Tell us, what do you think of our candidates so far?”

“Hi Anna! Happy to be here. Well, we all already know Governor Godfrey Karlington and his conservative politics. He represents the old ways and rules Fydelia with an iron fist. Personally, I think the most interesting candidate today is the young and charismatic Liam Rhys, a new face in the political map, but well ahead in the polls.”

Drake arched his brows and laughed to himself. -New face?- Liam was a great candidate, the best one, but he was certainly no newcomer.

“New face?” Ana asked echoing Drake's thoughts. “Please, Donnie. We all know Liam is the son of ex-president Constantine Rhys and that he comes from old Cordonian nobility. He’s hardly a ‘new face’. However, I’ll agree that his rapid popularity growth is worthy of attention. Now, as a political expert, tell us: Is it true that he intends to surround himself with young politicians?

“Apparently this is all true, Anna. He’ll form his cabinet with his closest political allies, otherwise known as the “Brat-pack” of Cordonian politics, all being sons and daughters of either rich men and government members as Miss Hanna Lee or old noble houses as Sir Rashad Domvallier.”

“Can you give us a sneak peek of his cabinet?”

“Of course, Anna! I’ll give you the name of those we are sure he’ll appoint if he wins:

For Secretary of Treasury, he’ll appoint Bertrand Beaumont, he was Governor of Ramsford and his family have had ties with the Rhys for hundreds of years.

In Education, he’ll name Hanna Lee. Miss Lee is the youngest person that has ever directed Cordonian University. She has won world recognition for her research in educational methods.

In Foreign Affairs we’ll have Kiara Theron, the also daughter of the prominent judge Hakim Castelraillan, was our representative in the UN for two consecutive years and speaks 6 languages fluently.

The Secretary of Defense will be Capitain Olivia Nevrakis, a decorated top army officer.

Rashad Domvallier will be the head of the Department of Commerce, his bold business deals have brought a lot of money to the most prominent companies in Cordonia

And for some experience he will appoint Ex Supreme Court Juge Hakim Theron as the Attorney General and Landon Ebrim as the Minister of Agriculture” Donnie concluded.

“Well, all in all, not a lot of surprises, Donnie. As you said it before, it will be an incredibly young cabinet. Cordonian people should be happy that they’ll have Senator Ebrim and ex-judge Theron to babysit. Now two questions remain. Do we know who he’ll name as his chief of staff? And, more importantly: Who’s going to be his number two? Do you think he’s going to run with his brother, Valtorian Senator Leo Rhys? Or is that too much nepotism even for Cordonian standards?”

“To answer your first question, rumor has it that he will name his assistant, the man that’s been with him his whole career: Mr. Drake Walker. It is an important position, let’s hope that Mr. Walker is qualified for it, after all, he is not a real politician. As for the second question, his number two is the big enigma here, Anna. We know that a double Rhys ticket is the ex-president’s dream, but we are also aware of the Senator’s lifestyle, and I don’t think that the public opinion would approve of him running with the young candidate”.

Drake turned off the TV. Fucking vultures, they would love to see Liam fail just so they could feast in his loss. They didn’t care that he was the best candidate, much more than that fossil Karlington would ever be.

He opened the curtains and looked through the window, it was a sunny Sunday, his day off. He was wondering what to do when his phone rang. He saw Max’s photo on the screen.

Preparing for over the top excitement in three, two, one… he picks up the call.

“Draaaaake! You answered!”

“Yes, Maxwell. What do you want?” He sighed “Wait, is Sunday morning so I assume you need me to go get you at the beach because you woke up naked, surrounded by peacocks, with a horrible hangover and no memory of what happened last night. Am I right?”

“Heyyy Drake! Not all parties end up like last week’s party!” Max laughed

Drake rolled his eyes. “No, you’re right, sometimes you wake up naked in a garden surrounded by pigeons, or with a hippo tattoo you have no recollection getting.”

“Actually, I just wanted to invite you to lunch to thank you for picking me up last week, buddy,” Maxwell replied.

Drake sighed in exasperation “I’ve told you one hundred times NOT to call me buddy. And lunch is the minimum you can offer me after I saw you naked. I’m scarred for life, I hope you know.”

“He! You’re just jealous of my attributes, and jealousy is not a good color on you, Drake. You pick me up at 12…ish?

Drake growled at the phone “I’m starving; I’ll be there at 12 sharp.”

When they arrived at the restaurant at 2 pm, it was so crowded the waitress had to sit them at the bar.

As Maxwell stepped outside to take a mysterious call, Drake immediately noticed a beautiful girl in the stool next to Max’s. She was a tall brunette, with huge brown eyes and a beautiful smile. The short red dress she was wearing uncovered her long, tanned legs and hugged her curves in a way that made Drake blush.

Slightly disappointed, Drake noticed that she was talking to a guy in a blue suit. When he was about to move on and order another whiskey, he heard a very familiar voice:

“Sooo, as I was telling you, my family is very rich, they own the Sartorini brand, a very famous, very luxurious, very expensive brand of men shoes, among a lot, and I mean a lot of other things. You have heard of my family of course.”

Drake rolled his eyes.

“Of course,” He heard her answer, and he couldn’t help but notice a hint of sarcasm in her voice. “The problem… uh…Tariq was it?” Drake was smiling to himself “Is that I have it as a personal rule not to date very smugly, arrogant, conceited men. It’s a pity really, I can tell we really could’ve hit it off”

“Are you making fun of me bitch?” Drake was ready to intervene when he heard her answer.

“Wow, it took you 30 seconds to go from charming prince to creepy pig, a real record. Now if you excuse me, I’m really hungry. Have a good afternoon.”

Tariq got closer to her but as he was facing the girl and not him Drake couldn’t see what he was doing. Unfortunately for Tariq, he found out soon enough.

“I suggest you take off your filthy hand of my thigh right now if you don’t want to end up severely injured!” She seethed.

Tariq took a look at her slender figure and laughed. “By who? You?”

“No, me” Drake had decided to intervene “You heard the lady, Tariq. Get out of here.” Tariq’s face went white as he apologized.

“Oh! I’m sorry Drake, I didn’t mean to disturb her, I didn’t know you were with her… I…I... I’m leaving..” He sighed, visibly scared, leaving the bar immediately.

The girl puffed “Typical creep, he doesn’t even apologize to me, but to the man with a savior complex, who no one asked help from in the first place”

Drake arched his brows: “Sorry lady, I know Tariq, and he never would have left you alone. Anyway, have a nice lunch.”

The girl bit her lip feeling guilty, he was only trying to help her after all, and not that it mattered but he was very handsome.

“No, I’m sorry, you were only trying to be a good person”. She moved to the stool next to him while Max was still talking on the phone. “Let me buy you a…what are you drinking?”

Maxwell arrived just in time to hear the last sentence: “Whiskey! It is like he doesn’t know any other beverages. Can you believe that he has never tasted a Cosmopolitan??!!” He said grinning. “I’m Maxwell Beaumont, he’s Drake Walker and you’re…”

“I’m Elena, Elena Ortiz. Nice to meet you both” She grinned, and Drake couldn’t help but noticed what a beautiful smile she had. It felt like she’d be able to light an entire room with it. “And don’t worry Drake, me too I looove whiskey” That time she joined a little wink to the smile and Drake felt like he was actually melting.

“Hi… Magda” She said reading the waitress's name in her uniform “Can you bring us three glasses of Knob Creek, please?”

“Where are you from? You have a bit of an accent” He heard Maxwell ask her

“I’m American Maxwell, from New York”

“Please, call me Max. Is how all of my friends call me and I can tell right now that you and I are going to be great friends”

“How long are you staying in Cordonia, Elena?” Drake hoped she couldn’t hear the expectation in his voice.

“Oh… for now I’m just visiting, I haven’t thought very far ahead”

“Oh, I would looove to show you the highlights of our beautiful country,” Max said, smiling with excitement. “But I have a date tonight, so I can’t. Drake here, on the other hand, is a free as a bird today, aren’t you Drake?”

Since he met him as kids Drake had imagined one thousand different ways to kill the ever-annoying Maxwell, but at that moment, he could’ve kissed him.

“Actually, yes I am. I could show you some spots in the city that aren’t in the guides. What do you say?”

Elena grinned back at him.

“Maybe … where are you taking me?”

“You’ll have to trust me Elena, but I’m thinking you’ll like it”

“Trust you? I’ve known you for like a minute and a half. What if you murder me and hide my body on your baseman forever?

“Heh, that… or I’ll show one of Cordonian’s most beautiful sights while we drink some good whiskey. I guess you’re gonna have to take your chances.” Drake didn’t know why he wanted so desperately her to trust him.

Elena looked deeply into his eyes. She didn’t know why she felt so safe around him, maybe it was his gaze, intense and bright; looking at her longingly now.

“Let’s go!”

Drake took Elena to a beautiful beach next to Cordonia city; he showed her a little cove he visited when he needed some time far away from all the politics and plots.

“Drake! This is beautiful. It makes me think of my favorite spot in New York, next to Orchard beach. I go there whenever I’m feeling that I need some time for myself or to think about something.” She let out a small sigh.“Sometimes life can be too complicated”

Drake could hardly speak, completely lost just by looking at her. The gestures her hands make when she spoke, the elegant curve of her neck, her beautiful smile, and overall those big brown eyes, almost black. They were shinning now, enjoying the view, but there was something else in them; something unreadable…Pain, maybe?

“Do you feel like that often?” Drake asked, avid to know everything about the beautiful stranger next to him.

“You have no idea.”’ She turned to look at him. “But enough about that. What’s your story?” She gave him a flirty smile that almost made Drake’s heart stop. “Do you bring here all your dates?”

Drake gave her a cocky smile. “Ha, good to know this is a date” She blushed in the most adorable way. “In fact, if you have to know you’re the second person I bring here, and the first one was my sister,” he said hoping she didn’t ask a lot of questions about Savannah.

“Oh, well is an amazing spot, but I was promised some excellent whiskey and I’m not seeing any.” He grinned taking out a little silver flask from his pocket and handing it to her.

“You’ll never taste anything better.” When he watched her take a sip and then lick her lips, it took everything he had not to kiss her, but for some strange reason, for once he didn’t want to go to fast with a woman. “So?”

“It’s not Knob Creek but is not bad.” She moved closer to him, hoping he would make a move, it was her last day of freedom and she really liked him, much more than she should. Drake was looking directly at her with his chocolate eyes, and a sexy smile in the corner of his mouth.

“What’s in your mind? You didn’t stop talking all the way here and now you’re very quiet”

Drake was a stranger, she would probably never see him again. However, his strong, steady presence invited her to confide in him. Without a second thought, she blurted out, “I was thinking that I can’t be the person I want to be.”

“What do you mean you can’t? What old are you, like 24? You can do whatever you want Elena.”

She shifted her position to watch the ocean. “25, and no, I can’t. Forget it, you’ll never understand”

He gave her a small smile, he definitely understood. “You mean that you feel trapped in a life that you don’t know how to live anymore but you have no fucking idea how to get out of?”

She looked surprised “That’s exactly it. You have the same feeling?”

He sighed looking at her with a bit of regret in his eyes. “I’m in a job that I hate, very far away from the life I pictured for myself when I was a kid”

She took his hand, feeling an immediate spike of electricity run through her arms “If you hate your job that much, why don’t you just resign?”

“I hope it was that easy, but it’s not. My boss is also my best friend and I owe him and his family everything. He’s asked for my help and I can’t deny it… so here we are”

“Wow, you make it look like the mafia, Drake. Maybe I should be scared” She said teasing him and he smiled.

“Well, actually it’s not that different from the mafia, that I can tell you. But maybe after this job is finished, I’ll be free to do what I want”

“And that is…?” He could see she was genuinely curious.

Drake took a long swig of whiskey. “It seems like a ridiculous child’s dream when I say it out loud, but I love horses and animals in general. I would’ve like to be a veterinarian, instead of going to business school”

“Well maybe someday… you’re young too, there is no reason you can’t make that happen”

“Now that you made me spill my guts, you have to tell me something about you. Why do you feel trapped?”

She also drank before answering. She didn’t want to ruin the mood by confessing the truth.

“Let’s say that I’m in the middle of a very awful business deal, that I can’t undo”

He looked at her quizzically. “What the hell does that mean Elena? Now is you who’s talking like a mob family member”

“He! If only…” She moved even closer to him, boldened by the whiskey and the confidences they’d shared. “But that’s enough of sad little secrets”.

Elena gave him a very inviting smile and he suddenly realized that she was impossibly close to him. He could smell her scent, delicate and fruity. Her brown silky hair had a cherry fragrance, that was inebriating him much more than the whiskey he had drunk. When Drake saw her dark eyes looking directly at him, he didn’t doubt one more second. He took her face with both his hands and kissed her. She had never been kissed like that, it was sweet and passionate at the same time. With longing and tenderness, desire and reverence all at once. Elena could smell his scent, something woody and musky and it drove her crazy. His tongue was entering her mouth looking for hers, delicately at first then more and more passionately, until they had to come out for air. He didn’t need much because almost instantly he was kissing the corners of her mouth, her cheeks, her neck, and there he was ravaging her mouth again.

Suddenly, the spell was broken. They were brought back to reality by the incessant ringing of her phone.

“Sorry Drake, I really have to get this” He saw her walking away a few meters and talk to someone, visibly affected by it. Her features hardened, she was still the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, but she seemed different, sadder, gloomier. Drake saw she had ended the call but remained in place, so he went to her.

“What was that about Elena?” He asked softly stroking her left cheek with his thumb. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah… it’s just that I’m gonna have to go back to real life tomorrow morning, and I don’t want to.”

“I thought you were in Cordonia indefinitely …”

“It’s complicated. Can you bring me back to the restaurant? A car will pick me up there.”

“I can take you to wherever you’re staying, Elena”

She gave him a rueful smile that tugged his heart. “I rather not, thank you.”

“This is the last time we will see each other. Isn’t it?” Drake asked, sadly.

Elena could feel the tears. Tears of sadness for everything she’d always wanted but never would have. Tears of joy for the moment she just shared with Drake, as briefed as it was. Tears of regret for leaving him despite all the possibilities that he held.

“Yes …it was the last time”

#drake walker #drakexmc #axwalker writes #tw noncon #the trade

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mygotholdladyheart · 5 years

Text

I am seeing a lot of anger today between Democrats. Today is a huge day for primaries, delegates from 15 states/territories will be assigned. Historically today is a sign of who will get the nomination, so I understand why emotions are high. Here is where we stand:

Warren, Biden, and Sanders are the top three candidates and one of them will get the nomination. (I am ignoring Bloomberg, much like everyone else should.) Whoever gets the nomination in November, you should vote for them no matter what because they will be better than Trump.

Warren: She has amazing policies and is a well rounded candidate. If everything wasn't so extreme right now I think she would standout as the top candidate for most people. As it stands, unless she gets a HUGE boost today her bid for president is over. She simply doesn't have enough delegates.

Biden: Is the Democratic establishment choice and is the vote for centralist (those who want to maintain how things were before Trump). He is expected to do well in more Republican dominated states and has the 2nd most delicates. Recently 2 candidates for president dropped out and endorsed Biden before Super Tuesday. This is a way to help give Biden a boost for Super Tuesday, there are less centralist candidates to split the vote and thus, Biden will get more delegates. It seems the goal is for him to get more than Bernie.

Sanders: currently Bernie has the most delegates going into Super Tuesday. Most polls have him ahead of Biden and it is projected that he will do well. This is largely contributed to his grass roots movement and more liberal plans. Some, the democratic establishment included, see him as too extreme. He tends to get the leftest/progressive vote and polls well amoung young people and people of color.

The anger I am seeing is largely split between Sanders and Warren. Most people who support Warren have Sanders as their second choice and vice versa. Since both candidates pull from the leftist/progressive votes people feel that having two candidates will split the vote. Generally primaries, especially those early voting states, are the place where people vote their conscious. Of course their is a slim chance Warren will come out of today with a huge serge in delegates. There is also a chance that votes will be split between Warren and Sanders so Biden will get the most votes and push closer to being the nominee. Which is why people say a vote for Warren is a vote for Biden. It may still be too early for that sentiment, but we won't know until votes for today are counted. However, if Warren stays in the race and continues to drag WAY behind Biden and Sanders than she is purposefully splitting the vote. Yes you should align with the politician that most represents your beliefs, however we have an electoral college, and it is ridiculous to pretend that voting outside of candidates with a viable chance to win is anything less than a waste. If you vote your conscious today, that is your choice, but after today you need to examine who can win before wasting your vote.

This goes doubly true in November. Voting third party gave Trump the election. Vote Democrat no matter who is selected in November.

#american politics #politics #primaries #Democrats #democratic primaries #super tuesday

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thankskenpenders · 5 years

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TKP Reader Survey Results

So the other day I ran that survey to ask whether or not y’all wanna see me cover Archie’s Sonic X comics when the time comes (among other things). It ran for a couple days and I got 367 responses, so I’d say I’ve got enough data to go over the results

And the results are...

1. The Sonic X Comics

With a whopping 71.4% majority, y’all have made it very clear that you want to see me cover the Sonic X comics. Only 8.2% said they didn’t want to see me cover them, and 20.4% were indifferent

With that, I think it’s safe to say that yes, we will be taking a look at the Sonic X comics

2. Sonic X Coverage Schedule

The results of the scheduling question were much closer, but 50% of you approved of doing them chronologically alongside the main Archie Sonic series, while about 30% of you supported taking a hiatus from the main series to cover Sonic X or even doing them all at a later date.

Because of this, I’ll probably be jumping back and forth between the Sonic X comics and Archie Sonic in a little over 50 issues. I may, however, do them a little differently. With Sonic X being a lighthearted series of stories taking place between episodes of the anime, it doesn’t really have as much continuity or lore to dive into. Most of y’all are probably already at least vaguely familiar with the premise and cast of the show, which the comics hardly deviate from. And to be honest, I’ll probably skip a lot of stuff with Chris’s human friends

If this is the case and my Sonic X coverage ends up being lighter, I may cover multiple issues a day to get through them quickly

...

Now let’s talk about the questions I added just for fun!

3. TKP Readers’ Favorite Sonic platformers

Sonic Adventure 2 (75 votes)

Sonic 3 & Knuckles (56 votes)

Sonic Mania (52 votes)

Sonic Adventure (23 votes)

Sonic Generations (19 votes)

Sonic Unleashed (17 votes)

Sonic 2 (Genesis) (15 votes)

Sonic CD (14 votes)

Sonic Rush (14 votes)

Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog (tie) (11 votes)

This poll went pretty much how you’d expect, but still! A good variety of games here. Nice to see Sonic Adventure and Unleashed getting a lot of love even though people tend to rag on those games

Personally, seeing all three of the Advance games get a few votes makes me happy since those are the ones I played the most growing up. I spent so many bus rides in elementary school replaying the first few levels of Advance 1 and 2...

I am also genuinely surprised that one single person voted for Sonic Chaos for Game Gear

4. TKP Readers’ Favorite Sonic Cartoons

Sonic Mania Adventures/Team Sonic Racing Overdrive (65 votes)

Sonic: The Movie (The OVA) (63 votes)

SatAM (60 votes)

Sonic Boom (60 votes)

Sonic X (57 votes)

The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (31 votes)

Sonic Underground (10 votes)

This was actually really close! We practically had a five-way tie for first. It seems like every Sonic cartoon gets its share of love (although Underground definitely gets less than others)

And finally:

5. TKP Readers’ Favorite Sonic Characters (only counting the major Sega characters to prevent the list from being 50 items long)

Blaze (49 votes)

Shadow (40 votes)

Rouge (33 votes)

Eggman (32 votes)

Tails (31 votes)

Big (24 votes)

Metal Sonic (24 votes)

Silver (24 votes)

Sonic (23 votes)

Knuckles (23 votes)

Amy (16 votes)

Omega (13 votes)

Cream (9 votes)

Charmy (4 votes)

Espio (4 votes)

Vector (3 votes)

This is a little surprising! But not the most surprising. Like two thirds of my audience is LGBT furries, and lord knows we all latched onto Shadow, Rouge, and Blaze HARD as kids. Blaze taking first is a little surprising, but she really does stand out in the games’ female cast and is just generally cool. Eggman being #4 (ahead of the entirety of Team Sonic!) is surprising, but I think in recent years Mike Pollock has been reminding everyone how great of a character he is

I think the biggest surprise here is that Amy is all the way down in 11th place. Everyone loves Amy! If I had to guess, I’d say there are two reasons for this. 1) Amy’s always been a very inconsistent character. Someone who loves Adventure Amy isn’t necessarily going to like her in Sonic X, Sonic Boom, Archie, Forces, etc. And two: a lot of people would probably rank Amy in their top 5, but when forced to vote for just one, less people would call her their absolute fave. I’m willing to bet a lot of y’all who voted for Blaze and Rouge would still put Amy in your top 5

...

Anyway, this survey was fun! Thanks for your feedback, everyone, and thank you for continuing to support this blog!

#tkp post

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blackmaylovesfries · 5 years

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MX Powers Part 2 - 1st Question

Asked: Yes, by @babybee05, my darling!

Words: 1904

Sinopse: “How do they discover their powers & what are their individual powers” - So, this one-shot explains more about the boys’ species and what exactly are their powers and what they do.

Notices: I’m not well versed in Fairy Canon Universe so I mostly invented here. Hope I didn’t offended anyone! Also, if you have any advice, I’ll take it! Also, this isn’t really a one-shot since I had to do a lot of explanations so it got more like a topic post… Sorry to disappoint…

Masterpost

URGENT - BIRTHDAY POLL - Wonho’s B-Day is getting closer, help me!

- Kihyun:

Kihyun is a fire fairy. He and his family are from the biggest city from the Fire Clan and always lived a good life. When he was 8 years old he started to manifest his gift: Intense Five Senses. It may not sound impressive but it was actually the reason he was able to be the main vocal from Monsta X.

In the Fire Clan, the kids would be sent to the Imperial School, where they would learn about history and how to live in the clan until they were divided by their power nature to be trained more specifically. Kihyun spent 3 years at that “manners stage”, like old fire fairies call it. Everything is quite intense at that clan, that include education.

His family were already super intense, the reunions were always crazy and fun.Just like their fights were vicious, their love were stronger than anything. Kihyun surely doesn’t fall far from the tree, he liked the spotlight and when his house was full of friends and noise, even if it wasn’t him making the noise.

When he first manifested the Intense Five Senses, Kihyun was at home for a holiday. he and his mother were talking about the school while the woman was cooking. Till this day none of them can explain exactly what happened but on one second Kihyun was talking about his new friend and at the other he was at the ground.

Since then he was forbidden at the family kitchen. Well… Until he was able to control it because as soon he was able to not pass out everytime he smelled human curry he developed a great cooking skill that none of his relatives could help but to beg for him to take charge of the place. He was actually really great when it comes to mixtures and fairy culinary.

His power is actually simple but incredible. His five senses were intensified so every sensation you receive from this world he receive it 4 to 10 times stronger. Not only that but he also can make other beings feel that amplified sensations. Like how you hear his voice and see his performance.

As he grown, Kihyun were able to control how his power affected him and how it affected others. That’s why he developed the taste for cooking and doing house chores, he was able to tell when the smallest thing is wrong in the ambient and guess what combination of flavors would be better for people like Jooheon that can’t eat everything all the time.

His power is also why he was able to be the ‘mother’ of the group, since his super senses make him quite sensible to humor changes. Besides that he could experiment things and know almost instantly how the public would receive it. Kihyun was definitely surprised when Monbebe started to just kinda of love everything he did on stage.

Ƹ̴Ӂ̴Ʒ

- Hyungwon:

Sweet Hyungwon is a water fairy. He and his family lived at a river inside the country, only having contact with others twice or thrice a year. Not that it matter since they were a happy family, always taking care of each other and having one night guests staying in their house.

Usually there were travelers that needed a place to stay in Hyungwon’s house. His parents were careful but they loved to hear the stories that the travelers told them. It was rare for his house to be empty. That was how Hyungwon discovered his gift at 11 years old.

He was busy the whole day, picking flowers and playing with his younger sibling so he wasn’t home until nightfall. Only then he discovered that his parents had a new guest. Well… an old one actually. That human had being with them a couple of times already and he was super kind to all of them. This time he was going to stay for a week with them.

The traveler had already even adapted to the family’s routine so they didn’t needed to adjust to him staying there. But this time there was something different. The human was sick. Actually it was just a cold but it was enough for influencing Hyungwon. He started to get drowsy every time he got near the man and his noise really hurted at the time.

When he complained to his father, the adult fairy took Hyungwon to a fairy doctor. It was a surprise when the doctor said that Hyungwon was super healthy and there was no problem at all. That made his father think that maybe he had developed the Healing Heart, a gift that would allow him to cure anyone he chooses to.

So, after leaving the doctor’s house, the duo of father and son went to the Big Water Fairy Library that were less than 30 minutes far from their house… Water fairies were really weird… Anyway, they found a book that helped young fairies to learn how to manipulate the Healing Heart. His father brought him and the book back and helped him to develop even more.

This gift was as pure and good as the name given. The Healing Heart really allows it’s user to heal others as they wish. But for the healing really be effective, Hyungwon needs to form a tie with the creature he wants to heal. Like a real tie. That’s why nowadays there are few peoples who are really healed by him: Monsta X and his blood family only actually.

The down side of it is that the user actually receive the pain they are healing. Like when Hyungwon is healing a cold, instead of the creature feeling pain or being uncomfortable Hyungwon will feel all of it. That’s also why he sleeps a lot, it helps his own body heal itself.

Ƹ̴Ӂ̴Ʒ

- Jooheon:

Jooheon, like Minhyuk and Shownu, was from the Air Clan. An, again like Minhyuk, his family could turn into an animal. So, unlike Minhyuk now, Jooheon was able to turn into a caramel with black spots cat. That was why his nickname was Honey, his cat form was really like a bee.

His family did have some similar characteristics with Minhyuk’s one, like the incapacity of staying still and the recluse childhood. That’s why he just get really hype when in social situations. Their time to manifest the animal form is also the same, as soon as they can chew solid food.

The particularity of his family is that they are actually really sensible to pain. So they avoid any situations that could have them hurted or even sick. The adults are quick to teach this habit to their child so no one was really found of dangerous plays that cubs are usually down for.

Jooheon came to the human capital to join Monsta X because he didn’t thought about how he could possibly get hurt with rapping. He cried the whole night when he first fell on the dance class… Hyungwon and Kihyun have a lot of problem with he and his fear, they are mostly the ones that are always around him to help.

His cat form often influenced him in humanoid form. He loves to play with soft fabrics and chains that made small noises. Also he was always hot and ready to cuddle with anyone. Although he could be almost 10 meters tall, he could not spare with Wonho, since the oldest didn’t go easy on him like Jooheon’s mother.

His claws are able to cut through almost everything and his roar could be heard from a 40 kilometers diameter. Truly terrifying but his family was teached to fight and put themselves at risk only when their lives or their loved ones were already at risk. So although he avoid pain, he would do anything to protect his loved ones.

Jooheon’s young cat form only reached something about 20 centimeters at tops. Until he reached fairy adulthood, about 20 years old, he would always transform into a little cub everytime his other form appeared. That did not made him have a great childhood even if his parents said to him that that was normal.

He also had a lot of trouble to control his other form so even the slightest pain could make him transform when he was 15 years old. Only when he started to rap and get really into music that his control got better and better until he was able to meet Monbebes and not transform from excitement.

Ƹ̴Ӂ̴Ʒ

- I.M:

Changkyun is a half water fairy, he was half human half fairy. He lived with his family in a small pond near the ocean. That’s why he could actually speak several languages and was quick to learn new things. Near his house was an mermaid village that were always helping travellers to reach mainland. There were always people coming and going so he learned a lot.

That was also why Changkyun was never lonely, even seeing other fairies only once or twice a year. Since he and his family lived far from everything, his mother almost never took him to season meetings besides the extremely officials ones. They didn’t wanted him to suffer so they stayed near a race that simply didn’t care that he was a hybrid.

He was almost 13 when he finally received his gift. His family were euphoric. Although most of the late manifested gifts were ordinary ones, they wanted Changkyun to feel special and equal to his older brother that had developed God’s Rhythm at 5 years old. Not that Kyun cared about it but he is still really thankful for his parents efforts.

When Kyun turned 13, his father took him to the mermaid village, where he could choose a present. Changkyun was looking around, holding his father’s hand, when suddenly he felt a strong sensation of pride. It was not a emotion he would have, not at 13 years old, although he could compare the emotion to when he was able to win a compliment from his father.

So he did a test. Yes, Chang was smart like that. He let go of his father’s hand and noticed that the sensation passed. Then, he took it again and the sensation was back! Smiling and jumping from excitement, Changkyun described to his father what was happening and asked him what he was so proud of. His father laughed and gently said “Of you, growing up to be so shiny.”

Then Chang discovered that he had manifested Absolute Perception. It allowed him to feel the emotions of the creature he touched. Since then, he started to control it enough so no one in this universe could hide their real emotions and intentions from him. He could tell just with a high five if the fan was a true one or not.

That was why he loved Monsta X right away, although they did have prejudice on the beginning he could see that they weren’t bad inside. They just needed time. He also used his talent a lot on tours to take care of his members mental health. He is so close of them now that he just need to be around them to read their emotions.

While when you can control Absolute Perception nobody can hide anything from you, when you are untrained powerful people can actually manipulate the Perception so it can’t say what is true and what is false, so you can be fooled easily if you’re not careful.

❤♫❤♫❤.•*¨`*•..¸♥☼♥¸.•*¨`*•.♫❤♫❤♫❤❤♫❤♫❤.•*¨`*•..¸♥☼♥¸.•*¨`*•.♫❤♫❤♫

Hi!!! So, I hope you enjoyed!!! I also hope that more questions come... If not, maybe I do the one-shots later anyway... Well... Thanks for requesting ( @babybee05 ) and for all of you for reading!

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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2020 Iowa Caucus Updates: Delayed Results Lead to Confusion https://nyti.ms/391M8gE

I know the voters of Iowa takes their role seriously, but I am so tired of being beholden to the interests of a single small state in the Midwest. We need a national primary, not to mention an end to the electoral college.

First the Des Moines Register poll is cancelled at the last minute and now the caucus results are delayed beyond reason for “quality control”. Both events drastically altering the news cycle about the candidates in the race. It really makes you wonder.

2020 Iowa Caucus Updates: Delayed Results Lead to Confusion

Multiple Democratic candidates said they expected to finish strong in the caucuses, though official results appeared to be a ways off.

By The New York Times |Published Feb. 3, 2020 Updated Feb. 4, 2020, 8:01 a.m. ET | Posted February 4, 2020 |

The release of Iowa caucus results was delayed after inconsistencies in the reporting of data. “This is not a hack or an intrusion,” said a spokeswoman for the state Democratic Party. The party is using photos of results and a paper trail to validate the results.

The lack of results didn’t stop multiple Democratic candidates from addressing their supporters late on Monday night. Nearly all claimed that they expected a strong finish in the state, whenever the results are eventually announced.

There are 41 delegates up for grabs, a tiny fraction of the 1,991 delegates needed to win the Democratic presidential nomination.

Follow our results page here.

Here’s what you need to know:

IOWA DEMOCRATIC PARTY HOPES TO REPORT RESULTS ON TUESDAY.

Troy Price, the chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party, said shortly after 1 a.m. that he expected to have caucus results to report “later today” after party officials had manually tallied the data.

On a brief conference call with reporters, Mr. Price stressed that the caucus results were being delayed because of problems reporting delegate totals from the more than 1,600 precincts, not because the system had been hacked.

“This is taking longer than expected,” he said. “The system is in place to make sure we can report results with full confidence.”

Several hours after the caucuses ended, the state party still has not publicly reported any results. Mr. Price did not take questions, and the call ended after he finished reading his statement.

He said the system the party put in place for 2020, which requires written records for each precinct’s results, was implemented in case such a communications breakdown took place. “We have backups in place for this reason,” he said. “We are updating campaigns and will continue to provide updates as they are available.”

‘INCONSISTENCIES’ IN CAUCUS DATA LEAD TO DELAY.

Results in the Iowa Democratic caucuses were delayed Monday evening, creating widespread confusion among the presidential campaigns. Party officials said the results had been delayed because of “inconsistencies” in their reporting. The reporting problems are believed to have only delayed the results, not called them into question.

“We found inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results,” said Mandy McClure, the party’s communications director. “In addition to the tech systems being used to tabulate results, we are also using photos of results and a paper trail to validate that all results match and ensure that we have confidence and accuracy in the numbers we report. This is simply a reporting issue, the app did not go down and this is not a hack or an intrusion. The underlying data and paper trail is sound and will simply take time to further report the results.”

On a conference call with the presidential campaigns, Iowa Democratic Party officials said the delay was because of the new rules requiring caucus leaders to report three sets of numbers to party headquarters, rather than just the delegate totals.

Representatives from the campaigns became angry at the party officials, who hung up after being asked about when results might be known, according to two people who listened to the call.

Since the caucuses began 50 years ago, Iowa Democrats reported only one number: the delegate count from each of the state’s precincts.

But after the razor-close 2016 race in Iowa between Hillary Clinton and Mr. Sanders, Mr. Sanders’s allies pushed the Democratic National Committee to require caucus states to track and report the raw numbers of how many people backed each candidate.

For Iowa, the new reporting standards meant counting how many people backed each candidate on the first and second alignment. That change, requiring the reporting of three separate numbers from each of the state’s more than 1,600 precincts, has slowed the gathering of data to a crawl.

Additionally, many precinct chairs across the state abandoned the new app that was built to help tabulate and report results as they struggled to log in. They opted instead to use the telephone hotline to report.

“I have had three precincts unable to report results,” said William Baresel, the Floyd County chair.

One rural county chairman took to Twitter to report results from a handful of precincts before calling it a night.

Already, a number of prominent Democrats have questioned the role of Iowa casting the first ballots in the primary process, criticizing the largely white, older state as unrepresentative of the diversity of their party.

Technical issues, happening in the midst of such a highly-watched caucus, could contribute to doubts about Iowa’s standing in the primary process.

Listen to ‘The Daily’: A Very Long Night in IOWA A story of caucusing and confusion from a middle school GYM. TIME 38:58, Listen on website)

TRUMP CALLS CAUCUSES ‘AN UNMITIGATED DISASTER.’

In the annals of expected news, President Trump won the G.O.P. caucuses in Iowa.

The contest was largely symbolic: While Democrats have saturated the Iowa airwaves for over a year, Mr. Trump faced little opposition in the Republican caucuses. In past years, Republicans have canceled their caucuses when an incumbent president was running for re-election.

Still, Mr. Trump and his team have used the past week to try and grab some attention away from the Democrats. On Thursday, Mr. Trump drew more than 7,000 fans to a rally where he predicted that Iowa would deliver for him again in November. He also deployed cabinet secretaries, top Republican officials and Trump family members to the state.

Early Tuesday, Mr. Trump called the confusion on the Democratic side “an unmitigated disaster.”

“The only person that can claim a very big victory in Iowa last night is ‘Trump,’” he tweeted.

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

The Democrat Caucus is an unmitigated disaster. Nothing works, just like they ran the Country. Remember the 5 Billion Dollar Obamacare Website, that should have cost 2% of that. The only person that can claim a very big victory in Iowa last night is “Trump”.

6:33 AM - Feb 4, 2020

The Trump campaign also questioned the legitimacy of the contest.

“Democrats are stewing in a caucus mess of their own creation with the sloppiest train wreck in history,” said Brad Parscale, Mr. Trump’s campaign manager. “It would be natural for people to doubt the fairness of the process. And these are the people who want to run our entire health care system?”

THE CANDIDATES MOVE ON TO A FULL DAY IN NEW HAMPSHIRE.

While the caucus results remained in limbo early Tuesday, most of the Democratic candidates boarded planes and left the state behind, flying east to New Hampshire to start a new round of campaigning before the Feb. 11 primary there.

Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., appears to have the first event of the day — a stop by Riverwalk Cafe in Nashua at 7 a.m. — before going on to a full day of five town hall events around the state.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts was also set to campaign in the state on Tuesday morning. Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont had events scheduled there through the day as well.

Ms. Warren landed in Manchester shortly after 4 a.m., surrounded by senior aides and top surrogates. In brief remarks to supporters, Ms. Warren said she felt good about her campaign’s position, even as the official results remained unclear.

“When I left Iowa, I said it is too close to call, and it still is — but I feel good,” she said. “We are in 31 states and have thousands of people on the ground.”

Ms. Warren thanked her team in Iowa and said organizers would disperse to other states for what her campaign has said it expects to be a long race. In previous statements, her campaign manager and chief strategist said they believed that Ms. Warren had finished in a closely bunched top three in Iowa, with Mr. Buttigieg and Mr. Sanders.

BUTTIGIEG CLAIMS VICTORY BEFORE RESULTS ARE REPORTED.

Nature may abhor a vacuum, but candidates abhor it more.

And so, in the absence of any official results from the Iowa caucuses, they all tried to frame the vacuum in the best possible light.

Ms. Klobuchar said she knew one thing: “We are punching above our weight.” Mr. Sanders joked about the delay and said he had “a good feeling” that when the results finally arrived, “we’re going to be doing very very well.” Mr. Biden said he was going to leave Iowa with his “share of delegates.” Ms. Warren of Massachusetts said it was “too close to call” but assured her supporters that they were one step closer to beating President Trump.

Then there was Mr. Buttigieg, who decided the vacuum didn’t exist.

“What a night!” he yelled to a mass of cheering supporters late Monday, declaring — with zero percent of precincts officially reporting — that “by all indications, we are going on to New Hampshire victorious.”

“Because tonight, an improbable hope became an undeniable reality.”

In truth, that reality was very much deniable.

A Buttigieg aide said that his campaign had received results from 77 percent of its precinct captains, and that those results showed him in position to win the most state delegates.

But this was hardly conclusive: Jeff Weaver, a senior adviser to the Sanders campaign, said he had similar numbers from Mr. Sanders’s precinct captains showing him ahead. And even if the internal results are accurate, results can vary hugely from precinct to precinct, so there is no way to say that 77 percent of the precincts accurately reflect the whole.

“So we don’t know all the results,” Mr. Buttigieg said. “But we know by the time it’s all said and done, Iowa, you have shocked the nation.”

CYBERSECURITY EXPERTS WARN OF PROBLEMS WITH APP.

Christopher C. Krebs, the director of the Homeland Security Department’s cybersecurity agency, said late Monday evening that the mobile app being used in the caucuses had not been vetted or evaluated by the agency.

Cybersecurity experts also said that the app had not been properly tested at scale, and that it was hastily put together over the past two months. Iowa Democratic Party officials only decided to use the app to report results after a previous party proposal — which entailed having caucus participants call in their votes over the phone — was scrapped, on the advice of Democratic National Committee officials.

J. Alex Halderman, a professor of computer science at the University of Michigan, and David Jefferson, a computer scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said Monday night that they had warned state officials that the mobile reporting app was vulnerable to what is known as a “denial of service attack,” in which hackers flood the central servers used to power the app with traffic, stalling them or knocking them offline.

“This app has never been used in any real election or tested at a statewide scale and it’s only been contemplated for use for two months now,” said Mr. Jefferson, who also serves on the board of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan election integrity organization.

“This is an embarrassment but it shouldn’t shake people’s confidence in the results,” Mr. Halderman said. “If this had been an election conducted by phone, or online, that would have been a major disaster. We might never know the results and would have had to re-run the entire contest.”

“This is an urgent reminder,” Mr. Halderman said, “of why online voting is not ready for prime time.”

Mr. Jefferson warned that Nevada is also currently slated to use a similar mobile app to report its caucus results in a few weeks.

Warren: ‘WE ARE BUILT FOR THE LONG HAUL.’

Ms. Warren said the early returns in Iowa showed an appetite for her campaign of “big, structural change,” even as official results were muddled by technical difficulties.

In a rare set of prepared remarks, after being introduced by her grandchildren, Ms. Warren repeated a new refrain: “This campaign is for you.” It was in keeping with her attempts to paint herself as the candidate best suited to unite the Democrats’ moderate and progressive wings.

She acknowledged that the race’s official results were still muddled. “It is too close to call. But I’m just going to tell you what I do know,” she said. “As the baby daughter of a janitor, I’m so glad to be on this stage tonight.”

She then gave the sort of positive speech often given by victorious candidates.

“This race started here in Iowa, but from tomorrow it will run ocean to ocean, east to New Hampshire, and then west to Nevada, then down to South Carolina,” she said. “This fight will stretch across all 57 states and territories that make up this great nation until we unite together as a party in Milwaukee. The road won’t be easy. But we are built for the long haul.”

SANDERS IS FEELING CONFIDENT.

On a frustrating night for every candidate, all of whom were hoping to declare victory quickly and then jet off to New Hampshire, Mr. Sanders tried a bit of humor.

“Let me begin by stating that I imagine — I have a strong feeling — that at some point the results will be announced,” Mr. Sanders told supporters at his election-night watch party. “And when those results are announced, I have a good feeling we’re going to be doing very, very well here in Iowa.”

BIDEN CAMPAIGN COMPLAINS OF ‘CONSIDERABLE FLAWS’ IN THE REPORTING PROCESS.

The Biden campaign sent a letter to the Iowa Democratic Party late Monday night citing “considerable flaws” in the reporting system for the caucuses and seeking information from the party before results are made public.

“The integrity of the process is critical, and there were flaws in the reporting systems tonight that should raise serious concerns for voters,” Kate Bedingfield, a deputy campaign manager for Mr. Biden, said on Twitter.

Addressing supporters, Mr. Biden said he wanted to make sure the state party was “very careful in their deliberations” and added that he expected the results to be “close.”

“We’re going to walk out of here with our share of delegates,” he said. “We don’t know exactly what it is yet, but we feel good about where we are.”

In the letter, the Biden campaign’s general counsel, Dana Remus, wrote that the app to relay results from the caucuses had “failed,” and that the backup telephone reporting system had not work either.

“These acute failures are occurring statewide,” Ms. Remus wrote.

Ms. Remus said that campaigns should get more information from the state party — as well as a chance to respond — before official results are made public.

“We believe that the campaigns deserve full explanations and relevant information regarding the methods of quality control you are employing, and an opportunity to respond, before any official results are released,” she wrote.

KLOBUCHAR: ‘WE ARE PUNCHING ABOVE OUR WEIGHT.’

There may have been no official confirmation of how anyone was doing, Ms. Klobuchar told supporters Monday evening, but she knew she was doing well.

“We know there’s delays,” Ms. Klobuchar said, speaking at the Des Moines Marriott. “But we know one thing — we are punching above our weight.”

“Even in a crowded field of candidates, even during the well-earned impeachment hearing of Donald J. Trump, which had me bolted to my Senate desk for the last two weeks, we kept fighting and you kept fighting for me,” she said. “Somehow, some way, I’m going to get on a plane tonight to New Hampshire, and we are bringing this to New Hampshire.”

‘WHAT’S THE MATH?’ ANDREW YANG ASKS.

“I gotta say, I’m a numbers guy, and we’re still waiting on numbers from tonight,” the former tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang said in a speech to supporters in Des Moines. “We’re all looking around being like, ‘What’s the math?’”

“But the math that I care most about is the fact that this movement has become something that has already shocked the political world,” he added. “And it’s going to keep on going from here — it’s going to keep on growing from here.”

BLOOMBERG LOOKS BEYOND IOWA.

There’s one candidate saying that whatever happens in Iowa tonight does not matter all that much: Mr. Bloomberg.

The former New York mayor spent Monday flying through California, stopping in Sacramento, Fresno and Compton. He shook hands with voters, took a few questions from reporters and plans to get on a plane to Michigan tonight.

Mr. Bloomberg is waging an extremely unconventional campaign, skipping the first four early states entirely and instead focusing on Super Tuesday and beyond.

“I’m a believer that if you want to fight the last war, you believe things like whoever wins Iowa goes all the way,” Mr. Bloomberg said in an interview at a community center in Compton on Monday. “You believe that only six states matter. That was the last election. That’s not true today.”

Early voting officially began Monday in California, and Mr. Bloomberg is urging supporters to cast a ballot for him now. Though Mr. Bloomberg mostly demurred from playing pundit, he stands to gain if the moderates stumble in Iowa.

______

Reporting was contributed by Maggie Astor, Nick Corasaniti, Reid J. Epstein, Trip Gabriel, Shane Goldmacher, Michael Grynbaum, Astead W. Herndon, Thomas Kaplan, Lisa Lerer, Jennifer Medina, Jonathan Martin, Nicole Perlroth and Jeremy W. Peters.

_______

"I’m sick to death of these never ending Iowa caucus stories. Any state that sends the likes of Steve King, Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley to Congress has absolutely no business determining the Democratic candidate. They don’t represent this country and the hype they get is nauseating." NANCY, LAKE Oswego OR

"Just watching the Iowa caucuses on TV. It's the first time I have seen the process live. I did not see one black person in any of the caucuses. Yes, I am African American. And it all seems like backroom dealing is the way it all works. It's not really voting. It's politicking. I don't get it. Even among Whites who vote in the state, so many people apparently cannot participate in these caucuses and are excluded because the time required to caucus makes it prohibitive. Some people attend the caucuses and are so frustrated that they leave when their candidate is excluded because they cannot reach a critical number. Why are the Democrats still using this arcane nearly all white system for its first primary? Folks who care need to push for a very diverse state to be on the same day as, or even before the Iowa caucus. Let's rethink this. Traditions have their place. Traditions that give the power of the first primary to a 95% white electorate where the process is about back-room dealing needs to be scrapped." TONY GLOVER, NY

" I just spent a half hour being attacked by Sanders supporters online for a mildly critical comment about the difficulty of passing socialized medicine. I was accused of being a plant, of being a stooge, and of being a part of a DNC conspiracy. It's as if none of them read or trust anything "the media" says. Who does this remind you of--the non-stop conspiracy theories, the constant attacks from supporters, and the belief that the media is out to get them? I know who it reminds me of, and I know that I will not be voting for Sanders." SUZANNE, NY

"I live in France. People vote on a ballot made of paper. These are collected and counted locally after polls close. Results are transmitted to central offices and, within a few hours, final results are announced. Thank goodness America has a far more hi-tech, sophisticated system." FRANKSTER, PARIS 🇫🇷

"We just watched Klobuchar, Biden and Warren all give speeches thanking their supporters in Iowa. Senator Warren’s supporters were enthusiastic and Senator Klobuchar had her fans as well. Mr. Biden’s crowd was very quiet and we couldn’t see any placards or signs promoting Biden’s candidacy. I asked my husband if he thought it was a room full of journalists - people clapped politely but without enthusiasm. Senator Sanders is speaking as I write, surrounded by HUGE numbers of overjoyed supporters. The corporate media is unified in its determination to prevent Bernie from winning the nomination. If Bernie’s supporters feel cheated by this process, the Democrats will be handing the election to Trump. But maybe that’s the whole point."

ANNIE GRAMSON HILL, MT KISCO, NY

" "Problems with the app". "Quality control". Meaning: no-one stress-tested the app before it went live? I'm sure caucusing worked really well in 1848. It's 2020. Why is Iowa still holding caucuses? Have they not heard of voting and counting ballots? Does this look good? Not by a long shot."

BOB THE BUILDER, NYC

"I grew up in Des Moines. I remember participating in the caucuses when I was 18 (for John Kerry). It was an interesting experience, and it definitely contributed to my interest in politics as I got older. Fast forward 16 years--I now have two little kids. Even though I remain very actively engaged in politics, and have watched every single debate start to finish, I still would not be participating in the caucuses tonight if I still lived in Des Moines. There is a reason the vast majority of Iowa caucus goers are either very young, or very old--its because they have no other commitments (i.e kids, full time jobs, etc) and can easily devote an entire evening to participating in this event. I just can't imagine the results from this being an accurate representation of the voters of Iowa, let alone a projection for the country as a whole. If Iowa wants to continue the caucus, fine, but it should no longer receive the insane media coverage and endless months of obsession and money by the potential candidates." TO THE MAN, CHICAGO

"As a precinct chair, who actually had no problems with the app, the phone lines were jammed by not only those trying to call in results, but also my those trying to get help with the app. That created a mess. I'm also guessing the state party had fewer people answering phones, figuring more people would be using the app, which turned out to be faulty." NANETTE, IOWA CITY

" Yet another example of the perfect being the enemy of the good. Democrats are passionate about making sure everything they do is transparent, fair, and representative of the nation's growing diversity. In Iowa, party leaders developed a caucus reporting strategy that, in retrospect exceedingly complicated -- and thus virtually certain to fail. But we should not go overboard in attacking the process. The motivations behind this failed effort were positive, and it is worth noting that it contrasts significantly with official Republican policy, which is to limit voting of minorities, reduce even the opportunity to cast ballots, and try as hard as possible to sabotage the other party (the Democrats) from a fair chance of even competing for voters." PAUL, NC

"Since the caucuses began 50 years ago, Iowa Democrats reported only one number: the delegate count from each of the state’s precincts. But after the razor-close 2016 race in Iowa between Hillary Clinton and Mr. Sanders, Mr. Sanders’s allies pushed the Democratic National Committee to require caucus states to track and report the raw numbers of how many people backed each candidate." So, the guy who isn't a member of the party pushed the Democrats around to get what he wanted, and it's a mess. Do away with caucuses and have primaries where folks vote the same way as in the general election- a much better barometer. And, while we're at it- Iowa is a weird place to start. Lump it in with four or five other, more representative states." TOM, HOLLY SPRINGS NC

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#u.s. news #trump administration #politics #president donald trump #politics and government #us politics #democratic party #democrats #democracy #u.s. presidential elections #presidential elections #elections #2020 presidential election #2020 candidates #2020 election #iowa caucus

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snkpolls · 6 years

Text

SnK Chapter 114 Results

The chapter poll closed with 1081 responses. Thank you to everyone who participated!

RATE THE CHAPTER 1,038 responses

This arc continues to impress, with almost half of respondents giving it 5 stars, and only 3.5% giving it a highly negative rating. That said, the amount of 5 ratings is down 11.9% from last month, which itself was down 17% from 112.

That was an amazing way to conclude vol. 28, arguably making it the best volume of this arc so far. Not only Levi did get hoisted by his own petard, but it was a fantastic way to flesh out more Zeke as an actual character instead of a plot device meant to trigger the rumbling.

Amazing chapter. I was certain Zeke had his own goals, but I was not able to see it coming. I love where the story seems to be going.

Easily top 10 worst AOT chapters of all time

Excellent chapter. Expected nothing from Zeke's backstory and was pleasantly surprised to see how well it turned out. Also good job on leaving hints at his true motivations since RtS and making the whole thing come together in such a thematically impactful way.

This chapter has been just another in a rung of disappointing chapters that has taken characters like Eren and done so much damage to them I am concerned there is no recovery for them even if they begin to change in a better way.

One of the best chapters

This has to be my most favorite chapter of this series thus far! I absolutely loved finally getting some crucial insight on Zeke and learning about what has been secretly buried within his heart for the entirety of his life.

There was no Floch this chapter, therefore what a waste

Imho this is the best chapter we've had since 101

Not as exciting as the recent chapters

Not the most exciting chapter, but it wasn't boring either. We got to finally visit the source of Zeke's motivations and what his true mission is, which has been a mystery for a long time. Now we just need to know what Eren is thinking and why he treated his friends the way he did..

WHAT WAS THIS CHAPTER’S MOST MEMORABLE MOMENT? 1,057 responses

Garnering over ¼ of the votes, Zeke dramatically detonating the thunderspear made a huge impact on us readers, followed by 22.4% finding themselves grappling with Levi’s uncertain fate on the last page. Bringing up 3rd at 20.4% was Zeke and Xaver’s plan to commit eldian genocide through titan eugenics.

Oh god, I did not know fear until I saw Levi being blown away. I was cool with him dying fighting his comrades, but christ, I can't stand the thought of him being critically injured or something. Going out in a blaze of glory is one thing, but no longer being humanity's strongest soldier? That's honestly more painful for me

Zeke's childhood was sad - but we knew that. Doesn't justify genocide - even 'gentle' genocide via sterilization. It felt more like a way of getting pieces in place for the final showdown.

Levi loses his right arm like Erwin! Fuckyeah

Levi better be crippled. Tension in the story increased a lot with him being maimed.

Zeke, you're a cool guy, but that ""Cockblock all eldians"" plan? It ain't gonna happen. The world is a cruel place with or without titans.

WHAT WAS THE BEST REVEAL IN THIS CHAPTER? 1,054 responses

In a chapter full of infodrops, 65.2% found the reveal that the Founding titan can manipulate Eldian DNA to be the most fascinating among them. 15.5% chose the curtain being pulled back a bit on Zeke turning in his parents, revealing Xaver convinced him to. 12.1% chose the tie in to season 2’s ED, with the battle of Lago. 3.7% were taken aback with Xaver’s tragic backstory, selecting it as the best reveal, and 1.9% selecting his profession as a titan researcher. 1.6% of you were shocked to learn that Xaver was able to hide his Eldian status.

I really love the DNA manipulation reveal, it changes a lot of things and allows for a bunch of new theories.

This chapter hasn't changed much for me aside from the revelation that the FT can alter Eldian DNA.

Now we have more questions (like always happens) like if Kruger was involved with Xaver and the decision to turn in Zeke's parents.

There's more backstory for Xaver.

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE REVEAL OF ZEKE’S PLAN? 1,060 responses

Zekerets revealed! Zeke’s master plan to end the world’s suffering through euthanizing the Eldian race was met to mostly mixed responses. 34.8% felt the reveal was alright and gave it a 3, with 32.2% bumping it up to a 4. 15.2% gave it the highest rating, and 17.9% voted unfavorably.

I think Zeke's motive fits his character and the stories themes perfectly. I can understand some people's disappointment expecting him to have some deus ex machina that'll solve all the stories problems and save the Eldians. But I find this far more realistic.

Zeke's ideology is classic "greater good" rhetoric.

Was hoping Zeke would be more morally gray rather than a blatant antagonist so I'm a little disappointed, but I also thought this was genuinely an amazing chapter. My heart broke for young Zeke.

This isn't freedom, neither salvation. This is giving up of his own people lives, because of his own view of the world.

It’s funny, Mikasa’s ‘this world is cruel...’ line is probably the one that best sums up the world of Shingeki. But whilst Mikasa can see the good in the world, Zeke only sees the cruelty, and determines that there is no need to live in a world where people are so endlessly cruel to Eldians. A world in which they are a mistake.

I also like the thematic continuity of how Zeke’s plan was revealed, and how it fit perfectly with what we’ve seen already of how characters discover that “the world is a cruel place”, and how their individual life experiences and relationships lead them to completely different conclusions. I much prefer this kind of big reveal that adds depth to the story & writing, as opposed to something completely sensationalist just for a shock factor

DO YOU THINK EREN IS AWARE OF ZEKE’S PLAN? 1,059 responses

At 52%, just over half of respondents believe that Zeke has let Eren in on his plan, while 16% are sure Eren is oblivious to it. The remaining respondents don't want to say for sure either way.

I think Eren is fully aware of Zeke's plan, but is only letting it go on until Eren gets closer to his own goal, whatever that may be.

I really hope Eren doesn't know Zeke's actual plan. I have a shred of hope left for him and if he agrees to genocide that's out the window

DO YOU THINK EREN AGREES/WILL AGREE WITH ZEKE’S PLAN? 1,056 responses

Over 76% of respondents agree that Eren hasn't gone totally off the deep end and will oppose Zeke's euthanasia plan. A small percentage feel Eren will see things the same as Zeke, while 16% remain uncertain either way. We can all probably agree we need to see his point of view soon, though.

Eren thoughts when?

Zeke as of now represents the perfect opposition to Eren's philosophy and the incoming conflict which will eventually push them to stand against each other is bound to be interesting.

Something is missing here. Zeke and Eren could do their "Eldian Euthanasia" right when they secretly met in Liberio. There has to be more to Zeke's plan.

With the conflicting plans almost confirmed, Jaegerbowl incoming?

I don't think Eren is double-crossing Zeke/only using him/intending to betray him. While I doubt Eren will agree to Zeke's plan, I think it'd be a bit too predictable and underwhelming if Isayama simply decided to do the brother vs brother route now, especially when we haven't seen them properly interact.

There'll be conflict, but maybe not in the way most of the fandom seems to be anticipating.

This chapter firmly confirms that unless Eren has agreed to go along with Zeke's plans, one of them is playing the other.

Eren is definitely either unaware of his bro's endgame or not truly on Zeke's side but pretending he is. I hope it's the latter because that would be so much more interesting to me than Eren being manipulated. I also think there's setup: Zeke projected on Eren literally the first time he ever saw him, thinks Eren is the only other person who understands, and seems like a deeply lonely person on the inside. The inevitable Yeager brothers clash will be awesome either way; they're total opposites. I am dying for Eren PoV soon, ugh.

WAS ZEKE’S CHOICE TO TURN IN HIS PARENTS JUSTIFIED? 1,049 responses

The vast majority (71.1%) agree with Zeke’s decision to report his parents to the Marleyan authorities. Most of those (59.1%) follow Zeke’s own logic: that it at least spared his grandparents and himself, while the remaining 12% simply believe that Grisha and Dina deserved what happened to them. In contrast, almost a quarter think Zeke should have instead tried a little bit harder to talk some sense into Grisha and Dina. Sadly, only 4.6% of respondents believe that he could have saved his parents.

I can't blame Zeke that he betrayed his parents. It was the best decision, to save the life of his grandparents and his own, cause they shouldn't be punished for the sins of Grisha and Dina.

He didn't have a choice. He was manipulated and was just an abused child. A better question, I think, should have been "Was Xaver justified in forcing Zeke to turn in his parents?"

Seriously, I don't feel sorry for Grisha and Dina. Zeke tries to warn them, but they don't listen to him and if you don't want to hear, then you have to be punished and take the consequences.

IN A SERIES FILLED WITH TRAGIC BACKSTORIES, WHERE DOES ZEKE’S RANK? 1,051 responses

Zeke finally got a chance to step up to the plate of tragic backstory, and hit a bit of a bunt. It did the job, but didn’t exceed the home runs hit by Reiner and some others. The majority, at 44.3% felt that while tragic, it doesn’t quite merit eradicating his entire race. Interestingly, the average rating of the chapter increases the more tragic you found Zeke’s childhood, finding the chapter to be more of a narrative success.

Bold of Isayama to think a sad backstory would make me stop wanting Zeke to get rekt.

Zeke's childhood wasn't as tragic as Reiner's. They both had to deal with a lot of problems, but Zeke at least had Xavier and grandparents who cared about him. They gave him love he needed.

I never thought it was possible to make me not hate Zeke Jaeger. But somehow now I barely hate him at all. We'll see how Season 3.2 changes that.

I did enjoy Zeke's backstory but I also found it kind of underwhelming. IDK

Zeke has been my favorite character for years now. Glad to see my instincts were right. He is not the villain people used to think he was.

He was always thought to be a 900 IQ mastermind, but in reality he was even less talented than Reiner was.

Zeke’s flashbacks were very well executed, with the perfect combination of tragic and disturbing, and just the right amount of the classic Isayama “grey morality” to stir up some debate. Each backstory reveal like this is an exercise in empathy, in which we are asked to sympathise with a character just enough to understand where they’re coming from and the suffering they’ve undergone. By having their resulting crimes/actions as bad as they are however (i.e. mass murder), the story does NOT require us to forgive or justify what they’ve done. Rather, it simply invites us to expand our perspective and see the bigger picture, that horrible individuals are both victims and perpetrators of horrible environments; basically, how bad people are made, not born.

Zeke did nothing wrong, he is just a sad little monkey.

TOM XAVER SAID THAT DINA AND GRISHA NEVER LOVED ZEKE. WHAT DO YOU THINK? 1,058 responses

Was Xaver being manipulative? Dramatic? Truthful? Luckily for Zeke, most of us (87.7%) do think that his parents at least loved him in some capacity. Unluckily for Zeke, almost a quarter believe that his parents loved him less than they loved their dreams of restoring their lost empire. Only 12.3% believe that Xaver’s words were honest, and that Grisha and Dina never loved their son - only seeing him as a tool to be used.

I think Dina did love Zeke, but loved the mission more. Grisha however, I think only ever saw him as their "savior", and never took the time to truly think of him as his son.

I used to believe that Zeke was some cruel psychopath. Now I see that he was just a sensitive, unloved child who was forced into some crazy plans of his trash parents. He never wanted to fight, that was not his nature.

Xaver telling Zeke "your parents never loved you" was incredibly manipulative but also (maybe) an attempt at making a bad situation less bad. If Xaver had said, "I know they love you but... " Zeke would have been consumed with guilt for condemning his parents to death. On the flip side, believing he was never loved likely added to the feeling of wishing he'd never been born, and thus the mess we are in.

WAS GRISHA WRONG TO VENTURE OUTSIDE THE WALLS? 1,056 responses

For all of Grisha’s flaws, most of us don’t quite blame him for what happened on that fateful day 37 years ago, when he dared to venture outside the internment zone walls with his little sister Faye. 40% defend him - arguing that he was just a child himself. Only 2.1% blame him, citing that things would have gone fine if he had just followed society’s rules. A little more than a third of us don’t believe that he was personally in the wrong, but that he should not have endangered his sister.

Zeke wasn't so wrong about what happen to Faye, Grisha's curiosity and carelessness cost's the life of his sister.

Grisha, Xaver, Zeke... none of them were ever special or any kind of masterminds but just normal people driven to extreme due to their awful lives.

WHO DO YOU THINK TURNED OUT MORE LIKE GRISHA? 1,048 responses

Unsurprisingly, 80% of respondents believe that Eren is the brother takes after Grisha the most. Heated and bold claims of striving for freedom surely had a part to play in that.

I don't know whether Eren or Zeke will turn out more like Grisha until we find out how they both turn out

I've been saying during months that Grisha destroyed both of his sons, and now we finally have the evidence. They've both taken opposite paths (being different or the same as him) and will end fighting each other, unless Levi manages to accomplish his promise somehow.

Grisha had never really screamed Eren quite as much as this chapter, which truly makes me think how unbelievable it is that Eren inherited his father's titan and his memories along with it, including the absolute regret he felt over how he handled things with the Eldian Restoration Movement and Zeke (read: putting his desire for freedom above people) and then became exactly like him. He literally learned nothing.

UP TO THIS POINT, WHO DO YOU FEEL IS/ARE THE WORST PARENT/PARENTAL FIGURE(S) IN THE SERIES? 1,046 responses

If this story has shown us anything, it’s that Isayama is marvelously skilled at creating problematic parent characters. Rod Reiss still wins the award for worst parent, but Grisha and Dina collectively come in second place after this chapter - with a quarter of respondents choosing them. Other (dis)honorable mentions go to Alma and Karina, who still managed to scrape up more than 15% of the vote each.

Grisha because he had a kid just to use as a tool TWICE!!!

Karina and Alma can share the title. :/

Let me pick more than one xD(Also Alma and Karina both suck)

There is a tie: Karina + Grisha/Dina + Alma + Rod.

They all have their faults as parents so it's hard to focus solely on one option.

They all sucked in their own way

Tom's wife

I don't know why people are letting Grisha's parents off the hook. They are just as awful at parenting as he was (who tells their grandson that his father was responsible for his aunt's gruesome murder? Also, they were pumping him full of just as much propaganda as his parents). Honestly though, that entire family was screwed from the beginning.

Everyone but Carla

Isayama: Worst parents? Worst childhood? Hold my beer. Now I wonder what did Isayama counter when he was young.

DO YOU THINK XAVER WAS A GOOD PERSON? 1,054 responses

Most of us felt positively about Mr. Xaver after seeing his backstory, with 65.4% feeling he had good interests at heart for Zeke. More of us are uncertain about his true motives, with 8.9% feeling he wasn’t genuine at all.

Xaver's doing that freaky "hide true emotions behind opaque glass lenses" thing that Zeke did a lot, giving me a concern

Definitely enjoy Zeke less as a villain now, but hope Kruger and Xaver keep on being creepy enough to make up for it.

It’s Xaver, not Xavier; spell it properly r/SnK!!!

Xaver is a kind and wise monky man, but with lots of secrets. Hoping to see more of him in the future.

Even though Xaver may be a schemer, he met Zeke by chance, so I believe in him.

About Tom Xaver...for me he looks friendly and I feel bad for him too, as he said that his wife killed their son and herself as she found out, that she has married an eldia. I guess, she doesn't want to take the consequences, cause it isn't allowed for marleyans to have a romantic relationship to an eldia. It was really sweet, that Xaver see's in Zeke his own son and was more a father figure to Zeke.

Zeke’s “watch this, Mr Xaver” is kind of sad; it’s obvious that Zeke respected him more than anyone else in his life...and he was just using Zeke. I wonder if Zeke realised that at any point during his adult life...

THE MONKEY TOY HAS MADE A REAPPEARANCE. DO YOU THINK THIS IS SIGNIFICANT? 1,053 responses

62% of us felt that Zeke’s cute monkey toy, featured prominently in both Grisha’s and Xaver’s memories, has some significance to the plot going forward.

I feel like the Monkey Toy is a plushie of the Beast Titan, like each of the seven Titans in Marley have toys based on them. Xaver's son and Zeke being shown to have them is probably done to show that, but I wouldn't be surprised it is used as delayed foreshadowing as a writing technique to foreshadow who Xaver and Zeke will turn into later on.

I'm glad to see that somebody else noticed the monkey toy; I was really excited that it showed up again.

DO YOU THINK XAVER WAS WORKING WITH KRUGER? 1,039 responses

The fandom is almost perfectly split with regard to Tom Xaver, and whether or not he was aligned with Eren Kruger. Half of us have donned our tin foil hats and are ready for the conspiracy to be unveiled, while the other half is more optimistic that Xaver was an authentic part of Zeke’s life - or at least independent from the Owl’s schemes.

Both Grisha and Zeke were groomed since childhood to inherit titan-shifting powers by Kruger and Xaver.

I don't know if Xaver is/was working together with Kruger and I kinda doubt that. Maybe Kruger used Xaver, cause he was a researcher from the titan-science about the information, but who knows? We don't have any proof of this.

If Xaver isn't the doctor who falsified Kruger's documents I will shit on my own head

WHICH TITAN DO YOU THINK IS THE “BEST” TITAN? 1,052 responses

A typo in the official translation lead to an interesting question: Which would be the best titan to inherit? The Warhammer titan wins out with its ability to create almost anything. The supposed ultimate titan, the Founding, came in second place, while the raging Attack Titan fought its way into third. The Armored Titan racked up 7.9%, the Female Titan got 6.9%, and the Beast Titan garnered 4.8% for best titan. The icon for the titans, the Colossal obtained 4.7% of the vote, with the Jaw titan following with 3.3%. The poor Cart Titan got a measly 2.1% of the vote.

Part of me wonders if an inherent trait of the beast titan is to create war? For the sake of conflict?

The whole Titan and World History is what I'm interested the most.

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE FOLLOWING CHARACTERS AFTER THIS CHAPTER?

This more introspective chapter drastically changed opinions on a few characters, while others who had less focus were rather unchanged. The main character of the chapter, Zeke, saw his favorability increase a bit with his time in the spotlight. His parents weren’t as lucky, with Grisha tanking the hardest after we see him through Zeke’s young eyes. We also got to know Xaver for the first time, and the new info lead most to becoming fans of his. Magath, Eren, and Levi remained at about the same level, with Levi going up the most of the three in his time of peril.

I miss eren, I love zeke and grisha is a bastard

Levi is - as always - an arrogant midget who paid for his silliness, finally (he knows that a shifter can regenerate from the brain, and he still uses a single spear!). Historia will save all the Eldians asses from suicidal Zeke in the end - she has her agenda, but Eren is still a mystery to me. Grisha is the worst character and Dina truly disappoint me.

I get that Levi is the most popular character, but dear god am i tired of everything revolving around him. can we have one sequence of events without it being the Levi Drama Hour

Xaver good boi

I have to say, the Marley arc was a real turning point for how I felt about Zeke. He went from 'someone I love to hate and want to see suffer' to 'I can't believe I actually kinda like this guy'. Then his betrayal happened, and while I didn't go back to hating him as viscerally as before, I couldn't help but feel a bit bitter about the whole thing. But this chapter. This. Damn. Chapter. It was everything I could ever need to fall in love with his character. Don't get me wrong! He's still wrong, on so many different levels and I definitely do NOT want him to succeed with his plans! But I hope, in the end, he can find some peace for himself.

But is it Xaver or Xavier tho?

DOES ZEKE’S RATIONALE FOR KILLING PEOPLE HELP JUSTIFY IT? 1,050 responses

With all of his Zekerets seemingly revealed, Zeke attempts to explain why he’s snuffed out so many souls over the course of the story. Almost half of the fandom, at 46.6% understand what he’s saying, but don’t think it justifies his past actions. On the other hand, 41.5% don’t buy a single word coming out of his mouth.

Justification isn't the right word. It gives me a means of understanding his reasoning, and I sympathise more because of it. But racial cleansing is not justifiable, no matter how little you value your own life., but given his history, that is also understandable

At the end of the day he's no different than all the other people that built mountains of corpses to stand upon so everyone could hear them preach about peace.

His mindset and feelings of defeat are completely understandable but nothing ever justifies killing people the way he does.

His parents and Xaver made him this way. It can't be helped. I think he's lying to himself. He clearly enjoyed torturing people. It was like a game to him. I think he isn't sane.

There’s always a “reason” for what people do, but it doesn’t always justify their actions.

No. But, I understand where he is coming from, and it's just truly heartbreaking that this was the solution that he feels is best for all Eldians.

Aah man. This is probably one of the only times I understand an antagonist’s desire to destroy humanity/a race

Fuck him, he killed our precious Erwin

WHICH END GAME SCENARIO DO YOU THINK IS MOST LIKELY? 1,048 responses

At 62%, the majority of voters feel that the end game will be to free the Eldian people from the power of the titans. 13% feel that the titan power will remain, but that the rest of the world will learn to stop viewing them as monsters and 10% feel that Eldians will all die.

DNA will be the solution to remove curse

I can’t help but to draw parallels with the real world. I want more than anything for Marley to stop holding Eldians to the crimes of their ancestors and to talk with each other instead of further alienating each other.

WHICH IS THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS? 997 responses

The conundrum to end all conundrums. If peace doesn’t end up being on the table, one side has to go. Just over ¾ of the fandom, at 76% feel that bringing an end to the Eldians would be a lesser evil than wiping out the rest of the world.

I think at this point it's clear there's no 'good' way to solve the Eldians' problems, unfortunately.

Genocide can never be the lesser evil. Murder is never justified.

Neither Zeke nor Eren's plan qualify as the lesser of two evils, imo. The point is that they are both deeply flawed goals that bring a lot of misery. Neither are desirable outcomes.

I can't see either out of 'killing all Eldians' or 'killing the rest of the world' as the lesser of two evils, even if killing all Eldians is technically lesser in numbers terms. They're both just evil.

I actually find some comfort in the fact that Zeke sees no way out of this situation for the Eldians. He has no ultimate Zekeret plan, he genuinely believes the situation is impossible for them. Which is exactly how us fans feel since literally any possible solution that would either make any form of sense or wouldn't be massively unrealistic, or an overly optimistic stretch are non-existent right now.

Zeke knows that peace between humans and eldians is impossible and eldians will never be accepted in the world. Instead of crushing humans, he decided to remove the eldian race.

If I'm to choose between two evils, then I prefer not to choose at all. Fuck that, I'll find another way or die trying.

WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING DO YOU THINK ARE TRUE OF YMIR FRITZ? 1,029 responses

Ymir Fritz is the biggest mystery within the world of SNK, and for us as well. The only place most of the fandom seems to agree on her is that she’ll likely be important to the story’s ending, with 77.3%. 52.9% are putting the new info given this chapter about biological manipulation to use, theorizing she used that to create titans. 50.3% believe she came in contact with the source, whereas 21.7% think the devil was responsible. 34.3% believe PATHS are at play and she has, is, or will contact Eren. The majority of respondents don’t believe the ramblings of Grisha and the restorationists, with only 14.3% believing she was in fact a benevolent person. Interestingly, people who selected that she is benevolent, as well as those who think paths contact with Eren is likely, on average had every other option chosen far more as well.

Honestly, Ymir Fritz was probably just a girl that wanted to save her people and had no idea what she was doing.

The true History will be play a huge part about the end, I guess.

Another friend discussed the idea of maybe the beast titan being the organic source/devil that Ymir made contact with. Just fun ideas to throw around.

WHAT CONDITION DO YOU THINK LEVI IS IN PHYSICALLY? 1,052 responses

Captain Levi has made it through his fair share of death-defying ordeals, but this time he may not have escaped unscathed. 35.9% of respondents believe he’s done it once again, escaping with only minor injuries. 28.6% feel the captain is in more dire straits, losing both an arm and a leg. 24.5% feel he lost just an arm, similar to Commander Erwin. Only 4.8% feel the Captain has breathed his last.

He's been through worse. Not worried

Best case scenario he's missing just his right foot. Worst case (assuming he lives), Levi is half his original height.

He has Ackerhacks, he's fine

Hope he's dead. Too op

One thing I haven't seen anybody mention, Levi was holding a sword before the explosion. I think it's possible the dude might've been impaled by his blade, in which case he might be screwed.

He will probably fall into the river and be led somewhere by the stream. Maybe to end like Kenny with a last discussion or memory.

He’s not dead... yet

WHAT ARE YOU MOST HOPING TO SEE NEXT CHAPTER? 1,054 responses

With a whopping ¾ of respondents worried about Levi’s fate (followed by nearly 50% wondering what happened to Zeke), the majority of us are hoping Isayama doesn’t leave us on this cliffhanger for too long. Historia brings up 3rd, possibly based on the theory that she’ll find Levi and help him?

I wanna see Floch get jumped tbh I used to stan but I can’t anymore

I'm afraid that Isayama killed Levi

I'm just over here waiting to see what Reiner and friends are up to, probably getting the whereabouts of Annie and attempting to free her

At this point my pet theory is Historia somehow swooping in Valkyrie-style and making everything better. Hey, a girl can dream, right?

I don't think Levi is dead, he's a survivor! If any man can, Levi Ackerman can!

WHERE DO YOU PRIMARILY DISCUSS THE SERIES?

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON THE CHAPTER?

Chapter 112 - Zeke is using Eren. Chapter 113 - Zeke and Eren are working together. Chapter 114 - Eren is using Zeke. It's quite amazing how fast it changed.

What's the right, what's the truth, what to believe?

I was absolutely blown away by how artfully Xavier's back story was told. Those panels are haunting, and beautiful, and so well constructed. The kind of thing that will definitely stick with me for a long time. Isayama has become a truly amazing artist.

I have so much respect for Ymir. Despite having the shittiest childhood, she ended up being one of the most emotionally stable characters.

THE CHAPTER OF MY LIFE and Leave baby zeke alone you monsters *i meant you fandom*

At least Isyama knows how to make the final boss sympathetic. Even if his writing in most places leaves a little more to be desired, I am definitely enjoying the story for the story's sake.

Really miss Pieck…

[Levi] has a bruised ego, due to being so fucKING STUPID YOU DUMBFUCK WHY WOULD YOU GIVE THE ENEMY A BOMB

If you don't think Levi was remembering his choice in chapter 84 when Zeke said that stuff about saving the soldiers he killed you're wrong.

Should have gone for the head, Captain.

this chapter makes me feel like us readers have been caught in the final explosion, too. I see so many people who hated or disliked Zeke before, sympathize with him now.

I don't know how a person can stand and say one person deserves to die and I sure as hell don't know how one person can say whole nation deserves deaths. This is genocide, not euthanasia, but Hitler and Stalin would've approved this plan.

So, my dislike of Zeke aside, kid went through some shit. Every one only wanted to push their own ideas and agendas onto him to guarantee their own safety. He reminds me of Reiner, sans the rebellious parents. He went through just as much as Zeke did as a kid, but Reiner is racked with guilt over what he's been forced to do. Zeke hasn't shown any genuine sympathy; even Eren managed to look lifeless and affected by his self directed actions in Marley. And that kid LOVES killing people.

The fandom theories for his actions were setting people up for disappointment. This is a story about common people who are forced into abhorrent positions and have to make the best out of shitty circumstances.

I feel like Zeke's plan is perfectly valid if we take a step back and see the Eldian race as what it is. Each individual is an intelligent WOMD linked to a hivemind with limitless potential for change. Suddenly the Eldian people don't look as harmless. As readers however we've only been following from one perspective, and didn't fully get to see how terrifying the Eldian empire was.

[Zeke’s] whole plan sounds unbelivably stupid that even Hanji and Armin's "let's just talk lol" sounds more reasonable in comparison

As more chapters release, I'm struggling to fathom how Annie would become relevant to the plot line later on, or if ever.

The manga is reaching levels of depression I couldn’t think it was possible to reach inside me. Maybe it’s because of how long I follow AoT. This is a very tragic and sad story, Isayama is telling us, and I think it has more in store to come. Brace yourselves, my fellow soldiers....

If Levi is going down, let it be a glorious end, not like that. Just give him some satisfaction finally, no crippling please, he's suffered enough. Come on Yams, I believe in you :)

This chapter really tugged at my heartstrings. As a reader, being aware of and mourning Zeke's lost childhood doesn't excuse his behaviour as an adult, however, I'm really glad we finally got to hear Zeke's side of the story.

I'm really tired of Isayama using cliffhangers to stir people into a frenzy and this chapter was the worst of it. People wanting Zeke's spinal fluid to have gotten into Levi's wounds (I guess so he can turn into a titan), Levi having the ability to regenerate or turn into a freaking titan out of nowhere because Ackermans' powers do come from PATHS also. Really? All of that sounds horrible and I really hope none of it happens.

I was hoping for this chapter to not be as bad as the chapters normally are since Isayama married and shit bu holy fuck I was wrong. The happier this man the sadder we get.

Zeke should be a Final Fantasy villian instead of an SnK antagonist

Cool motive, still genocide.

im eating a cucumber

#snk 114 #snk chapter 114 #snk polls #snk poll results

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butihavejoy · 6 years

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Lost Cause

This fic is brought to you by my thirteenth hour at work and more coffee than one human should reasonably consume in a day.

Got my mind on GOTV and GOTV on my mind...

“He’s cheating on me,” Rafael said mournfully.

“He’s not cheating on you,” Olivia said without looking up from her phone.

Rafael glared at her, though since she was still looking at her phone, the effect was mostly lost. “Then how else do you explain him being gone all the time, and when he is finally home, being so exhausted that all he wants to do is sleep?”

Olivia sighed and set her phone down on the bar at Forlini’s. “Could be the double overtime he’s been pulling lately.”

“Yeah, and whose fault is that?” Rafael grumbled under his breath. “But he hasn’t been at work. Believe me, I’ve called the precinct enough times looking for him. He’s just been MIA for most of this past month. And now he’s spending the entire weekend with his parents on Staten Island?” He shook his head, the pit in his stomach growing bigger as it had been with each passing day. “Something’s up with him.”

“Here’s a thought, and just hear me out here: have you tried asking Sonny where he’s been going?”

It was hard to tell in the dim light of the bar, but all of a sudden, Rafael’s cheeks seemed awfully pink, and he seemed suddenly very focused on his drink. “That’s not the point,” he snapped, after swallowing a mouthful of scotch. “I shouldn’t have to ask because if it wasn’t something bad, he should tell me.”

Olivia sighed, and for one moment, it looked like she might impart some much-needed wisdom onto him. Instead, she drained her glass of wine and stood. “Talk to your boyfriend,” she ordered. “He’s the only one who has the answers you’re looking for.”

Rafael glowered at her retreating back. “Thanks for the pep talk, Liv,” he called. “Really feels like old times.” He scowled down at his phone, his last text to Sonny — How’re things at your parents? — still unanswered. “Hard to talk to him when he’s not answering my texts,” he muttered, though he suddenly brightened, undoubtedly bolstered by a bellyful of scotch. “Unless…”

He drained his scotch, tossed some bills on the bar and grabbed his coat, finally resolved on what he needed to do.

---

While Sonny’s parents had turned his childhood bedroom into the guest room decades before, Rafael would always find the image of Sonny in the room surprisingly adorable, all the more so when he was sprawled on his stomach across the full size bed, snoring like a freight train.

Or at least, it would be adorable if it wasn’t 11 at night and if Rafael didn’t have a million questions for him.

Dom and Tessa hadn’t even asked any questions when Rafael showed up unannounced on their doorstep, just gesturing for him to traipse up the narrow stairway to Sonny’s bedroom, where the idiot love of his life was certainly not cheating on him with anything other than one of Tessa’s hand-stitched quilts, and for a moment, Rafael was tempted to call the whole thing off.

But then again, just because he wasn’t cheating on him tonight…

He sat on the edge of the bed, the mattress creaking under his weight, and he reached out to run a hand down Sonny’s side. “Sonny,” he said quietly. “Wake up.”

It took a few more tries to get Sonny to open his eyes just enough to squint at Rafael. “Raf?” he said thickly. “What’re you—” He sat bolt upright, the quilt falling off of him and revealing an old, stretched out Harvard t-shirt that definitely shouldn’t have made Rafael’s heart skip a beat at the sight. “Is everything ok?” he asked urgently, searching Rafael’s expression.

Rafael winced. “Everything’s fine,” he assured him, and Sonny’s brow furrowed.

“Everything’s fine and yet you came all the way out to Staten Island in the middle of the night?”

“It’s just after 11,” Rafael informed him. “Hardly the middle of the night.”

Sonny glared at him. “That’s not the point and you know it.”

Rafael sighed. “I know,” he said, before clearing his throat, feeling suddenly very embarrassed. “I just — that is to say, I was, um—”

“Spit it out,” Sonny told him somewhat more sharply than usual.

“I wanted to know what you’ve been up to.”

Sonny blinked. “Huh?”

Rafael waved a dismissive hand. “The long nights, the days when you’ve been too busy to do anything...I was curious.”

Something darkened in Sonny’s expression. “No, you were suspicious,” he said, running a hand across his face before flopping back down on the bed. “Jesus fucking Christ, Raf, you came all this way just to accuse me of cheating on you?”

“Technically, I didn’t—” Sonny glared at him and Rafael winced, the words dying in his throat. “I’m sorry,” he offered. “I know I shouldn’t—”

“No, you shouldn’t,” Sonny informed him dryly. “Mainly because first and foremost, I would never—”

“I know—” Rafael started, but Sonny ignored him.

“And you should trust me, and second of all, I wanted it to be a surprise.”

Rafael frowned. “Wanted what to be a surprise?”

Sonny waved at the desk chair, which was heaped with what looked like dirty laundry, and Rafael wrinkled his nose before glancing back at him. “Can’t you just tell me?” he asked.

When Sonny just glared at him, he sighed and stood, making his way over and carefully picking up a discarded t-shirt from the top of the pile, glancing down at it in surprise. “Max Rose for Congress,” he read aloud before looking back at Sonny. “You’ve been volunteering?”

“Yeah,” Sonny said, slowly sitting up again. “Our district doesn’t have a competitive race, you know, and I wanted to do something for you that would make you proud, so I figured since this was as good a chance as any to try to turn Staten Island blue…”

He shrugged, looking uncomfortable, and Rafael just shook his head slowly. “So in what precious little time you get off from work, you’ve been coming to Staten Island to canvass and phone bank for a congressional long-shot?”

Sonny’s expression fell slightly. “Well, like I said, I figured—”

“Sonny,” Rafael interrupted, but he couldn’t bring himself to continue, too choked up with unexpected and inexplicable emotion. “That’s—”

He broke off, shaking his head, and tossed the t-shirt aside before crossing back to the bed, bending down and kissing Sonny, cradling his jaw in both hands. Sonny laughed lightly, wrapping his arms around Rafael’s waist and pulling him closer. “So you don’t think I’m an idiot who’s wasting my time?”

“I think you’re incredible,” Rafael told him sincerely, kissing him once more. “I think what you’re doing is incredible.” He paused, running his thumb lightly across Sonny’s cheekbone. “I do wish you had told me, though.”

Sonny sighed. “I know, and I’m sorry if I worried you—”

“No, not because of that,” Rafael said, a little impatiently. “Don’t you think I would’ve been out there every weekend with you?”

Sonny laughed again, and this time he pulled Rafael down onto the bed so that he could kiss him properly. “I thought you didn’t believe in lost causes,” he teased.

“FiveThirtyEight has the race at 2 in 7 that the Democrat wins,” Rafael said. “I’ve managed with worse odds than that.” He kissed Sonny’s cheek before adding, “Besides, I fell in love with you, so it appears I have a weakness for lost causes after all…”

Sonny poked him lightly in the stomach, grinning when Rafael winced exaggeratedly. “Well, good news is, there’s still three days to the election,” Sonny told him. “And I’m sure they could find a good Spanish-speaking precinct to have you canvass in tomorrow. If you wanted to help, anyway.”

Rafael made a face. “Knock doors on a Sunday and try to convince all the abuelitas to talk to me on a Sunday?”

“Better than trying to convince all the nonnas I’m gonna end up talking to,” Sonny said with a laugh. “Besides, you never know. They might take one look at you and decide you need fattening up.”

Rafael glanced balefully down at his waistline. “Doubtful,” he sighed, before seizing the opportunity to poke Sonny in the stomach. “You, on the other hand—”

“Stop, my ma’s been on my ass about it enough,” Sonny said with a laugh, pushing his hand away before glancing up at Rafael hopefully. “So what do you say?”

Rafael considered it for a moment. He had a bad back, and bad knees, neither of which would be helped by spending the night on an unfamiliar, too-small bed wearing pajamas he had to borrow from Dom, and the idea of walking around, knocking on doors and talking to strangers was a literal nightmare.

But on the other hand, the man he loved was looking at him with something like hope in his expression, and he knew he could never say no to him. “I’m in,” he said, lacing his fingers with Sonny’s and squeezing his hand. “It may be a long shot, but if we want anything to change, then it’s worth the effort.”

“It is,” Sonny told him, leaning in to kiss him once more. “It really, really is.”

FIND YOUR POLLING PLACE HERE AND VOTE ON NOVEMBER 6!!!!

#barisi #rafael barba #sonny carisi #barisi fic #svu fic #yes I did just use my dinner break to word-vomit a barisi fic about voting #ask me if I have any regrets #hint hint I DON'T #and vote like your goddamn life depends on it because it does #and now back to phonebanking

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patriotsnet · 3 years

Text

Which Democratic Candidate Would Republicans Vote For

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/which-democratic-candidate-would-republicans-vote-for/

Which Democratic Candidate Would Republicans Vote For

How Are Primary Elections Conducted In California

Why lifelong Republican voted for a Democratic candidate in GA

All candidates for voter-nominated offices are listed on one ballot and only the top two vote-getters in the primary election regardless of party preference move on to the general election. Write-in candidates for voter-nominated offices can only run in the primary election. A write-in candidate will only move on to the general election if the candidate is one of the top two vote-getters in the primary election.

Prior to the Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act, the top vote-getter from each qualified political party, as well as any write-in candidate who received a certain percentage of votes, moved on to the general election.

The Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act does not apply to candidates running for U.S. President, county central committee, or local office.

Why You Need To Vote In The Primary Elections

True or false. You only need to vote in the November presidential election and not the primary elections.

FALSE!

For most American voters, the presidential primary elections matter more than the general election. Like Ive said before, if you live in a red state or a blue state, your vote in the presidential election wont make a difference. The rest of your state will overwhelming vote for a Democrat or a Republican. Your vote wont change your states outcome. .

But the primary elections are an entirely different story.

The presidential primaries determine who will represent the Republicans and the Democrats during the November election. Instead of voting between just 2 candidates, you have the choice of 3 Democrats or 12 Republicans. Unlike the general election, you actually have a chance of voting for your preferred candidate, not just the lesser of two evils.

How Do I Register To Vote

You have a few options:

If you have a New York drivers license or state ID from the Department of Motor Vehicles, you can register online using this tool from NYC Votes and TurboVote.

If you dont have a New York drivers license or state ID, the law requires that you sign a form and mail it to the Board of Elections office.

You can use this site to have the forms mailed to you, or you can and print the forms yourself to fill out and mail in. If you request to have the forms sent to you, they come with a pre-addressed envelope to return them.

You will be asked to plug in your name as it appears on your state ID. If you dont have one, thats OK. Just put how your name appears on official documents.

If you need language access or you want to help someone register to vote in another language, you can download the registration forms and FAQs in a bunch of languages here.

You can also request voter registration forms in various languages by calling 1-866-VOTENYC.

Lastly, you can pick up voter registration forms at any library branch, any post office or any city agency office.

After you fill them out, mail them to the BOEs main office:

Board of Elections

New York, NY 10004-1609

And make sure its postmarked by May 28.

Other materials needed: If you dont have a state ID, you will need to provide the last four digits of your Social Security number.

Don’t Miss: Democrats More Educated Than Republicans

Listen To The Podcast Episode

A dizzying selection of 46 candidates appear on the ballot in California’s recall election. Here’s a closer look at four of them three Republicans and one Democrat.

Aired: August 23, 2021 |

Early voting is underway in the Sept. 14 recall election that will decide whether California Gov. Gavin Newsom will be removed from office. The first question on the ballot is a simple yes or no: Should Newsom be recalled?

The second question who should replace Newsom if the recall passes has many voters scratching their heads. Forty-six candidates appear on the ballot, most of them longshots with little to no name recognition or political experience.

KPBS chose to examine the four replacement candidates who have most frequently polled near the top and have raised the most money. Here are details on those four.

Conservative radio host Larry Elder has led in most polls, likely helped by his national profile. But his right-wing politics would be a dramatic departure from the leftward trend in California.

Elder, who is Black, denies the existence of system racism. He opposes gun control, abortion rights and clings to the outdated term “illegal alien” to describe immigrants who are in the country without legal permission.

Elder also believes the minimum wage should be abolished.

Aired 8/23/21 on KPBS News

Listen to this story by Andrew Bowen.

Democratic Majority Whip Says He’s Disappointed But Not Surprised Republicans Voted To Block The Bill

Sen. Dick Durbin, the Democratic Majority Whip, said on CNN that he was “disappointed but not surprised” that Republicans voted to block the sweeping voting rights bill today.

“I thought perhaps some of the;Republicans would step up and;say that this national strategy;of changing state laws and;making it more difficult was;just wrong, but they didn’t.;They stood together,” he said.

Durbin went on to criticize Republicans as “the party that is supporting voter suppression.”

“I hope they understand, as we;do, that going in history as a;party that is supporting voter;suppression is not a good place.;For many decades, the Democratic;party of the early 20th century;was that party.;I’m not proud of that moment,;and I don’t make any excuses for;it.;I don’t want to be part of it in;the future, and I hope many;Republicans feel the same,” he said.

You May Like: Why Does Donald Trump Wear Red Ties

What You Need To Know

The Democrats voting and election bill failed to advance in the Senate after a procedural vote to open debate on the legislation was defeated by a tally of 50-50, falling short of the 60 votes needed to succeed.

Senate Democrats pitched the legislation as necessary to counter efforts by GOP-led legislatures to swiftly pass state laws that would impose restrictions on voting.;

All 50 Senate Republicans united in opposing the bill, having decried it as a partisan power grab and federal overreach into state voting and election systems.

Our live coverage has ended. Read more about today’s vote here.

List Of Registered 2024 Presidential Candidates

The following table lists candidates who filed with the FEC to run for president. Some applicants used pseudonyms; candidate names and party affiliations are written as they appeared on the FEC website on the date that they initially filed with the FEC.

Candidates who have filed for the 2024 presidential election Candidate

Also Check: How Many States Are Controlled By Republicans

Democrats Are United In Support Of Cooperation With Us Allies Differ On Importance Of Us Military Superiority

Democratic registered voters overwhelmingly agree that the United States should address the interests of its allies when conducting foreign policy. This view varies little among supporters of Democratic presidential candidates.

Fully 87% of Democratic voters say the U.S. should take into the account the interests of its allies when making foreign policy decisions, even if it means making compromises with them. Few say the U.S. should follow its own national interests, even when its allies strongly disagree.

Republican and Republican-leaning voters are divided over whether the United States should follow its own national interests, even when allies disagree or address the interests of allies, even if this means compromises .

There is far less agreement among Democrats in views of whether U.S. policy should work to maintain its global military superiority. Among Democratic voters who name Warren as their first choice for the nomination, 65% say that in the future it would be acceptable if another country became as militarily powerful as the U.S.; just 31% say U.S. policies should try to maintain its position as the worlds only military superpower.

Majorities of those who support Sanders and Buttigieg also say it would be acceptable if another country became as militarily powerful as the U.S.

Republican voters, by a margin of about 4-to-1 , say U.S. policies should try to keep it that America is the only military superpower.

Recent History Isn’t As Bleak As Dems Might Think

California Primary 2020: Why independents can vote for Democrats, but not for Republicans

In 2020, national Democrats looked to Texas with hope and helped raise money for State House races they thought could be flipped to take control of the chamber in Austin. The goal was to have Democrats steering the wheel when redistricting maps were drawn in 2021.;

The Democrats didnât lose any seats, but they didnât pick up any either.;

That election came on the heels of 2018 when Texas Democrats flipped 12 seats in the State House and former congressman Beto OâRourke came within 2.5 percentage points of beating Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.;

While 2020 may have been a disappointment after 2018, the Democratsâ position needs to be put into perspective, Van Meter said.

“Texas Democrats have spent the last 20 years trying to build up infrastructure in a state where everyone believes that it’s not possible to elect a Democrat,â she said.;

More and more Democratic candidates have entered local and state races in recent years after decades of election cycles when there would often be no opposition challengers to the Republican candidates.

Democratsâ momentum in 2020 continued with increased registration and voter turnout, she said.;

âIt just so happened that so did the Republicans,â Van Meter said.

The fact that Donald Trump was on the ballot proved to be a huge motivator for Republicans who previously werenât registered to get to the polls.

Read Also: What Caused Republicans To Gain Power In Congress In 1938

Democrats’ Recall Dilemma: Should They Cast A Vote For A Candidate To Replace Gavin Newsom

For many Democrats and other opponents of the recall, question No. 1 is easy. They plan to vote ‘no’.

But what about question No. 2?

That’s a dilemma for Democrats because the best-known recall candidates are Republicans like Newsom’s 2018 opponent John Cox and conservative talk radio host Larry Elder. By not voting on question No. 2, Democratic voters risk ceding the recall election to a candidate whose views they oppose.

Elder, for instance, believes that the minimum wage should be abolished and supports former President Donald Trump. Cox courted Trump’s endorsement in 2018. Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, another well-known candidate, supported Trump’s 2020 campaign.

There are 46 candidates on the recall ballot, including nine Democrats.

The California Democratic Party is urging left-leaning voters not to select anyone on the recall ballot’s second question.

“The California Democratic Party is activating voters to vote no on the Republican Recall and leave the second question blank. It’s the only way to stop Republicans who want to take California back to some very dark days,” said party spokeswoman Shery Yang.

Former Newsom spokesman, Nathan Click, reiterated Yang’s advice for Democratic voters.

“Leave it blank. Voting no is the only way to block the Republican power grab and prevent the Republican takeover of California,” Click said.

‘No on recall, yes on Bustamante’

Bustamante told his supporters to vote “no on recall, yes on Bustamante.”

Rutherford B Hayes: Campaigns And Elections

The Campaign and Election of 1876

As the favorite son of Ohio, Rutherford B. Hayes had much in his favor. Both regular and reform Republicans liked him. He was a war hero, had supported Radical Reconstruction legislation, and championed African American suffrage. He also came from a large swing state. His reputation for integrity was excellent, and his support of bipartisan boards of state institutions endeared him to reformers. Hayes ultimately, though, realized that his simple “availability” was his greatest strength. Distasteful to no one, he was the second choice among the supporters of the other leading candidates. Nevertheless, Hayes insisted on a united Ohio delegationand at the same time did nothing to lessen his availability.;

Moreover, the 1876 Republican convention was in Cincinnati, which teemed with Hayes supporters. “Availability” did work for Hayes. James G. Blaine, the frontrunner and the favorite of partisan Republicans, was tarnished by allegations of corruption; Oliver P. Morton, the favorite of Radicals, was in ill health; Benjamin H. Bristow, the favorite of reformers, was anathema to Grant; and Roscoe Conkling, the quintessential spoils politician, was unacceptable to reformers and to Blaine. In the end, none of these candidates could muster the votes of the majority of the convention. By the fifth ballot, Hayes had picked up votes; by the seventh, he had clinched the nomination.

The Disputed Election of 1876

Read Also: Donald Trump Saying Republicans Are Stupid

Harris: The Fight Is Not Over

Vice President Kamala Harris’ told reporters that “the fight is not over” after Republicans unanimously blocked the Democrats’ sweeping election and voting reform bill.

Harris expressed that she and President Biden intend to continue to push for voting reform, including the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which is likely to come to the Senate floor later this year.

This what Harris told reporters after leaving the Senate floor where she presided over the vote:

“I was here today because obviously this is one of the most critical issues that the United States Congress could take up, which is about the fundamental right to vote in our country. And I think it is clear, certainly, for the American people that when we’re talking about the right to vote, it is not a Republican concern or a Democratic concern. It is an American concern. This is about the American people’s right to vote unfettered. It is about their access to the right to vote in a meaningful way. Because nobody is debating, I don’t believe, whether all Americans have the right to vote. The issue is the access to the voting process. Or is that being impeded? And the bottom line is that the President and I are very clear. We support S-1. We support the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the fight is not over.”

Watch Harris’ remarks:

Cancellation Of State Caucuses Or Primaries

The Washington Examiner reported on December 19, 2018, that the South Carolina Republican Party had not ruled out forgoing a primary contest to protect Trump from any primary challengers. Party chairman Drew McKissick stated, Considering the fact that the entire party supports the president, well end up doing whats in the presidents best interest. On January 24, another Washington Examiner report indicated that the Kansas Republican Party was likely to scrap its presidential caucus to save resources.

In August 2019, the Associated Press reported that the Nevada Republican Party was also contemplating canceling their caucuses, with the state party spokesman, Keith Schipper, saying it isnt about any kind of conspiracy theory about protecting the president; Hes going to be the nominee; This is about protecting resources to make sure that the president wins in Nevada and that Republicans up and down the ballot win in 2020.

Kansas, Nevada and South Carolinas state committees officially voted on September 7, 2019, to cancel their caucus and primary. The Arizona state Republican Party indicated two days later that it will not hold a primary. These four were joined by the Alaska state Republican party on September 21, when its central committee announced they would not hold a presidential primary.

Virginia Republicans decided to allocate delegates at the state convention.

You May Like: What Is Donald Trump A Republican Or Democrat

The 2024 Republican Presidential Candidate Wild Cards

The first Democratic debate back in 2019 had 20 TWENTY! candidates, so dont be surprised if the Republican field is just as large or larger. We could have some more governors or representatives run, or even other nontraditional candidates, like a Trump family member, a Fox News host or a celebrity, like Dwayne The Rock Johnson, whos said hes seriously considering a run. Stranger things have happened.

No Party Preference Voters: Pay Attention

Registered Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Libertarians and other party members, rest assured. You are guaranteed a primary ballot with all of your partys presidential contenders on it.

But voters who dont belong to a political party the fastest growing voting block in the state will have to navigate a more daunting set of obstacles to cast a presidential primary vote.

Some parties have members only policies:

The Republican Party

The Green Party

The Peace and Freedom Party

If you want to vote in one of these three primaries, youll have to join that party. You cant do it as a member of any other party, or even as a no party preference independent. No exceptions.;

The following three parties do allow political independents to cast ballots in their presidential primaries :

The Democratic Party

The Libertarian Party

The American Independent Party

But and this is an important caveat these voters do have to specifically request the ballot they want.

For those who vote in person, this is a cinch. Just go into your polling place when its time to vote and ask. But independents who vote by mail need to let your county know which ballot they want ahead of time.

Maybe you received a postcard that looks like this:

And if youve already received a ballot in the mail and were disappointed by the lack of presidential candidates, do notfill it out. You can always request a new ballot, but trying to vote twice is frowned upon .

Recommended Reading: Did Republicans And Democrats Switch Names

Counties Are Doing Things A Little Differently This Time

If you live in one of the counties highlighted below, voting might look a little different this year.

In 2016, California passed the Voter Choice Act, a law aimed at modernizing the states election system, such that:

Every registered voter gets a ballot in the mail

Voters are no longer required to go to a specific polling place, but can vote at any number of voting centers or drop-off points

Voters can cast their ballots in person beginning 11 days before, and up to and including, Election Day

In 2018, five counties rolled out the new system. This year, 10 more will join their ranks. Thats fifteen counties in all containing 49% of the state population.

This is key for no party preference voters living in these counties who may not get the ballot they want in the mail. See the previous section for details.

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theliberaltony · 4 years

Link

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarah (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): Former Vice President Joe Biden’s team is talking a big game about an expanded electoral map with Arizona, Georgia and Texas in play, even though those states haven’t voted for a Democratic presidential nominee in two decades.

So let’s talk about just how feasible this strategy is. How competitive are those three states at this point? And what’s more, how does this strategy complement — or counteract — Democratic efforts to pick up Midwestern battleground states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, or perennial swing states like Florida?

First up, Arizona. What do we think? Does Biden have a shot there?

geoffrey.skelley (Geoffrey Skelley, elections analyst): Of the three states we’re looking at, I think it’s pretty clear that Arizona is the most in play — and that Biden may even have the lead there, based on the limited polling we have.

President Trump won Arizona by 3.5 points in 2016 while losing the national popular vote by 2 points. So it stands to reason that if Biden is up 6 points or so nationally, Arizona is a toss-up, and that’s before we consider other things that may have shifted between 2016 and now.

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst): I agree, although I have been surprised at the degree to which Arizona seems to have moved to the left since 2016.

sarah: What other evidence do we have that Arizona has moved to the left since 2016?

geoffrey.skelley: Well, unlike in Georgia and Texas, Democrats actually won major statewide contests in Arizona in 2018 — including the state’s marquee Senate race — and election turnout was nearly as high as the 2016 presidential contest, meaning that performance may reflect a broader shift toward the Democrats rather than just a side effect of the midterms’ blue wave.

nrakich: G. Elliott Morris of The Economist had an interesting newsletter item recently that showed how much various states have moved left or right since 2016, based on the 2020 polls so far. Arizona had the starkest movement.

And Geoffrey’s right that, if Arizona were still 6 points redder than the nation and Biden led by 6 points nationally, we’d expect polls of Arizona to show a tied race. But Biden has consistently led in Arizona polls so far.

Biden has the edge in Arizona polling so far

Presidential general election polls of Arizona conducted since March 1

Dates Pollster Biden Trump Margin May 18-22 HighGround 47% 45% D+2 May 10-14 Redfield & Wilton 45 41 D+4 May 9-11 OH Predictive Insights 50 43 D+8 April 7-8 OH Predictive Insights 52 43 D+9 March 10-15 Marist 47 46 D+1 March 11-14 Monmouth 46 43 D+3 March 6-11 Latino Decisions 50 42 D+8 March 3-4 OH Predictive Insights 49 43 D+6 March 2-3 Public Policy Polling 48 47 D+1

Source: Polls

On the other hand, I’m still somewhat skeptical of the idea Arizona has moved that much to the left. Some of the higher-quality polls, like from Marist and Monmouth, do have the race closer to a tie, whereas the polls suggesting Arizona has gotten significantly more Democratic (e.g., by showing Biden up by 8 points) are not coming from gold-standard pollsters.

sarah: One other thing about Arizona that makes me think it might be fertile ground for Democrats in 2020 is that Democratic Senate challenger Mark Kelly seems to have the upper hand against Sen. Martha McSally, and if that race ends up close — or flips blue — that bodes well for Democrats in the long run, as it’s more evidence that Arizona might be becoming more of a blue state.

nrakich: Yeah, Kelly has been a monster fundraiser. He’s taken in more than $31 million since the beginning of last year.

Although I don’t think a down-ballot race is likely to drive turnout for the presidential. If anything, Kelly might run ahead of Biden because of his money and great bio.

geoffrey.skelley: That’s fair, but it’s worth remembering that every Senate seat that was up in 2016 went for the party that carried the state at the presidential level, so the fact a Democrat is polling that well in the Senate contest is probably a decent sign for the party’s chances as a whole.

sarah: For sure. It’s less that a down-ballot race would affect the top of the ticket, but more that Arizona really might go blue in 2020.

It sounds like we agree with the Biden campaign’s assessment that Arizona is in play, so does it make sense for them to campaign there?

Or is there an argument to be made that they should keep an eye on it, but maybe not commit fully?

nrakich: I mean �� both?

It’s a spectrum.

I definitely think Biden should spend more time and money in Arizona than in Georgia and Texas. But I still think Arizona is unlikely to be the tipping-point state, and Biden should spend even more time and money in must-win states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

geoffrey.skelley: Oh, they should definitely fully commit. Arizona gives them another possible path to 270 in the Electoral College. Arizona’s worth 11 electoral votes, so it could sub in for, say, Wisconsin (10 electoral votes) if Trump were to narrowly carry the Badger State.

nrakich: Now you have me questioning myself, Geoffrey! *whips out calculator*

Hmmm, Florida and Wisconsin were 3 points to the right of the nation in 2016. Arizona, as discussed, was 6. That’s not a big gap at all; maybe they do converge this year?

geoffrey.skelley: Another thing to keep in mind is that Democrats have been making inroads in the suburbs and dominating urban areas. Maricopa County (Phoenix and its environs) was the most populous county in the country to vote for Trump in 2016, but Trump only won it narrowly by about 3 points, and in 2018, Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema carried it by 4 points. So Democrats may be hoping for a repeat in 2020. Win Maricopa, win Arizona.

sarah: OK, it sounds like focusing on Arizona is smart for the Biden campaign, but maybe we’re a bit more skeptical of Georgia and Texas, the other two states the campaign has included in its “expanded” electoral map?

nrakich: Yeah. Georgia was 7 points to the right of the nation in 2016, and Texas was 11 points to the right. Given long-term trends, they have both probably moved a little to the left, but they have further to go than Arizona.

That said, Biden may well win those states — take a look at the polling there:

Georgia polls are extremely close

Presidential general election polls of Georgia conducted since March 1

Dates Pollster Biden Trump Margin May 16-18 Civiqs 48% 47% D+1 May 11-13 BK Strategies 46 48 R+2 May 4-7 Public Opinion Strategies 47 46 D+1 April 25-27 Cygnal 44 45 R+1 March 31-April 1 Battleground Connect 46 48 R+2

Source: Polls

Can Biden shock Trump in Texas?

Presidential general election polls of Texas conducted since March 1

Dates Pollster Biden Trump Margin May 8-10 Emerson College 48% 52% R+3 April 27-28 Public Policy Polling 47 46 D+1 April 18-27 University of Texas at Tyler 43 43 EVEN April 10-19 YouGov 44 49 R+5

Source: Polls

But if he does, he will probably already have clinched the Electoral College in the Midwest, Arizona or Florida.

geoffrey.skelley: Georgia is interesting. On the one hand, Biden could target the increasingly Democratic suburbs of Atlanta. On the other hand, it’s one of the most inelastic states in the country — meaning voters there are among the most likely to stick with their usual party regardless of which way the rest of the country swings — in part because its white voters remain predominantly Republican and its large black population is heavily Democratic, and there just isn’t a ton of movement there.

Additionally, if Democrats couldn’t carry Georgia in 2018 when the electoral environment was very pro-Democratic, that makes me skeptical they can win it in a presidential year, when partisan conditions could be more balanced. That said, if Biden is winning by 6 or 7 points nationally, that might be enough to put Georgia in his column, as Trump only carried it by 5 points in 2016. But as Nathaniel was saying earlier, that’s not a situation where Georgia is an integral part of Biden winning 270 electoral votes. It’s gravy at that point, though maybe it helps Democrats in the two Senate contests there.

nrakich: Yeah, Georgia is definitely inelastic. But on the other hand, Georgia has inched leftward (relative to the nation as a whole) in the last three presidential elections. And I think there is room for more suburban whites to move toward Democrats, not only in Georgia but also in Texas and Arizona.

sarah: That’s a good point, and I think a real question determining whether Georgia and Texas will be competitive is just how much the trends of 2018 — namely, suburban white voters moving to the Democratic Party — hold true.

This is an extreme hypothetical, but earlier this year, Nathaniel looked at what would happen if a state’s presidential vote was based strictly on how rural or urban the state is, and he found that Georgia would remain in the R column, but both Arizona and Texas would swing blue:

What if the urban-rural divide dictated the 2020 election?

The results of a hypothetical presidential election if a state’s urbanization were the only factor, based on the relationship between FiveThirtyEight’s urbanization index and 2016 presidential election results

State Result State Result Alabama R+16.0 Montana R+30.8 Alaska R+27.3 Nebraska R+8.2 Arizona D+6.1 Nevada D+12.3 Arkansas R+20.5 New Hampshire R+11.9 California D+17.7 New Jersey D+18.3 Colorado D+4.2 New Mexico R+12.2 Connecticut D+7.6 New York D+22.5 Delaware D+2.3 North Carolina R+6.6 Florida D+8.3 North Dakota R+23.2 Georgia R+3.6 Ohio D+0.6 Hawaii D+3.3 Oklahoma R+11.6 Idaho R+16.1 Oregon R+1.5 Illinois D+10.3 Pennsylvania D+4.1 Indiana R+5.5 Rhode Island D+11.6 Iowa R+16.1 South Carolina R+9.4 Kansas R+9.3 South Dakota R+27.4 Kentucky R+13.6 Tennessee R+8.3 Louisiana R+8.6 Texas D+4.5 Maine R+23.4 Utah D+1.7 Maryland D+11.5 Vermont R+25.9 Massachusetts D+13.2 Virginia D+1.0 Michigan R+0.3 Washington D+3.8 Minnesota R+4.9 West Virginia R+22.4 Mississippi R+25.1 Wisconsin R+8.3 Missouri R+8.2 Wyoming R+33.6

Source: American Community Survey

What do we make of this? Might Texas actually turn blue before Georgia?

nrakich: We have a tendency to think about elections through the lens of the decisive voters in the previous election, which for 2018 was suburbanites. But as I showed in that urbanization article, Georgia does have a lot of rural voters too, and there is still room for them to move even more toward Trump. So, actually, maybe those two trends will cancel each other out.

geoffrey.skelley: OK, but Georgia was still notably closer to going for Clinton than Texas — Trump won Georgia by 5 points and Texas by 9 points, which is a fairly sizable difference. And while Georgia may be more inelastic than Texas, Texas is not that elastic. Our 2018 elasticity score for Texas was 1.03 — not that far above the baseline of 1 — while Georgia’s was 0.90.

Texas is changing, but Barack Obama lost it by 12 points in 2008, which was a really good environment overall for Democrats.

nrakich: Yeah, there’s just too far for it to go.

geoffrey.skelley: As is often the case with questions about when Texas could go blue, it depends on how fast the political environment changes, but it still probably won’t happen until sometime after 2020, given what we know currently.

sarah: People seem to agree that the Biden campaign shouldn’t invest too much in Georgia and Texas if it comes at the expense of other battleground states in the Midwest or Florida. Is that fair?

nrakich: I think there’s a case for keeping your options open in Georgia. But the Biden campaign would be foolish to invest significantly in Texas. If Texas votes Democratic, Biden will already have won virtually every other swing state and, therefore, the election. It’s simply not a part of his path to 270 electoral votes — more like a part of his path to 400.

Also, Texas is an extremely expensive state in which to campaign, so it just wouldn’t be an efficient use of his money.

geoffrey.skelley: If Trump really is doing a lot worse among older voters than in 2016, it would be foolish for Biden to abandon Florida, which has one of the oldest populations in the country.

I could see reasons for Democrats to worry about Florida being a mirage after they failed to win the gubernatorial and Senate races there in 2018, but it’s just been too close in recent presidential elections to actually give up on it. Trump only won it by 1 point in 2016!

nrakich: Oh, I have strong feelings about Florida.

sarah:

nrakich: Florida is definitely still a swing state; it’s not as inelastic as the 2018 results implied. The Democratic nominees for governor and senator, Andrew Gillum and Bill Nelson, still outperformed Hillary Clinton in most counties; they just underperformed Clinton in a few key areas, especially Miami-Dade County. (This article by Florida Democratic consultant Matthew Isbell does a great job showing that.)

The reason for this is probably that their Republican opponents, Ron DeSantis and Rick Scott, did a lot better among Hispanic voters than Trump did. According to exit polls, Trump got 35 percent of the Latino vote in Florida in 2016, while DeSantis got 44 percent and Scott got 45 percent. In 2020, I don’t think Trump will be able to match DeSantis’s and Scott’s numbers.

So if Biden can pair Clinton’s performance among Hispanic Floridians with Nelson’s and Gillum’s among other voters, he can absolutely win Florida.

geoffrey.skelley: We’ve talked a lot about how Biden might be able to expand his electoral map, but he can’t afford to give up on Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In 2016, they were collectively decided by 78,000 votes, and who wins them in 2020 will likely be consequential as well.

The bigger questions in the Midwest and Rust Belt are probably whether to invest in Iowa and Ohio, which Trump carried by about 9 and 8 points, respectively. Those two states might be harder for Democrats to win back considering how they swung hard toward the GOP in 2016 after backing Obama in 2012.

That said, Iowa does have some history of being pretty swingy. It’s also cheaper to advertise in Iowa than Ohio, and if we’re talking down-ballot races, there is more at stake there, too. Potentially four competitive House races and a Senate seat in Iowa, whereas Ohio has no Senate race and is likely to have only one or two close House races.

nrakich: Yeah, if Biden wants to be an effective president, he’ll need a Democratic Senate. IMO, that means he should give extra credit to Georgia and Iowa when deciding where to allocate his resources.

sarah: The balancing act that the Biden campaign will inevitably have to engage in isn’t entirely clear to me yet. How much will they actually invest in states like Arizona, Georgia and Texas versus doubling down on states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin?

Much of this will inevitably boil down to what the tipping-point state is in 2020, but one thing that’s hard to figure out is how much of the map already realigned in 2016. Put another way, does Biden have his eyes on states like Arizona because winning states like Wisconsin back will be difficult?

nrakich: But I think that’s the needle we need to thread: Arizona might be moving in one direction and Wisconsin in the other, but even in the “realigned” (really more “recalibrated”) 2016 map, Arizona was redder than Wisconsin.

geoffrey.skelley: It’s curious because some of this comes down to the national environment. Maybe Wisconsin is a point or two redder than it was in 2016, but if Biden wins by 4 or 5 points nationally, maybe that’s enough to carry it even if Wisconsin is continuing to move toward the GOP.

But how exactly that plays out in each state is hard to say.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Sarah Frostenson #Nathaniel Rakich and Geoffrey Sk

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your-dietician · 3 years

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JD Vance, author of 'Hillbilly Elegy,' enters large, pro-Trump GOP field for Ohio Senate seat

New Post has been published on https://depression-md.com/jd-vance-author-of-hillbilly-elegy-enters-large-pro-trump-gop-field-for-ohio-senate-seat/

JD Vance, author of 'Hillbilly Elegy,' enters large, pro-Trump GOP field for Ohio Senate seat

At a kickoff rally Thursday night in his hometown of Middletown, near Cincinnati, Vance delivered a populist message, with large corporations, big tech firms and “public health leadership” in the crosshairs. He also promised to fight for the grandmothers who believe in a secure border and for the “middle-class worker.”

“I want to be not just a fighter, but a fighter who’s fighting for you,” Vance said from behind a lectern where, moments before his announcement, a campaign sign had fallen down.

“There has never been a Republican primary for statewide office in Ohio this wide open and this chaotic,” said one Republican strategist familiar with Ohio. “Each one of these candidates has their own claim to the Republican base.”

The knives were already out for Vance before the 36-year-old venture capitalist joined the race. Earlier this week, Ohio Republicans received anonymous text messages blasting Vance as a “Never Trumper.” The texts are similar to a flurry of messages sent to voters in April,denouncing Vance shortly after he announced he was exploring a Senate run.

Most Ohio Republicans doubt Trump will endorse until closer to the May 3 primary next year, but the fight over his mantle is on. Mandel, for instance, has taken on the role of pro-Trump culture warrior, releasing a video last month of himself burning a protective mask to protest Covid-19 restrictions. The more establishment-aligned Timken can point to Trump’s support for her as Ohio GOP chair in January 2017. And Vance has taken up Trump’s criticisms of “Big Tech” — aligning him with the Trump donor and Silicon Valley gadfly Peter Thiel, who earlier this year pledged $10 million to a pro-Vance super PAC.

Trump’s centrality in the GOP primary reflects how the former president remains a political force in the Buckeye State. Trump won the state twice, earning more than 3 million votes in 2020 and improving his share of the vote from four years earlier by 2 percentage points.

Once considered a perennial swing state, Ohio has trended toward the GOP for the past decade. In that time, Republicans have held every state executive office and the majorities in both houses of the state legislature. Since 2010, only two Democrats have been able to win statewide in Ohio: Barack Obama in his 2012 reelection bid and Sen. Sherrod Brown, who won reelection in 2012 and again in 2018.

Trump’s ascendance has accelerated the GOP’s takeover, allowing the party to corner the White working-class vote that Democrats have struggled to keep in the fold. Amid their own primary battle, Republicans are trying to define the Democrats’ leading candidate, Rep. Tim Ryan, as someone who is captured by his party’s left wing and out of touch with Ohioans.

“As Tim Ryan seeks a promotion, he is trending more and more leftward to appease his liberal bosses — Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, AOC and Bernie Sanders,” said Lizzie Litzow of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “He is in lockstep with these radicals on issues like open borders that have led to the outrageous crisis at our Southern Border and abolishing the filibuster — a blatant power grab.”

Hoping for a reversal in their fortunes, Democrats in Ohio and nationally are counting on a chaotic and messy Republican primary to give their nominee a chance.

“Their chaos is our opportunity,” said Liz Walters, chair of the Ohio Democratic Party. “These Republican candidates are so desperately running their campaigns for an audience of one, for Trump.”

Ryan declined to be interviewed for this story.

Vying for Trump’s base

This competition came to a head in Wellington, Ohio, on Saturday, where each of the top Republican candidates treated Trump’s rally at the Lorain County Fairgrounds as a proving ground.

Leading into the rally, Timken ran a radio ad touting her Trump credentials. On the day of, she had a plane flying over the rallygoers touting her campaign and had campaign volunteers around the event to meet voters. Gibbons hosted a pro-Trump tailgate before the rally and had volunteers and the event. Both Mandel and Moreno took a more casual approach to the event — they attended but mostly just mingled with people.

Trump — in Ohio to kick off his revenge tour against Republicans who haven’t been loyal to him — clearly enjoyed the competition vying for his base’s support.

Standing on stage deep into his rally, the former President began to play up the divisions.

“Hey, do you want to take a poll,” Trump exclaimed about the Senate race, throwing the crowd of supporters into the contentious affair.

When Trump mentioned Timken, the former state party chair earned a smattering of cheers, groans and boos. Mandel, who has tailored his campaign narrowly to Trump’s base, earned more hearty applause, while the response to Gibbons — more of an unknown in the race — was more muted. The former President, seemingly sensing the divisions, said, “I think we’ll get out of this poll stuff,” before mentioning Moreno.

The tension at the Trump rally was just the latest — and possibly most public — chapter of an already frenzied race, one that has seen the candidates already fighting.

The frontrunners

Mandel, the 43-year-old Marine veteran, is considered the current frontrunner even by those supporting his rivals. Thanks to his two terms as state treasurer, he has high name identification and connections with conservative groups and leaders in Ohio.

Mandel also brings a considerable amount of campaign dollars — more than $4 million — left unspent from his short-lived 2018 run for Senate, when he dropped out months before the primary.

“If the election were today, Josh would win,” said one adviser to another GOP candidate.

But Mandel is also facing headwinds in the early months of his current campaign. The Columbus Dispatch reported in May that three of Mandel’s fundraisers had left the campaign, followed by a report this week that two of those staff members departed because of a “toxic work environment” created by Mandel’s girlfriend and finance director, Rachel Wilson.

Mandel declined to comment to CNN about those reports.

Mandel’s most direct competition appears to be Timken, who comes to the race without the experience in elected office but with a formidable organization — including committee chairs in all of Ohio’s 88 counties. Timken also has access to financial and political resources through her husband, Tim Timken, a former steel executive who is a lobbyist in Columbus.

Timken has faulted other candidates “who have based President Trump, refused to campaign for him or quit the tough fights” — something she has done regularly on campaign literature that calls out her opponents by name. Mandel has regularly attacked Timken, casting her as someone not entirely loyal to Trump and tying her to former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican who has drawn the ire of Trump loyalists.

Much of Mandel’s focus on Timken has centered around Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, the Republican congressman who voted in favor of impeaching Trump earlier this year. The Ohio Republican Party later censured Gonzalez and called for him to resign.

Timken carefully defended Gonzalez after his vote, touting his record as a legislator and opening up a line of attack for Mandel.

“Question: Why did Jane Timken refuse to censure Gonzalez when she was Chairman? She clearly had time to do so,” Mandel tweeted in May. “So what’s the real reason?”

A ‘different kind of candidate’

Vance enters the Senate race as something of a wild card. Known primarily for his best-selling memoir Hillbilly Elegy, the Yale Law School graduate and venture capitalist has emerged as an authoritative voice on the White-working class that makes up the base of Trump’s support in the GOP.

But Vance’s political fate could come down to how he talks about his transformation on Trump, who he publicly opposed in 2016 before reversing his position in 2020.

During the 2016 campaign, Vance wrote in USA Today, “Trump’s actual policy proposals, such as they are, range from immoral to absurd.” The same year, as it became clear Trump would become the GOP presidential nominee, Vance wrote in The Atlantic that “Trump is cultural heroin,” who “makes some feel better for a bit.”

“He cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it,” added Vance.

As the anonymous text message demonstrates, Vance is already facing attacks for his past opposition to Trump. Some of that will come from the national conservative movement, which has begun to coalesce around Mandel. The Club for Growth’s political action committee, which endorsed Mandel in March, released a statement Wednesday night going after Vance.

“He claims to be a Trump Republican, but in the short time Mr. Vance has been active in politics he’s spent the bulk of it tearing down President Trump and mocking Trump voters,” said the Club’s president, David McIntosh.

Nevertheless, Vance’s allies say he is the most authentic candidate in the field because he can express so well why Trump became president. (They also point out that some of his opponents, including Mandel, first supported other Republicans in the 2016 Ohio presidential primary.)

Earlier this year, Vance met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. He also attended his rally last week in Ohio. And his connection with Thiel may further help soften any bad feelings Trump could have for Vance.

A spokesman for the Thiel-backed super PAC, Protect Ohio Values, told CNN that Vance “believes deeply in President Trump’s America First agenda and is laser focused on fighting for policies that will benefit Ohio’s mighty Middle Class.”

“Ohioans want elected leaders with the spine to stand up to Washington’s corrupt political class and we’re confident that JD Vance is the only candidate in this race who fits that bill,” added the spokesman.

The Republican strategist familiar with Ohio called Vance a “different kind of candidate” with an idiosyncratic style and issue-set who could break out if primary voters find themselves underwhelmed by Mandel and Timken.

That jibes with the overwhelming sense from Ohio Republicans that, barring an intervention by Trump, anything could happen.

“This could be the wildest primary of the cycle,” said the GOP strategist.

This story has been updated with Vance’s remarks Thursday evening.

CNN’s Manu Raju contributed to this report.

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bloomsburgu · 4 years

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How this alumna went from respected business leader and Army veteran to state treasurer

By Tom McGuire Marketing and Communications

To say Stacy Garrity ’86 is not your typical politician is an understatement. She went from political unknown to winning a state row office, a journey that has taken the Bradford County native around the world. Her election victory shocked even the most optimistic of supporters and has suddenly thrust her into the thick of the political world.

So how did the Athens resident and retired Army Reserve colonel make it to Harrisburg as Pennsylvania’s new state treasurer?

The oldest of four daughters of Howard Garrity and Beverly Arbie, “we were raised to be about God, country, and family,” says Garrity. “We went to church every Wednesday and Sunday. In the summer, we attended vacation Bible school, and every morning at school, we recited the Pledge of Allegiance. And on top of everything, no matter what, I had to watch out for my sisters.”

“My parents were very encouraging,” says Garrity. “They always made it a big thing to say that whatever you put your mind to do, you can do it. I grew up just believing it in a naive sort of way.”

Following graduation from Sayre High School, Garrity knew she was going to college. It was something her parents drilled into her and her sisters. However, the first-generation student admits she didn’t put much thought into what school she would attend. “My reason for [first] choosing Lock Haven was simple; my friends were going there.”

“I wasn’t well-traveled and lived a pretty sheltered life, soI figured I could carpool and come back home on the weekends,” Garrity says. “After a year of adjusting to college life, I realized I should look for a school with more of a focus on business, which is what I was interested in. When I looked around, I saw that Bloomsburg had a very good program and so I transferred.”

As a student, Garrity was intrigued by business and economics and how markets function. It was a field dominated by males in the 1980s, which did not worry her in the least. At BU, Garrity studied finance and accounting and was influenced by then chair of the accounting and business law department, the late Bernard Dill.

“Professor Dill was very engaging with his students,” Garrity recalls. “He was funny, he was motivating, and he made me take a strong interest in the major.”

Garrity, a runner in high school, also found time to be a varsity cheerleader, but more importantly, she joined the Army ROTC on the encouragement of her parents, both 20-year Navy Reserve veterans.

“Basic training was an eye-opening experience. I wasn’t mentally prepared for people being in my face and yelling. We weren’t allowed to call home for a few weeks, and when we did, of course, my mom immediately said forget it and to come home. My dad said never quit. So, I stayed so I wouldn’t disappoint my father.”

“My dad supported us and told us ‘whatever your mind believes you can achieve, you can achieve’ and that ‘winners never quit, and quitters never win.’ It stuck with me.”

After graduating from BU, Garrity joined Global Tungsten and Powders Corporation , or GTP, in Towanda and advanced through several positions, becoming vice president of two of GTP’s three business units. She was VP for government affairs and industry liaison before stepping down to assume her elected position.

At the same time, Garrity was a member of the Army Reserve, but certainly had no plans for what would become a 30-year military career.

“My original idea was to do my six years and then get out. Of course, after 9/11, I went to Kuwait. That was my first deployment. Upon returning home, I just could not bring myself to get out. I felt I needed to stay and serve our country.”

GTP management shared Garrity’s commitment to the Reserve. “At some companies, when you return from a deployment, management will try to reorganize you out. But every time I got back from a deployment, GTP would promote me. They are a great company that has been around for more than 100 years. We have many third-generation employees. And, of course, they were always very proud of me and my work.”

“The entire GTP Group organization has deep respect for Stacy,” says Hermann Walser, president and CEO. “She is always looking beyond her direct responsibilities. The well-being of all stakeholders, customers, employees, community, and country, is her priority. Her ability to motivate and convince people, to communicate, and to network are unique. We will desperately miss her in this function, as well as a member of our GTP family.”

During her last overseas deployment in 2008-09, Garrity earned the nickname “Angel of the Desert” while serving as the acting battalion commander of the military police at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq.“Our mission was to provide care and custody with dignity and respect to the 7,000 detainees.”

“To make sure all the rules and regulations were being followed, I would walk the camp after midnight because I always said nothing good happens after midnight. I would walk with the senior staff and just check on soldiers. Then we would have meetings and make sure everything was going OK.”

“We also had a deal that as long as the detainees weren’t doing anything to hurt our soldiers, then we would allow family visitation or even some soccer matches. The detainees would also get videos once a week. But, among our staff, we had zero tolerance for abuse. We were the first internment facility to have zero abuse allegations. I’m very proud of that fact.”

Garrity’s outstanding work in Iraq did not go unnoticed. She was twice awarded the Bronze Star and received the Legion of Merit before retiring from the Army Reserve with the rank of colonel. Back in Bradford County, she and her husband Dan Gizzi, married since 2005, kept busy with water skiing, snowmobiling and running. But the desire to serve others was always an itch.

“As I was thinking about what to do, volunteer work and politics were two of my choices. I’ve always liked politics, so I called our state representative Tina Pickett, who I knew from my job in government affairs since my real passion is the industrial base and making sure that we keep jobs in the United States.”

Pickett recommended jumping into the race for Tom Marino’s U.S. Congressional seat after his resignation. “The next day she had me lined up with a political consultant, and they pushed me right into the deep end.” Despite 31 candidates in the race, Stacy finished a respectable sixth. That showing led the state GOP leadership to reach out to her in late 2019 to gauge her interest in running for statewide office.

“I started praying about it, and I thought, OK, Lord, if you want me to do this, then open the doors. And, he did, and then I still was pretty hesitant. When the GOP leadership said they couldn’t find anyone to run for treasurer, I decided, if not me, then who’s going to do it.”

Shortly after making the decision to run and receiving the state Republican Party’s endorsement to challenge incumbent Democrat Joe Torsella, the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

“Trying to campaign and raise money during a pandemic was hard. I had to go total grassroots with the odds stacked against me. A Republican had not defeated an incumbent Democrat since 1994. Many people told me ‘Stacy, you’re running a great campaign, but there’s no way you can beat this guy.’”

As Election Day grew closer and the polls showed a tight race, Torsella mounted an advertising blitz with a campaign chest of more than $2 million. But on election night, as results showed her in the lead, she was cautiously optimistic. A week later her opponent called to concede. She had pulled off a win no one had expected. “Joe was extremely gracious and very helpful in the transition. I’m sure it was tough for him because he was told there’s no way you’re going to lose to somebody from Bradford County who had never run before.”

At her swearing-in ceremony in January, Garrity did something most unusual. She offered Torsella an opportunity to deliver some remarks. “Joe rose above politics and helped ensure a smooth transition. As we say in the military, thanks for your service.”

In her inaugural address, Garrity touched upon several key points that have been a part of her life. “Service to others, be it in elected office or wearing the uniform of our country, is the highest calling.”

“Getting the job done in good faith and with honest effort is the watchword by which I promise to serve. I say we look ahead to a place of optimism and cooperation.”

Garrity says her goal for the office is to make transparency a top priority and put taxpayers first. “Putting those checks and balances in place is what I want to focus on so that we can make sure that we’re being a good steward of our taxpayers’ money. Taking transparency to the next level is something that I want to do, and then probably further enhancing the savings programs.”

Throughout her journey from rural Pennsylvania to the battlefields of Iraq and then through the rigors of a political campaign, Garrity has never forgotten her roots. Her advice to young girls and women is to remain true to your values.

“I’ve really tried to live my life with integrity, selfless service, honor, loyalty, and duty. If somebody like me from Bradford County, who grew up on the left side of middle-class, can put myself through college, join the military, then work in manufacturing and become the first female vice president in my company, deploy three times overseas, and retire a colonel, then anyone can do it.”

As for the next part of the Stacy Garrity journey, only one person knows for sure.

“People have already called me about running for other offices, and I’ve told them I campaigned on staying in the job for four years and want to be the best treasurer I can for the people of Pennsylvania. And then we’ll see what God has in store for me.”

Spoken like a true non-politician.

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